For eight years I was the full time audio engineer for The Elms. Touring was fun, but I made the decision to get off the road late last year. The guys were in Columbus last weekend and asked me if I could step behind the board for them again. It was a blast, I have to say, and it was good to see everyone again. There is a lot church bands and audio crews can learn from a show like this. I’m going to give you a peek at the gear that was used, what it’s like to be the opening band, and some insights into the politics of a show this size.

I arrived just after load in. The guys had pushed all the cases inside, and Chris was setting up the drums backstage. For this gig, the local rock radio station brought in 3 local bands, but Frampton’s camp brought in The Elms. Although The Elms were still an ‘opener’, they were still part of the Frampton show.

The plan was to backline the guitar amps in front of Frampton’s gear after his soundcheck and before the 1st local band. Some rain came through and delayed the soundcheck, so the whole day got pushed back. After the 1st band played their set, we then got to backline.

Here’s where I get frustrated with local bands. They all started complaining that we were putting gear on stage, taking up their space. If you’re in a band hoping to make it big, learn how to shut up, set up your gear quickly, and just play your set. Promoters and crews will appreciate that and it’ll go a lot further than demanding 1 hour soundchecks and minimum stage sizes that you’re not going to get anyway. I could write an entire book on the small stages and non-soundchecks The Elms have had to endure.

For bigger shows, there are usually 4 consoles on site. Most churches run monitors from the sound booth, but at these type of shows, each input on stage gets split to 2 consoles: the front of house (FOH) and the monitor board. In this case, the additional 2 boards were for Frampton. He’s the headline and he brings his own that no one else gets to use.

A lot of bars and clubs, however, will still use 1 console for both the house and monitors, and I got very accustomed to running monitors for the guys from the same console at which I’m mixing the house. You’d think it would be great to have a separate board and engineer doing monitors, but it can slow things down when there’s little time for a line check, let alone a full blown soundcheck! The tug of war between the house engineer and the monitor engineer can get frustrating.

In this case, I talked the monitor engineer, Rik, into letting me do monitors. WITHOUT A SOUNDCHECK, I had to set up 4 aux sends from the FOH to the stage: mix 1 was a wedge on SR for Nate. Mix 2 was wireless in-ears for Owen (lead singer). Mix 3 was a wedge on SL for Thom. Mix 4 was hard-wired ears for Chris at the drums. I had everything wired up quickly and set levels on the fly during the line check (just 2 seconds for each input to make sure it’s working- like a very abbreviated soundcheck).

The console was a Yamaha PM4000, or “a 4k” in roadie-language. This console has been around for ages, and it was the most popular before digital consoles became more popular. This 40-input console has 8 aux sends (mono) and 2 sets of stereo aux sends. My aux sends were feeding (in order): TC Electronic D-Two delay unit, set at 175ms delay with a 15% feedback that I only used on the lead vocal for a Lennon-type slapback sound; Yamaha SPX900 that was already being used as a reverb, that I adjusted to make the decay 1.8 seconds; monitor mix 1; monitor mix 2; monitor mix 3; monitor mix 4; blank; subs send (the subs were fed by this aux send so that only inputs needed to have extra low end could be sent there).

The house speakers were 7 of the the EAW line array: KF760 (or maybe the smaller 730′s- I didn’t look that close) per side. The subs were the SB1000‘s and there were 6 per side. The amps were a mixture of Crest and Crown (pictured). Since I was mixing the opening band, and I only had a few precious moments, I didn’t spend much time evaluating the house system. Having done 30 shows with Frampton in the past, I knew what to expect since his FOH engineer, Vinny, set it all up anyway.

My biggest frustration with the evening was that I had to mix from under a tent, and the back of it too! It was like cutting the bottom out of a styrofoam cup, placing it over your ear, then trying to mix. I kept having to walk out to the front of the tent and hang out of it to hear. That and the fact that the local tech had been instructed to keep the opening bands quieter, it was very difficult to hear. Luckily, we were ‘with Frampton’ and Vinny stopped up during the 2nd song. He asked me what was wrong, and I looked perplexed. He told me I had more ‘gas’, but my board meters were pegged (literally weren’t moving during a song I had it running so hot). The opening bands’ board was being routed through Vinny’s, so he walked over and turned my mix up 200% in volume! Suddenly I could hear, and the crowd got into it.

What I want to make sure comes across in this post, is that opening bands need to learn how to become very time efficient, take up very little space, and deal with bad monitors. What I want you, the church sound guy, to learn from this, is that sometimes you just have to make things happen. You should know your gear, know your system, and be ready to make major changes at a moment’s notice. It comes with practice and dedication though, but the satisfaction of pulling off some borderline miracles is well worth it!