SXSW Tour Diary: Matt Shane On The Road With Dan Black
NYC-based engineer/producer and all-around audio renaissance man Matt Shane (Flight of the Conchords, John Garrison, Robbers on High Street) handled FOH/monitors for electro-pop artist Dan Black at SXSW this year. Shane, who also tours on monitors for Flight of the Conchords, has assumed all technical and production duties for Black’s 2010 shows. Given the artist’s mass-appeal, accelerated by the popularity of his emo-hop single, “Symphonies” (featuring Kid Cudi), it’s going to be a busy year.
Shane met Black through his label, The Hours, when he was hired to compile and sequence the U.S. version of Black’s album ((Un)). “I really loved the songs and production,” says Shane. “I met with Dan briefly and we discussed music and what his live approach was like and how he wanted to change it.
“Last year the band was touring as a five-piece with a drummer and sample/loop person, and now it has been streamlined to a trio with Dan running all the tracks and loops off laptops and Frédéric Pruchon and Nick Peill handling guitar, bass and backing vocal duties. Costs of touring and travel prevented having the drummer and auxiliary member come to the States, so it became a trio somewhat out of necessity, although it’s evolved nicely into a really tight and powerful package.”
Dan Black played 6 shows over four days at SXSW. Here, Shane fills us in on the rigors of the road, the venues, the gear and the high and low points of the SXSW whirlwind… from the sound guy’s perspective.
PRE-SXSW: Getting Acquainted
We did a few days of rehearsals in NYC and then had a short tour in February playing clubs in NYC, Toronto, Montreal, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Feedback on the shows was great and more importantly the band and I developed a great working relationship.
When you are walking into different clubs and venues every day with limited time to sound check and you’re subjecting yourself to varying quality levels of PA’s, venues, and backline; it’s very important that the band trusts their engineer. They asked me to continue and work on this run of SXSW shows for Dan, and I was very excited to mix his shows in Austin!
One of the things I love about this gig is we are very self-contained, so between myself and the tour manager and the three band members we can carry everything we need for a show in our hands. We rent bass and guitar amps or borrow them when we can. I do not have to deal with poor quality drum kits or pushing amps around; just the laptops, controllers and stand, 2 guitars, bass, keyboard stand, and a bag of tricks.
Dan Black controls all the tracks and loops and sings, Fred plays bass, synthesizer, cowbell, and sings; and Nick plays guitar and sings backing vocals.
THE TOURING RIG: Laptops, Live, Launch Pads & Loops
Dan has a very cool rig that I worked with him to streamline and make extremely manageable and portable, with SXSW in mind. Most of our SXSW shows had only 10-15 minute changeovers scheduled. This meant 10-15 minutes to setup AND line check. I usually was guessing on monitors and using the first song to try to read the band to dial those mixes in better based on the band’s preferences for their wedges.
Dan Black uses two USB Novation Launch Pads to control all his songs in Ableton Live.
I setup the sampler rig so I could build it off stage then just carry it up and plug in power and signal lines and be ready to go. It’s a 2 RU rack containing an 8-channel M-Audio Interface for connecting to Ableton Live and an 8- channel Radial DI rack mount unit. Dan uses 2 USB Novation Launch Pads to control all his songs in Ableton. One pad is setup as the clips for each song, so he can do arrangement and sequencing. The second pad is all mutes, filters, and FX. Dan can create a vocal loop and turn it on and off. Mute the drums, filter any of the elements with up to 8 stepped filters, or crunch them up with distortion or another effect.
We currently use 4 outputs from Live for our streamlined SXSW/Club setup: Stereo Loops and track, mono synthesizer, and mono vocal FX looper. These four channels patch out of the M-Audio interface and patch into 4 of the Radial DI’s. I give the house sound guy a 4 4-channel XLR snake to patch right into the stage box. Fred plays a small USB keyboard controller that he velcros to his belt to control the Synthesizer instrument track in Ableton. He is also wearing headphones in one ear containing track and click for several songs. Dan and band sing through standard Shure SM58s.
Dan routes his mic through an active BSS DI to split it to me at FOH and to the Looper input in Ableton. Dan has 2 laptops running: one is running Live and the other is running just song notes for arrangements and the set. I gaff tape the rack to a X-folding keyboard stand and the laptops velro side by side to the top of the rack. I have the BSS DI and the Euro powerstrip and our main power plug attached to the leg of the keyboard stand with Velcro and gaff tape. All my cabling folds up into the 2 2-space SKB euro rack and travels easily.
SXSW: DAY ONE – MOHAWK’S INDOOR STAGE
Our first show was at Mohawk’s indoor stage right after we landed in Austin. The room we were playing was roughly a 30×30’ box with 12-14’ ceilings and a stage approximately 2 feet off the ground. Right before we were going on they stuck another band in and cut everyone’s sets back. Welcome to SXSW!
I was mixing on a small Mackie ONYX board with 24 inputs. Basically I had just enough time to have the guy tell me where our 10 inputs were coming up (which he managed to tell me wrong, of course). It was still a fun show despite the difficulties of the small room and only 2 monitor mixes (when we have less than 3, Dan gets one and Nick and Fred share the other). This is when a band having their own sound engineer helps a ton.
I know what the guys all want in their wedges and can dial up a working mix quickly, which matters a lot when the set length is limited to 20 minutes for some of these shows.
SXSW: DAY TWO – BEAUTY BAR, SPEAKEASY & DIRTY DOG BAR
Matt Shane
Day two was the craziest day! We started around 10am with a load in for our noon gig at the Beauty Bar (Palm Door). This gig was in a nice room and it was a beautiful day. It looked like an old summer camp rec hall with vaulted ceilings, all made of wood. The PA was nice and backline was quality as well. Marshall JCM 900 and 4×12’’ cabinet and an Ampeg SVT-2 with an 8×10” cab for the bass. Nice new Soundcraft Spirit console at FOH. Quick simple flexible console with workable EQs and plenty of head room.
These quick turn-around gigs frequently don’t afford much time to dial in dynamics or fiddle with FX, I only use a very short hall/plate on the vocals usually somewhere around .9-1.2 seconds depending on the room. No time to dial in compressors on anything so I do a lot of vocal riding to keep Dan sitting nicely on top of the mix. Knowing the songs helps when there aren’t available dynamics processing because I know where the big moments are and can ride the vocal(s) accordingly.
Trouble in most of these venues is that the bass and guitars are loud on stage, so getting the track pumping in the wedges and maximizing vocal clarity without too much foldback problems is the toughest part. The PA company did a good job ringing out the wedges and system so I was able to get Dan plenty of vocal level on stage and give the band plenty of the tracks in all the wedges. The show was definitely a good show to kick off Day 2.
Our second day in Austin continued with some last minute changes. Due to a problem with the stage our second show’s venue was changed last minute from Buffalo Billiards to Speakeasy. This was a very difficult venue to mix because FOH is a tiny room up a 12’ ladder in a small cave and well out of any range of coverage that the high end will have in the PA. There were some small subs and only 2 high boxes (old EAW I think).
The console was an old Allen & Heath, and wedges were the big, carpeted Yamaha wedges. They are not very clear and have quite a bit of honk in the mid-range without much bottom; definitely not a top choice for wedges. All the other acts were small acoustic bands so they had no problem. For us, however, it was difficult to get the tracks and vocals above the bass and guitar volume in the space, and I was guessing as far as mix balances went.
I could only climb down the ladder once or twice, and after that it was a guessing game. I had the house guy breathing over my shoulder too in this tiny little room watching the amps and telling me his way of doing it. The gigs with no sound check, line of sight, or working talkback can definitely ramp up the challenges of mixing a solid show. It was a tough one for the band and myself, but the end result was good. Folks enjoyed it and we keep on trucking.
We had some time to kill after this show and relaxed before our third show of the day. Heard a couple youtube clips from fans down in the audience and those sounded well balanced so I think I did my job.
Last show on Day 2 was closing the night out at Dirty Dog Bar. This bar was fun, and had a decent size stage for the guys. Thanks to The Constellations for letting us share their bass amp and guitar amp! The house rig were nice JBL boxes for the tops hung above the stage and JBL subs under the stage. The house engineer had the system setup well and we definitely got every ounce out of the rig that was possible. Mixed on an old Yamaha console, with 8 VCAs.
Mixing this show was a real breeze and the band really played well — there were available comps patched on all the vocal inputs already so that was great to have. He also already had the vocal channels multed for separate EQ for monitor sends, which is something I like to do when I have the available channels and I am mixing monitors from FOH. The venue had those same lousy Yamaha wedges, but there were 3 mixes of 6 boxes across the front so the coverage was adequate.
This was a fun gig to end the night and even though we had been up since 9am and this gig started at 1am.There was a tremendous amount of energy.
SXSW: DAY THREE – EMO’S
The next day was a lot of press for Dan. Acoustic 2-3 song set for a small audience and an outdoor Billboard.com interview and song set. Dan is a great guitar player and really performs well on his own with just an acoustic guitar, which makes doing press gigs painless, because Dan can walk in with just an acoustic guitar, sit down and play. He has great mic technique and knows how to work an SM58 to get a great vocal without much fuss or EQ on my part.
Dan’s guitar was busted up by the airlines so we called the folks at Gibson and they lent Dan a gorgeous hummingbird acoustic to play all weekend.
Our only show on Day 3 was at the outdoor stage at Emo’s. We were the first band of the night so we actually got a soundcheck (long line check). Emo’s has a really professional staff that was very accommodating to the band and myself as an outside engineer. FOH console was the 8 VCA Yamaha desk like at Dirty Dog, but there was a separate Soundcraft desk for monitors right next to the FOH desk. The house guy drove the monitors based on my “cheat sheet” for the band while I dialed in my mix.
I have a fairly specific “cheat-sheet” for the monitor mixes for the band that works as a starting point for the band when there’s the luxury of having a separate monitor engineer. The Emo’s PA really pumped and we shook the place, having full range sidefills was a nice touch for the band. I could give Fred all the bass he needed and fill the stage a bit more with the track and Dan’s vocal. This was the most relaxed show of the week. Bit of a bass trap at FOH mix position, but it was centrally located so stepping away from the desk to get the “audience’s” perspective was easy.
SXSW: DAY 4 – POWER PLANT, OUTDOOR GIG, AND OUT
On day 4, we went out to an old power plant for MTVu Promo video shoots. The band setup and shot a 30-second clip of one song for use on MTVu. The band was being tracked to Pro Tools HD through a Midas Heritage 3000 with 1176s and ADL 1000 compressors on the vocals and bass. Really sounded full and warm, definitely looking forward to the day when we can carry that level of production.
Later, we had an outdoor show, which would have been great the previous 3 days as the weather in Austin was perfect. Unfortunately the weather had gone from 70 and sunny the days before to 50 and cloudy on this day. Staying warm prior to the gig was key, fortunately the green room for bands was indoors.
Nomad Sound had brought in a PA last minute after the original setup was removed due to weather concerns. Meyer Subs and QSC top boxes, 2 per side. Radian wedges that sounded great and Yamaha LS9 digital console at FOH and another at monitor world. This was the first show we had in Austin where subs were fed off an aux.
Most of the time I prefer the sub feed to be handled in the processing and crossover, but I was happy to have this added control even if it was an outdoor gig. Depending on the rooms, some of the sub bass for different tracks will bloom and compound quickly, and without sound checks it is easier for me to pull down the feed to the sub a couple dB on tracks that have heavier sub bass, rather than reach for the graphic and just grab the offending frequency and try to isolate it and pull it down.
LS9’s are easy compact desks that are light and durable, but the lack of touch screen really slows down fast adjustments on the fly. I tend to do lots of little things as they arrive and go from element to element shaping the sound, so having to arrow over and select stuff is a big time waster, I find. Also, I don’t find the Yamaha digital compressors very usable, they tend to “shred” the top end a bit instead of controlling the peaks of the full range of signal.
Despite the cold, the crowd was great and the show sounded great. Mix position was ideal and the PA was dialed in nicely with plenty of power on the bottom end for the tracks, kicks and basses.
All in all, SXSW was a really great experience. I saw a lot of great bands perform, and Dan had 6 great shows in 4 short days. We just played a show at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza supporting Julian Casablancas (last night) and we have Ultra Fest and the IDMA Awards at the Winter Music Conference in Miami coming up. And many more dates will be added this summer!
For more on Matt Shane, visit his website and get in touch via his Dan Backhaus at Just Managing.