Production Profile

For the 2007 Canadian Winter Games, they only heated the venue enough to keep the FOH gear operational. . .
 
Whitehorse, Yukon, with its population of 23,000, has a cozy, small-town feel, as people have time to chat, and cars stop for people to cross the street even if the traffic light is green. This city is also one of the best places to see the mysterious phenomenon called the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis. During a clear winter night when there is a high level of solar wind, the electrons discharge like florescent lights, and tourists come from all over the world hoping to see the sky light up in green swirls.
 

Ace Baker and Anthony Roberts keep horn-funk legends Tower of Power sounding TOPs 150 nights a year.

Quick, answer this question without actually thinking about it. You have a choice of two gigs. One is a mega-hot young band with a huge radio hit headlining arenas and doing stadium festivals. The other is a group of 50+ year-old guys who have not had a radio hit in 20 years and are on the road up to 200 days a year, playing everything from casino showrooms to clubs. Which one do you take? 

Most of ATK AudioTek's 46-person crew are veterans of the Super Bowl extravaganza. But they still take nothing for granted. Arriving three weeks before the Feb. 4 showdown between the Colts and the Bears at Miami's Pro Player Stadium, Scott Harmala, ATK's CTO and vice president of engineering, saw that this year's version was going to have a few unique challenges of its own.

Concert sound isn't usually a matter of life or death, but leave it to Iron Maiden to be the exception. The iconic metal band's recent "Matter Of Life Or Death" world tour proves that after more than 30 years, they haven't slowed down a tick and still demand a P.A. that permeates sold-out arenas with full-range output, while also upholding the first commandment of metal: Make it loud.

Produced over the course of the Halloween weekend, the Vegoose music festival in Las Vegas, Nev., featured jam bands, punk bands, fringe bands and mainstream headliners spread out over three days and the city of Vegas. Bands such as Widespread Panic and the String Cheese Incident played out in late night gigs at clubs closer to the casinos [Interview with Chris Raboid And Brad Blettenberg of Widespread Panic is on page 26 –ed.], while the main show was concentrated on the grounds of Sam Boyd stadium in the city's southwest corner.

It's 12:35 p.m. when I walk into Engine studios in Chicago. In 25 minutes The M's will be playing live for a small audience here, but their performance is going to reach a lot more ears. KEXP, the radio station from Seattle which is sponsoring this concert (and 10 others over the course of three days), will be broadcasting this performance live over the airwaves in Seattle as well as streaming it live in multiple formats over the internet and cell phones, keeping that stream available on their website for two weeks, possibly podcasting the performance, burning it to CD for later playback on the air and archiving it for possible inclusion on a live CD at a later date. That's a lot to think about for FOH engineer Scott Colburn, but he seems cool as he walks around the 11-piece band in his socks, swapping XLR cables on the lead vocalist's mic and checking the DI boxes on the string section (two violins and a cello — yes, it's a rock band). Of course, this calm might come from the fact that everything that can go wrong, already has. This morning, just after install, the ISDN line that fed the broadcast back to Seattle failed.

Going from the self-proclaimed "kid in the teenage garage band that happened to know the most about the sound system" to a career that includes stints with acts ranging from Earth Wind and Fire and Prince to Brian Setzer and Leann Rimes, Jeffrey "Raz" Rasmussen has been at the console for Michael McDonald for the last dozen years.

"By the time I was 15, I had put together a P.A. with my friend and we started to rent it out to other local bands when we weren't playing. I started to mix some of the shows, and the rest is history. I would mix many local bands whenever I wasn't playing. I worked at music store when I was 18 and started to do sound system installs. The next year I got hired by Speeda Sound, worked there for about two years, then moved to L.A. where I went to work at Studio Instrument Rentals running the audio department. I've also worked at NBC, Nickelodeon, Schubert Systems, Electrotech and even AVHQ."

To be honest, when FOH called me needing someone to cover Ozzfest I was pretty stoked. I had always wanted to see Ozzfest, but in this biz doing a few shows a week of my own, I have generally no desire to be around another show. I also had never been asked to "cover a show". Typically FOH just wants me to "rant"–which I'm OK with.

This time, though, it was coverage, so my wife Lisa and I drove from Vegas to San Diego Saturday for a Sunday show. We had arrangements with Ken "Pooch" Van Druten, FOH engineer for System of a Down, to get working passes for the day. When we arrived around 2 p.m., Pooch met us at the gate and took us to his bus where we had a 30-minute discussion with him and Dave Coil, monitor mixer for System of a Down.

FOH engineer Rob "Cubby" Colby has been doing so much Latin work of late (Luis Miguel, Robi "Draco" Rosa, Juanes, and Shakira) that it is easy to forget that his R&B roots runs deep, including tours with both Prince and Janet Jackson. Likewise, DB Sound Image has provided plenty of thump over the years. The latest R. Kelly tour was a reunion after years of separation for Cubby and DB Sound Image's Harry Witz. Together, they put together a system and crew that wowed the R. Kelly production staff–a group known for their collective critical ear.

Live music is already a challenge in the modern world of multimedia concerts. Dealing with a new venue every night, multiple crews, gear issues and the requirements of different artists is certainly not easy. Now imagine you're on a tour with the Black Eyed Peas, a hot hip-hop crossover group that in concert features four singers, four live musicians, backing tracks, samples and a variety of instruments. Then imagine that there are almost no soundchecks ever.

Replacing a charismatic front man is never an easy task, and when that means someone with the vocal power and range and total command of the stage as the late Freddie Mercury, it looks impossible. Maybe it was a need to get back onstage or maybe the band just did not want the Broadway show We Will Rock You to be its last hurrah. (We Will Rock You did fairly poorly in a truncated Las Vegas run and closed earlier this year.) Side note: Yeah, the story line for We Will Rock You was silly–a quasi-sci-fi tale of a world without rock music and the rebels trying to revive it that did a passable job of stringing together the hits of Queen. But Mamma Mia! (a similar kind of show featuring the music of ABBA) is at least as silly, the music is not as cool and it remains a hit, running concurrent shows in London, Melbourne, New York and Las Vegas, and selling out seven years after its initial opening. Go figure.

We always seem to learn the most about a show and the people behind it when we get to spend some time just hanging out beforehand. The way a certain trick or piece of gear is described can tell you a lot about the people driving the rig. In the case of Dirk Durham and Earl Neal with Toby Keith, they seem to vacillate between merely pleased and downright giddy as they show this intrepid reporter around the stage.