Robert Scovill

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob met Sets podcast.
My guest today is Robert school Why music Engineer extraordinary. Robert,
good to have you on the podcast. It is my pleasure,
Sarah good to be here. Thank you for him writing
me in very nice Okay, we were scheduling this and
you said you had to do the CMT Awards. What
did that involve? Honestly, it was a very last minute thing.

(00:32):
I um, I'm kind of enlisted to mix Kenny Chesney
this year. He's gonna go out and mix. You're gonna
do his normal stadium run throughout the year. So we
were in rehearsals. We were in Nashville and rehearsing for
about six weeks total, and then right before we were
ready to finish, I mean the day before we were
ready finished, they said, oh, we're gonna have Kenny closed
the CMT Awards, so we're gonna go do that. So

(00:53):
everybody kind of dropped everything they were doing and said, okay,
let's go get ready to do the c MT Awards.
So they closed the show and uh, it kind of
went off without a hitch. It was a nice thing,
but you know, you kind of get these curve balls
thrown at you all the time. You know, so no
problem there, let's go. So how do you interfaces Kenny's
engineer with the engineer for the show? Yeah, it's it's
an interesting thing, and honestly, every one of the award

(01:15):
shows are different in how that sort of happens. I mean,
as you can imagine, every band that comes on any
of these shows. Uh, you know, has their own people
that work for them. But you know, depending on what
city you're working in, you know, it can be heavily
regulated by the union. Uh you know some Nashville or
Tennessee is kind of a right to work state, so
it's not necessarily union. But you know, if it's not

(01:38):
too complex, you know, more often than not, you're just
gonna be you know, kind of the backstop for the
engineer that is actually mixing the event to air. You're
gonna kind of let him know, Okay, this is what's
going to be hit and you here be ready for this.
Usually there's you know, there's plenty of run throughs, you know,
or camera blocking and rehearsal, so you can kind of
get pretty well set where you feel comfortable with the

(01:58):
audio that's gonna go to air and then the man's
has got to get up there and performance, so uh,
you know, so preparation is kind of the key to
it sometimes. I mean, I over the last couple of years,
I've gotten my Union card, after you know, forty years
in the business, I got a Union card so that
I could actually be the guy sitting in the chair
for some of these awards shows where I'm on the
other end of it, where the band's engineers coming up

(02:19):
and guiding me through it. So you know, I've kind
of been on both ends of it. Now. Okay, so
you're rehearsing with Kenny getting the sound right when he
actually does an award show. How much of his own
equipment does he bring and how much of the sound
from the stage are you responsible for before it feeds
into the mixer for television? Right? Well, again, I mean,

(02:39):
I hate to be so abstract about it, but it
depends on the show. Like you know, obviously, some television
shows are uh, you know, a pre record or you'll
record it and then the band will get up there
and mime to it. Uh. Some of them are fully live,
things like Rock and Wall Hall of Fame induction that
is a completely live event. You know, everybody's performing at that.
But you know, kind of depending on the producers you're

(03:01):
working with or the show format, you know, sometimes it'll
it might even be a hybrid of that, whereas prerecorded music.
Band is playing to it, but it's all live vocals,
you know, So it can be any combination of those things.
For TV UM TV is a very particular little animal
there for doing live music for sure. Okay, so if
you're doing it, do you record the live track and

(03:23):
you do it before and how do you do that? Yeah? Well,
I mean luckily, in this day and age, we're, you know,
with the way we do live sound now, we're we're
set up to do any kind of recording, any kind
of multi track recording, any kind of to mix, etcetera.
So what happened in this particular situation was, you know,
we were recorded it at rehearsals. I mean it was
actually the band playing the player run through. You record it,

(03:43):
then you remix that in a studio and bring in
what are called stems, which are you know, one volume
control basically for the drums, one for this guitar player,
one for the other guitar player. It's kind of pre
mixed and then that's what goes to air, and then
they put live vocals right on top of it. So,
you know, television product and you know they're looking for consistency, predictability.
You know, they've got to stay on schedule, you know,

(04:05):
to the second. Really, so everything is really really highly
scripted for those TV show, especially live TV for sure,
you know, so they don't they don't allow a lot
of flexibility there. Really for the most part, they want
to know exactly what's coming at him and deal with
that accordingly. Okay, so if Kenny is doing live vocals,
does he bring his own mic and do you sit
there with the engineer saying set the board like this,

(04:27):
this is how he likes it, Again, depending on the show.
On the vast majority of shows, especially for a lead vocalist,
they can bring their own microphone. Sometimes it gets into
a little bit of a problem if they want to
bring a wireless microphone, because you know, wireless frequency management
in this day and age is very very challenging, so
you know, you'll you'll be under the strip confines of
why he has to work within this frequency range for

(04:48):
the transmitter and the receiver, etcetera. But usually that's that's
even acceptable, and we can kind of get that going
and then they can be comfortable with their own mic,
you know. I mean, you know, see a lot of
artists they have their own mic blinged out and cutting
jewels and be dazzled and all kinds of other stuff
on it, so you know, it's part of their brand,
so to speak. So they'll theyn't want their own mic,
and and that's fine. I have no problem with that.

(05:09):
And then yeah, you'll sit there with the engineer and go, Okay,
these are kind of the characteristics of Kenny's voice you
need to look for here, you know, blah blah blah,
and just try to help him be fast and get
through it. So, okay, you mentioned the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame. You've been the overall engineer for those telecasts, correct.
My first one was this year. I did the one
this year after they you know, they postponed for a year.
I was supposed to do it the year before, but

(05:29):
then COVID shut it down. So this was my first
year handling that and it was really cool. I really
loved it. I hope I hope they asked me back
to do more of them. Let's start from the beginning.
How did you get the get One of the um
production managers for the gig knew me from touring years
and years ago. We toured together, and you know, just
reputation carries a lot of weight in that situation, and

(05:49):
they had an opening and he called me and said, hey,
are you would you be interested in mixing and rock
and roll Hall of Fame inductions? I said, heca, yeah,
let's go. So, uh, you know a lot moving parts
in that show, Man boy, I mean, it's a it's
a big it's kind of a monster to wrestle to
the ground from the musical end of it as well
as the rest of it. I mean, it's that's a
big production to do, and especially given that they want

(06:12):
to do it all as live performance. You know, there's
there's no there's no miming in that show for sure.
So that that's cool, That makes it. That's attractive to me.
You know, I love being involved in those sort of
things and taken on that kind of that kind of task.
So you get the gig? How long before the recording
date in that situation, Well, because of COVID, I had
it almost a year and a half before. But in

(06:32):
a normal situation, you know you're gonna get in listed
for that gig a good a good six months in
advance because you're doing a lot of work in the
background on that interfacing with every band that's going to
get there. What you know, what are you going to bring,
what instruments are you going to show up with, how
are we gonna make it, who's going to be the
house band? And even in that situation, you know you're
going to have, you know, that grand finale thing where

(06:53):
you're gonna have multiple bands up on stage playing at
the same time. So I mean it's you know, from
an audio point of view and be a little bit
like hurting cats, you know. I mean there's a lot
you know, what do we do with three bass players
during the performance of one song, or you know, six
guitar players, or you know all of those things. So
you know, that gets very challenging to make that kind
of you know, just go and work. So it's a

(07:16):
there's a lot of planning involved for that, lots and
lots weeks of planning for Okay, so in the weeks
of planning, since you're the major domo, to what degree
are you in charge? To what degree do they bring
the wrong guy. Tell you to what degree do you
dictate to them based on television limitations. Yeah, in that situation,
I'm the mixer on record and the mixer of records,
so I will be mixing all the events. You know,

(07:37):
their engineer is welcome to sit down right next to
me and say, Okay, here's what I need to hear. Here. Uh,
let's make this a little bit louder lessen. Don't worry
about that. That's fine. You know, he can help guide
me through it, for sure, and I welcome that. You know,
that's that's a very necessary element of that. But at
the end of the day, you know, I end up
having to be the one to mix it. I'm going
to be the one that has to answer for it,

(07:57):
et cetera. Again, it comes back kind to TV production
where it's like, I've got to have predictability. I've got
to I've got to have known entities there. You know,
as many as many constants and known entities as we
can create in television production, that's what is wanted. That
is what is desired by the producers for sure. So
to get it right, how much rehearsal was there? You
get quite a few run throughs with each act on

(08:19):
the day before the show. Um, there is an off
site rehearsal where you know, they'll have a musical director
that will meet with the talent and they'll figure out
whether they're going to sing with the house band or
you know, it's going to be a band on its own,
like you know in that situation. You know, Food Fighters
was one of the bands that went in, so they
were going to play on their own for sure, but
yet you know somebody like uh, you know, Mickey Guyton

(08:41):
was going to do a piece and she was going
to sing with the house band. So all of that
is rehearsed off site. There are rehearsal spaces set up
away from the show, uh, you know for weeks previous
where they're rehearsing and working on arrangements. Who's going to
sing what, etcetera. And then I show up, you know
really the day before the actual tape and airing, uh,

(09:02):
and we have a full run through, and you know,
a lot of time is spent with the artist on
stage doing camera blocking, you know, like getting all the
camera shots sorted out, you know, all the cues sorted out, etcetera.
And they're doing run throughs of it during that that period,
so you have a lot of time to kind of
prepare the music and get it hopefully mixed properly for
the audience. You know, it's kind of a I mean,
it's kind of nerve wracking mixing for that audience. I

(09:23):
mean it's a pretty heavy audience sitting there listening to
you present those those bands, you know, so it'll get
your attention. So the mix you hear in the room,
is that the same as the mix that goes over
the air. It is not. There is always a mixer
that mixes to air, and there is always a mixer
that mixes for the room, and just as there's there
are mixers that mix for the artist on stage as well.

(09:44):
You know, they're considered monitor mixers. So yeah, there's there's
multiple mixing formats taking place at the same time, and
it's all recorded in multi racked form. If they want
to get back and remix it for the post for
postwork before it actually goes to air, which they almost
always do there. You want to get it as good
as you can before it actually is to air, you know,
So every act brings their own monitor mixers. They can

(10:04):
absolutely I mean most monitor. Most acts at that level
and of that caliber have their own monitor engineer as well,
and same sort of thing. He would walk in and
work with that monitor engineer to get all their ear
mixes or their you know, their speaker mixes worked out
properly for the artists. They're going to know all the
artists sensitivities and sensibilities at that point. So yeah, you know,
like I said, we welcome it as like bringing on. Yeah,

(10:25):
the more info you can give me here, the better
it's going to get. Just make my my world a
little better here, as opposed to having to guests for
an hour here and then figure it out at all
the wrong times. So what's the difference between mixing for
the room and mixing for television? Very big difference in
my opinion. I've done both, and you know, you're mixing
for a very different medium when you're it's really no

(10:46):
different than mixing the live p a versus mixing for uh,
you know, for CD or streaming or any of that.
You know, they are two very very different dynamic ranges.
They're two very very different frequency responses. Uh, there's a
a very different outlook on you know, volume in those situations. Etcetera.
So you know, there are guys that have done both

(11:08):
at the same time. You know, in a pinch, I
have done both in the same time, and it is
really really hard to do and make them make them
both great. You know, usually one suffers a little bit
because of the other one, you know, in terms of
you know, mixing life for the room versus mixing for air.
You know, if you're trying to do both those things
at the same time, that's hard, that's really really challenging
to do. So something like the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame, which is recorded before. Are you involved in

(11:31):
post and how much work is done in remixing? I
can only use this year's experience as the the basis
of this conversation. I was not involved in post there.
I don't feel like I need to be really uh,
you know, the engineers that are that are mixing that
thing are fantastic. I actually thought this year's show sounded
fantastic over the airwaves, so they did a super John there.

(11:53):
I'd probably just be in the way if I was there. Okay,
there's a lot of literature and a lot of knowledge
of what's going on in the recording studio. Oh and automation, etcetera.
Let's start, what is the board that you use to
mix lots? Well, you know I'm old enough you and
you can see on camera here I got enough gray
hair to back this up. But you know, I've been
around for a long time watching mixing console development here

(12:17):
over over forty years. So you know, the capabilities that
we have in live sound today from mixing consoles are
just incredible. I mean, we have reached really a really
high degree of capability and mixing consoles there. Obviously everybody
now is mixing for the most part in digital uh
just because of all the capabilities, and it especially for
things like you know, Rock and Hall of Fame and

(12:39):
some of these other very complex shows. I don't think
we could do them an analog. If we did, we
it would require two or three mixers at the front
of house to be able to do that. But we
can do that all in one console now. So the
capabilities are absolutely fantastic. Um, But I work on a
Are you looking for a name of a console or
just sure? Yeah, I I work with uh an Avid

(13:01):
sxl Avid Technologies and the live sound business. Now. I
actually helped them get into the live sound business in
two thousand right around that area where we helped. You know,
I was kind of enlisted to come in and help
them conceive a console line that would work in live sound.
So you know, we kind of came in and uh
kind of reinvented the wheel a little bit in that world,

(13:23):
you know, because you know, that was a world that
was living in, you know, primarily in pro tools and
video editing, and now all of a sudden we were
going to jump into live sound. So you know, they
they've kind of done some things that have really reshaped
the way people work in that market. Now, So what
was our inspiration to get into live Soule? Well, I'll
ask that. I'll answer that question with a question, what
is anybody's inspiration to build any product? Bob. It's revenue,

(13:44):
you know, they want to make money. But by the
same token, they had a gentleman working there named David
le Bolt. I don't know if you know David and
know that name. Um I met him in the early eighties.
We were touring together with an artist named Lori Anderson, Uh,
kind of doing a world tour. He was the keyboard
player on the tour. I was one of the mixers

(14:04):
on the tour and we kind of hit it off
stop for a second, got in the whole rock and
roll guy, How do you end up working with a
performance artists like Lorie Anderson? You know, I don't know, man,
These gigs just come across the desk, and you know,
you know, I would be lying to you if I
said when I got asked to do the gig that
I knew everything about Lorie Anderson. I didn't. I had

(14:24):
to go study it and and understand who she was.
But I'm just telling you. Once I got into that
camp and worked there a little bit, I was completely
on fire for it. It was so cool technically, I mean,
it was performance art, no no doubt about it. I mean,
and you know, she was really pushing the envelope technically
of what you could do on stage and and with
audio there. So it was fascinating to be a part

(14:45):
of it. And I think that's part of what drove
this conversation that we're gonna have here, because David was
really into it and being the keyboard player. I mean,
it was right when Samplers and all kinds of things,
we're really just starting to hit the hit the landscape there,
and so he and I hit it off famously. We
did the tour, we went our way as at the
end of the tour and he went off. He played

(15:05):
with Billy Joel for a long time, and then I
went on, you know, toured a bunch of metal acts
and all kinds of other things. And at some point
he actually went to work for digit Design. At that point,
you know, who was developing pro Tools at the time.
This was pretty early on in the development of pro Tools,
and he kind of drove all that technical development to
make that a really, really credible product in the studio.

(15:28):
I mean he he really brought a lot of that
functionality and made it a credible product as a recording tool.
And by the time the late nineties, you know, two
thousand rolled around, I mean pro Tools was pretty ubiquitous
in the recording studio. I mean it was everywhere. And
I get this call one day, I'm I mean, I'm
at my home in Arizona and I get this call
from David and I haven't spoken to him in twelve years.

(15:51):
You know, Hey, uh, you know I'm working for digit Design, right, yeah. Yeah,
we're thinking about putting together a live sound console. We
want to use plug ins blah blah blah blah. You know,
do you think we have to do it? I mean,
this is something we got to do. And I just said,
absolutely not. Don't do it. Don't do it. We don't
want that, you know, we don't want pro tools in
the life sound. But you know, the conversation carried on

(16:13):
and he kind of convinced me to come up to
San Francisco and meet with him. So, you know, we
sat around at dinner table when when night, kind of
discussing what we thought a digital console should be in
life sound, and lo and behole. Five years later, you know,
we released this thing called The d Show from digit Design,
you know, a company who had zero brand equity, zero footprint,
and live sound, and yet we took it really to

(16:34):
be one of the most lauded consoles out there today.
So you know, that was that was fun to be
a part of that. That was kind of a new
take for me, you know, to get in on the
manufacturing side of it. And you know, I've been working
with digit Design well Avid now you know since officially
since two thousand five on console development. That's been a
lot of fun. How big a market is there are
you're talking in revenue or just people or you know,

(16:55):
I mean, I think of how many acts on the road. No,
a lot of these things have consumer level video YEO
editing and all this stuff. When I think of live sound,
there's a limited universe for how many people are looking
for something of this capability. Well, it's funny you bring
this up, because you know, I think this is h
indicative of how people view live sound to begin with, right, um,

(17:19):
where they think it's this kind of small thing that's
off in the corner, and you know, compared to Apple
or something like that. Of course it is small, right,
but you know, just put something into your mind, just
for a second. Now, on a given day, just in
the United States, how many shows happened. I'm gonna let
you tell me, because I would say, I don't know.
I've never been able to research, but it's it's thousands

(17:40):
upon thousands of certain right, every one of those shows
has a sound reinforcement need, It has a console need.
Now buckle that into the concept, and I'll give you
this number because I know how many. I know this
one was accurate. From a few years ago. I was
doing some research on the houses of worship market, which
was moving into production, you know, in their services. This

(18:02):
was probably oh, this was probably mid two thousand's, you know,
and I was kind of coming back to Avid and
making a player for them. We should examine this market
that stands up be a very rich market. And I
kind of brought up the number. I said, you know,
who knows how many churches there are in in America?
And you know, I could see that kind of gears turning,

(18:23):
and they, you know, they really weren't thinking too hard
about it. I said, today, right today, it's three d
and thirty five thousand churches in America. Every one of
them have a sound reinforcement need on Sunday and throughout
the week. So you know, I mean, when you start
putting the numbers together, all of a sudden you start
thinking about it's like, well, okay, now let's make that
a global number. It's pretty big number. It's pretty big

(18:45):
market out there for this. You just gotta go find it.
You know. It's just not one of these things that
are that is in everybody's windshield when you see it.
You know. Okay, So since you're involved with Avid, how
simple a product do they make for like houses of worship?
We were us to play pretty far down into that market.
But see, I mean even even what you say there,
I say to you, hey, man, don't think of house

(19:06):
of worship as being a simple thing. I can I
could name you sixty churches plus in America that have
live sound, recording, studio broadcast type facilities that would rival NBC.
I mean, they're unbelievably technically adept. You know. So you

(19:27):
know that that whole house of worship market is a
big thing now, big big deal man. Okay, So in
terms of the console, yeah, I want to get one
from Avid. Do they build custom depending on the number
of channels where you have a certain number of products
and you choose from those products. No, they have a
I mean again, we in our current product range, we
don't play very deep down into the market. There are

(19:50):
other competitors that play at the much much more inexpensive
end of it. I mean, it's really a professional product
right now. But we kind of changed the game here
recent they because we kind I think, you know, I
kind of saw the writing on the wall and how
this was going to go into the future, and we
have this thing called I can't believe I'm going to
talk about this on your podcast. We have this thing

(20:11):
called unified platform, right, which is basically a menu of products,
so you can pick how many faders you want on
your console, how how powerful of an engine you want,
how many microphone preamps do you want to be able
to and just kind of ala carte put together a
huge system or a pretty small system, right, and you
can kind of piece this together as opposed to making

(20:32):
a small one, making a not so small one, making
a bigger one, making a bigger, bigger one, etcetera. Because
the challenge that comes with that in software development is
you end up having software that is specific to every
product and you can't keep the development going. In our world,
we create one piece of software that works on everything,
all of our hardware interacts and can scale. It was

(20:55):
the first first time this had ever been done for
any kind of live sound product, you know, where you
didn't have an actual product per se. You had pieces
that you put together into a product. And that allowed
us to have one string of development with software. We
developed one piece of software that works on everything we make. Okay, Traditionally,

(21:21):
software that has a relatively small user base is buggy,
So how does the software for av it? Well, every
software has bugs. I will say that, but you know,
we're also very cognizant of the fact that we work
in live sound. Right, this is live events. You cannot
be sitting in front of sixty people and have a

(21:42):
software bug to take your show down. You can't do it.
I mean, you just can't be allowed. Now that that said,
no one's perfect, and you know, I've it sounds uh,
what's the word, kind of contrived and rationalized, but I've
said to people at times, Okay, look, this is the
world we live in. Here. It doesn't matter how much
money do you spend, or how much how many of

(22:03):
the great people you get to work. Sometimes the space
shuttle crashes, sometimes the space shuttle blows up. You can
have the best people in the world, the most money
in the world working on it, but things happen. The
thing you have to be able to do is be
able to respond to the failure. Right, It can't be
a failure that just well we just got to stop
the show. You know, you've gotta have you gotta be
able to respond to a failure and keep the show going. So,

(22:26):
you know, we we're pretty adepted at doing that kind
of thing. It it took time to get that. But
that was one of the calling cards of our our
product when we first came to market was that it
was very reliable, I mean really really reliable and you
could really count on it. So and it sounded great, so,
you know, added bonus. So you have a lot of
experience forty years. What kind of problems have you had
in the middle of the show. Oh man, it's a

(22:50):
long list. I mean, you know, there's lots of times
where it you know, it has gone sideways, no doubt
about it. I mean, you know, I mean I've said
this to artists trying to get them to calm down
a little bit after a mishapp is like, hey, relax,
I've messed up way bigger shows than yours. Okay, so
you know, just take it easy. It's gonna be fine here,
We're gonna get through this, you know. But yeah, you know,

(23:11):
everything from microphone failures to console failures to p as
on fire. I mean, you know, I mean, after forty years,
you know, you can feel like you feel like you've
seen it all. You definitely haven't, but you can feel
like you've seen it all. So let's assume you have
a misshap did you ever have to end the show
or do you always have a way to patch it
back up for extra equipment. I personally have never had
that happen. I know of shows that have had that

(23:33):
happen where they haven't been able to continue the show,
you know. But you know, in fairness, I've seen that
happen for a litany and reason. It's not just an
audio failure, you know. So there's all kinds of things
that could cause that. But you know, Bob, I mean,
and this may take us down a deeper conversation here.
That's the beauty of live sound, right, It's the beauty
of it. Everything's at risk. It's at best when it's risky,

(23:57):
when when things might just go haywire. That's the juice.
That's the juice everything. When everything is all sort of
out and predictable and all the bows are tied on
the knots and everything, you know, that can be pretty
vanilla at times, that can get kind of stale. I
actually think the desire to do that is has driven
us into some bad corners and performance and live event,

(24:19):
you know, where we try to make it too safe
and too predictable and too perfect. It's like, hey, let it,
let it ride. Let's go, you know, let's have some
juice in the room here. Let's get back to that.
But first let's talk about the console. What makes a
live console different from a studio console. Yeah, okay, so
h a live console has to have way more h oh,

(24:41):
guess we're gonna get we might get geeky here, go
geek absolutely go geeki has way more summed outputs on it. Like, um,
let me see how I want to frame this conversation here. So,
in a studio, you're primarily concerned with either getting individual
microphones and sources, two tape tracks or in this case
this time of the world, into pro tools tracks where

(25:02):
you might have you know, a hundred tracks of instruments,
and then you are mixing that down to a single
stereo or five point one or surround. You're mixing that
down to a single format, a single pair about puts
out of the console. And the other thing that the
live sound console does very very well is it allows
you to do that and provide monitoring to the musicians

(25:23):
in the studio right where they can hear their mixes,
they can you know, they can sing, do everything that
they need to do during the tracking phase. Right, So
recording consoles are very adept at that. Live consoles, on
the other hand, really don't aren't thinking necessarily about providing
you know, you know, mixes back to the musicians at

(25:44):
the front of house position. I'm talking here, he's really
just worried about mixing. Period. In this day and age,
we're multi tracking at the same time, but he's really
primarily worried about mixing. But he's going to send out
puts to multiple places, multiple speaker systems, He's going to
have all kinds of stuff that has to do with
that p A system, not just a pair of control
room monitors now, so he's got a whole lot more

(26:05):
on that console to deal with. And um, there are
different types of automation, Like in the studio, you would
have what's called run time automation, where we can record
something into the recorder and then play it back and
start doing moves on the console. That and the moves
on the console are also recorded into the d A W.
And now when I play back, it's not only playing

(26:27):
bout the audio, but it's playing back all my moves.
I can adjust those, I can edit those, etcetera. That's
that's really rare in life. Sound. You don't see that
very often in life sound unless the act is using
a lot of playback. If they're relying on almost entirely
on playback, then you can kind of get that going.
But more often than not, live sound consoles have what's
called snapshot automation, right, which is okay, for this song,

(26:50):
I need to get the console in this state to
get it ready for me to mix it right, And
I might need to get it in forty different states
for forty songs, depending on what instrumentation is being played
at a time. So really that's kind of one of
the main kind of junctions of difference there is that
in the studio we're typically working on one song at

(27:11):
a time, and live sound we're working on thirty or
forty songs at a time. Right, We've got to be
able to prepare to be able to mix thirty or
forty sometimes really intricate songs and really intricate changes bang
bang bang bang bang. That's rarely the case in the studio. Okay,
when you mix on your desk, how many channels do
you use? As many as I got, I'll use them

(27:32):
all now, uh you know, I mean, I'll give you
an example for and really this kind of thing is
really shifted over time now with digital consoles because we
have the ability to have way more inputs into the console.
So for Kenny Chesney right now, which is you know,
three guitars, bass, drums, keys, five vocalists. I mean, that
sounds kind of simple, but by the time you really

(27:53):
get it mapped out and do the things you want
to do, that's that's approaching a hundred channels, you know,
probably a hundred and ten, hundred and twelve, uh inputs. Now.
Part of that is also the way we're recording, Like
I record probably upwards of probably upwards of fifteen sixteen
audience mis to be used in post. Like I'll record
a five point one mic, I'll record spaced microphones for

(28:14):
the audience, so that when they get it to post,
if they want to mix it in five point one,
they have the ability if they want to mix it
in stereo, they can use the other audience mix things
like that. So channel count can grow, you know, pretty
dramatically based on the based on your inputs. I mean,
probably the most famous you know concept of this was
you know, when I was mixing Rush. I mean that

(28:35):
was a hundred and eighteen channels for three guys, you know,
but one entire console was the drum kit, you know,
I mean that was that was Neil's kit. So you know,
the input count group pretty pretty big there. Okay. You
know the more modern recording studio boards have a lot
of effects built in as opposed to outboard gear. On

(28:56):
these Avid desks, are there any effects old in or
any other digital effects? Well, it was kind of our
calling card at at Avid right because you know, they
were the first guys to ever really kind of you know,
I dare I say invent, but you know, they brought
plug in architecture to the recording market, you know, where
you could have emulations of all of this really great

(29:18):
analog gear. And you know, it's kind of when we
kind of brought that. I was kind of one of
the things when David was talking about bringing into the
live sound that was the point where I went, okay,
now wait a minute, that could be really really something
here if we could do that in live sound right
where you could have you know, some of these really
coveted piece you know, Poltch eques and fair Child limitars,

(29:39):
these things that you know, you can't you can't even
buy them. You at the time, you couldn't even buy them.
But if I could get plug in versions of that
and use them in live sound, Wow, what a what
an incredible thing that would be, right? So, yeah, all,
at least for my shows, nearly I'll say ninety eight
percent of the processing is inside the console. I don't
use outboard gear anymore. And it's just such a luxury.

(30:02):
I mean, I'm just so spoiled with it now. Where
we can you know, as opposed to going out and
spending thirty two dollars for a single channel of fair
Child compression. Well, I can have an emulation of that,
you know, sitting on the console, and I can use
as many of them as I want to use if
I want to use it, do it, you know? And
is it exactly the same as it of what a

(30:23):
that fair Child thing is? No, of course not. But
there's a practicality that has to come with with live sound.
You know, you wouldn't go out and rent, you know,
a hundred thousand dollars worth of processing to take with
you on the road. I mean, it's just impractical. Uh. So,
you know, there's a practicality that comes with digital that
is really, really enticing for life sound. So I love it.

(30:45):
I'll never go back, honestly. Okay, so give us the
old digital compared to analog wrap. Well, it's way more
complex than anybody makes it. I'm telling you right now.
It's not a binary argument. You know, which is better
analog or digital? And I'm famous for saying it, and
I totally believe it. I need them both. I need
them both. We can't just say it's either one or

(31:07):
the other. I need them both. They both have their
elements that we need to go with it. And I
think the argument is actually much deeper, deeper than sound quality.
And I say this about the studio as well, in
live sound and other elements, because I think what people
miss a lot of times. I've even used albums as
the example here. You know, albums compared to CDs, compared
to streaming. What people miss is the analog experience, right,

(31:30):
the workflow, you know. I mean, I'm one of those guys.
As part of why I love albums, I love opening
that album, I love reading credits, and all of that
element is part of the experience for me. Well, it's
very similar in analog recording. You know, where I want
to see tape rolling. I you know, I want to
work at a certain pace. You know, analog allows you

(31:52):
to work at a much slower pace or demands that
you work at a much slower pace than in digital.
So you know, there's there's just all kinds of things
about it, above and beyond sound quality that play into it.
There's an analog aesthetic you know that works there. But
you know, with with the digital technologies that are out
there today, I'm on record to say in this and
I stand by it, I can take a digital piece

(32:13):
of technology and I can make it sound more analog
than analog if you know how to do it. You know,
you just gotta have the skill to do it, have
the tools to be able to do it. It's very
analogous to what we see now with film right where
I can take the sterileness of video and make it
look like the oldest film you ever saw in your life.
You know, all of that possibility is there. And I

(32:35):
think that argument of analog versus digital and audio is
very comparable to the argument of film versus video. For
a storyline, you know, if you watch something in video
and you watch something in film, something that has film
look on it or that looks like film. It evokes
a different response. There's no if stands robuts about it.
It does. And the same thing applies to analog versus digital.

(32:58):
Analog evokes a different response. Uts it evokes it because
we have been programmed to listen to it that way
for the last sixty or seventy years. We're emotionally tied
to that analog sound quality, and we want it. We don't.
We didn't realize we wanted it until it was taken
away and I was like, oh, wait a minute, that
that's not what we like. Let's have some of that back.

(33:19):
But you know, so analog is really really important. But
what I trade away all the digital capability just to
have an analog signal path for life sound? I would not.
I would not just staying on analog digital for a second.
There are some engineers say that what you're really hearing
in the analog is distortion. And then there's the experience

(33:39):
of putting on some c ds in some vinyl records
and you feel a warmth in the analog that you
don't feel on the c D. Tell us, from a
professional viewpoint, what's going on there? It is distortion. It
is it's very very well managed sometimes poorly managed distortions,
but it is what we love about it, right, and
most people don't realize it. And I'll just at risk

(34:01):
of letting the cat out of the bag. You would be,
I think as a consumer, would be mortified, maybe is
the right word to understand and watch and see how
much distortion is intentionally injected into music today to get
it to have the vibe that it had thirty or
forty years ago. I mean, it's it's breathtaking how much

(34:21):
it is, you know. I mean, it's going to get
maybe even drive us into this conversation of what is
good audio, what is great audio? I mean, it's such
an open ended palette now, especially in music. Music is
such a unique animal for this discussion, you know. But
you know every sense Rocket eighty eight and Ike Turner
and Jackie brett Ling, brett Ling, you know, we've had

(34:44):
distortion in play, intentional distortion in play because it evokes
an emotional response. You know, it has a statement to it.
Think about what rap and hip hop music would have
been like in the eighties if it wouldn't have come
from the boom box era, which was just horribly distorted audio,
But that gave it the sense of being urban, right,

(35:05):
that was the urban signature. That was the thing. This
came from the street, right, It didn't come from a big,
glossy studio. You know. There's all these sonic signatures and
little tip offs to let you know where that music
came from. You know, I mean so many, so many
artists don't want to look shiny, you know, because there's
no street cred in it from an audio perspective, I'm

(35:27):
talking right. Okay, Let's assume an act is going on
the road. Most of these acts, other than the reamplifiers
and their guitars and through other instruments, rent the equipment,
you know, in arena level rock at these big tours,
who owns the actual avid board? The sound company. So
there's an entire sound company industry now that's been rocking

(35:48):
and rolling and going strong now for you know, thirty
forty plus years now. I mean it started out certainly
as a cottage industry. I mean when I got into
the business, and but as a fledgling I mean, we
were only ten years rood from Woodstock at that point.
You know, it was amazing, you know, I was looking
at a post on Facebook the other day for cal
Jam Too, which I remember seeing as a kid, and

(36:11):
you know, I had this kind of lightbulb moment. I
was like, Okay, look at what's going on here technically
at this thing. This is only about eight or nine
years removed from Woodstock. I mean, look how far this
industry has come just in that seven eight nine years,
you know. And that was all just sole proprietorship people
just pulling it together and getting together. You know. It's

(36:31):
when we really started to see the emergence of JB
L you know, as a professional audio company, because they
provided a lot of the speaker system for that that show.
You know, Meyer Sound was really really influential in in
in the growth in the development of what that industry
has become. So to kind of circle all the way
back to your question, Yeah, there's a sound company that
would provide all of that technology, all the speaker technology,

(36:53):
all the mixing technology, etcetera. To the act. The act
would lea set out for the the course of the tour,
and then when they're done, they move on to another
another act. You know. Okay, so do you personally own
any equipment that you might use on the road. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I own microphones that I use. I mean,
I used to own my own consoles, and and there
are artists are there are mixers out there that do

(37:13):
own their own consoles and still use them out there today.
I used to own a lot of my own effects processing.
I mean, I was one of the one of the
earlier guys in the eighties that was taking a lot
of studio processing out on the road and trying to
make that happen out there. You know, we were kind
of trying to make that transition. I mean, there was
a period of time in the late eighties where you know,
some of the front of house positions, probably mine included,

(37:35):
would arrivaled most studios, especially when I was mixing Rush
or or Deaf Leopard for sure. You know, those were
big front of house positions that were very technically complex positions. Okay,
so let's assume you get hired for an act. Let's
leave Chestney out because he plays stadiums, which is a
whole another ball game. We'll get to that. That's adult
audio there. Man, that's a whole another thing. That's right. Okay,

(37:57):
So let's just talk and arena act. You get hired
to do the gig, this is the first time you
work with the act Do you go and hire all
the equipment? It depends. I certainly would could. I mean,
if they've brought me into the gig, then I want
to have influence on what gear we're going to use. Yeah,
So you know, obviously there are fine there are accountants
that get involved in budgets that have to be honored, etcetera.

(38:19):
But you know, there's certainly preferences. I certainly have preferences
of speaker systems and companies to work with out there.
For sure, you're gonna put me on the spot like that.
Certainly with the speakers, people are always interested in that. Yeah, well,
speaker and speaker development, man has really come a long way. Man,
hearing about about the last twenty five years. Man, there's

(38:41):
been some phenomenal advancement and speaker technology. But you know,
I mean there's the big companies out there. I'm working
with Claire Brothers for Kenny Chesney, which is you know,
I'm Claire Brothers is the undisputed champ of sound companies.
They are the biggest one by far. They probably they
probably address sixty the clients out there in the world.
To day. I've used sound image with great effect there

(39:04):
out of Southern California down an Escondido. Really great company.
Who else? I mean, there's so many good companies going now. Okay,
so forget the intermediaries. You're dealing with a company. You're
on an Aerweena tour forty dates. What do you need?
Do I gotta know what kind of music we're trying
to present? You gotta know? You know, are we going
to make something that's freaking loud and impactful? Here? Are

(39:26):
we looking for intelligibility? What is the act? Is it
adell or is it a Metallica? They're going to require
very very different PA systems and very different capabilities for
that room. So you know, I've got to know that first,
I've got to understand it musically, what what what the
fans are gonna expect there, And then you do a
design that you have to kind of in these in
this day and age, you have to fit into lighting

(39:47):
and video production because you're your third in line. Now.
You know, the first things that get done our video
production and lighting production, and then we try to squeeze
in some sound in there and get it in hopefully
in the right positions to address the geometry in the room.
So all of that comes in place very complex formula
of Okay, if it's going to need to be this,
it's going to cost this much, it's got to fit

(40:08):
in here. How does it impact the production schedule? You know,
are we going to have time to put it up?
And you know, all of that gets put into a
hat and shake it up and hopefully come out with
the answer there. You know, you work very closely with
you know, the production team, meaning the lighting designer, the
video designer, and the production manager, and then the accountants
come in at some point and tell you that's going

(40:30):
to cost way too much and we can't do it. Okay,
you're interested most and getting the best sound. Do you
ever butt heads with these people and say, well, I
hear what you're You know, with the classic thing, you know,
couples have a living room and one of the members
of the couple doesn't want anything to show, and then
the other person's well, I want the big speakers and
all the equipment that lights up. So these are different

(40:52):
considerations video and audio. So to what degree is there
a battle? That's a strong term, but every every here,
I mean it's a knockdown, drag out fight. I'm not
exaggerating it. I mean it's a battle every tour, honestly,
go into stadiums, it actually gets a little easier because
the you know, the places where you're gonna be able
to do things in the structure that's going to hold

(41:13):
it is a little more forgiving than what you're going
to do in an arena. But you know, you look
at the complexity of some of these arena shows now
and trying to get speaker systems fit into that that
can actually properly address the geometry and make it where
everybody can actually hear what's going on. It's in the way,
it's in the way. You know, it's hanging in front
of the video screen, right, so it's gotta move, we

(41:34):
gotta go higher, whatever we gotta do, you know what
I mean. There's all kinds of parameters that get put
into play there to make that work, especially especially so
for television. I mean Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
is a great example of that, where you know, the
camera shot is the whole thing. There can't be p
a hanging down in the camera shot. You've got to
have a p A system that can go high, aim low,

(41:54):
cover the geometry etcetera. You know, it's there's a lot
of a lot of moving parts there, like I said,
that have to get into play. So I mean, I
hate to give you the stock answer. Well, it depends,
but it depends on what are we doing TV. I'm
sure every situation is you need. But you know, videos
king right now, you know, I mean, it gets all
the consideration right now. So let's just go to the extremes.

(42:21):
Adele and Metallica. Literally, what brand of speaker would you
want to use and what brand of amplifier? Well, I
don't know, is the honest answer. I mean I have
ones that I would lean towards. I mean, you know,
there are some of these very very dsp driven, very
accurate speaker systems that can cover i mean to the seat.

(42:41):
You know, you can build in these these polar patterns
for these PA systems where you know the p A
is the sound from the p A is literally not
hitting any of the walls, it's only hitting the seats.
So you know, from for Adele, I would choose something
that had that capability. For Metallica, you know, you want
something that has a little bit of that capability for sure.
You want to be able to be precise with it.
But man, it's got to have some balls to it.

(43:03):
I mean, it's going to have to have some oomph
to it because there's gonna be a volume element to that,
and a punch element to that and impact element to that.
That is absolutely vital for the show to succeed. Right
whereas Adele that's gonna be there's gonna be some elegance
to that, there's going to the vocal is going to
be It's going to be all about the vocal there. Really,
how do I get this beautiful, tall, elegant, highly addictive

(43:27):
vocal that every person in the room can understand every
word that she sinks? You know? Two different really agendas
there to really two different agendas there. Let's talk about
the speakers. Are these brands consumers would be familiar with
and probably not now they're really I mean short of
you know, JB. L. I'm I'm sure that's ubiquitous enough
that everybody would know it. But you know these now

(43:47):
these are very uh, you know, brands that are focused
really entirely on professional sound. Not to say that they
don't go down into the consumer market with some of
their products, but their primary focuses on and a couple
of the names us for the record uh AL Acoustics,
which is a French company that kind of they really
are responsible for kind of changing the whole game and

(44:07):
going getting us to go to this thing called line
Source where you here's you see speakers hanging in a
straight line uh E, A, W D and B Audio
Audio Technique U JB L. Of course, you know those
are probably the big big players in it right now.
Claire Claire Brothers makes their own proprietary boxes called Cohesion,

(44:28):
which were very, very good. So let's talk about what
was the breakthrough exactly of the French company. It's called
line Source. So if you have a memory of looking
back on shows and you paid any attention to speaker
systems in the past up until about let's call it,
I'm going to call it the mid to late nineties,

(44:49):
was when we really started to see the shift. Previous
to that, you saw a lot of speaker systems hanging
in a horizontal way. We kind of called it a
golf ball. Look right where you would see they would
be four or five cab it's deep, and then they
would kind of wrap around the corner. You know, you
would see this just this I mean it was almost
like looking at a whole bunch of little cabinets that
made it look like one big speaker cabinet. And we

(45:10):
generally refer to that as a horizontally arrayed p A system.
You know, we're worried about it going in this direction. Now,
the downside of the horizontally p A system was that
it was very hard to cover steep geometry. If you
had to cover very high, like you had seats that
were steep or high, you didn't have enough angling in
that horizontal p A to be able to get it

(45:31):
up there and and direct energy up there. It was
very difficult to do, especially for a hanging p A system.
It was if it was a stacked p A system,
you could kind of get it, but still that that
had its own limitations as well. So in the nineties, uh,
we had some development in speaker driver technology that came
to play, and it allowed for us to do vertical

(45:55):
hanging of these speaker systems and and then these vertical
line sources. What's really critical to making it work is
the spacing between the speaker components. So you know, if
you took the grill cloth off of one of these
line source speaker systems. You would see too low frequency devices,
and then you would see some mid frequency devices, and
then right in the center you would see a whole
line of high frequency devices. And that high frequency line

(46:20):
of devices might be thirty ft tall. Right, But what
that allows for is that mathematically that line of speakers
is working as one speaker. To the ear, it appears
to be one speaker. That's the goal there. Now the
challenge with it is how do I then how do
I expand horizontal coverage? How do I get coverage around

(46:40):
the corner where you have to hang more lines around there?
So if you were to go to a show today
and see it, you would probably see on either side
of the stage, you know probably two maybe three line sources.
And the other big advantage of line sources is very
easy to cover the vertical geometry. If I need to
cover high, I need to cover a steep Remember I
talked about TELEVI in production when we might want to

(47:01):
fly high but then shoot audio straight down. I can
do that with a line source very effectively. Right, So
that that the game really changed in the late nineties
once those came to bear and we were able to
amplify and have these components, these smaller components that could
handle the amount of power and have the amount of
output available to them. Then line source became the thing.

(47:21):
And unlike any time I've ever seen in the history
of sound reinforcement, the entire industry just kind of stopped
on a dime and went, yep, we're gonna go a
line source. Here we go. And you know, from that
point on you hardly saw any horizontally ran pas for
a long time. And what are the amplifiers that are used? Man,
super super high power networkable amplifiers now where we can
get audio to them off of an audio network, but

(47:44):
you know, thousands and thousands of what's available to you
because headroom is what you want there. You want to
be able to do really push things up and not
have it distort and and blow up the speaker component.
And what are the brands used in the amplifers. Most
of the companies are making their own amplifiers at this point.
Alocoustic makes its own amplifiers. DNB Audio Technique makes their
own amplifiers. Uh, you know, Crown Amplifiers works in conjunction

(48:08):
with J B. L Um who else There's I'm probably
missing a ton of them here U E. A W
has their own amplifier package made by power Soft. I
believe this Powersoft may and it might have moved to
a different amplifier now for the and your riggs. But
you know it's all in house, and you know they're
making their owns now that you wouldn't necessarily go out
and buy them off the shelf there. It's all part

(48:28):
of the system design now. So if you go to
Claire Brothers, they have all of this stuff and you
pick and choose what you want. Yeah, especially Claire Brothers
in in this day and age, they used to be
really they've kind of changed their model now. They used
to be a proprietary company where you know, in the
early eighties they were one of the few companies, one
of one of two or three companies really, Claire Brothers,
Shoko I probably put Britannia Row in there, maybe Concert

(48:50):
Sound over in Europe in there that we're making their
own boxes because the manufacturers weren't really able to manufacturer
a box that could could do that. Yet Alter Sound
out of San Rafel was great. You know, that was
the Grateful Sound company for the longest period of time.
But they you know, they were they just decided, Hey,
we're gonna make our own boxes, make our own speaker systems,
you know like that. You went to that company because

(49:13):
they had the technology and the technical infrastructure to go
out and do these huge tours at the time, you know,
I mean I think back to show's you know, like
Live Aid and you know, the the first rock and
rios down in you know, in South American stuff. I mean,
there was only a couple of companies that could have
even possibly pulled that off, you know, and today there's

(49:33):
you know, you can you can go out and buy
a concert sound system off the shelf and call yourself
a sound company. You know. So I am old enough
to remember two things. One, when the venue provided the
sound reinforcement to that the only thing going through the
p A was the vocal. Yeah. So at this point

(49:54):
is every instrument might, every amplifier might what's going I'm
there for rock and pop music, yeah, absolutely every I
mean it's very much like studio mixing at the console,
and you're just bringing it to a big p A system. Now,
if you if you go all the way down into
something like you know, if you get to jazz things
like that, then then you're really you're not necessarily not

(50:17):
necessarily putting everything in the p A system, you know,
you're you're back to what we would kind of label
a sound reinforcement methodology there right where, Okay, let me
take what I can hear on the stage and then
just fill in the holes with the p A you know,
and try to make it very organic feeling. You know,
you don't, especially for things like symphony and pops. You know,
you don't really want to experience p A system there.

(50:38):
You know, you want it to be more like I'm
experiencing the orchestra here, right, So, even though you might
have all the inputs and all the mike stations of
an orchestra get up, you really don't want it to
be a parent that it's coming out of a p
A system that wants to be very invisible for the listener.
There so different sensibilities depending on the music for sure.
So being like Petty you worked with for forty years,

(50:59):
or Kenny Chestney, how many mikes do you need? Well,
how many instruments you got, you know, and and how
many like some of the guitar players you know they
may play like well, Kenny Greenberg has got two different
amplifier packages that he uses. John's got a couple of
different amplifier packages. Uh. You know, Uh, Danny, the stage

(51:20):
left guitar player, is working completely on amplifier emulation. He's
using these things called fractals, which are no live amplifiers.
It's it's all digital. But it sounds fantastic, you know.
I mean they work really really good. So you need
something for every instrument. You know, on the drums, I've
probably got in there fre just you know, probably upwards
of sixteen eighteen microphones in play microphone channels on the drums.

(51:43):
So it just depends on how many, how many inputs
you got up there, how many instruments you got up there. Okay,
once you showed up in the rehearsal room with Chestney,
how long did you take you to get miked and ready?
Just miked and ready? You know, we were ready the
first day. And again it kind of comes out of preparation, right,
I mean, before I ever got there. I mean, this
is kind of where we're adding sound reinforcement these days.

(52:05):
You know, this is uh, you know, that whole concept
of virtual sound check that is in play now. You know,
I took they had recorded tracks from the twenty eighteen
tour En Tour, you know, pro tools sessions that were
recorded right off the live sound console. I brought them
into my place here. I have console and p A
system set up at my place here. I brought that
in and I'm mixed that show in preparation of showing

(52:27):
up for rehearsals. And when I showed up my console,
a lot of it was already set and ready to go.
Is just plug in the microphones and bring in the band,
let's go. You know. So, you know, the the amount
that you can prepare now today compared to what what
it was, you know, twenty years ago, twenty plus years ago,
is dramatic now, I mean, I can, I can come in.
I did the same thing with Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame, even though I didn't have the bands there.

(52:48):
You know, I could use tracks to kind of prepare
the console to get ready for that show, and when
the bands came in, I was way way far ahead
of the game. You know. Okay, if you were a
regular recording studio, setting up mike is getting the sound
can sometimes take a week. So in this particular case,
are you literally going on stage and setting up all
the mics. Well, I have somebody do it, but I

(53:09):
I have total providence over where those microphones get placed.
Like you know, I even have some alignment procedures, some
very specific alignment procedures that are used on certain microphones
to get them exactly in the position I want them
to be in. And you know that part of it
is really not that different from the studio. That that
piece of it is very similar to what I would
do in the studio as well. You know where we're
working on microphone choice, we're working on microphone placement. We're

(53:33):
working on getting the right instrument into the right amplifier
to get the right sound. Is that the pickups we want,
is that the strings we want? Is that the guitar
we want to use? For that part. I'm involved in
all of that with musicians more often than not, in
picking what drumheads are we going to use? Okay, are
these how many PLA shells? Is this? Is that what
we're gonna do there? Okay? Yeah, alright, okay, yeah, I'm
good with that. On the kit, what symbols are you

(53:54):
using and using heavy light? All of that plays into
it because you're gonna mix it. You know, you're at
the end of the day, you're out of the responsible
for what it's gonna sound like. So, you know, the
guys that I've worked with in my life. I'm not
necessarily preaching that every guy needs to work this way,
but I know for the guys that I've worked with
and been around in my life and that that mentored me.

(54:15):
I picked up on it very quickly that the guys
that knew audio the best didn't necessarily know how to
operate the console the best, but they knew how to
get the sounds. They knew. Okay, you want that guitar sound.
I need that guitar with that pickup and those strings
on it into that amplifier through those speakers, and we're
going to use one of these two microphones here, and
that's probably going to do it. You know. That's the

(54:36):
things they knew. And then once you get to to
the console and it's just about mixing the thing, you know,
I mean, it's just about getting it together. Okay, tell
us about virtual sound check. Yeah, that's kind of my
pride and joy there. You know, I've been kind of
credited as you know, developing this whole concept and and
bringing it to bear. Um. I mean I'll give you
the reader's digest version of the story. So you know,

(55:00):
one of the things, one of the challenges we have
in life sound previous to virtual sound check is the
only time you, as the mixer, ever get to work
on the audio like practice, work on sounds, make changes, experiment.
The only time you ever get to do that is
when the band is on stage or the audiences in
the room, and the band is on stage, so you

(55:22):
know it. It makes it where there was a whole
lot of guesswork. I mean, you could kind of hear
instruments and stuff, but you couldn't really mix anything until
the band was on stage and playing. And you know,
to ask a band who's getting ready to a concert, Hey,
I need you to do this song about ten times
for me to get it ready, It's not gonna happen.

(55:43):
It's not going to happen. So you know the reality
of what happened with that, I mean, there's two realities,
stark realities that happen as results of that. One is
previous to virtual sound check. You were gonna learn the
show on the road during the SARTs. The show that
I mixed two weeks from the first date is going

(56:04):
to be infinitely better than the first show because I'm
still learning it. I'm still understanding what to do on
the console still. You know, any experiments I gotta do,
I'm gonna have to do showtime and figure it out
and get it going right, so that happens over course
of time. Now, add to that, you may have people
that are very inexperienced mixers in life sound. They're gonna

(56:25):
learn their craft in front of the audience. It's going
to happen over time. I mean, I think it's part
of why live sound kind of got a got a
bad rap over a period of time and is considered
not very good because you have a lot of very
inexperienced people in there, you know. I mean, you know,
when I've taught mixing clinics and you know, things like that,
I've always tried to get across people. Look, you want

(56:46):
to learn how to mix, Get in the studio and
learn how to mix when there's nothing at stake, right,
get in there and learn how to do all the
ear training and learn all the audio cues that you
need to learn to get out and then do it
under pressure live. You don't come out live and just
learn the craft over five or six years of really
bad mixing right and put the audience through it. So
all of this to say, we needed another way to

(57:09):
do this right, And this really all came to bear.
You know, it's all down to timing of technologies. So
I got invited into mixed Petty live around Wildflowers. They
had just finished Wildflowers and we were going to do
the the Dogs with Wings tour. This was well, as
luck would have it. I'll give the little sidebar here,

(57:30):
as luck would have it. Right about that time, these
small modular digital multi track recorders came out. They were
called a DAT right, which was a VHS cassette that
did eight tracks of digital recording and you could cascade
them together to make forty eight tracks, sixty four tracks
of digital recording, whatever you wanted to do, right. So
I had those in my studio already, had been using them,

(57:53):
been recording bands. You know. That was around the time
I was trying to get my label together and and
get that whole part of my my my empire one.
But I got invited to do the Petty thing. Now,
you know, Petty has already been together at that point,
you know, about you know, fifteen years maybe, and the
band knows each other, you know. I'm in rehearsals and
I'm kind of set up in another little room because

(58:14):
it's a pretty small rehearsal space, and I'm kind of
set up in another room with my consoles and some
control room monitors, and I'm just gonna work on mixes
in there while they're rehearsing to get ready for the
first show. Well, and you probably know this from you know,
being around the Heartbreakers and that stuff. This was Petty
and the Heartbreakers. I mean we we did five days
of rehearsals. I never heard one Petty song, not one.

(58:37):
It was all covers. It was just like, oh, hey,
let's do uh, let's do this Johnny Cash thing, you know.
And they would dig into that, so, you know it.
It became kind of the treehouse where they would just
go hang out and play music. It wasn't really rehearsals
per and I kind of had this moment of abject
fear of thinking, oh my gosh, I'm going to get
to the first show having never heard Tom Petty song

(59:01):
through this console. You know, it's I'm gonna get to
that show and it's going to be nothing like what
I'm doing. Right now. So this was like on a
Thursday Friday, and again just kind of as luck kind
of have it. You know, I was working on a
particular style of console at that time that would allow
for this kind of thing to happen, and I had
this kind of lightbulb moment of just thinking, you know what,
I've got to create a studio workflow here. I've got

(59:22):
to be able to record this because I'm gonna bet
next week before we leave, they're going to run through
the set once just to kind of make sure everybody's
on point and make sure everybody's okay. And you know,
not not the least of which that was Steve Ferroni's
first time with the Heartbreakers, so he was panicking the
same way, you know, thinking I'm gonna get to the
first show, we're not playing any of these songs. So

(59:43):
I literally called my wife and I said, Honey, I
need you to go grab a screwdriver, and I need
to go in the studio and I'm gonna have you
pull out all these digital recorders and I'm gonna even
send them to me. So over the course of the weekend,
she sent those to me and we were able to
interface them to the console in a way that it
was very much like a studio workflow, where I could
the band could play, I could record it literally, rewind,

(01:00:07):
put the machines in play, and practice mixing that audio
through the console without the band playing there right. So
we didn't we didn't know it was called virtual sound
check at the time. The name for it didn't come
along until years and years later. But I spent the
next probably six eight years developing that process, you know,

(01:00:28):
with analog consoles and digital recorders. At some point I
switched over to pro tools and all kinds of things,
and you know, I knew we were onto something at
the first gig because you know, I mean, I don't
know how much your listeners or anything you know about
this kind of process. But for years of the process
for getting the p A system to sound right in
the room, would will play some prerecorded music, We'll play

(01:00:49):
our favorite CD, try to get the p A system
sound right, and then we'll mix and try to make
it sound right. And especially as the nineties war on,
you know, mastering and equalization of recorded music changed dramatically.
I mean it's way brighter, way more compressed, way less
dynamic range than anything you're ever going to be able
to make happen in the p A system with live microphones, right,

(01:01:12):
So those two worlds kind of diverged where you could
get get the PA to sound really good and then
have the microphones come online and wouldn't sound very good,
wouldn't be representative of it at all. But the thing
I noticed with virtual sound check right away was, oh
my gosh, we've got the most relevant source for the show. Now.
If I hit rewind and hit play here and get
that to sound really good in the p A when

(01:01:33):
the band walks on stage, it's going to sound really
close to that, right because now we're just trading tracks
for microphones. We're just trading them off and saying which
one are you listening to right now? Tracks or microphones? Now?
So you know, I'm I'm really oversimplifying it. But that
developed over a period of years and really the I
think for me, the validation came one day, and this

(01:01:54):
was about two thousand five. This was after the first
you know, once I got to digit design, I remember
started thinking, okay, we could actually make this a valid
product feature and really kind of completely reshape the industry here.
So we released the ability to do that and called
it virtual sound check with the one of the first
digit design consoles. And we were sitting in rehearsals in

(01:02:15):
Sony or it was actually on the Paramount lot, I think,
full production, the whole nine yards and Tom and the
band had been in the day previous, and I had
recorded the entire set and was going to come in
the next morning and just go into virtual sound check,
tear it all apart and see what I wanted to
do with it. And I haven't mentioned it, but keep

(01:02:36):
it up in mind. Tom had no idea I had
this ability to do this. I mean I kind of
kept it secret for the longest amount of time. He
had no inkling that we could do this. I would
always virtual sound check, then the band would come in
and do their actual sound check, and then we would
do the show. So he I came in the next
morning and again was going to break it all down
and try to get, you know, really dig in and

(01:02:56):
see what I needed to do on this. And I
didn't realize that as time, but he was in the
building and he was sitting on a couch about thirty
ft behind me, off in the corner, waiting to do
some interviews and he tells the story way funnier than
I could ever tell it. He said he was sitting
there on the couch and kind of had this panic
moment of, well, wait a minute, that is that my
band sound checking right now? Why am I not? Why

(01:03:19):
am I not there? And then he heard his voice
come through the p A and he was like, Okay, now,
wait a minute, here's what's actually happening right now. You know,
there was this kind of pause moment. So he kind
of came up to the console and we were talking
about it, and I kind of revealed what I was
going on, and you know, I mean, he was he
was such a smart guy. I mean, he just he

(01:03:39):
just got it. You know. He was like, Okay, wait
a minute now, so you're telling me that for the
first time ever in my life, right now, I'm going
to be able to sit here and listen to how
my show sounds in the in the venue, just like
when we're playing. I said, yeah, you want to hear it?
Here we go, you know, and sorry, and and we
sat there and had this just incredible bonding moment of

(01:04:00):
you know, he was just like, I I've never heard
it sound like this. He goes, this is just the
greatest thing I've ever experienced in my life, you know,
I mean he was just over the moon about it,
and it changed our relationship from that moment on. I mean,
you know, he I think he understood where I was
coming from in terms of what I was trying to
accomplish with it, and you know, all of a sudden
he was married to it. He was like, oh, this
is great. And then he had the ultimate epiphany of well,

(01:04:22):
wait a minute, can you do this for monitors to
for the monitor console. I was like, yeah, of course
we can. So that was in two thousand five, and
from that point forward to the end of our time
together in two thousand and seventeen, that bend. That band
was never in the building again for a sound check.
We only used virtual sound check to get ready for shows.

(01:04:45):
And you know, of course I didn't see all the
the positives from it at the time, but I actually
think that process actually extended the life of the band
over a period of that over that period of years,
because you know, Tom is famous for saying it, you know,
we don't sound check. It can only break up the band,
you know, because everybody's in you know, three o'clock in

(01:05:06):
the afternoon, they're in a horrible mood, and then when
they're done, they gotta go sit in some danky dressing
room and listen to a horrible opening act and then
come on stage. You know. I mean it just grinds
on you, absolutely grinds on you. Over the course of
a tour, well, that all went away now. I mean
there were nights where we would be at the set
change between the opening act and tim going on, and

(01:05:27):
they still weren't in the building. I mean they would
literally walk off the bus, walk up on stage and
start the show. And I noticed it really really early on.
It was like, wow, these guys are so focused right now,
like they're just playing on fire now, you know. It
changed the dynamic of the show. Everything, everything just became
a positive as a result of it. It was just

(01:05:48):
such an amazing time and an amazing experience, you know.
So that that to me was the ultimate validation of
that process. Does everybody do this now? A lot of
people do? I mean it it really changed the industry.
It changed the mindset of a lot of people. Yeah,
I don't think as many people do it as should.
I'll be honest about it. I think more people should
do it because I think it's a the ultimate way

(01:06:10):
to get your arena or your club or whatever it
is ready for your show. Like I said, it's the
most valid thing you can play through the p A
because it's gonna be if it sounds like that way
with the tracks, it going down that way with your band. Okay,
So let's see you're doing rehearsals with Chestney. How many

(01:06:33):
rehearsals are there? Well, I mean when you get ready
for something like this. And we had some unique circumstances
with Chesney this year because he's got two new band members,
Like they replaced the drummer and they replaced one of
the guitar players, so they extended the rehearsal time to
make sure that the new guys were going to be,
you know, up to speed with the songs, et cetera.
So I took full advantage of that. But we had about,

(01:06:54):
oh gosh, I'm gonna say about three weeks of what
we would call band rehearsals, right, which is in a
smaller place where just the band is set up with
their band gear and everybody's just learning the songs and
getting familiar with them. And then we had about two
maybe three weeks of what I would call production rehearsals,
which we moved to a much bigger facility. Excuse me.

(01:07:15):
We have a p A system, we have the lighting system,
the video systems up, and then all the production elements
are working on the songs at that point in rehearsing
their pieces of it. You know, Obviously, lighting guys got
to know other cues. I've got to know how to
run the set and you know, make all my changes
song to song to solong. Excuse me. Video guys have
to have all their content together, etcetera. So that's the

(01:07:36):
production rehearsal, and then we're gonna go down to Tampa
next week and do the two about three or four
days in the stadium to get everybody acclimated to that,
and then after that we just go, you know, and
then after that there's no more rehearsal periods. Okay. I
guess what I'm asking is what recording do you use
for the virtual sound check last rehearsal or you're recording
all along the way. I'm recording every day, and I

(01:08:00):
always use the most recent version of the songs, so um,
you know, like every day of rehearsal, if I was
coming into work on my on what I would need
to do on the console, I was using yesterday's audio,
and the same thing will apply on the tour. I'll
always use the most recent version. So when I get
to Tampa, I'll be using on the first day of rehear,

(01:08:20):
so I'll be using audio from the first day of
rehear or the last day of rehearsals, and then the
second day in Tampa, I'll be using the first day
of rehearsals in Tampa as that basis. And then it
just keeps leap frogging as you go along. And the
beauty that you get out of all this this this
is the other head of benefit as you create an
archive then, right, I mean this this was one of
the once I once I got Petty to buy off

(01:08:41):
on this one and his management to buy off on it,
then the light bulb really came off. It came on.
It was like, guys, you know, we don't have to
erase this every day. Let's keep these multi tracks and
put them in your archive, right because you can remix
any of this and and put it out for product,
especially now, you know, I mean, Kenny's got no Shoes radio,

(01:09:02):
you know, Tom had serious you know, you know the
Tom Petty Show. On Tom Petty Radio Show. You can
just you're just gonna be so flush with fresh material
if you want it, you know, And I'll tell you something, Bob,
I mean really. One of the underlying agendas for me,
this was a personal one for me, was being able
to do this because the technology allowed us to do
it right. The technology allows us to do this inexpensively. Now,

(01:09:24):
this concept of multi tracking our shows and archiving it.
One of the things for me was I love live music.
I love live recorded music. I mean I grew up
I had every live album known to man, you know,
from nineteen Let's let's start for one second. What are
is the best or the two best live recordings in
your book? Oh, you're gonna put me on this, Okay,

(01:09:46):
I'm gonna say Allman Brothers at the film wore that
that is got to be right up at the top
of the heap because it's just such a magical set
of performances and recording. I mean, Tom doubt but just
just killed it. And then I'm going to say, because
the thing you have to put with live recordings is
there's an audience capture that needs to take place as well,
So you know, the audience recording is a big piece

(01:10:09):
of it. And I still to this day say Frampton
Comes Alive is the best audience engaged recording I've ever
heard today. Now there's one that's close to that, and
it's Buck Owens Live at Carnegie Hall. That's an incredible
audience recording there. But you know that that is what
makes live albums work for me, is when you can

(01:10:31):
tell that's the actual audience that's recorded and they are
fully engaged with that artist. You can hear it. They're
just hanging on every word. And I've yet to hear
anything that matches that with Frampton Brampton Comes Alive. You know,
next time you listen to it, just pay attention to
the audience. It's just incredible. I guess for a long
time people said that Live It Leads was the best
live album, but I didn't hear the audience, so it

(01:10:51):
didn't work for me, And there's some truth to that.
Although that's very high on my list. I mean, I
mean that one kind of set the bar for me
for a long time. I'm I wore out multiple opies
of that one, but the other one, and I know
you worked with this band, Tesla five Me and Acoustical Jam.
I was piste off because I didn't get to mix that.
But that's a whole another story. We'll save that for
another episode. But you recorded that, No, I didn't. I didn't.

(01:11:14):
I was on that tour and kind of mixed a
bunch of the tour that was radio great, radio controversy.
And then they went off and did that. Oh, forgive me,
I'm going to forget. The guy who recorded it's Dan.
Oh gosh, guys, forgive me. I'm spacing his last name.
But he worked with the band for a long long
time and he recorded it and mixed it and did
a phenomenal job on it. And you know, I'm sorry

(01:11:35):
to say he's not with us anymore, but he was great.
He was one of the you know, he's one of
those long time guys that have been with the band
for a long time, and they let him do it
and it came out great. Okay, let's go back a chapter.
I have been at the venue. I know the people
at the venue, and they were there at sound check
and one act I don't want to mention the specific
name here, they said that guy can't sing it all yeah,

(01:11:57):
and it's all effects or there's another household being I'm
good friends with these people and they say, all the
backup vocals are on hard rock. Okay, how do you
do that? Do you want to know how you do
it or why you do it? Both? Yeah? Well this
is a well and it's going to play into what
I was going to promote here. You know what I'll

(01:12:17):
get to this. Just hang with me, bear with me
here one second. You know, one of the things I like,
I love about live music and live albums was this
sense of, you know, kind of getting to hear what
the band could do before you go see them live.
I mean, that was always the thing for me. But
as I matured and I got older, you know, I
started to realize, you know, and I got exposed to

(01:12:38):
production techniques, etcetera, that some of these live recordings that
I grew up loving, we're actually just completely redone in
the studio with audience added to him. And I was like, well,
wait a minute, that's that's not live. That's not live.
I don't want I don't want my live record to
be you going in and singing perfect vocals over it. Now,

(01:12:59):
you know, because the thing that happens with that from
production point of view, and I've experienced this, you know,
mixing some of these products, is that, well, the audience
mix that are out there are also picking up what's
coming out of the p A to some degree, so
they can hear those audience mikes can actually hear you're
very poor vocal. So now if you go in the
studio and you record a perfect vocal and we tried

(01:13:21):
to add the audience, you can hear the bad vocal
behind it. So what ends up happening is we start
to pull the audience farther and farther away off of
the record and maybe even putting canned audience on it.
So now it's not even the live audience anymore. It's
not the live performance or the live audience. I was like, well,
and and I mean, you've got to keep it in context.
Right at that point in music history, you know, live

(01:13:45):
records were kind of throwaway kind of they were Sometimes
they were done to complete record contracts so I could
move on to another label, you know, all those kinds
of things. So and you know, it was very expensive
at that point in history to record. So you know,
if the truck your two thousand dollar a day, you know,
plus crew, plus expenses. If that showed up and recorded

(01:14:06):
a really bad show, well guess what you were keeping
it and you were going to go fix it. So
part of my agenda, I promise you, part of my
agenda with kind of developing this whole multi track archive
thing was what that's going to allow us to do
is record every night, not just certain nights, record every
night and then go pick the performances that are worthy
of being mixed and released. And that's you know, with

(01:14:29):
Petty's Anthology, that's what happened there. You know, we had
enough recordings where we could kind of go through and go, wow,
we don't have to fix anything there. Let's let's release
that sucker, mix it up and let's go you know,
and then it becomes very pure, right, I mean, then
it becomes really what you're stating that it is right
and that that's always been my goal on it. And
you know, one of the other sidebars I would give

(01:14:50):
you on that is and I watched this happen with
every act I've ever worked for. I don't care how
proficient they are. I have seen this happen in the
days before multi track archiving, like I've tried to develop here.
If you had the truck show up and say, okay,
we're gonna do Los Angeles next week and we're going
to record it, hopefully get a live album out of it.

(01:15:10):
You could we do with the band where you've done
sixty shows together just overall, just great shows. And the
minute that truck shows up and that red recording light
goes on, they turned into a different band. They're just
a different band. They're playing different, they're they're over trying
all kinds of things, and you just walk away on that,

(01:15:32):
ain't it? That ain't the one we wanted. Well, multi
track archive eliminates that process because they don't they don't
have red light fever. Then the red lights on every night,
they get used to it, and you get the smoking performances.
You know, you just gotta be able to go in
and mind them out of there and find them right.
It's it's awesome, it's absolutely awesome. Well that's the live then,

(01:15:53):
but let's go to the acts on the other end.
You want to cover. Yeah, we were gonna get back
to that, right, Sorry, I promise you we get back
to that. So, I mean, I'm so I'm so mixed.
About this and and got to keep it in context
at times, I think, right, I mean, I'm okay, I
I promise you I'm okay with using tracks with backing tracks.

(01:16:16):
What I'm not okay with is people miming to backing tracks. Now,
I want to keep this in context here. I want
to keep TV out of it and talk about only
the concert hall we're paying to go see the band perform,
right when that is all tracks and just sit people
lip sing it, sinking to it so that they can

(01:16:37):
do other things or what are maybe they can't sing
and they feel like they're insecure, I have to sing
to the track, etcetera. I'm really uncomfortable with that as like,
I mean, that just feels really really misrepresented to me.
You know, it feels very phony to me, and you know,
there's it's like and I just am uncomfortable with that.

(01:16:58):
But by the same token, I look it and go, well,
that's a function of the industry that we have right now,
the record business that we have right now. Right think
about this now. The record industry is upside down. It's
completely backwards. Now. The first thing we do as an
artist now is make a record and then go out
and learn how to perform it. You know, artists today

(01:17:20):
don't have that crucible of performance in front of an
audience where they have where they learn how to sing
with nerves and in front of people, they learn how
to develop their charisma, all of these sorts of things,
and then go make the record that's completely upside down.
Now they just don't have to go through that crucible anymore.
And we see it all the time where you know,

(01:17:42):
people make their record at home, whatever they the thing
blows up, they do really big, and now they're playing
in front of Lollapaloosa and they don't have the chops.
They don't have the chops to do it live. But
on a technical level, you're working with an act they
want to use canned backup vocals. How do you literally
do it? It's done in a digital audio workstation, which

(01:18:02):
is like pro Tools. There's lots of other ones out
there like Ableton and etcetera. Where they bring in the
tracks from the record, put them in there. Whoever the
band is playing to a click track, and at the
proper time in the song, those backing vocals come up
and they come into your console. You turn them up
and they sound just like the record coming through the
p A system. Okay, I know what a click track is,
but from my OEMs, explain how it works live. A

(01:18:24):
click track is I mean another word for it is
a metronome, right, But in our world we have recorded
versions of that where you know, it's recorded as a
specific tempo. Everybody knows where the the first beat of
the song is and it just starts clapping. It just
starts ticking, right, So the song is going along and
it's going this is the tempo that we're playing the

(01:18:47):
song too. And at the you know, at bar or
whatever it is, here come our backing vocals. You know.
So Petty played the super Bowl. Were you involved in that? Ye?
So how did you do that? Dude? It's the scariest
fifteen minutes of your life. It's it's the most intense pressure.
I think I may have ever felt that a gig,
you know. So the way you do that is honestly

(01:19:08):
very similar, you know, and they do it in a
really cool way there. I like how the super Bowl,
at least I'm assuming they're still doing it the same
way where you you prerecorded on the day, the day's
leading up to the event, and then the band plays
along with the tracks, and you have the choice of
using as the mixture. You have the choice of using
the actual mix or the tracks. And you know, the

(01:19:29):
lead vocal can be all live, it can be partially live.
You have the choice of doing it because they know
that that. You know, if the lead singer forgets the
lines or whatever, you know, the guitar player misses the
part mrs the solo, you just lean on the track
and finish out the song. So again, it's it's down
to that thing. It's so time driven and so like

(01:19:49):
the brackets have got to be perfect around that. It
can only last this long. We cannot have any mess
ups here, etcetera. You know that is about predictability, etcetera.
So I you know, I don't. I don't think it's
a huge secret what goes on there. But you know
that said, there have been live performances on there, you know,
I mean a lot of part of the Petty thing
was live, for sure, part of the Prince thing was live.

(01:20:10):
You know, I'm playing guitar. Were you literally control or
was one of their engineers in control for the broadcast?
Is one of their engineers for the house? I was, well,
I was, it was a similar sort of thing where
you have a house engineer who's doing it, who's a
union guy, and you're sitting right next to him saying, yeah,
let's do that. Yeah, you're you're guiding there. Okay. One
thing about live sound is every building is different. Indeed

(01:20:32):
it is. Okay, so are you saying now? With virtual
sound check, it makes it so much easier, whereas before
you were just on the flaw. Yeah, because you can
take actual band audio that's played at the right dynamic everything,
send it through the p A system and really take
your time and figure out how good is my PA coverage?
Am I actually getting all the way up to those seats?

(01:20:54):
You know, what does it sound like up there? What
is what does my band sound like sitting over in
these seats? Right now? I can go evaluate it and
adjust it. You know. The biggest piece of positive I
think for virtual sound check is it gives you the
ability to practice when nothing's at stake. You can experiment,
You can try things, all kinds of things without the

(01:21:15):
band sitting on stage, you know, being freaked out by
a bunch of weird sounding audio or the audience not
not having to do it in front of an audience.
It's very very analogous to a studio workflow where you're
working on mixes, you know, like in virtual sound check.
I'm no use kidding as an example, because the most
recent thing, you know, I might I might spend one
entire day of rehearsals working on one song, you know,

(01:21:35):
for the set, trying to get it to be what
I wanted to be. So you know, you could never
do that that was not just simply not possible in
pre virtual sound check. Okay. In an arena show, how
long we'll it take you to set up depends on
the size of the production, but usually usually you'll start
at six in the morning and bring in that entire
production that day and be ready for a Show'll be

(01:21:56):
ready for the doors to open by six pm. How
much of the time are you there, Well, I'm usually
in there in the morning, working out early in the morning,
so I'm available, but my my process doesn't start until probably,
you know, somewhere between eleven and one o'clock. And it
also depends on how many bands we have on the bill.
You know. Stadiums is a very very different thing. You

(01:22:18):
have about a week to load in for a stadium.
There's a lot of steel build that has to take place,
a lot of stuff has to go into place in
the stadium, a lot of delay speakers, etcetera that go
out in the far reaches of the stadium. All kinds
of stuff. Is very like I said earlier, it's adult audio.
It's very very complex, very challenging. So let's assume it's
an arena thing. You're there, you're working out. Once you

(01:22:40):
stit in behind the board, how long does it take
you to get it right? If I've done my job
in the process called system tuning, which is kind of
equalizing the p A and make sure the distribution of
it right, It'll usually take me about I don't know,
maybe thirty minutes thirty forty minutes to just kind of
check things and make sure they are where I want
them to be, because you know, the the cool thing

(01:23:01):
at least this is my approach. Once I get the
console kind of set and and know all the moves
that are going to take place during the show, that's
kind of a constant, right, So like you know, if
we start that process and I'm on song three and
it sounds right to me and everything is responding that way,
then I'm confident that the rest of the show is
going to work as well, you know, unless I need
to go really dig in on something and work on

(01:23:22):
it and say, oh and I need to get that better,
you know whatever. So yeah, forty minutes. Tell me about
the equalization. Well, we have all kinds of possibilities now
with equalization, I mean, and really it's just I mean,
it sounds like a big flute word, but it's just
really trying to get this thing totally balanced so that
it sounds like the music you're trying to present, right.

(01:23:43):
So you know, if it's I mean, if it's Metallica,
you can bet there's going to be a huge based
drumb element, a huge bottom end element, along with some
very loud, bright guitars and you know, a big vocal.
I mean, it's going to be in your face, you know,
whereas I mean, we'll just keep using it as the
example here. If I was mixing Adele, very very different
profile through the p A system, they're much more focused

(01:24:05):
on intelligibility and elegance, you know. Needless to say, in
the days of your you would go to the gig
and the sound was bad, okay in the arena, in
the stadium, if you knew the songs, you knew what

(01:24:27):
they were playing, you'd fill in. And it has certainly
got better. You certainly have the Forum in l A
which is dedicated solely to music, but generally speaking that
is not the case. I mean, I've certainly been at
gigs where the front of hall mixer, you know, and
it sounds good right where he is or she is,
and then the rest of the room sounds terrible. Yeah,

(01:24:48):
that can happen, although I'll say that happens way less
today than I think it's ever happened. I mean, we've
gotten that so much better now. Certainly the Petty, the
p A system that I had on Petty, I think
was the best ample of that where I was really
really confident that however it sounded where I was sitting
was pretty much how it sounded everywhere else in the house.
You know, from a tonal point of view, it may

(01:25:09):
not be the same volume everywhere, but tonally it sounded
that way up there. You know, the things I was
doing on the on the console would translate to big
pieces of the audience, you know. So that was that
was a big move forward. That that PA system was
a big jump forward. Well, actually, I know. I saw
that gig on the final weekend and I was very
close and I was astounded how good it sound, because

(01:25:29):
I go to a lot of gigs at the Hollywood
Bowl and you know, you know that the act is there,
but it's not crystal clear if you're sitting fifteen rows back.
You know, I remember you. I remember reading one of
your letters where you commented on this, Bob, and I
actually wrote you back. I don't know if you hear this,
well I do. That was all around the time that

(01:25:50):
you know, Tom died and then Tony used what I
wrote at the memorial service. But moving on from that,
you were talking about the speakers that can direct lead
point someone. Have you heard the demonstration for the sphere,
the Madison Square Gardens sphere. I haven't heard the demonstration yet,
but I understand the concepts behind it and irrelevant of

(01:26:11):
the finance. Some people think the venue is too large
or whatever. Does it work? I mean it works in
the demonstration, you know, but that's a small scale thing. Well,
you know, I think it can work, certainly, you know,
but I think it's gonna be how do I want
to say this? And you kind of say it the
right way. It is all gonna come. It's gonna work

(01:26:32):
better for certain styles of music than others, no doubt
about it. I can't foresee certain styles of music actually
benefiting from that. But the technology in and of itself
and the functionality of it and the capability of it
is super impressive. I mean, it's super impressive. It's going
to get used in lots and lots of places. But
you know, live music is a it's a particular animal,

(01:26:54):
you know, especially live rock music, lave pop music. You know,
it demands sir and things. And I'll be very interested
to see how that translates in that style of venue,
you know, with that kind of kind of approach, because
they're making a lot of claims there where I kind
of where I kind of brace myself a little bit
and go, wait a minute, I'll be sure about this here. Okay,
I need to hear that before I'm gonna sign off

(01:27:17):
on that, you know. Okay, for those out of the loop,
this is a concept where every seat gets to their
own individual sound. Just reference why different types of music
would be better or worse under those situations, you know,
I mean, if I read the thing correctly, you know,
the idea is that I can have a set of
speakers that are focusing one thing into a zone of

(01:27:40):
the audience, while you can be sitting a couple of
seats away and not hear it at all. Right, I
mean you can do this, I mean abject localization of audio.
So that's where I kind of come from it as well.
That's a very very powerful concept. I mean, I can
see where that can be used very handily for a
lot of things. But is that really what we want
for concert sound? Right? I mean I I you know,

(01:28:04):
I want the audience to have dare I say a
unified experience here? Right? I want them all to be
relating to the music that's kind of the same way.
And it's you know, I mean, we we're never gonna
get it. I don't think where every scene in the
house sounds exactly the same. And I don't even know
if I would want that. It's like, not every seat
in the house looks the same. Why would I want

(01:28:25):
it to sound exactly the same over there? I don't know.
I'm a little I'm a little iffy with that at times.
But you know, what I want is consistency. I want
I want, you know, the engagement from the audience to
be really, really good. And I can tell you as
a concert sound mixer, I spend the night looking around
that a building, and you can tell whether people are
having a good show where they can hear a good
show up there or not. You can tell but just

(01:28:45):
by their engagement whether it's right. I don't need any
microphones or any instruments to tell me whether the coverage
is good. All I gotta do is watch the people.
They'll tell me whether it's good. So how do you
place the audience microphones in our arena? Well, typically they're
placed there's a set that are placed up along the
front plane of the play of the stage. You know.
I'll typically have four to six microphones spaced out to

(01:29:08):
kind of pick up the front field of the audience,
and then I have some other ones out where I'm at. Like,
I'll usually put a five point one mic which is
a kind of a head, you know, it looks kind
of like a head that's sitting right in the middle
of the arena, and it picks up left, center, right,
and surround in the rear, all in one microphone, and
then I'll kind of support it with some other microphones

(01:29:29):
out there so because it's it's one of the harder
things to do in big arena sounds, get a good
crowd capture, you know, a good crowd recording. Okay, let's
go back to the beginning. You know, you sent me
an article talking about an influential experience with Russell Pope,
who was mixing Super Trip. I mean that album, you know,
and there's a half speed Master version trying the entry,

(01:29:49):
and that album is just, oh man, unbelievable what it says,
what it sounds. It changed me. I mean, I mean
the record changed me, and then the concert absolutely changed me.
So was that really the lightbulb moment? Yeah, yeah, no
doubt about it. Like I said that, that was the
moment where because again you gotta keep it in context, right,
this was V four Now, I mean I was a

(01:30:12):
freshman in high school. Is at the Fox Theater in St. Louis,
and you know, I mean I was a kid. I
mean I was a kid who wanted to be a
musician at that point. I mean I wanted to be
Mitch Mitchell and the Jimmy Hendrix experience at that point,
you know, that's who I wanted to be. And I
didn't really know anything about production other than kind of
what I've been able to kind of glean from, you know,
pop rags and Rolling Stone and things like that. I mean,

(01:30:34):
he just had no sense of really what it took
to do that. And by that chance meeting with Russell,
I got to see an actual mixer and you know,
understand that there's a p A system up there. Now
you know it's not you know, it's not just the
guitar amps up there playing. We're actually miking it and
mixing it back to the PA. So you know, it
was this huge, huge awakening moment. And you know, kind

(01:30:57):
of like I said in the article, I walked there
and walked out of that thing and just going, oh,
I know what I want to do, no question about it.
I don't want to be a musician anymore. That's what
I want to do right there. So how did you
fulfill that dream? Well, that's a that's an interesting story
for a night, you know, because by the time night
rolled around when I was graduating, uh you know, I

(01:31:18):
mean I remember going to my high school counselor and saying, Okay,
this is what I want to do. I think I
brought in some recording magazine It wasn't even a recording magazine.
It was a magazine that was talking about right, had
a recording console on it or something. I was like,
this is what I want to do right here. And
you know, at that time, you know, there were no
recording schools, there was no there was none of that.
I mean, it was truly truly cottage industry at that point.

(01:31:39):
And he kind of looked at me and goes, well,
it looks technical. Maybe should go in the army. You know.
I was like, Nah, I'm not gonna in the army, dude, No, No.
And you know, funny enough, you know, around that time,
I mean this was eight, This was right at at
the time that Boston came out with their first record, right,
and all the mags we're running the story of Tom Schulz,

(01:32:02):
which I just recently kind of rediscovered him here again recently,
and you know, I for some reason, I got on
fire with that. I was like, oh, this is so cool.
I mean, here's a guy who was really technically adept.
He's also a musician, you know, kind of a renaissance man,
really right, you know, technically adept musician made this incredible record.
And I remember when that record came out. There was

(01:32:23):
two records that came out kind of that year or
that era. It was that one and the first man
Halen record, where it you know, really crystallized in my brain.
At some point I was like, Wow, these records don't
sound like any other record, Like, what is the deal here? Man?
I mean, these things sound amazing, you know. And you
know at that time, you have a stereo, right, I
mean I remember just cranking that stereo up and listening

(01:32:46):
to those those albums and just being the greatest thing,
you know. So it was like, I've got it. I
got to know how to do this. This is what
I want to do, you know. And you know, as
I mean, it's just you know, an episode of incidents,
you know that that transpires. So we decide, and I
think this is partly based on the Tom Schuls thing.

(01:33:08):
We decide, Okay, what we need to do is go
to an electronics institute and get you a degree there.
That's what we need to do, right. So I signed
up for this electronics place called Missouri Institute of Technology
is one of the varie institutes, and I was going
to go get a double E and electronic engineering, right,
And I figured, well, this is the way you get in.

(01:33:28):
So I'm I'm there for a good year. I mean,
I went right out of high school. I was seventeen.
I was in college by the time that summer even started,
and you know, I was probably I don't know, maybe
just a few months away from my bachelor's degree. And
remember thinking this ain't it. I mean, I'm not doing
I'm not learning anything about recording or live sound or

(01:33:50):
any of this kind of stuff. I mean, this is
this is not it. And it just so happened. On
the bulletin board of the school, a local sound company
in Kansas City, a company called Superior Sound, posted a
one ad for people to come down and help out
with these big concerts that they were doing down in
this place called Brush Creek, which was right down in
the high end district of Kansas City shopping district down there,

(01:34:12):
and they would have ten, twelve, fourteen thousand people on
a weekend for a free concert down there. So they
needed help putting up the p a system, stage, everything.
I was like, Okay, yeah, I'll go do this. So
I go down there and I show up for the
first gig, and you know, they they were excited about
having me there because they was like, oh, electronics guy, Okay,
he'll be good, he'll be able to help us out.

(01:34:33):
I was horrible. It was absolutely horrible. I blew up
a couple of amplifiers, all kinds of stuff, and they
didn't invite me back. I wanted to go back the
next weekend, and I was like, they didn't invite me back.
And I was just heartbroken, you know. I was like,
I've blown it, you know, that was my shot. So
I just kept showing up. They wouldn't call me, but
I would show up every weekend. And I did that

(01:34:54):
entire summer series, just showing up. And by the end
of it, you know, it was me and two or
three other guys. We were the guys that were there
every week and I knew the sound system as good
as anybody by the end of the summer. And they
ended up giving me a job after that and and
going to work for them, and and it's luck have
it would have it. I mean, I worked with an
incredible set of mentors there. They were just those guys

(01:35:14):
were really really knowledgeable. They understood how audio worked and
really bread that into me. Thank god. Uh And and
then then the next step of that was you know, uh,
this band called Shooting Star out of Kansas City and
you might remember, and they were did four or five
records for Virgin Virgin Atlantic. Um Gus Dudgeon produced their

(01:35:34):
first record. Ron Nevison produced one of the records. Anyway,
I got hooked up with them, uh you know, from
doing demos and all kinds of other stuff, and ended
up going on the road with them, and we went
out our first tour together. I mean I was nineteen
twenty years old, barely I wouldn't even old enough to
drink yet. You know. We were opening for Journey, we
were opening Razizi Top. We wrote in a Jefferson starship,

(01:35:57):
et cetera. And I was lucky enough to part lay
that into a career. I mean I met everybody and
and got exposed to a very big, high level concert
experience at a really really young age. I mean I
didn't really come up through the clubs. I mean I
started out at that level, you know. So I was
very very fortunate, very lucky. What'd your parents say about
your dreaming career choice? They were not too impressed. You know.

(01:36:22):
It's funny, you know, my mom and dad were not
impressed until there was two things that made it kind
of okay. I went off to do some shows with
Tammy Wynett. It was like, well, anyway, you're working with Tammy. Okay,
wait a minute, and I'll tell us more about this,
you know. Then all of a sudden it was it
was kind of okay. And then my dad was you know,
he was kind of an engineer guy, mechanical engineer. I

(01:36:45):
mean he was really kind of a savant mechanically, uh,
and worked on all these this heavy equipment, all this
kind of stuff. And I invited him. He never got
to go see a show until I was working for
Deaf Leopard, which was in the late you know, mid
in the late eighties, and he showed up one day
and once he saw all the semi trucks and all
the all the chain motors, you know, putting all this

(01:37:07):
style of stuff out and play, then he was all in.
He was like, oh my gosh, this is the coolest
thing I've ever seen. Can you get me some of
those chain motors? I need some of those. It was
pretty cool and where they were great with it from
then point on. Obviously, Okay, if you're working with Shooting
Star and you're cutting demos, was there ever a time
you said, well, maybe I should work in the studios
sup post to live. Well, I did a lot of

(01:37:29):
studio work during that time because I needed to make
a living. So there was studios in town that I
was working in at the time, and kind of moonlighting
in the studios, kind of moonlighting at the sound company, etcetera.
But you know, I mean it was a great learning experience,
and that's why I always promoted you know, it's like,
hey man, you want to get in and learn how
to listen and learn how to hear because you know,
I'll say it right here, I say this all the

(01:37:49):
time I'm mixing clinics. Mixing is not a technical skill.
It's a listening skill. It's not a technical skill. You're
just using the the technology to present a vision that
you have in your head. You know, you have to
if you want to mix music, You've got to understand music,
not technology. You've gotta have music sensibilities. You gotta understand

(01:38:11):
why I go for this sound in that genre music,
and I go for this sound in the genre music.
You have to be well studied in music, not technology.
I mean, you still have to understand how to operate
it don't get me wrong, But the guy that are
guys that are really really excellent edit understand music and
understand how to present it, you know. So, uh, that's
what the studio will do for you, you know, you
because you're digging in at such a finite level there,

(01:38:34):
you know, at such a detailed level there you you
understand what makes music tick. You have to in that situation.
And if you can go out and start applying that
in live sound, you're you're going to be good. You're
gonna be really good. The guys, the best guys that
I see that do this job usually start out as
musicians and that builds their music sensibility, and then it's
a matter of expanding and broadening your taste into production techniques,

(01:38:55):
you know, which speaks to your ears and your hearing,
you know, just jically, everybody loses a certain amount as
they get older. To what degree are you conscious of that?
Protect yourself? Worried about it? Well, I've had this discussion
a couple that I actually didn't had this discussion on
another podcast with another group of mixers where we were

(01:39:15):
talking about this. And you know, when I was living
in Los Angeles, I used to get my hearing checked
every year. I mean, and I still get it checked regularly.
I'm I'm probably about two years away from my last check.
But what I in doing that, I had a regular
audiologist and he really explained a lot of things to
me and set me up for really great success with
my hearing. And I've put this on other people as well,

(01:39:36):
and his his his take on it was really interesting
because he was also a guy who did audiology for
a lot of mixing engineers around town, like he did
a lot of scoring engineers and a lot of other
like rock mixer guys. I just have to ask this
at the house clinic, where'd you find this guy? And
my tax guy referred to me believe it or not,
because you know, if he knew all the all these

(01:39:56):
other people from doing their taxes, but you know, the
thing pointed out to me. He says, Look, you know,
everybody's worried about you concert guys, you know, and the
volume and everything. He said, I'm not worried about you guys.
He says, your hearing is going to be fine because
you're only exposed to it for short amount of short
amounts of time. Even though it's high volume, it's not high.
You know, it's not at these deafening volumes entirely for

(01:40:19):
two hours at a time. It's it's in peaks and valleys,
he said. The guys that have the most trouble are
the guys that are sitting in fair of a in
front of a pair of small speakers for eight ten
twelve hours a day, he says. You know, he says,
I got, I know. Scoring guys that are doing symphony,
he said, that are working, you know, eight ten twelve
hours a day, he says. You would not believe how

(01:40:40):
bad they're hearing is he said, And they're listening in
just at moderate levels. But it's repetitive, he says, it's worried,
it's just constantly working. So one of the things he
advised to me was that try to stay away from headphones.
So that's the first thing, uh, he said, at the
end of the night. If you know, if your ears
are tired, put in some of your plugs so you

(01:41:00):
average in some really really quiet time and give your
ears a chance to recover, he says, And you're you're
gonna be fine over time, he says, if you can
just stay away from high impulse things. He says, if
you go to the shooting range, make sure you double protect,
he said, do twice as much protection as you think,
because that impulse is the one that's that's going to
kill your hearing. For sure. It's a gunshot. That kind

(01:41:21):
of impulse would do you in. It's about drummers have
a really typically have a bad time with with hearing,
you know, because it's very high impulse, high impact audio
a little bit slower. How did you get from Shooting
Star up the ladder? Well? Uh, like I said, Shooting
Star was opening for all these acts, and uh, you

(01:41:41):
know in those days, I mean, you know, you kind
of had to be a little bit of a jack
of all trades. So not only was I mixing, I
was also the drum road on the tour, you know,
set up the drums and tune him everything. Uh. And
that got me a job because I think we had
done some some um tour, some shows with John Mellencamp
at that point early eighties there. Uh, right when John

(01:42:02):
was getting ready to go out and do the Pink
Houses tour, one of the guys that I knew from
that tour called me and said, Kenny Arnolfs looking for
a drum guy. You want to come out and do it.
I said, yeah, I'll come out and do it. So
I was Kenny Arnolf's drum tech for about a tour.
And during that period, you know, there was a sound
company working on the thing, and you know, what am
I gonna do when I'm when the drums are set up?

(01:42:24):
I got nothing to do until we get ready to
go back. So I started working with this SA guys
on the sound crew and helping him put up the
p A every day, you know, blah blah blah blah.
And that led to a job with that sound company,
and then from there, you know, convinced them a little bit,
a little bit slower. In your legacy information, it says
you were the monitor mixer and you got fired by

(01:42:44):
Melon cap Oh. I did, Yeah, I mean that was
that was a watershed moment for me. I mean, no
doubt about it. I mean, and so, how did you
become the monitor mixer? Was that just after you were
the drum roady? Yeah? So I did drum roading on
the Pink Houses tour and then the next door they
were going to move to another monitor engineer, and I
lobbied for that position. I said, I can do that.
Let me do that right, And technically, I mean I

(01:43:09):
was more than capable of doing it without a doubt.
But you know, I actually had a guy and go
through a little bit of a crucible there, and I
learned something about myself there, because I mean, John's reputation
kind of precedes him. You know, everybody knows he's a
very very difficult guy to work with. And you know, honestly,
of all honesty, I was not mature enough for that gig.
I was not mature enough to handle him as if

(01:43:30):
you're going to handle him, but just not mature enough
to deal with him properly. And he saw it. I
mean he saw me as being a little weak and
he was going to go out and do a big
tour there, and he was just like, I can't have
this guy sitting on the side of the stage. I
gotta have somebody I know has it together here and
can and can deal with me. And I wasn't that guy.
I just wasn't mature enough yet to do it. And

(01:43:51):
you know, I had to kind of have a little
look in the mirror there and kind of go, Okay, dude,
if you're gonna do this work, you know, there's more
to it. Then just being able to technically do it.
You've got to be able to interface with people and
work with them and deal with them on their levels,
you know, and that is not a technical level. That's
a personality thing. You've got to learn to hang and

(01:44:11):
and be able to do it. So, you know, it
kind of reshaped my thinking and what I was watching
and what I was doing from that point forward. I
used it to great effect when I went to work
for Prince said that all came right around and I
used every lesson I learned on that tour on that
Prince Store. Okay, if you go to a recording studio,
the engineer, generally speaking, is quiet and a yes man.

(01:44:33):
He is not an individual with character saying no. That
might be the producer. So as a front of fall engineer,
you know, what kind of personality do you need? Do
you know that, Hey, I can't push too much. That's
just not my role. You've gotta be able to read it.
You gotta be able to read the person and see
where you can go with it, you know. I mean

(01:44:54):
where I ended up with Tom Petty versus where I
started with Tom Petty were two very very different places.
You Yeah, it's it's earned, it's not given. You know,
you have to you have to earn that voice in
that room for sure. Well, you tell the story in
one of your publications about telling Tom to change his
money and he says, the last guy who said that
it's no longer here right before he was gone. Yeah,

(01:45:18):
So you know, luckily I was smart enough when that
happened to go, you know what, Tom, We're just gonna
give that mike another try for a little bit. We're
gonna we're just gonna work with that one for a
little bit. But I mean it's a perfect example of
what I'm talking about. You know, I tried to come
in probably a little too heavy handed there, and but
but over time, you know that that completely turned around
where you know, Tom was very reliant on me for
what we were going to do, and you know he

(01:45:40):
was I mean, I'm very proud to say he was
on record as saying, I'll never do it without that guy.
So if he's not available, I'm not available to go
on the road. So that was probably the highest compliment
I've ever gotten in my life, that's for sure. Okay,
so you ultimately got him to change the mike. How
did you do that, well, you know, again, you have
to get a you end up having to have some

(01:46:01):
credibility at some point. And uh, I mean, I'll tell
the story. So we were that first tour had finished
and we had stayed on the particular microphone. I won't
name names here, so but it was just the wrong
mac phone for the application. So we come around to
the next tour now and we're in production rehearsals, et cetera.

(01:46:22):
And I was like, Okay, it's either going to be
the mic or me. I'm not going to survive another
tour with that microphone. So I had another microphone that
I thought was gonna be a really good choice for him.
So I just went up and put it on the
stand and plugged it in, and I said, to the
monitor guy, do what you need to do. This is
going to be this way until he tells me that
we need to change it. All right, I'm just gonna
see where we're gonna go here. So he came in

(01:46:44):
and he, you know, immediately was like, wow, what what
the heck is this? You know? And I came walking
from the front of house up to him and I said, look,
I want I want you just to try this, I said,
we're really in early in rehearsals here. Just give it
a try, see what you think. If it starts to
feel good, then I want you to give it a try.
If you hate it, then we'll go back to the
end of micro alright, So but just give it a try.

(01:47:05):
So the band kicks in. They do two or three songs,
and I can see he's still kind of processing, you know,
he's I can see his head kind of working, going
is this really as good as I think it is
right now? You know what's going on here? Can I
really trust this? And luckily, I mean I think it's
what saved me and the whole thing almost as it
was happening, you know Howie and Scott Thurston both chimed

(01:47:28):
in together at the same time and said, wow, we
can hear you really really clearly over here right now,
like it's so easy to sing to your voice right now.
I mean, they were and it was totally imprompted and unscripted.
I didn't ask him to do it. It just came
out of, you know, organically, out of the conversation. And
from that moment on we were on that microphone. We

(01:47:48):
didn't change that microphone for years. You know, Okay, let's
go back. So you're with the Sound company. You know,
you you finished Smith Mellot Camp, you go with the
sum company. What's the next step after that? Next step
after that was really going to work for the Sound company.
I went to work for this company called Electrotech, which
was kind of uh an after version of t f
A Electro Sound, one of the more famous stalwart companies

(01:48:11):
that kind of started this industry. They were out of
Canoga Park, California. So I moved to California. I went
to work for the Sound Company and was just taking
gig any gig I could get my hands on at
that point. And then another gig came up to mix
for the Go Goes, So I took that I and
had a really great time on that. It was very
successful on that. And then the next thing that came
my way mixing wise, let's say I did Rick Springfield

(01:48:35):
in there for a period of time, and then really
the next the next kind of big opportunity that came
my way, and it really just kind of fell in
my lap because nobody else wanted to take it. Ironically,
at the time, I was mixing Alice Cooper and this
was right when Alice was trying to make her comeback.
You know, this was he had been down and you know,
out of the business really for a period of years there.
This was I think something like that at eight five

(01:48:58):
it was you know, Nightmare Returns where it was his
first time back, and I jumped all over it. I
wanted to mix that so bad. I was a huge
Alice Cooper fan when I was a kid. It was
one of one of the very first concerts I ever
got to go see. My mom took me to go
see it when I was a young teenager and I
was totally hooked on him. I just thought they were
the greatest records and still do to this day. There

(01:49:18):
were just those those early bob Ezrian records were just
sensational from him. I read a review that raved I
didn't know if it was a joke and Rolling Stone,
So I bought the record. I dropped the needle and
I heard under my wheels. I was closed instantly, Am
I right? So absolutely? I mean it was just and
I can go back and listen to those records today

(01:49:40):
and relive them. So long story short, I mean I
jumped all over it. I was like, oh, I will
do anything to mix that tour, you know, and okay,
so you'll get the whole DNA here. So on that tour,
one of the opening acts was Tesla. So that's my
first interaction with Peter Mention and Cliff Bernstein, right, So
they're out hearing me mix on this tour, and you know,

(01:50:02):
I mean it was pretty kind of a low rent production.
I mean, it was tough to make it sound really big,
and we didn't have very much PA system, etcetera. But
you know, I in those days and I still do
it to to this day. You know, I'm always recording
what I'm doing on the console. At that point, I
was recording to cassettes, and you know, i'd go back
and listen to it at the end of the night
and kind of review what I was doing and go, Okay,

(01:50:23):
I know what I need to do there now. And
so it was just study tapes. You know. Well, during
this period, somehow, and I've said this before and I
still don't know how, but somehow, during this period, Joe
Elliott got ahold of one of my desk tapes, one
of my board tapes. It might have been through Ross Halfen.
The photography was after shooting Tesla. It might have been

(01:50:45):
I don't know, I swear to you, I don't know.
It might have been through Brian Wheat. He might have
gotten it to him. I don't know. But you know,
the tour ends and I'm kind of working on thinking
about what's going to be my next move. You know,
Deaf Leppard is in working on Hysteria now for god
knows how long. You know, it's getting ready to release.
But you know, I'm not really visible to that, and

(01:51:07):
but I know that Cliff and Peter are also doing
They also managed Docking at the point at that point,
and I remember thinking, you know what I'd love to
mix doing. Maybe I'll call Peter and see if you,
you know, consider me for Docking. In the meantime, in
the background, there's this conversation going on between Joe and
Peter where Joe is going, that's our guy, whoever mixed
this tape, that's the guy we need to mix our tour,

(01:51:29):
that's the guy we want. And he is really all
about the vocal performances on it. He was like, the
vocal sound unbelievable on this tape. You have to get
this guy, and Peter was kind of going, are you
sure this is the guy. I'm not listening to this
every night. I'm not. Are you sure this is the
guy we want? And Joe God love him. I mean
I owe him a dead of gratitude like nobody's business.
And he was like, Yeah, that's our guy, that's the
guy we want. So I get home a week later

(01:51:52):
and there's a message on my machine from C Prime,
you know, and I'm thinking, fan fuckantastic. Carry this. I'm
going to get docking. I know they're going to give
me the dock and kid, hey, we think we want
you to do Deaf Leppardy interested in doing Deaf Leopard
And I was like, yeah, okay, I'll do deaf Leppard.
So off we go to London and the rest is history,

(01:52:14):
as they said, Just so I know where does Tesla
fit in this game? They were the opening act for
Alice Cooper on that But you worked for Tesla too.
That was afterwards. That was after Okay, I gotta ask, Okay,
you are the front of whole Guy, but especially on
that Deaf Leopard tour, there are a lot of shenanigans.

(01:52:34):
You're gonna put me in the TMZ zone here, aren't you.
I don't really need that level of detail. I want
to know to what degree did you participate. Oh my gosh, dude,
I'll just say I met my wife on that tour.
Maybe we'll just leave it there. Actually I met her
on air supply. I shouldn't say that I was mixing
air supply at that Okay. The other thing is very

(01:52:57):
hard to be part of a traveling entourage with raw.
It's worse for the performers themselves. They played for twenty
thousand people. They can't calm down there with the same
five assholes they've known since they were twelve, and a
lot of them, you know, turned to substances to cope.
How did you cope? Well, I mean, I'm not impervious

(01:53:19):
to the partying that happened in the eighties. I mean,
I mean that was just a different time. I mean,
you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll was in.
It was going ten miles an hour during the eighties
and the very early nineties, and until you know, the
AIDS epidemic, put the cope, put the cabbage on it.
I mean, that kind of shut the whole thing down
there for your period of time. But you know, again,

(01:53:40):
I'm I'm always stressed in this, man, You've got to
put it in context. This is not rationalizing it, but
you just have to put it in context. That was
an accepted piece of the puzzle out there. I mean,
if you were going to be out there, you were
going to be a part of that lifestyle. I mean,
it's just and you know, I mean I still say
this about touring to this day. You know, you've got

(01:54:00):
to be able to hang. You know, you're not going
to survive on these tours as the outlier very often,
you know. I mean, you've got to be able to hang.
And it doesn't mean you've got to give in and
participate on everything, but you've got to be able to
survive out there from a cultural point of view and
you know, kind of a social point of view. I mean,
you've got to have a personality that fits into that
lifestyle out there. And it's not for everybody. It is

(01:54:22):
just not for everybody. And it's a I mean, we're
starting to see all the statistics come in now. You know,
it's a stressful lifestyle. Traveling for a living is stressful
and it takes its toll on people. Man, it's that
bill starting to come do. Now we're starting to see
it in our industry. Now, okay, let's just go through
the litany. You work for Death Leopard, then you go

(01:54:42):
to Tesla to take us through the acts. Actually I
went from I went from Death Leopard to Rush, and
you know I got that through Peter. You know, Peter
introduced me to Getty one of the Death Leopard shows
and we kind of hit it off. And that was
the dream gig for me. If there was every one
gig that I always want, it was mixing Rush. That
was I was the Rush fan that got to mix

(01:55:03):
the show. I've said that many times. So that was
that was the brass ring for me during that period,
no doubt about it. But I mean in terms of
the time frame, yeah, I think it was Deaf Leppard hysteria,
then onto Rush for a little bit, and then to
to some testless stuff, and then back to def Leopard
and then back to Rush. I mean it was it

(01:55:24):
was just just constant. I mean I was always on
the road during those pretty years. And at what point
did you go independent stopped working for the Canoga Park Company. Oh,
that was with def Leppard. Right right after def Leppard
was my first truly truly independent gig where I was
not working for the company, so from night late night on,

(01:55:44):
I've been independent. So how did you end up working
with Prince? You said, Yeah, that was just the you know,
the phone rang one day and you know, one of
the guys that I had worked with on Petty Uh,
he was one of my systems engineers, was out on
prints and kind of just said, Hey, I were in Phoenix,
you want to come down and see the show. I

(01:56:05):
was like, yeah, coming and see the show. So I'd
love to see Prince. So I go down there, and
I mean, not for nothing, man, I mean it it
sounded bad. I mean it was just like who I
mean it was, but you know, I mean you got
to kind of know all the again, all the ins
and outs of this, but I mean it was just like, Wow,
this is not working. Whatever they're trying to do right here,

(01:56:26):
this is not working. I mean I left after about
six seven songs, and after I left the place, I
kind of went out for a couple of drinks whatever.
By the time I got home, there was a message
on my machine from UH, from the tour manager saying, Hey,
Charlie tells me you're available right now. Is there any
chance you would want to come out and mix this
for a while, you know. And I was like, oh boy,

(01:56:48):
I mean, the dude's reputation kind of precedes himself. I
mean I kind of heard what was going on. I
was like, I don't know, it's like, I'm right in
the middle of a record project right now. Said I
don't think so, man, I'm you know, blah blah blah.
And then they started throwing out money. You know. I
was just like, Okay, that's a lot of money. I
was like, okay, all right, well here's the deal. You know,

(01:57:10):
I'll do it, but you know, I mean again, you know,
Prince was known for just churning through engineers. And I said,
I want all the money up front. I said, I'll
come out, but I want all the money up front.
I'll take a break from this project for two or
three weeks, kind of bail water off the ship out
there and get everything squared away, and then we can
turn it over to somebody else if you want to
do it. And he fully he goes, okay, be in

(01:57:31):
San Antonio tomorrow. I was like, oh my god, but
a long story short on it. You know. I got
out there and really just the mixer and the p
A system was a mess. I mean, really, that's what
it was all about. Because the performances, the music, and
the musicians were off the freaking chain. I mean, it

(01:57:51):
was so good, you know, I just I had that
kind of moment at the show, just thinking, Wow, look
at these players. Why does this sound like this? And
I mean, I want you know, it's not an effort
to talk ill of the dead or anything like that,
but you know, between the engineers that were there kind
of mean and a yes man for Prince and his
input on the console and his input on the p

(01:58:13):
A systems, things were just just completely out of whack.
And I it took me about three or four shows
to get him to really trust what I wanted to
do on the console and with the p A system, etcetera.
But after a period of time I got him to
trust it and we ended up having some really really
great shows. We you know, we went from having three
and four hour sound checks that were holding the doors

(01:58:34):
to doing, you know, one song, two songs, Okay, that's great,
let's go, you know, get it going on. So you know,
he and I actually at the end of by the
end of it hit it off pretty good. We it
was to the point where I could go talk to
him when I needed to talk to him. You know,
I didn't have to go through his bodyguard or anything
like that. And you know, it convenient to say it now,
but you know, if I had to go back and

(01:58:54):
work for him again, I would have gone back in
the heartbeat. You know. We we we got to a
point where we got some mutual respect built and then
then it then it went swimmingly. It was really really
good and a fantastic show man. My goodness, what a
set of players. And how long did you end up
working with them? It was only about three or four weeks.
Wasn't long. Like I said, I was right in the
middle of a record project I needed to get back to.

(01:59:15):
So it's like I kind of bailed water on it
for a little bit, got it all kind of sorted
back out, and and really it's not even like we
turned it over to somebody else. The the tour was
coming to a close, so I just went in and
closed it out and then we moved on. Okay, if
you look at your CV, you work with certain acts
for like three or ten years and then it ends.
So you know, you work with Alice Cooper for six years,

(01:59:36):
worked with Jackson Brown for three or four years. Why
did these relationships end? Well, I mean sometimes it's just
a matter of scheduling, you know, where you can't. I
mean I was really fortunate to be able to really
kind of buttressed together two or three acts there during
the nineties, where I was if I wasn't working with Rush,
I was working with Petty. If I wasn't working with Petty,

(01:59:57):
I was working with Matchbox twenty, and just the round
robin just continued. But at some point, you know, especially
after Rush shut down for a little bit and then
they were going to come back, that's I had a
scheduling collision then, and I couldn't do both. I just
they just was going to be impossible to do both.
So I had to pull the record on one of them.
And it was heartbreaking to do it. I mean, I

(02:00:20):
I felt like I could have retired mixing Rush. I
just loved that organization and those guys so much and
loved that music so much. But it wasn't to be,
you know, it wasn't to be. Okay if also, you're
known for being an exercise junkie, and the thing that
stuck out to me was the swim from Alcatraz to

(02:00:40):
the shore, so illuminate that. Yeah, well this all kind
of you know, this whole thing kind of started. You know,
when you turn fifty, you know, weird things happened in
your brain, you know. I mean, you know, when when
I was growing up, when I was a kid, I
was I always struggled between two things. Don't want to
be an athlete? Who want to be a musician? I
want to be an athlete. I wanna be a musician,
and I you know, going through that as a teenager.

(02:01:02):
And finally, you know, rightly, so it settled on music
than goodness, because I'm not an athlete. I mean, if
you looked at me, you were just going, yeah, not
an athlete. But that said, you know, touring in and
of itself is a physical activity. I mean, it is
something that requires I mean, if you're gonna do it
well and stay on top of it, you know, there's
a physical element to it. And it's part of what

(02:01:23):
I love about it. It's part of what I love
about it more than being in the studio, which is
very sedentary. But I like me and moving. I like
my windshield changing every day, all of that kind of stuff.
But It's physically very, very demanding. And I got kind
of turned onto this by a friend of mine here
in town. You know, a neighbor friend of mine who
was doing this. I was at a party. We were
just chatting one night, and I was just about to

(02:01:45):
turn fifty, and somehow this subject came up of swimming Alcatraz,
and I was like, hang on, hang on a minute,
hang on, you're telling me that they actually let you
do that. And he was like, yeah, yeah, they hold
a race every year. They they do it as a biathlon,
and then they do this thing called the Escape from
Alcatraz where you swim from the island into Golden Gate

(02:02:06):
Park and or down to the Aquatic Center down there.
I was like, okay, I'm all in. I am all in.
I want to do this right now. I've never been
a competitive swimmer, never been anything even remotely like that.
I thought, okay, I'm going to train to do this,
and and sure enough went and got a trainer and
started doing it and did the swim. I mean it

(02:02:27):
was you know, if you kind of read this, I
kind of revealed this a little bit in my CB.
So I've always been this way in my life where
I've and I think it served me well in my
in my job as a mixer as well as I've
never backed down from anything. Right, if you put it
in front of me and tell me I can't do it,
I'm probably gonna find a way to do it. I
like running at challenges, and all of the events like

(02:02:53):
that that I do are like that. They're just things
where you go, why would anybody do that? And it's like, well,
I want to do it, because I don't I'm going
to be uncomfortable doing it. You know that whole concept
of get comfortable being uncomfortable. Man, that's that's concert life
in a nutshell right there. You know, you've got to
be able to manage your emotions and and get comfortable
being uncomfortable. Right. Okay, so we've all seen the movies, etcetera.

(02:03:16):
Supposedly you couldn't escape from Alcatraz. So how hard was
the swim? Well, it's freaking hard, but you know you're
doing it in a wet suit. I mean, you've got
all the things in your favor there as opposed to
be in a prisoner. You know, some malnutrition prisoner who's
gonna try to swim and those I mean freezing cold
water to try to get there, you know, try to

(02:03:38):
do that without a wet suit. Although I mean, I'll
tell the story because I love telling the story for
some reason. You know, when you go out there, like
you you march down the street and you get on
a big barge and they take you out, you know,
to the southwest portion of the island and you jump
off into the water and you tread water there for
you know, fifteen twenty minutes until the race starts. So
we're on the we're on the barge and everybody's in

(02:04:00):
full wet suit everything, you know, because it's I mean
it's cold water. And there are three girls on the
barge with us, and we're looking at them, going, well,
they're wearing one piece bathing suits. What the heck is
this all about? These girls aren't gonna last five minutes
in the water. They were Olympic swimmers. They were Olympic swimmers.
They did the swimming about twenty five minutes, you know,

(02:04:21):
I mean, they just beat the hypothermia. It's like, yeah,
I feel like such a man right now. This is
this is great. How long did it take you? And
how bad are the currents? The currents are for real,
and you've got to know where they are and and
know how the currents because they do the race two
times a year and the currents are different for each one,
so you've got to study the currents a little bit
and know it. And there's a guide boat out there,

(02:04:41):
so you can kind of stay focused on the guide boat,
but you know, you you kind of site toward the
Transamerica building in the city and then let let the
current kind of help you. But you you've gotta gotta swim.
You kinda kind of edge against the current because if
you miss the entrance to um the Aquatic Park down there,
it takes you down underneath the ridge and you're out
to see and have to go get rescued, you know.

(02:05:03):
So you gotta pay really close attention to it. But
it's hard, man, especially if the wakes are up there.
That is a that is a challenging swim. It's just
just under two miles, so you gotta you've got trained
for it. You gotta be ready. So how long does
it take you? I I did really well. I did
surprisingly well. I mean I was right. I think I
have on the wall out here somewhere. I know, I

(02:05:23):
think I was something like forty nine minutes. So I
finished in the It was a thousand people in the
water for the start, which that in and of itself
is just pure survival. But once they get started, you know,
and you get going. But I finished, you know, top
three hundred, top four hundred in it, which was really
I was thrilled. I was like, there's no way I'm
going to finish that high in this, but did great

(02:05:44):
with it. So how often do you do with challenge?
What's the hardest challenge you've done. I've been doing them
every year since I turned fifty. I mean I've probably
done in that time, I don't know, maybe fifty triathlons
something like that, and I you know, I love doing
these for periods of time. I was really into doing
these tough mutter events, so I've done. In seventeen, I

(02:06:07):
did this thing called World's Toughest Mutter, which is a
twenty four hour race where you do I think it
was twenty two obstacles on a five mile course. Uh,
you know, all kinds of water, all kinds of really
crazy obstacles, you know, electro shock, all kinds of things
like that, and you do as many lapses as you
can do of that in twenty four hours, so uh,

(02:06:28):
and get as high on my allege as you can get.
So I've done that twice. Those are really challenging. I
think probably one of the most challenging things I did,
probably short of Iron Man. Iron Man is really really
a challenging event. But it was probably the Great Wall Marathon.
I did the marathon on the Great Wall, and man,
that was as close as I've ever come to not
being able to finish a race because it's it's a

(02:06:50):
full on marathon and within the marathon itself, you have
essentially two two hundred and ten hundred fifteen story stair
climbs inside a marathon. One happens at mile five and
the other happens at about mile te and man, I
didn't think I was going to finish it, but any
it's a time limit, you have so much amount of

(02:07:10):
time to finish that. But that was the hardest, probably
the hardest thing mentally I ever had to tackle. Okay,
So at this point in time, what are all the
activities you're working on. I am currently well working for
Chesney obviously, and you know we're really only doing about
two shows a week on that we do a stadium
every Saturday, and sometimes they'll throw in a shed show
on you know, a Thursday or something like that, so

(02:07:31):
it's not a terribly demanding schedule. And then the other
times I'm working for avid Um, you know, doing the
console design and development for them. So I've been you know,
that's been kind of my stability gig, which I really love.
I love working for the company and and love being
able to contribute that piece of it to the industry,
so that that's a lot of fun. And then you know,

(02:07:51):
the rest of the time is just picking up other
odd jobs. I love doing the award shows now, those
are really fun to do. I recorded my first opera
this past year. I did opera called The Copper Queen
recorded that here in Phoenix, the Phoenix Eymphony. That was
really fun to do. So, you know, there's no lack
of work. Okay, So in the old days, you're going
from tour to tour to tour. How much do you

(02:08:13):
want to work now on the road as much as
you can or you have a limit. I certainly don't
want to work at the schedule I was working at
in the late eighties and nineties. I mean, you know,
I just I just don't want to work that much.
I'm very selective about what I want to take and
go out and do on tour. I mean part of
the I mean I I really enjoyed the Kinney Chesch
has anything. I really do. It's an incredible band. I mean,

(02:08:34):
what an incredible group of players. I mean it's like,
you know, mixing a studio band every night who is
also a really good live band. But you know, the
thought of getting out and doing trying to conquer all
the stadiums. I really wanted to get out and do that.
You know, I've done that. I've done a lot of
stadium work in the past, but not to this level
where I have my hands on it every single night

(02:08:55):
for a stadium. That's like I said, that's I said
it multiple times here. That's adult audio, really challenging to
do really, really well. So I I was looking forward
to take that on. Just to stop there one second.
When Kenny play stadium, there's a retinue of acts. Do
you mix all those acts? No? Just Kenny, just Kenny.
I have done that in the past, like for one

(02:09:16):
Tom Petty tour where Jackson was opening, I mixed both
Jackson and Tom for the show. But that's that's pretty rare.
You don't get a chance to do that very often. Okay,
so you pick and choose. So at this point in time,
you're on the road. How much of a year. I
granted we've had COVID, but generally speaking, yeah, well, I mean,
you know, Petty, you know, worked at a really civilized schedule.
I mean, he wouldn't do more than you know, really

(02:09:38):
rarely did more than three shows a week, four shows
at the outside, So you know, that was a really
civilized schedule. It was really civilized travel. I could do
my I could do all the avid work while I
was on the road because I'm an remote employee for
them anyway, So it doesn't matter whether I'm working from
my office or I'm working for the bus or working
from a hotel room, and just doesn't matter. It's all
kind of task based, you know, as long as I

(02:09:59):
can get the work done, doesn't matter where I do it. Uh.
As far as touring itself, you know, I'm a lot
more picky about who I work for now, and you know,
what the show is going to be, what the setting
is going to be. So I'm I mean, I'm very
blessed to be able to kind of be a little
picky about who I choose to work for now. I
mean the Chesney. Part of the attraction to the Chesney

(02:10:20):
camp is it's just the greatest group of people. It's
very much like the Petty camp in that regard, where
you know, these are people you would hang out with
off tour, you know, not just on tour. So you know,
they're very enjoyable people to hang around with. So that
that makes the whole thing even better and even more easy,
you know. And do you have any children and what
have you sacrifice being on the road all those years.

(02:10:43):
I have three children who are all grown now. I
have a twenty six year old daughter who is doing
fantastic and fashion uh and designed. She I actually had
her out on the last Tom Petty tour. She was
one of the wardrobe stylists for Tom Petty for the
last tour. But she's gone on to do other photography
and styling work for commercials, etcetera, just doing fantastic. I

(02:11:05):
have a middle son who's twenty three, who is completely
wrapped up in the skateboard world. He is an incredible
skater and a videographer now, him and a buddy have
started a company called Liquid Chicken where they do all
these I really just fantastic skate videos. He's got a
really cool thing going on there. And then my youngest
is probably the most musically inclined to the bunch. He's drummer,

(02:11:28):
bass player. He'll end up being a producer by the
time it's all said and done. But he's actually thinking
about getting into folly work. He wants to do fully.
I think he's kind of gotten the bug from doing
all the gaming and everything. He's you know, he's kind
of come to me and said, tell me about tell
me about fully. How do you get into that? So
that's that's pretty cool. He's he's just out of high school.

(02:11:48):
He graduated last year. And you're still married to the
same woman I am thirty five plus years now something
like that. Yeah, we're kind of an outlier there. We've been.
We've been together since day one, since we met, and
I mean it feels as strong now as it's ever felt.
She's actually looking forward to be going on the road
because she's an empty nester now and she can come

(02:12:09):
out and and to her now, so she wants to
come out, you know, which was what we did in
the early days. You know, we kind of you know,
I think we were as a couple. I look back
on it now, ago we were smart enough to do
some really smart things there with our relationship, Like we
were smart enough to know that, you know, if we
were physically apart from more than two weeks, three weeks,

(02:12:29):
three weeks was really outside, then it was just cost
of business. She has to come out, we have to
be together, continue bonding, etcetera. So that was kind of
the rule up until the time we had, you know,
until we got up to two kids, and then she
was pretty homebound. From that point on. It was hard
to bring the kids out on tour, and I'd end
up in Arizona, you know. You know, I was in

(02:12:50):
l A for the longest time, working there, you know, again,
doing studio work and life sound work there. Uh, you know,
working out a did a fair amount of work out
of Keith Olsen's place good Night l A. You know,
working with a bunch of people there, excuse me. And
then at some point, you know, I started realizing, you
know what, I don't need to live in l A
to work in l A. So, uh, you know, we decided,

(02:13:14):
you know, I was going to live somewhere else, someone
that was less expensive, that's for sure. And both me
and my wife were really big fans of the Southwest.
I mean we looked at we looked at Taos for
a little bit, and you know, places in New Mexico,
and but at some point it was just like, Wow, Scottsdale,
it's just such a great fit. I mean, it's so
easy to get in and out of Los Angeles if
I want to do it. You know, I had a

(02:13:34):
I just kept my phone number, uh my l a
phone number for the longest time, but lived in Arizona.
And you know, if somebody called me up and said, hey,
we got session brewining, you want to come in and
do it, I'd said, give me a couple of hours
and I go jump down on jump in Southwest Airlines
and get there and and go do the work. So
but you know, one of the things that drew me
here at the time was, you know, like I kind

(02:13:56):
of mentioned earlier, at one point, I was trying to
put together my own studio and my own label. And
you know, at that time, this was around the time
I guess the gin blossoms were breaking out of here
and some of the other people were coming out of Phoenix,
and there was a lot of metal bands coming out
of Phoenix. Um, I think Megadeth. Think. I think Dave
was still here and he was doing a lot of
Megadeth stuff out of here. And I was looking to

(02:14:17):
come here and really cultivate some talent out of this
area and start a label here. That was my goal. Uh,
And I did okay with it. I did okay with it.
I got probably five six bands signed to the label
and then was trying to move them up. I had
some inroads into Atlantic. I was trying to get them
signed in there. But you know, at the end of
the day, it was a lot of money spent, and
you know, I just kind of had this epiphany at

(02:14:39):
some point. It's like, you know, this is not my thing.
As much as I wanted to believe I could be
a producer, I just didn't really have the right chops
for it. I mean, I didn't have enough musical acumen
to really be a good producer. And the whole role
even of a producer was changing during that period. The
music industry was kind of upside down at that point,
and it just kind of pushed me away. I just thought,

(02:14:59):
you know what my thing is going to be live,
and I know I have some things to contribute to
the life sound world that are going to shape it
and change it a little bit. I could just feel
that coming, you know, So I really just kind of
pulled the record on the studio and that whole kind
of thing. Even though I was I was still mixing
a lot of stuff there, I stopped tracking. I mean,
I had a little mobile recording trailer that I would

(02:15:20):
pull around and do events and stuff here and and
do some mixing and stuff. But really I kind of
got away from the label dream and just focused entirely
on live sound. And you know, as as it's turned out,
it served me very very well. How lucrative is it
being a front of the house engineer depends on how
good you are. Bob, Well, you're an elite player. I
make more than I ever dreapt. I would make at it,

(02:15:41):
I'll tell you that. I mean, I remember in the
very early days of this, in the early eighties, just thinking, man,
if I could just make if I could just make
seven fifty bucks, maybe a thousand dollars a week, I
could do this forever. You know. Needless to say, we've
we've moved on past that figure. So yeah, no, I

(02:16:01):
I've lived very comfortably. I mean, I'm not a high
maintenance guy. Not I don't require a lot in my life.
I can. I think I could actually live very simply,
and I think that comes from living on the road.
You learn how to live simple and and entertain yourself,
you know. So, I mean I have a beautiful home here, etcetera.
Don't get me wrong, but I don't think I have
to have that to survive. So you've achieved so much.

(02:16:23):
Any dreams left, goals left, people you want to work with.
I mean, so many of the bands that I dreamt
about working with, you know, I really don't exist anymore, etcetera.
You know, there are still bands that I would I
would love to go out and do and really try
to put a really interesting spin on doing it, like
do it really unique. I mean, there's there's this whole

(02:16:44):
movement now and p A systems and and mixing consoles
to do immersive work in in the life sound space.
I'm really excited about trying to do some of that.
I mean, I would love to go out and mix
somebody like tool uh, you know, and do that kind
of thing. Um. I mean, certainly in my heyday, I
would have loved to mix Queen. I would have loved
to mix the who you know, any of those bands

(02:17:06):
that would have been just my dream gigs. But like
I said earlier, I really got to mix my dream gig.
Brush was my dream gig. That's the one I always
clamored after to do. You know, what is this immersive
thing you're talking about, Well, think of it like, although
this is gonna probably confuse the issue more than than
actually explain it, but think of it like atmost but

(02:17:27):
for a live sound that's that's what it's gonna end
up being. It's this thing called object mixing versus bus
mixing for a live sound, and it stands to really
really do some amazing things in sound production live sound
production for sure, because you know, at risk of going
into all the geeky part of it again. You know, stereo,
as we've known it is great really for the majority

(02:17:49):
of things that we do in our world. You know,
we listen to almost everything in stereo still to this day,
but large format stereo by the time you get up
to arenas and by the time you get to stadium
where you have these very large distance between the left
and the right of the stereo can cause lots of
problems in terms of coverage and consistency in sound stereot

(02:18:09):
large format stereo is is really not the ideal thing
to do in large format live sound, and the concept
of doing it uh in an immersive speaker format is
highly desirable, highly desirable. But we again this is again
where the technology and we're just at that point in
history where the technology is going to allow us to

(02:18:30):
actually do it. The consoles have the capability of doing it.
We have the ability in in these big DSP processors
to build an immersive environment. We have the speaker system
capabilities to do it. You know, all the pieces are
falling in place to do it, and certainly the music
is lending itself to it, you know, so it could
be it could be very cool. Before that, when you mix,

(02:18:51):
you're essentially mixing mono or are you mixing stereo? I
call it kind of a wide modo. I mean, it's
it's not mono in the sense really model by definition
should be one speaker cluster, right, So stereo with everything
pan to the center is kind of model, but it's
not really model. So you know, I kind of for

(02:19:13):
large format concerts, I'm kind of doing what I call
wide model. Sure, there are things panned out left and
right to do things, but for the most part, the
most important information is at the center and is modeled
because you want with the entire room to be able
to read it right. You don't want people on one
side of the room not hearing other things on the
other side of the room. Just to go back a chapter,
if there's twenty thousand people in the arena, actually most

(02:19:34):
of them are a little bit smaller, but let's use
twenty thousand, and you're using the sphere concept. Everybody there
is getting a different sound. But if you're using the
immersive concept, are I going to hear something completely different?
If I'm you know, up in the rafters as opposed
to on the floor, you could. I mean, in that
situation you're gonna do, You're gonna have areas of seating

(02:19:58):
that are going to be optimized for the immersive. Right,
they're gonna this section of seats, maybe this is the
floor seats, and the first bowl might be optimized for
immersive where they get the immersive experience, and then people
up in the upper things still can hear the show,
they would hear what would be we would term a
folded down version of the show. Right, they wouldn't experience

(02:20:19):
the spatial element of the immersive, but they would still
still hear all the elements. Right, So it just becomes
phil speakers in that part of the arena, and they
still hear the show and still hear every element of it,
they just don't experience it immersively. Right. And your favorite buildings?
Who favorite buildings? Um? I think my favorite sounding building

(02:20:42):
that I've mixed in in the past ten years is
probably the new FedEx Place, FedEx Dome or whatever you
wanna call it in Memphis. I think the place in
Memphis just sounds absolutely fantastic. Whatever they've done to it,
you know what, have treated it however, they've done it
absolutely fantastic. Um. I love me in the Gorge. I
love Red Rocks. I love mixing at Red Rocks. I

(02:21:05):
like the Hollywood Bowl. I'm actually fine at the Hollywood Bowl.
I like I like how it sounds there, and I
like the PA installed they got there. So um, I
mean there's there's a lot of good places now, you know.
I mean the architects are doing really good jobs with
the places. That. Honestly, the places I hate the most
are the places that are actually designed to do performance,

(02:21:26):
which are the indoor outdoor sheds, you know, I think
those are the those are some of the most challenging
places to do, which is really unfortunate because they're designed
to handle performance, you know, just because their indoor outdoor
and there's a roof, low roof, yeah, just the well,
you know, you would you would be tempted to think, well,
it's outdoors, there's no acoustics, blah blah blah. You know,
but yeah, there is lots of acoustics because of the

(02:21:48):
coverage of the audience. It's usually all very hard material,
very reverberant down under the under the roof. So then
you have you have to address both worlds. You have
to addres us a world that is outside the roof,
which is outside, no reflections, no ambience, no anything, and
then a very reverberant space down where all the seats are,

(02:22:09):
and usually a stage area that sounds less than optimum,
we'll put it that way. So to me, they're very,
very challenging to do and very challenging to get speakers
in the right places, in those right positions, in those places.
So those are the most disappointing places to me. It's like, gosh, man, Fellas,
if you're going to design it to do performance, how
about we take these things into consideration. You know. Well, Robert,

(02:22:32):
I want to thank you for taking so much time.
I could listen to you all day. This is all
really interesting stuff, because you know, you go to the
show and you want to know what's behind the Other
thing I want to say is you sent me the
article that you wrote about Russell Pope. Yeah. I was
stunned how well written it was. Oh well, thank you
that seriously. I mean, I read for a living and

(02:22:55):
most people can't write. I mean, so when someone writes, well,
and this is not blowing smoke because it didn't have it.
I'm literally reading, I'm shocked because most of this stuff
is unreadable. Oh my gosh, thank you. I mean, that's
that's really kind. I mean, I I kind of pride
myself on it. I mean I've written, you know, dozens
and dozens of articles and you know, obviously been featured
in quite a few. But I mean I enjoy writing.

(02:23:16):
I do. I I mean I enjoy putting blogs together
things like that. So yeah, thank you. That's that's very kind.
I'm very appreciative that you said it's hard felt. In
any event, I want to thank you taking for the time.
You've just been fantastic, so thanks again, Well, thank you.
I mean it's you know, I was a little uh,
you know when when I was asking to be on
your show, I was just thinking, oh my gosh, what

(02:23:36):
is this sound guy going to talk about on the
Bob left Side Show. I was like, what are we
going to cover? Man? But you know, thank you for
making it so easy. And well, I say, there's so
much we didn't cover. They go deep in the weeds,
but I think we got a pretty good s mortgage
board of what's going on. So Robert, thanks again. Hey,
thank you and thanks for your letters. I mean, I
enjoy your your thing. And before this I didn't even

(02:23:58):
know you had a podcast. So now I'm really glad
I can I can listen to you while I'm working
out now, so it would be good. Absolutely until next time.
This is Bob left Sex m

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