Sound Companies
Sound Image (Consoles), Shure (Mics)
Venue
Various (Tour)
Crew
- FOH Engineer/Production Manager: Jai Vatuk
- Monitor Engineer: Cory Benson
- Systems Engineer: Josh Isenberg
- Tour Manager: Kyle Crownover
Gear
FOH
- Console: Avid S6L-32D
- Processing: (1) Waves Extreme server, (2) LM44 Lake processors, AES from console to processors
- Plug-Ins: Waves C6, API-550 EQ, SSL Comp, NLS- Buss, F6, Abbey Road Reverbs, H-Delay, H-comp
- Power Distro: Standalone 3-phase power distro
- Snake Assemblies: Power 3 phase 5TL, redundant Cat5 digital snake, 4 pair XLR
MON
- Console: Avid S6L-32D
- IEMs: Jerry Harvey JH13v2, JH11, JH10x3
- Wireless: Shure PSM1000
- Mics: Shure Beta 91, Beta 52, KSM8, Beta98 AMP/C, KSM 137, KSM 141, SM7B, KSM313, SM57, BETA 56, SM58, SM58 with Optogate, KSM32, SM58S, TL47B/O, VP89, Beta 181, KSM-8 on Tyler Childers’ vocal
Tour Details
Tyler Childers’ 2023 Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? tour, with Childers’ band, The Food Stamps, and special guest Elle King, included two shows with orchestral performers at NYC’s Radio City Music Hall Aug. 2-3, 2023.
The tour kicked off in April 2023 and will wrap up in Denver in late September, with an additional performance set for Lexington, KY’s Rupp Arena on Dec. 31, 2023. Working mostly with venue-supplied P.A. systems, Childers and his band once again turned to Sound Image for the control package at FOH and monitors along with a Shure-supplied mic package.
“We’re a Sound Image client,” said FOH engineer and production manager Jai Vatuk when FRONT of HOUSE caught up with him just band’s big shows at Radio City Music Hall in NYC in early August. “Our relationship goes way back. The CEO, Dave Shadoan, he was a monitor engineer when I was a musician; we met many years ago. I’ve used Sound Image for most of my tours,” Vatuk said. This time out, “we’re playing mostly venues with P.A. installed. We’re carrying full audio control – consoles – and Shure wireless equipment for IEMs, plus a boatload of Shure microphones.”
Originally hired to serve as the production manager, Vatuk quickly assumed the “rather large other hat” of FOH Engineer after joining the band and hitting the road in September 2019. After getting everyone on in-ears “for the first time in their lives,” the band’s production started scaling up, with performances at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, the Austin City Limits Music Festival, where Childers performing before Guns N’ Roses took the stage. The Childers camp “instantly felt like a great place to be,” Vatuk said.
Monitor engineer Cory Benson also proved a great fit when he joined the band in mid-2022. “He’s got a pretty expansive knowledge of wireless, and he’s just a really good, all-around engineer,” Vatuk said. Also playing a key role as the tour production has expanded is systems engineer and FOH tech Josh Isenberg. “Wearing the two hats, I start the morning as a production manager, leading up to sound check, so Josh is the one who gets everything up and running at FOH and tunes the system every day and hands it over.”
Vatuk, who had been using an Avid Venue Profile when he first started with the band in 2019, switched over to an Avid S6L when Childers teamed up with Sturgill Simpson for their Good Look’n Tour that kicked off in Feb. 2020, shortly before the Covid pandemic cut that co-headlining trek short. For the current 2023 tour, Vatuk at FOH and Benson at monitors are each mixing on Avid S6L-32D consoles.
While Vatuk doesn’t go overboard on analog outboard, he does use a Waves Extreme server and Waves plugins. “On Tyler’s vocal, I have the Waves C6 de-esser and API-550 EQ, and on master I tend to use the SSL Comp and NLS-Buss to give it some analog coloring. But I’ve got a lot of different plugins across the board.”
As for wireless, both the artist and band are on IEMs – Jerry Harvey JH13v2, JH11, JH10x3 – and Shure’s PSM1000 wireless system. For the Radio City Music Hall shows, orchestral performers joined the band (as they had at Bonnaroo and Red Rocks), required some additional wireless wizardry on Benson’s part. “The extra PSM 1000’s were actually in a different frequency range because it was getting pretty crowded where we were,” Vatuk said.
The more complex orchestral shows, Vatuk noted, can add an hour or so to the setup, with the audio crew putting in up to three hours. “And we’ll do a full sound check, he added. “Usually we start with Tyler’s solo, then use a band song to make sure everything’s in the ballpark in the room, then rehearse with the orchestra” as long as time permits.
Vatuk gave a shout out to Shure’s Ryan Smith for an assist with microphones, and the current tour’s arsenal includes Shure’s Beta 91, Beta 52, KSM8, Beta98 AMP/C, KSM 137, KSM 141, SM7B, KSM313, SM57, BETA 56, SM58, SM58 with Optogate, KSM32, SM58S, TL47B/O, VP89 and Beta 181, with Shure’s KSM-8 for Tyler Childers’ vocal.
From Vatuk’s vantage point, Shure’s KSM-8 proved to be a “game changer” for vocals and a particularly good fit for “some of the frequencies that really sound good on his voice.” He also credited Shure’s KSM 313 ribbon mics on the guitar amps for providing “warmth” to the guitar sounds. For the orchestral performers, he added, “we’re using SM7s for horns and the TwinPlex for the string section” to “provide a really natural sound.”
The early push to get everyone on IEMs, Vatuk added, has really paid off. “Since I started with Tyler, we’ve been doing larger and larger venues, and stage volume, even at the largest venues, is still a factor. So it really is a blessing to have everyone on IEMs, and for all of them to be happy with that, because it just eliminates that other side of things where the stage noise competes with what’s in the house, and vice versa.”
For more information on upcoming Tyler Childers tour dates, go to www.tylerchildersmusic.com
