Jack Johnson gig w/ Aura Sonic

JayCrouch · 16th November 2002

hey guys - yesterday I met up with Steve Remote and the Aura Sonic crew for a Jack Johnson remote at Boston's beautiful Orpheum Theater.

We arrived around 11:30 or so, with a sceduled 4:30 soundcheck. The truck backed up nicely to the front of the building by the box office, and power and the MASS line were run into the building. Both cables ran inside and then went up thru a ceiling hole that came out under theater seats that were lower orchestra. Cables were then run along the front of stage to where the House had their lines set up off to the right. A 24 channel snake system was used, and all was done before I ever got to the stage to check out what was what.

Everything was already miced up by the House, so it was the splits along wit a pair of shotguns on stage to the side of the wedges facing the crowd. For crowd response, Steve seemed to set his levels based on ambient response of the room during the soundchecks, the level he had was pretty on come showtime and it just took a simple rise of the audience group fader to bring up the applause between songs...

Having the band miced up already, lines went back to the truck - all patched into the console, except for four channels of shep sn-8 (1073 clones). If I remember correctly the 4 channels that got the Shep lovin were the kik, snr, vox, and gtr amp.

Come showtime, Jack takes the stage with his guitar about a half hour before scheduled showtime without any warning whatsover. John was just on his way inside when we hear the crowd get excited, look at the video camera and see Jack getting up to the mic - Roll tape and Steve made it with just enough time for a smooth fade up.

Show was only 1:15 with the encores, and everything seemed like it was as routine as macaroni is with cheese.

breaking down the rig was a mean job of collecting the shotguns, cables, splitter, mas, and power cables - reeling them back into the truck, putting some gear back into the cabin of the truck and then it's a night...

I believe it's Sat. the 23 - yet if anyone is in the Boston area, you can catch a Steve Remote live mix on WBCN 104.1 - I definatly will be via internet radio.

**Remoteness** · 16th November 2002

Hey Jay,

It's cool that you wrote about the Jack Johnson / Orpheum gig. Thank you for your perception of the event!

There are a few additions and some corrections to be made to this story. Check it out.

We met up with Jay along I-95 in Connecticut. We worked out a plan so we didn't have to stop when we hooked up with him. I called him when we passed exit 32, that gave Jay enough time to meet and wait for us at exit 36 near his home. When Jay saw the truck passing by, he was able to catch up and follow us the remaining way.

We arrived at the venue closer to 1:00 PM. The sound check was scheduled at 4:30 PM, but Jack was already onstage and playing around with a new "in ear" set up. We ran our MASS 52 snake, PTZ video and power feeder through the box office cable access hole. This makes it a lot easier to record and or broadcast from this venue. Monitor world was stage left. That's where we tied into power and microphone stage box. We had about a 250' run. The PTZ camera was position on top of the stage right speaker stack.

The band's PA & lighting systems had a 9:00 AM load in. They already had everything set up when we showed up. Jack's engineer and I worked out the mic split situation days before the gig. Since we knew they were gonna be set up way before we got there, we worked out a way to interface the truck without pulling or changing their original set up. They had multipin sub snakes that plugged directly to their input panel and were not using the female input XLR's. We just patched a XLR fan to fan harness to their female input XLR's, added some male/male XLR barrels on our end of the harness and patched it to our splitter's female XLR inputs. We took the transformer isolated side of our splitter and everything was everything. Our smaller 52 channel passive transformer splitter system has 40 mic transformer splits and 12 tie lines, usually used for 8 additional truck mic (audience or spot mics) and 4 auxiliary lines (for comm and any kind of return feed).

We had four audience mics, not a stereo pair. We set up three MKH416 downstage, < stage right, ^ center and > left. We clamped the two < SR and > SL mics on to the FOH stack's speaker handles. The third mic was placed on a short straight stand, smack in the center of downstage. The fourth MKH416 was placed behind FOH facing the stage. I set my levels based on the ambient response of the room during soundcheck, but spent a lot of time tweaking the audience applause during the opening act.

The Sheps were originally patched for the Kick, Snare, Bass and Vocal, but when there were some additional mics added to the set up, we repatched them just for drums. Kick, Snare, Rack & Floor.

Important note: Jack was originally going to perform at 9:15 PM. They moved up the show to 8:45 PM and nobody updated us. I think the PM was busy reading the newspaper. Not knowing about the earlier start time, I had Jon (truck A2) go to the tour bus for a set list, thinking we had plenty of time before show time. If it wasn't for Rob (CDL & stage A2) needing to go to the bathroom and notice Jack was hitting the stage, we would have not caught the start of the show in time. We had 4 CDR's, 2 DAT's and 6 DA78HR's running. I turned around and rolled the multitrack, then proceeded to roll on all the stereo recorders. We just made it with a smooth fade up into the start of the first song. Crazy, crazy stuff. I'm glade I didn't need a break at that moment.

The MASS 52 snake and PTZ video cable get reeled up. The power feeder cable is individually coiled up and placed in the truck's belly bin.

The show will air on WBCN-FM 104.1 in Boston, MA. I'm not sure it will air on the Internet. Made Jay knows something different? I'm not sure.

imacgreg · 16th November 2002

Wow, sounds like a cool setup. I'm a big fan of Jack Johnson and I recently saw him play in his home town of Santa Barbara. It was a very cool show... Was the recording just going to be used for the radio, or is he putting out a live record?

Ian

**Remoteness** · 17th November 2002

Ian,

After working this show, I realized why he sold out every show on the tour. He and his band sound great, play cool tunes and is really smooth and laid back. It's a nice niche. There are many big fan's of Jack Johnson. From parents and their kids, and everyone in between.

Jack's FOH guy, Mike Pollack, has been recording every show via his DAW set up at FOH. I assume they will be picking the best stuff and putting out something in the future. But, I'm only guessing. The recording we did with the truck was for the November 23rd, 2002 WBCN-FM radio broadcast. Perhaps it may show up on a future "WBCN Naked Disk" compilation CD, which they put out at the end of each year. This year's CD has already been done. It will include nine acts from various past WBCN River Rave concerts.

cajonezzz · 8th April 2004

Quote:

Originally posted by Remoteness

Jack's FOH guy, Mike Pollack, has been recording every show via his DAW set up at FOH. I assume they will be picking the best stuff and putting out something in the future.

do you happen to know what DAW they were using?

thanks.

fifthcircle · 9th April 2004

Geez Steve... When are you gonna hit the west coast? I'd love to sit in on one of these gigs that are written about.

Anyways, great write up Jay.

I finally saw Jack Johnson play live last summer... He was the opening act for Ben Harper's tour and I saw them at the Hollywood Bowl. In short, that was one of the best shows I think I've ever been to. Jack was amazing, then to hear Ben Harper afterwards (they were recording him that night for a live DVD that has since been released).

--Ben

**Remoteness** · 9th April 2004

Ben,

Thank you for the kind words.

We done a few projects on the Left Coast, but it's been sometime since the last one.

There's an open invitation (to all GS members) to sit in on one of our live recording gigs.

We have had the opportunity to work with Jack Johnson twice and once with Ben Harper. I must agree, their performances were great. Acts like them make our jobs so much easier to deal with.

I always said, a producer is only as good as the engineers they keep. An engineer is only as good as the band (musicians) they keep.

gregrw · 10th April 2004

Quote:

Originally posted by Remoteness

There's an open invitation (to all GS members) to sit in on one of our live recording gigs.

I took him up on that! It was late last summer at a local (Boston area) venue. His rig is a must-see. Steve and crew are nice guys, and very professional. I learned a lot, and even stole one of his ideas. (Giving a letter to each DA-78, and writting on each tape which '78 was used to format the tape, which was used to record on it, and the dates. If there's a problem, it can be traced to a specific machine. My letters go up to "F." I think I saw "P" in his truck!! :- )

Definitely worth going well out of your way!

BTW, long time no post. The day job has been kinda insane, but I am doing audio stuff on the weekends. Maybe someday I'll post some photos...

-GRW

Waylon · 11th April 2004

Quote:

Originally posted by gregrw
..... and even stole one of his ideas. (Giving a letter to each DA-78, and writting on each tape which '78 was used to format the tape, which was used to record on it, and the dates. If there's a problem, it can be traced to a specific machine. My letters go up to "F." I think I saw "P" in his truck!! :- )

I have seen way higher then that

Anyone who has used Aura Sonic and/or Steve and Crew on a date knows I am not just ass kissing when I say that there are a zillion other little touches like this that make thier gigs run smooth. Maybe if we can all rally and egt an Aura Sonic truck and Crew on the grammys, we can avoid letters to Mix magazine like we seen this month...

Sorry for the blantant promotion, but it seems odd that I can get the level of attention and quality service on a one off gig which Steve R. and the gang provide but the truck on the Grammys with many days of setup cant even get thier act together. And they profess their the best at what they do. That is pathetic.

Cheers!

**Remoteness** · 14th December 2005

Wow Waylon,

I was looking at the Remote Possibilities forum archives and found this thread...

Thanks a lot buddy. That was a super kind thing for you to say!

Whether we're on one-offs or long term production ventures we DO give it everything we have and I appreciate you seeing the difference.

Thanks again!

JayCrouch · 14th December 2005

2002, That was a fun gig! Somehow that old thread sent me an e-mail notification!

and yeah, Steve does have all that little stuff down.

**Remoteness** · 14th December 2005

Holy Freak dude, where the 'ell have you been?

Long time no posts. Give me a call one of these days -- we should catch up catchin' up.

JayCrouch · 14th December 2005

new phone, no digits

shoot me an AIM (selfdub)

**Remoteness** · 18th December 2005

Yes, self dubbed with a "0" (zero) instead of the letter "o."
I remember...

Jay, Good luck on your new beginnings! thumbsup

16th November 2002	#1
JayCrouch Gear maniac Joined: Jun 2002 Location: CT Posts: 292 Thread Starter	Jack Johnson gig w/ Aura Sonic hey guys - yesterday I met up with Steve Remote and the Aura Sonic crew for a Jack Johnson remote at Boston's beautiful Orpheum Theater. We arrived around 11:30 or so, with a sceduled 4:30 soundcheck. The truck backed up nicely to the front of the building by the box office, and power and the MASS line were run into the building. Both cables ran inside and then went up thru a ceiling hole that came out under theater seats that were lower orchestra. Cables were then run along the front of stage to where the House had their lines set up off to the right. A 24 channel snake system was used, and all was done before I ever got to the stage to check out what was what. Everything was already miced up by the House, so it was the splits along wit a pair of shotguns on stage to the side of the wedges facing the crowd. For crowd response, Steve seemed to set his levels based on ambient response of the room during the soundchecks, the level he had was pretty on come showtime and it just took a simple rise of the audience group fader to bring up the applause between songs... Having the band miced up already, lines went back to the truck - all patched into the console, except for four channels of shep sn-8 (1073 clones). If I remember correctly the 4 channels that got the Shep lovin were the kik, snr, vox, and gtr amp. Come showtime, Jack takes the stage with his guitar about a half hour before scheduled showtime without any warning whatsover. John was just on his way inside when we hear the crowd get excited, look at the video camera and see Jack getting up to the mic - Roll tape and Steve made it with just enough time for a smooth fade up. Show was only 1:15 with the encores, and everything seemed like it was as routine as macaroni is with cheese. breaking down the rig was a mean job of collecting the shotguns, cables, splitter, mas, and power cables - reeling them back into the truck, putting some gear back into the cabin of the truck and then it's a night... I believe it's Sat. the 23 - yet if anyone is in the Boston area, you can catch a Steve Remote live mix on WBCN 104.1 - I definatly will be via internet radio. __________________ Jay Crouch Crouch@optonline.net 203-521-9520

16th November 2002	#2
Remoteness Super Moderator Joined: Aug 2002 Location: NYC Posts: 7,405	Hey Jay, It's cool that you wrote about the Jack Johnson / Orpheum gig. Thank you for your perception of the event! There are a few additions and some corrections to be made to this story. Check it out. We met up with Jay along I-95 in Connecticut. We worked out a plan so we didn't have to stop when we hooked up with him. I called him when we passed exit 32, that gave Jay enough time to meet and wait for us at exit 36 near his home. When Jay saw the truck passing by, he was able to catch up and follow us the remaining way. We arrived at the venue closer to 1:00 PM. The sound check was scheduled at 4:30 PM, but Jack was already onstage and playing around with a new "in ear" set up. We ran our MASS 52 snake, PTZ video and power feeder through the box office cable access hole. This makes it a lot easier to record and or broadcast from this venue. Monitor world was stage left. That's where we tied into power and microphone stage box. We had about a 250' run. The PTZ camera was position on top of the stage right speaker stack. The band's PA & lighting systems had a 9:00 AM load in. They already had everything set up when we showed up. Jack's engineer and I worked out the mic split situation days before the gig. Since we knew they were gonna be set up way before we got there, we worked out a way to interface the truck without pulling or changing their original set up. They had multipin sub snakes that plugged directly to their input panel and were not using the female input XLR's. We just patched a XLR fan to fan harness to their female input XLR's, added some male/male XLR barrels on our end of the harness and patched it to our splitter's female XLR inputs. We took the transformer isolated side of our splitter and everything was everything. Our smaller 52 channel passive transformer splitter system has 40 mic transformer splits and 12 tie lines, usually used for 8 additional truck mic (audience or spot mics) and 4 auxiliary lines (for comm and any kind of return feed). We had four audience mics, not a stereo pair. We set up three MKH416 downstage, < stage right, ^ center and > left. We clamped the two < SR and > SL mics on to the FOH stack's speaker handles. The third mic was placed on a short straight stand, smack in the center of downstage. The fourth MKH416 was placed behind FOH facing the stage. I set my levels based on the ambient response of the room during soundcheck, but spent a lot of time tweaking the audience applause during the opening act. The Sheps were originally patched for the Kick, Snare, Bass and Vocal, but when there were some additional mics added to the set up, we repatched them just for drums. Kick, Snare, Rack & Floor. Important note: Jack was originally going to perform at 9:15 PM. They moved up the show to 8:45 PM and nobody updated us. I think the PM was busy reading the newspaper. Not knowing about the earlier start time, I had Jon (truck A2) go to the tour bus for a set list, thinking we had plenty of time before show time. If it wasn't for Rob (CDL & stage A2) needing to go to the bathroom and notice Jack was hitting the stage, we would have not caught the start of the show in time. We had 4 CDR's, 2 DAT's and 6 DA78HR's running. I turned around and rolled the multitrack, then proceeded to roll on all the stereo recorders. We just made it with a smooth fade up into the start of the first song. Crazy, crazy stuff. I'm glade I didn't need a break at that moment. The MASS 52 snake and PTZ video cable get reeled up. The power feeder cable is individually coiled up and placed in the truck's belly bin. The show will air on WBCN-FM 104.1 in Boston, MA. I'm not sure it will air on the Internet. Made Jay knows something different? I'm not sure. __________________ Steve Remote AuraSonicLtd.com the home of ASL Mobile & Location Production Remoteness on the Linkedin Network What about my Facebook Profile? Remoteness on Myspace

16th November 2002	#3
imacgreg Gear addict Joined: Jun 2002 Location: Echo Park, Los Angeles Posts: 444	Wow, sounds like a cool setup. I'm a big fan of Jack Johnson and I recently saw him play in his home town of Santa Barbara. It was a very cool show... Was the recording just going to be used for the radio, or is he putting out a live record? Ian __________________ ---------- Ian MacGregor http://twitter.com/#!/blackwatchsound www.standard-audio.com - Home of the Level-Or, 500 series Level-loc inspired limiter Visit Standard Audio on Facebook

9th April 2004	#6
fifthcircle Lives for gear Joined: Apr 2003 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 3,323	Geez Steve... When are you gonna hit the west coast? I'd love to sit in on one of these gigs that are written about. Anyways, great write up Jay. I finally saw Jack Johnson play live last summer... He was the opening act for Ben Harper's tour and I saw them at the Hollywood Bowl. In short, that was one of the best shows I think I've ever been to. Jack was amazing, then to hear Ben Harper afterwards (they were recording him that night for a live DVD that has since been released). --Ben __________________ Benjamin Maas Fifth Circle Audio Long Beach, CA http://www.fifthcircle.com

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17th November 2002	#4
Remoteness Super Moderator Joined: Aug 2002 Location: NYC Posts: 7,405	Ian, After working this show, I realized why he sold out every show on the tour. He and his band sound great, play cool tunes and is really smooth and laid back. It's a nice niche. There are many big fan's of Jack Johnson. From parents and their kids, and everyone in between. Jack's FOH guy, Mike Pollack, has been recording every show via his DAW set up at FOH. I assume they will be picking the best stuff and putting out something in the future. But, I'm only guessing. The recording we did with the truck was for the November 23rd, 2002 WBCN-FM radio broadcast. Perhaps it may show up on a future "WBCN Naked Disk" compilation CD, which they put out at the end of each year. This year's CD has already been done. It will include nine acts from various past WBCN River Rave concerts.

14th December 2005	#10
Remoteness Super Moderator Joined: Aug 2002 Location: NYC Posts: 7,405	Wow Waylon, I was looking at the Remote Possibilities forum archives and found this thread... Thanks a lot buddy. That was a super kind thing for you to say! Whether we're on one-offs or long term production ventures we DO give it everything we have and I appreciate you seeing the difference. Thanks again!

18th December 2005	#14
Remoteness Super Moderator Joined: Aug 2002 Location: NYC Posts: 7,405	Yes, self dubbed with a "0" (zero) instead of the letter "o." I remember... Jay, Good luck on your new beginnings! thumbsup

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