NO DOUBT / BLINK 182
Summer 2004’s hottest
West Coast package doubles your pleasure ...
Production support by Ed & Ted’s, Rat Sound, Sound Image, All Access,
Accurate Staging and Delicate Productions
Production
coverage by Bruce Jordahl. No Doubt photography by Jimi G. Blink 182 photography by Steve Jennings. |
Over the last few months, No Doubt and Blink 182 joined forces for a series of alternating headliner tour dates that gave fans a real bargain: two major acts and no production compromises. Though Blink 182 was already touring when the camps came together, seamless production integration by Spike and Justin at aRtfAg resulted in completely unique concepts for each act. Along the way some cutting-edge tools were supplied by an impressive list of vendors in this tale of two cities from one production. |
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VIDEO “The Synergy 4 has four program outputs and 64 inputs, of which we used probably 20 for the show, but I needed five program outputs for the five screens on stage; there’s a clean feed that is a fifth output – so ultimately, I could size and change the shapes on all five screens.” Three were hung from trusses, and two RP screens lived on the ground. McShane used CDK111 downstream key cards – one for each program output. He uploaded the shape of the screen as a white background into the CDK’s, and used the cards to key the video coming from the switcher as a mask. A total of five cameras were employed – a couple of remote pan/tilt Elmo cameras – one each side of the stage, one up in the downstage truss that shot on the drummer, another on the drum riser, and a mini-DV cam at FOH added manipulatible live images. “We never did any conventional IMAG,” Rob explains. “On one song I did a lumenesence key with a matte fill, which produced this black background with a color outline of each guy - very Warhol-esque.” Video playback came from six Omega hard drives, and was controlled by the GrandMa console with the Neve 8 system – the newest version of Breck Haggerty’s controller. Joining McShane on the video crew were projectionist Sam Kriemelmeyer and video technician Pat Boyd.
PRODUCTION “We had to integrate the package, but make it a completely different feeling show for each band,” says Ray, “and so we agreed each band would get full stage. When Blink’s design came across – we aimed our show in a whole other direction. They had a very automated, video-treated show, and we went for more of a conventional ‘hot light’ show with No Doubt. We put in some other elements – like the VarioLifts, and at the suggestion of Justin Collie – who was awesome on this tour, used the new SoftLED curtain, which was great for eye candy.” Eric adds, “While we were coming up with unique looks for each band, at the same time we were looking to integrate the two rigs so the transition would be as smooth as possible.” To everyone’s credit, very few elements were repeated, and other than the rack, stacks and movers, each piece either performs a task specific to Blink 182’s asymmetrical design or No Doubt’s beautiful study in symmetry. And since aRtfAg was already handling Blink’s environmental design, it was natural to bring them into the picture with No Doubt as well. Once the tour hit, Woodbury switched to tour management, and No Doubt’s PM duties were handled by Jimmy Pettinato. Woodbury continues, “The reason this worked is because we all get along so well, and have toured together before. One of the interesting things is the flip-flop of production – to go in one day as the headliner and the next as opener – also creates the need to soundcheck, pack and prep things out differently. Our first four shows were all about finding those key elements!” A series of reveal curtains add a sense of mystery and obscure the set changes from public view. But that’s not to say there wasn’t a challenge or two for this group of friends along the way. While they were able to fit easily in most venues, the wind can play hell with soft goods, and there’s a good chance whoever opens the co-headliner show will be playing in daylight. Rigging was handled by Blink 182’s head rigger Rodney Johnson, and augmented by lighting crew experienced in rigging on the No Doubt legs. With lighting at around 70 lighting points, most would consider this a large show to hang.Tour transpo was provided by Upstaging (and Entertainment Coaches for passengers), and increased from five to seven trucks for the package tour. |
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AUDIO
Kerns produced his mix through a Midas XL4 – using 52 of the 54 inputs. With a cocktail drum kit used on a few songs, John was given a second percussion element to amplify. On the main kit, kick drum was handled with an Audio Technica AT2500 dual element mic, snare used a Shure Beta 57A on the top and AT AE3000 on bottom, hi-hat was an AT5100, the two rack toms were Shure Beta 98s, the floor tom was an AT3000, and the overheads were AT4050’s. The cocktail kit had an Audix D6 on the kick, a Shure 57 for snare, an AT4050 took care of the hat and one of the crashes – while an Audix pencil condenser served as the other overhead mic. Bass used a Radial DI (“they’re great,” John enthuses) along with the output of a Line 6 POD and a CAD M179 on the bass cabinet. The principle guitar rig employed an AT2500 and a Shure 57 placed halfway between the cone and the speaker edge; a modeling Line 6 covered additional guitar parts picked up by the keyboard player. Gwen sings through an Audio Technica AT6100 hypercardioid mic; the remaining singers use AT4100’s and Shure 58’s. Kerns’ effects rack is spartan but powerful, including a Lexicon PCM70 he’s used for years on snare, a TC Electronics D2 for delay, and his Kurzweil KSP8 that takes care of reverbs and spatial effects on acoustic guitars. Distressors are used on Gwen’s vocals and on bass DI and amps. Drawmer 241’s help tame additional vocals, kick n’ snare, and the ska horns. JK also puts Drawmer 201s on the toms and used a Fatso Jr. to create a compressed submix of the drums – brought back in on another fader. Finally, a SSL GE384 is placed across the stereo bus. “Yea, there’s a bunch of dynamics,” he laughs. “I also used a tube compressor across the guitar submix ... when I jam the VCA up for solos, it gives it a bit more of a compressed soloing signal, as opposed to putting it across the inputs. But most of the dynamics used wasn’t necessarily for controlling dynamics - it was more for tonal effect. You can morph guitar with a Distressor, and it gives it’s own timbre to the instrument.” The engineer mixes No Doubt as a left-and-right straight rock show, and says the subs are run off a mono aux as that’s how Blink’s engineers set up the system.While obviously Gwen’s voice is paramount, John says he tries to treat everything equally in the mix. “I don’t like having her voice so far out front that you don’t notice anything else – but you have to make sure she’s heard, and having a hypercardioid mic on her helps tremendously.” One new trick Kerns conjured was the use of recently recorded show material to aid in less-than-perfect soundcheck conditions. “I used a couple of Metric Halo 2882 interfaces and 16 outputs off my console – some of them direct output pre-fader pre-eq, and a few subgroups. I was afraid I wasn’t going to get much chance to soundcheck with the co-headlining package, and so I recorded a song from each show, and the next day I could re-load this onto my Mac and play it back through 16 inputs to another program on the XL4. The ability to play back at least a song from the previous show helped out quite a bit. I could use that to tweak the PA, so I didn’t have to wait for our allotted time slot to do my work. And it worked great; I’m going to try to never do a tour without it again.”Kerns also used Metric Halo’s SpectraFoo to monitor his working conditions. “I have both Foo and Smaart loaded on my Mac, but on this tour I used Foo 100% of the time.”John Kerns’ monitor counterpart was Bill Szocska, whose name gets easier to spell after a few paragraphs! Bill mixes No Doubt’s wedges / in-ear package on a Yamaha PM5000. “I use the PM5000 on Jimmy Buffet as well,” he explains. “It does what I need it to, and although I didn’t really need that much board for No Doubt, I’m really familiar with it. The PM5K also enabled me to do song per song recall. And I sure like the sound of it!” While the console floats his boat, Bill stays as far away from digital compression as possible. “I’ve got a nice mix of gear in the rack,” he says. “I’m pretty fond of the dbx 160, and ended up using about seven of them for kick, click, the electric guitar, acoustics, and horns.” Other tools include eight channels of BSS 404 – which Bill really likes to use, and a 160SL on Gwen’s vocal channels. Reverbs include the venerable Lexicon PCM70, but Dave Shadoan on Sound Image sent Szocska several of the new Yamaha SPX2000s, which Bill raves over. “Those SPX2000s are 96k and sound fantastic,” he says, “and I ended up with three of them. It’s got a great vocal chamber – and I liked the concert hall program on the 990, but the 2000 has some really great stuff, and it’s a multi-effects processor as well. I also use a TC 2290 delay on Gwen - they sound so great, and we rely heavily upon it for her sound.” Wireless systems included the AT wireless and 6100 capsule combo for lead vocals. “We started out initially with a 4100,” Bill explains, “and ended up switching over to the hypercardioid. Gwen spent most of her time on the front edge of the stage, so we had to go hyper – and for background vocals, we used the Shure UHF wireless.”In ears are Sennheiser 3000 series – all owned by No Doubt. Everybody who uses in-ears is on the Ultimate Ears UE5’s earpieces, except for the drummer, who uses Future Sonics. Guitar, bass and drums use wedges. “Our drummer’s on wedges, ears, and he uses a Thumper,” says Bill. “Whatever they make - he’s on it!” Bill uses Aphex Dominators on the in-ears for peak limiting. “The thing you have to keep in mind,” he adds, “is there’s really two types of musicians here - the ones that have to hear the wedges with no ears, and those on in-ears. The bass and guitar players – they want to hear their rig, so we create a comfortable pocket for them with the sidefills and wedges.” While No Doubt shared the Rat Sound proprietary sidefills, the monitors were Sound Image proprietary wedges. “Our drummer’s on a G2, which is a single 12” and a 2” all JBL components,” Bill explains. “The other players were on wooden ego ramp monitors with the very same components. I actually started them all off on the G2’s; I like them because they’re lightweight and they get pretty loud – and have a great mid-range characteristic – but the guys didn’t like the fact they couldn’t stand on top of them!” While TP US missed catching up with Blink 182’s FOH alchemist Bryan Worthen, we did spend some quality time with monitor engineer / Rat Sound crew chief Andy Turner. Turner, a Rat veteran since 1997, was out on Blink’s previous Take Off Your Pants and Jacket tour. Turner says while Blink 182’s front line wear in-ear monitors the whole set, the drummer only puts them in for two songs that require a click. “They were on Shure E5’s - which are awesome, but recently we’ve gone to UE Pro 10’s - and the band loves them.” Andy mixes the band through a Midas Heritage XL4. “For doing ears, it’s cool that it has a low-pass filter, so it fairly much gets rid of any top-end crap, and it sounds amazing ... it’s a sound that’s hard to get away from.” Oddly enough, Andy says the guys in Blink 182 don’t require any reverb for their mixes. “The guys don’t really care for any effects in their ears; they just love a natural sound – and the more live the room is the better. We keep things rather simple. Having said that, the spec was done when I arrived, as I kind of inherited this gig, and there were a few rooms that could have used some help ... so next time I’ll ask for a TC M2000 or Yamaha SPX990.” Andy credits FOH engineer Bryan Worthen with showing him the intricacies of live sound engineering.“I’ve been Bryan’s FOH tech for many years now, and I’ve been watching him,” he confirms. “Through showing me some of his wealth of knowledge, Bryan’s been instrumental in me being here today.” Turner says it took a high level of cooperation to make this audio integration appear seamless. “During set change, everybody helped out – if we didn’t, that thing would have never happened on time! And it was really cool to work with audio pros like John and Kevin. Our set change was nicknamed after the battle scene in Braveheart, so it was great having those guys with us – and after two or three shows, we had it down to a science!” |
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STAGING For Blink 182, Accurate fashioned a circular aluminum 10’ drum riser as well as a 7-ft. lift / turntable that appears at FOH. They provided all the soft goods, as well as Delicate’s video screen frames used to great effect during the show. “When Blink 182 opened for No Doubt they need to get the stuff offstage fast, so we made the drum riser roll, and built some shelves underneath it for the moving lights to sit on,” says Gallagher.Joe says Blink purchased all aspects except for the circular drum riser. Accurate also beefed up four chandeliers – ordered off the internet - and built set carts so they’d travel. Finally, Gallagher says Blink 182 prefer to stand on regular carpet. “They like carpet, and actually need carpet so they don’t slip!” Eastland of All Access explained how the staging elements, while not revolutionary, helped the two productions stand on their own. “We needed to make rolling risers and rapid deployment carts for set items, so it was fairly straightforward. No Doubt’s set was based on jewels and fine metals, and there were some interesting lighting effects happening with graphics on the risers.” Because of the tour’s short run, Eastland suggested producing No Doubt’s floor logo with die-cut, rather than paint. “Normally, we’d paint the logo on the flooring or do a digital output, but because the tour wasn’t that long we went with a die cut. We were thinking for the band at that point – you’ve got the most expensive Marley you can buy, why don’t we do it like this so you can peel it off and save yourself thousands on the next tour? We’re really utilizing a lot more technology in that area these days.” Another important focus of All Access is customer education. “We’re really pushing the concept that we don’t need any more 4’ x 8’s in the world – they’re all sitting in storage facilities, and the bands are paying for them! We have them here - and you can rent them for a nickel – and we want to carry that concept over to all the effects out there. If you want to come up from under the stage, we have one.” |
LIGHTING
TP US spoke
with Justin Collie as well as both lighting directors about the amalgamation
necessary to produce superlative results for each act. “With
a long term client, you get to try fresh ideas each time,” Justin
commented. “Blink 182 hadn’t been big on video before,
and we felt it was time to get them into that. As designers, we felt
it very important not to have the value of one show compromise the
production value of the The design team brought custom aRtfAg elements to the drawing board, including their notorious FagPod clusters and the Circle Pod arrays. “We had 26 FagPods already in use for Blink,” Collie explains, “and that was one element of the Blink 182 design that was very apparent, so we stepped back and just used them a bit for accents with No Doubt.” The Circle Pod’s – a circular truss-piece with seven ETC Source Fours – very narrows on the ring around the outside, a medium flood in the center and Wybron scrollers – were used in conjunction with the VarioLifts for a myriad of articulating effects. “We strapped three Circle Pods together to make one pod, and used three VarioLifts on each,” Justin adds. The center pod had four, while the remaining four pods used three.In tandem with the Martin and HES automated fixtures, the Robe fixtures also found a home in the No Doubt design. “It was a different light source,” the designer offers, “that Blink 182 didn’t have.” The team didn’t utilize extensive custom patterns, but Collie says they weren’t missed. “We didn’t really need more gobos,” he says. “In this application moving lights weren’t the big feature – the SoftLED curtain played that role for No Doubt, and obviously with a flat back wall, you don’t want to waste too much light on people’s faces – you want them to see what’s going on.” As a new LED tool, the 35’ x 40’ SoftLED largely played the part of a video screen, albeit with a lower resolution. Used with Martin QFX150 illuminators (and connected to the GrandMA console with Doug Fleenor Design DMX2iPLAY units), the starcloth also worked as the more traditional fiber optic curtain in Blink 182’s show. “Once you embrace its resolution – and put footage up there in two or three colors, or simple graphics, then it works well,” says Collie. “The eye is very forgiving for resolution, as long as you don’t try to put too much detail in.” aRtfAg’s Soft Ladders are used - most extensively for Blink 182, and in a different configuration by No Doubt’s lighting director Pat Brannon. Created years ago by aRtfAg (and employed first on a Blink 182 tour), the invention serves as “a way to create multiple layers of lighting without having big truss structures.” Paramount to the tour integration success story is that Justin and Spike are furthering their art of ‘performance environment design’ - whereby everything is a part of the show. “Why should design be divided up into separate departments?” asks Collie. “Of course, we’re still trying to find a way to get in on the sound gig.” Though the bands certainly knew what they wanted, at the end of the day the designers were charged with taking their ideas and making them production practical - and fitting into the combined touring package. Lighting Director Nathan Wilson handled the Blink 182 account for aRtfAg, and has operated the lighting for all previous aRtfAg-designed Blink tours. TP US asked Nathan about the lighting rig specific to Spike’s Blink 182 design.“I really am partial to the FagPods,” Wilson says. “You get your strobe, color changing and conventional – all in one light.” Three Syncrolite 3K’s add their signature fat beam sexiness. “I like the 3K’s light source, and packed them onto the side of the stage for a power side wash look; they’re also good for television.” Augmenting the asymmetrical design were Wilson’s Martin 2K Profiles all in the rig over the stage, while 2K Wash fixtures were placed on the floor and in the downstage truss. “The 2K’s are really punchy on the floor,” Nathan adds, “and you can basically blast through anything! I never use gobo projection from the front, so we put the washes up there. Nathan says the MAC 2K Profiles are his favored hard-edge source to date, and he can be found regularly harassing Martin for gobos at the onset of each new tour. Eight High End Studio Beams are employed for a FOH drum solo and under the main riser onstage. “His kit came out like a jack-in-the-box while he did his solo,” the director points out. Cyber Spots – Cyberlights with the mirror head removed - on the downstage truss, also removed the need for spot operators on the Blink 182 side. Three 24’ vertical towers – a way to backlight band members and to frame in the video screens for Blink’s show, were transformed at set change for the No Doubt show (or vice-versa). Nathan explains, “At set change we get rid of the center tower, and I use groups of three lights, where No Doubt was using five and five, so it was symmetrical. For No Doubt we flattened the rig out and my vertical towers became horizontal, and the upstage tower went away completely. “I kept my colors pretty basic,” he says, “with some yellows, CTO, CTB, reds, blues greens, etc. I had to definitely tone down a few things because of the video – we were using projection instead of an LED wall. So I had to pull back some colors, which works fine for the band. They’ve as much as said ‘if I’m not signing don’t light me up’. TP US last encountered No Doubt’s lighting director Pat Brannon as he manned the console for Bon Jovi’s last US tour. Though he used the movers, and had his own toys, one of the primary tools that would separate his No Doubt work was a judicious amount of conventional lighting that Blink 182 didn’t employ. “It was kind of fun going back to my early lighting days,” he says. While Nathan Wilson utilized the Macs more aggressively with strobing and fast color changes, Brannon strove not to emphasize the same qualities with No Doubt; the front truss covered the set, back and audience washes, while the hard edge MAC 2K Profiles gave cutting hard-edge looks from the back truss and from side positions. Three Robert Juliat Ivanhoe truss spots were paired with six in the house, all called by Brannon. “We weren’t lighting for video – so that was not really a challenge,” he says, “but rather a nice step back into the past – I’m old school anyway, and so it was fun to paint the stage in a different concept besides video. Nowdays everyone wants to see their mug on the big screen.” Keeping with the old school vibe, Brannon’s No Doubt color palette was Rock n’ roll lighting 101. “I used a lot of reds, ambers and blues – and not only with my conventionals ... basically my focuses were the big, wide and heavy looks. Rather than trying to use these lights to do things with movement, I concentrated on focuses that made the stage look bigger, and used my reds and ambers in basic combinations.” Like Nathan, Pat uses the GrandMA console: “I’m leaning heavily towards the GrandMA, and they’ve now done updates to include LED fixtures in their programming palette, which we think is the future. It’s a very stable desk; I’ve never had one crash at a show.” A GrandMA Lite handles backup, albeit 10 faders short of the full-blown Granny’s 20. “I have my bumps, audience lights, etc. all set up on the Lite’s ten faders ... I could get through a show with it.” Completing the Ed and Ted’s Excellent lighting staff are crew chieftains Donald ’Jaco’ Jacobelly (Blink 182) and Steve Roman (No Doubt), technicians Kevin Caulley, Steve Schwind and Trevitt Cromwell, and Vario Hoist technician/rigger Andy and Armando ‘Mondo’ Figueroa. In closing, Justin says Ed and Ted’s are “a fabulous vendor” that always provides excellent crew and gear, as well as indulge his design firm’s R&D exploits. “They seem to care about the ‘art’ in aRtfAg.”
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