Live Sound: Lucinda Williams and George Jones
Abstract (summary)
In
February 2006, legendary country singer George Jones invited singer-songwriter
Lucinda Williams to open a series of West Coast concert dates. Live sound engineers Nick
Pellicciotto and Mark Humphreys discuss mixing sound for the tour. Humphreys employees a system he
developed after years on the road of on-stage monitors for the musicians that
provide a clear vocal sound for the singer and the band.
Full Text
The pages
of Mix are filled with talk
of technology, but sometimes it pays to be simple. Keep it flat across the
board, make sure the vocal cuts through and let the players play. A nip and
tuck here, a notch out at 400 Hz, then give the band a good monitor mix, let them hear the house and
they'll begin to mix
themselves.
At least
that's how it works when the lineup is Lucinda Williams opening for George
Jones.
Last
September, Jones called Williams and asked if she would open for him on a
couple shows on the West Coast. She agreed, then decided to put together a
last-minute small theater/club romp in and around the February dates with
Jones. Rather than bring her four-piece band, however, Williams decided that
her leg would be a duo - just her and ace guitarist Doug Pettibone. For the
Oakland, Calif., and Santa Barbara, Calif., shows with Jones, however, she
would fly in her rhythm section of bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Jim
Christie. Mix caught the
Oakland show at the famed Paramount Theatre.
For the
duo shows, which have garnered rave reviews across the West, Williams
celebrated something of a return to her more simple singer/songwriter roots.
She carried no production, save for a short rack containing the Avalon mic pre
and BSS DPR-901 dynamic EQ, and she asked monitor engineer Mark Humphreys to
pull double-duty at front of house.
Humphreys,
a road veteran of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, The Smithereens and many others,
has served as Neil Young's monitor engineer since 1990 and as Williams' for the
past three years. Some of the lessons he learned with Young have been carried
forward and incorporated into Williams' show, including the emphasis on a clear
vocal and a rather unique approach to stage monitoring.
"My
favorite word in the dictionary is "clarity,"" Humphreys says.
"Working with Neil taught me that it's all about getting the vocal out to
everybody. Wherever you are - backstage, in the dressing room, at front of
house - when that man is singing, that's what you hear. And that's the first
thing I do with Lou is make sure you hear every bit. Then I work the guitar up,
but no matter what she's doing, you will always hear her."
Because
he's hopping on a new system every night, Humphreys has seen his share of
boards, big and small, and P.A.s of varying quality. So his soundcheck is fast
and efficient. "I just make sure that from 1k to 6.3 can be heard anywhere
in the room, and I try to aim the horns so everybody can hear the top end of
the P.A. I don't care that much about the low end, because once you create it,
it just sweeps the room anyway. I like to run the system dead-flat, and any bad
tonal frequencies - 125, 160, 315, 400 - I'll take off the mic strip so I don't
create it onstage. Over the years, I've learned that if you lose the bottom out
of your mic channels, it stops that in the room. Kind of backward, but it works
for me."
For the
duo shows, Humphreys is using only eight channels on the board du jour. He
splits those at the FOH console and does another eight as his foldback to the
stage. Essentially, the musicians are getting the same mix as the audience, as Humphreys loads the
sidefills with a full mix,
placing the monitors downstage, pointed back, as if there is a "musicians'
P.A." It's a system he first worked up for Wasp, then incorporated into
Young's show and now uses with Williams. He adds in a wedge for each bandmember
(vocal only), supplementing it with a tiny wedge off to Williams right that he
feeds guitar-only. Humphreys points out that Williams loves the feel of the
house, especially the old-school theaters she's been playing, and will likely
never go with in-ear monitoring.
Humphreys
takes the same approach to the stage whether it's the two guitarists or a full
band, the only difference being that he actually gets to move up and have his
own console, leaving FOH duties to San Francisco - based Nick Pellicciotto, who
has been with Williams since her 2004 tour. Pellicciotto is the one who put
together her vocal chain, which comprises an Audix OM6 microphone, Avalon mic
pre, BSS DPR-901 dynamic EQ, back into an insert return on the console to avoid
the channel preamps. At the Oakland show, Pellicciotto had a Yamaha PM5D at
FOH, as did Humphreys at monitors. Like Humphreys, Pellicciotto does everything
he can to keep things simple, with very little effects inserted.
"With
a band of this quality, processing would kill whatever they're doing,"
Pellicciotto says. "I simply do whatever I can to stay out of the way, to
be transparent. I see my role as a balance engineer, though I do work in
effects at times. Lucinda has three types of songs. On the ballads, I may pull
the kick and bass down a bit so the lows don't wash stuff away. Then on the
more bluesy or rootsy numbers, I may change the miking a bit and add some
effects to make the drums sound a little more trashy, raucous and not too
distinct. Same for guitars. And then the rock numbers get a pretty standard mix.
"I
agree with Mark on the need for clarity in her vocal," he continues,
"but these systems have gotten so clean that I often find some murkiness
can be helpful. Some graininess and lo-fi feel, especially on the bluesy
numbers. And I never really sacrifice the band for her vocal. I'm for
everything being audible. Doug [Pettibone] is so good at dealing with dynamics
- if he's too loud, he should be too loud. [Laughs] And the rhythm section is
just a dream. I have no gates on the drums; they're all open."
While
Williams has stripped back her production, Jones is carrying a full semi of
gear, both sound and lighting, for this 19-city leg. The P.A. put up at the
Paramount was put together by his longtime engineer Jimmy Owen of Owen Audio in
Nashvillle. A few years back, Owen wanted to get off the road and turned the
FOH reins over to Greg McGill (Merle Haggard, T.G. Sheppard, Lee Ann Womack).
"It's
a system of proprietary, refrigerator-looking boxes," McGill explains as
he points to the well-traveled cabs. "They each have a Gauss horn, two JBL
Bullets and two JBL 15s. I carry 12, though we're only using three each side
tonight. The subs are folded-horn - type. The amps are all McIntosh 2200 and
2300 models, solid-state, and they sound really smooth with that older country
feel. I think it sounds as good as some of the line arrays out there."
Though
Jones had a sinus infection at the Oakland show and was not in top form, he's
still George Jones, with one of the most distinctive voices of the past century.
He sings into an Audio-Technica Artist Elite AE4100 mic. McGill says, "I
can get more headroom out of that mic. George will talk and then turn his head,
but people come to hear everything he has to say. We do our best to give them
that." The only effect in the chain is a TC Electronic Intonator, which
McGill inserts in the channel and blends back in, giving him a bit more
presence in the top end. The entire band is on a Sennheiser in-ear system,
which McGill says has dramatically helped the mix by eliminating stage volume and adding
consistency night after night.
Like his
Williams counterparts, McGill keeps everything simple, mixing the show "old-school - style."
Being simple doesn't mean set and forget, however. Like Humphreys, he actively
pans throughout the show to avoid layers and build-up, preferring to find a
space for each instrument. Most members of the band have been with Jones 20
years or more, so the dynamics are all taken care of on the stage with the
players.
As we
went to press, Jones was wrapping up and Williams had a few dates left from
Dallas to L.A. If you get a chance, check her out. Many have remarked that it's
the best-sounding show out there; one guy in San Diego even left a $50 tip on the console.
Tom Kenny
is the editor of Mix.
Word
count: 1406
Indexing (details)
Narrow
subject
Country
and Western Musicians, Singer-Songwriters, Live
Sound Engineers, Mixers
(Audio Equipment), Microphones, Public
Address Systems
Broad
subject
People
Title
Live Sound: Lucinda Williams and George Jones
Author
Publication
title
Volume
Issue
Pages
90, 92
Publication
year
2006
Publication
date
Apr 2006
Year
2006
Publisher
Penton
Media, Inc
Place of
publication
Berkeley,
Calif.
Country
of publication
United
States
Journal
subject
ISSN
0164-9957
Source
type
Magazines
Language
of publication
English
Document
type
News
Document
feature
Photographs
ProQuest
document ID
1294446
Document
URL
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1294446?accountid=144516
Last
updated
2012-08-23
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