Sound Company
Clair Global
Venue
Various (Tour)
Crew
- FOH Engineer: Michael “Mikey” Weiland
- Monitor Engineer: Matt Hannigan
- Systems Engineers: Various (house-supplied speaker rigs)
Gear
FOH
- Console: DiGiCo SD12 96
- FOH Gear: Waves Diamond Bundle, Waves Waves SoundGrid Extreme X10 DSP Server Mac Mini, Neve 550 Primary Source Enhancer, Strymon Big-Sky
MON
- Console: DigiCo SD12 96
- Wireless: Shure Axient AD4Q
- IEMs: Shure PSM-1000
- Mics: Vocals: sE E.lectronics V7 Dynamic (Caroline Polachek), Telefunken M80 (Maya Lanar/Bass), Shure SM58 (Matt Horton/Guitar); Guitar & Bass Amp Mics: Electric Guitar – DI/Line 6 Helix; Acoustic Guitar: Radial J48; Bass: DI/Line 6 Helix; Kick-In: Shure Beta 91; Kick Out: Shure SM7B; Snare 1 Top: Beyerdynamic M201; Snare 1 Bottom: Beyerdynamic M260; Snare 2: Sennheiser 421; Snare 3: beyerdynamic M 201; Snare Crush Mic: Shure SM82; Hi-Hat: Shure SM81; Rack Tom/Floor Tom: Shure Beta 98C; Bongo: Sennheiser e906; Percussion: Studio Projects C1; Ride/Cymbal Stack: Shure SM81; Overheads: Warm Audio WA-84
Tour Details
Caroline Polachek’s recent Spiraling tour supported her February 2023 album release, Desire, I Want to Turn Into You. After a UK/Europe tour leg that kicked off in February, Polachek and FOH engineer “Mikey” Weiland hopped the pond for more shows across the U.S. from mid-April to late May, including a two-night stand at the Warfield in San Francisco May 1-2 (pictured here). The U.S. gigs included house rigs, but Clair supplied the control package, which included a pair of looped DiGiCo SD12 96 consoles manned by Weiland at FOH and monitor engineer Matt Hanigan for the U.S. shows. (UK-based Kaan Kurt mixed monitors for the UK/Europe tour leg).
More details from Steve Jennings:
FRONT of HOUSE had a chance to see Caroline Polachek’s show in San Francisco and to speak with her FOH Engineer Michael “Mikey” Weiland, who talks about mixing Caroline’s tour.
FOH Engineer Michael “Mikey” Weiland has been mixing Caroline Polachek since the summer of 2021. Her team initially brought him on at monitors for a local Los Angeles one-off at The Greek Theater that came through a recommendation from a mutual connection between a lighting director friend of Weiland and Polachek’s tour manager. “I was very familiar with her former band, and I’d known for years what an insanely talented vocalist and killer producer she is, so I was really excited to jump in when the offer came around,” says Weiland.
On this latest run Weiland says he’s hovering around 50 channels in total. “Her band expanded from a two piece to a three-piece, and they tend to have a guest performer on just about every other show at this point, so our channel count has jumped up quite a bit. We have 15 inputs for drums alone on this run.”
As far as processing goes, Weiland is using a mixture of plugins and outboard gear, which has always been his approach. “On the plugin side of things, I’m carrying a Waves SoundGrid Extreme X10, alongside a Mac mini running SuperRack. For vocals, I’m using the F6 floating band Dynamic EQ at the top of my chain to smooth out Caroline’s frequency response. Her range is really spectacular, and she’s often jumping between different vocal ranges several times within a song. The F6 is key in keeping the frequency response of her vocal consistent. After that, she hits a D-Esser, a few stages of compression for taste, and some broad stroke EQ on the Schepps Omni-Channel to tidy things up. Last in the chain is the Waves PSE, which is side chained to a duplicate channel of her vocal, pre-compression. This helps me to tamp down stage bleed and get a few extra dB of gain on her vocal. At the very end of her Vocal Bus, I have an X-FDBK plugin as a little insurance policy. Depending on the venue and P.A. setup, it can be a life saver… We’ve hit a few smaller stages and rooms where the P.A. hang isn’t ideal, and in those instances it’s a godsend.”
For drums, Weiland has standard go-to Waves, some Transient designers for individual skin inputs, a C6 on Kick-in, API 2500’s on toms, and an SSL bus comp on the ‘Skins’ group. “Our drummer, Russell [Holzman], is amazing and does a lot of the work for me, but the additional processing really does make his kit pop. Bass and guitar each get their own CLA-2A, and the bass gets yet another F6, which is side chained to duck the fundamental frequency of the kick drum.”
Weiland’s outboard gear includes a Neve 550 Primary Source enhancer, which he uses on the vocal side chain channel as mentioned. “Having the hardware PSE in front of me gives me a visual cue of what’s it’s doing, and a tactile interaction where needed so I’m not staring at a screen the whole show. I’m working the threshold for that thing the whole show to let through as little stage/crowd bleed from her mic as possible. Lastly, for her big vocal verb throws, I’m using a Strymon BigSky (which is actually a guitar stompbox). The Strymon receives patch changes via Midi, which are built into my snapshots. Again, I’m riding the decay times pretty regularly during the show, so having a dedicated outboard unit on hand is extremely helpful.”
The mic package is a mixed bag from Weiland’s personal collection. “Mic choices on this current run came from a lot of trial and error, and we have some interesting mics in places they don’t generally get used. For example, I’m using a [Shure] SM7B on Kick out, and a beyerdynamic M260 (which is a ribbon mic) on snare bottom of all things. Caroline’s vocal mic is Shure Axient Digital with an sE V7 capsule. We went through a few vocal mics before landing on the v7. There’s some weird magical voodoo in the V7 / female vocal combo. It’s got a ton of definition in the high’s without sounding too spicy or brittle, and the polar pattern is insanely tight and gets us a few extra dB of usable gain.”
On this latest run, run it was all house racks and stacks. “My preference for this tour would definitely be L-Acoustics K2’s, although we’ve hit a few newer Meyer rigs on this run, which have been pretty rippin! Our monitor engineer is Matt Hannigan, and he is amazing. We’re both on DiGiCo SD12 96’s and share an SD Rack.”
More Caroline Polachek 2023 tour photos by Steve Jennings:
