Gig Report: On the Road with Streetlight Manifesto

[bishopthomas]

It's been a week since I left home to go on tour with punk/ska band Streetlight Manifesto. I am FOH engineer, and since we're recording everything to HD24 via direct outs, I guess I am machine tech as well. We're based out of New Jersey but started out in Ohio for a couple of "warm-up" shows. We're in the Northeast right now (Philadelphia actually), but we'll be headed across the US to our last stop in San Francisco on December 4. We travel in an RV with all the gear, merch, and luggage in a 12 foot trailer. No heat, no toilet, no turning back.

I'm traveling with my own microphones (you never know what kind of stuff some clubs will have) except BG Vox, and that has made it a little easier. So far everything has worked out very well. It's interesting to go from a 300 capacity club with EV SX100's as mains to Manhatten Center's Grand Ballroom with a dVDocs array. It keeps it interesting for sure. So, on to the gearsluttiness, here's the input list and mics I'm running:

1. Kick - Beta 52
2. Snare top - Audix i5
3. Snare bottom - sm57
4. Hat - Earthworks sr69
5. Rack 1 - e604
6. Rack 2 - e604
7. Fl. Tom 1 - e604
8. Fl. Tom 2 - EV 308
9. Ride - Earthworks sr69
10. OH SR - MXL 603
11. OH SL - MXL 603
12. Bass DI - from amp
13. Bass Mic - MD421
14. El. Gtr. - e609
15. Bari sax - sm57
16. Tenor sax - md421
17. Trombone - md421
18. Trumpet - sm58
19. Electric Upright Bass - Radial ProDI
20. Acoustic Guitar - DI from amp (insists on using amp)
21. Lead Vox - vx5
22. Bari Vox
23. Tenor Vox
24. Trombone Vox
25. Bass Vox
26. Audience L - usually what the club has, or I'll lose the drum overheads
27. Audience R

I try to use as many clamps as possible, mainly because I like the clean look, but also because many clubs are short on stands. The hat, ride, and overheads are clamped from underneath with Shure A56D clamps (these work out great, beta 98 style but threaded to accept a mic clip). The snare bottom is on an LP claw, the two saxes are clamped on the vocal stands with the A56D's.

So there you have it. I'll post some pictures, but then it's off to the Trocadero.

[bishopthomas]

Pic 1: The comforts of home no more.
Pic 2: Club Diesel, Pittsburgh
Pic 3: Club Infinity, Buffalo
Pic 4: Grand Ballroom, NYC

[Remoteness]

Nice...

Keep the pics coming.

There's one thing you must pack for these type of tours.
Do you know what that item is?
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It's TP!

[Jim vanBergen]

Ah, the 7th floor of the hammerstein...

Did they show you the studio next to the stage with the 96 input Neve VR? It's heartbreaking when you can't use it. You should have mentioned you were in NYC! Never know who will stop by to cause you headaches!!

Have fun at the Troc in Philly! Stay WARM!!!

[bishopthomas]

There has not been a shortage of butt wipes as of yet. They didn't show me the studio, but Roy pulled out a couple of AT 4051's from there. You're right, Jim, I should have warned people I was coming to town, but I haven't been on Gearslutz very much and just didn't think about it until it was too late. But I am on my way to Hartford right now, then Tuesday is Boston. If anyone wants to come out I'll be glad to put them on the guestlist.

[Remoteness]

Hey dude, sorry I bailed on the MCS gig.
I got detained and could not make it by...

How did it come out?
Were you happy with the room?
The Grand Ballroom is a great sounding space.

[bishopthomas]

No problem at all, Steve, I know you have a lot going on. No need to apologize. The house engineer was Roy (Clark?) and he was a great guy, so laid back and friendly. He had good things to say about you, Steve. It was a nice room with an excellent PA (dVDosc) and sounded good. It was very reverberant at the balcony mix position, but that's to be expected in a place like that. By far the nicest place we have played and will play on this tour. Now it's back to 800-iish capacity clubs with finicky consoles (cough, Trocadero, cough).

Well, it looks like we just took the exit to the Hartford gig, so I'm going to go check that out.

[bishopthomas]

I'm in Baltimore right now, waiting to load in to the Recher Theatre. I've never been but hear that it's half way decent. Here are some pictures of the setup.

[StrifeII]

Awesome stuff, i'm a huge fan of SLM
You lucky git!
Have a good time out there dude

[Remoteness]

Thomas,

From what I gathered, you're doing FOH and recording them.
How do you like tracking from the direct outs of different boards each night instead of splitting the mics at the FOH?

I assume the quality of the sound changes each and every night due to the wide range of desks you're coming across.

Firstly, have you listened to the tracks each night and compared them to one another?
Is there a big difference or not enough of a difference to worry about?
I guess I'm trying to find out if you could edit parts of songs from each night or not.

[bishopthomas]

Yes, I am doing both FOH and recording to HD24 off the direct outs. It hasn't been going so well, to be honest. We started the tour off with a small drive and kept having issues with the HD24 freezing up. Then we bought a 500 gig drive, recorded a couple of shows succesfully, but the other night I popped the caddy in and the display read, "Invalid format, Format drive?" NO, I don't want to format it! We had the day off a couple of days ago and I wanted to pull the data off the large drive, format it, and start over, but I ended up leaving it on the RV and taking the small drive with me. So I transferred those files, formatted the drive, and tried using it again last night. Same issue with the HD24 freezing. The meters stick, the record enable lights flash (rather than staying lit as in record mode) and all button presses take forever to process. So today I'm going to extract the data from the 500 gig drive and try again. Maybe I'll do the washer mod for good measure, couldn't hurt.

I've always hated taking direct outs, especially when someone else is the FOH engineer, but even when I'm doing it it's far from optimal. So far I have been lucky enough to use consoles with DO's, but eventually I know I'm going to be taking group outs and doing the half way insert trick, etc. Plus, some desks' DO's are pre fade, some are post. There's no way that a coherent compilation will be able to be formed from these shows. At least not one that would be passable as being from one show. I still am not settled with my microphone choices, and the rooms are so vastly different that trying to blend audience mics would be a disastor.

I'm not sure what the purpose of the recordings is. It's probably just for archives and playing with after the tour (the singer has a studio in LA and will probably be mixing the shows if he gets around to it). It would be cool to set up a split and have a rack of preamps, but I think that's beyond the scope of this project. Maybe I'll offer my services for next time, but for right now just pressing record is enough for me.

[bishopthomas]

Hey, Strife, glad to know not only are there people here who have heard of them, but there are fans. I don't know how close you will be to any of the shows, but they're going to England for a couple of weeks in February as support for Reel Big Fish. I won't be on that leg, but it should be a fun time. Check the web site for the dates.

[noamraz]

That washers modification solved my faulty issues so it is more than recommended.

If you are the man to press "record" while doing FOH i think that direct-outs are best solution time-wise, When i do FOH&Recording from D/O i use some dynamics/processing @ Audio Groups so it gives me more clean output for recorder.

Goodday, Noam.

[bishopthomas]

So far I have been very lucky to only run across a couple of consoles that do not have direct outs. And the ones that do not have balanced insert points with separate TRS send and return. I don't mind to cut back on dynamics in order to send the signal out to the recorder. And there are usually extra aux outs that I can use for those very few channels that HAVE to have gates/comps.