FOH Interview

Under the name of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Alvin Ailey's mission and vision of American dance has been thriving for more than 46 years. The AAADT brings a wide variety of Ailey's 79 ballets and more than 190 works by more than 71 choreographers to audiences across America and around the world. Under the ubiquitous title of "Sound Engineer," Paul Allshouse is master of all things audio for AAADT. While he believes deeply in the values and goals of the company and each performance, at the end of the day, he has a job to do, and doing that job means battling some very familiar demons. Having started with the company in September of 2003, Allshouse tells us a little about audio design on the fly, life on the road and abroad, and the oldest battle in the book–fiscal responsibility while delivering the best show possible.

It's happened many times since I started writing for FOH–a seemingly simple story assignment turned out to be much cooler than I originally anticipated. This one started as a detour on a trip to Vegas, where my primary task was to check out a Cirque du Soleil premiere. Sure, I've heard of Tim McGraw, and his latest hit, "Live Like You Were Dyin'," is one of my current faves. And all the women in the office love his…um… tight jeans. What I found when I got to the McGraw camp was a great sound crew who've worked together long enough to really be a team, and who know exactly what they're doing–even when they're improvising, turning last night's dinner leftovers into gear components.

What started as simply a promotional gimmick for a new movie turned into something much more, to the obvious joy of everyone involved, from the performers to the sound guys and the soundco, which may just end up with a new long-term client. We are talking about the 10-city tour mounted to promote Beyond the Sea, the new Bobby Darin biopic written by, directed by and starring Kevin Spacey. Traveling with FOH and MON engineers and a production manager with an audio background, the tour carried no production besides mics, personal monitors and a small rack of processing gear. Even many of the musicians were picked up in each town, with just the core rhythm section and two backup singers along for the entire ride.

What do live sound and the rodeo have in common? Dirk Durham, Toby Keith's FOH engineer since 2000. "I've had two jobs–running sound and riding bareback horses," says Durham. "A good friend of mine is Ben Johnson, who's a pretty prolific singer/songwriter, and we traveled together–he wrote and I rode bareback horses. After the shows, he'd go in to the local VFWs and Moose Lodges, and they would rent to him and he'd play for the door. And I'd be there to drink beer and chase women, and he'd go, 'If you're going to hang out so much, then start rolling cords,' and I rolled cords, then moved to the monitor desk, and then to Front of House. And I thought, 'This is kind of like rodeoing: I'm traveling a bunch, and really not working more than an hour, and I think I might like doing this!'"