Home at last! No wait… It’s only been 8 days. Home too soon?

7/18-7/19:
One of the most hyped up and talked about shows of the year. Ok, maybe not, but it’s still a big show! 2 nights at Rams Head Live in good ol’ Baltimore. All Time Low is the first band to ever sell this venue out 2 nights in a row. 1825 tickets sold for Friday and Saturday night. Holy crap! These were going to be some big shows! Thanks to the awesomeness of selling out 2 nights in a row, everyone at Rams Head Live gave us the super A+ treatment. I’ve never seen the staff at this place in such a good mood! Even with the task of loading in a 20’ trailer packed to the roof and a box truck, everyone was in good moods.

Anyway, since this was such a big event for the band, and us I decided to make it the best show of the tour. I hired in a ton of extra production for this show. Yup, nothing like a 14’ box truck loaded up with extra sound stuff just for ATL. Speakers, consoles, amplifiers, mics, and more! Oh goody!

Caution: Sound nerd stuff, EXTENDED VERSION!
Normally Rams Head Live is a terrible sounding venue. There are 2 main reasons that cause this. The first, and the biggest reason is the house PA. Someone really screwed up with this. It seems like the people installing the sound system said to each other “Lets take all the most expensive gear we can find and put it into this venue, even if it’s entirely wrong for this place.” That basically boiled down to 6 JBL Vertec 4888’s and 2 JBL VT4880’s flown per side in this club. Somewhere along the way, they also decided it was a good idea to put some EAW SB1000z’s on the floor.

Now, this venue is not very deep, and is pretty wide. It also has 3 balconies. So basically, you end up with a PA that doesnt cover the first 10 feet of the audience, and in order to get it loud enough on the floor, you have to kill the people upstairs. It’s not uncommon at all to see SPL levels around 120dB upstairs, while only being around 106dB downstairs. Their solution to the crap install is to supply 2 JBL VP series front fills to cover the front bit of the crowd. Sadly, they are run in full clip/limit all night just trying to do their job. But, thats only issue one.

The second issue with this place is the lack of any low end. 4 EAW SB1000z’s and 4 JBL VT4880’s supply bass. The SB1000’s are on the floor, on an aux. 2 of the subs fire into the crowd, and 2 of the subs fire into a wall 10′ away. Not what I’d call ideal at all. They destroy subs weekly at this place trying to get enough bass.

This room also has some very weird summing issues with the PA. The VT4888’s seem to sum right down the middle of the room and create a massive pit of 630hz. Feedback comes quick if you don’t EQ it out in advance. The room is also very bright sounding. Concrete walls, floors and metal everywhere doesn’t help either.

So, I had a pretty fun task ahead. My goal was to use the least amount of the house rig as possible to make ATL’s set sound better then this place has ever seen before. So, with the help of Jim Bowersox, we brought in 12 Turbosound 21″ subs to cover the bass, and 4 Turbosound flashlights for “front fills.” I also had 3 Community RSJR’s as lip fills across the front. Finally, I brought in my own console for FOH, as I hate mixing on Midas Legends. We fed the house vertecs with a Matrix out on the Yamaha M7CL and only really used them to cover upstairs.

The end result, was a much better sounding, bass heavy sound system that was ready to rock. And rock is exactly was it did. During sound check, it was around 107dBA on the floor, and a comfortable 103-105dBA upstairs. Though, I did have to EQ out the usual 630hz death trap in that room, and the 6-8k harshness of the JBL’s…

/Sound Nerd stuff..

Once 1825 kids piled into the room, I realized it was going to be an amazing show!

Night one offered a few minor issues. I expected some problems, as they can be quite common. The first one was that mixing monitors from Front of House was not as ideal as we thought it would be. The second issue is that some band members in certain bands are basically deaf, and require monitor mixes beyond any reasonable level… The result of that was a blown horn in one of the wedges… After talking to everyone, it was decided that the openers would be left to RHL’s house staff, and we would only worry about ATL. Night 2 went much smoother. Well, at least in terms of getting the bands up and running. Since the openers were only using the house system, it was quite harsh! I forgot how bad it sounded…

But, All Time Low’s set ran very smoothly both nights. Everything sounded very good, and I had plenty of PA. For the first time in a long time, there was more sub then I needed.

ATL played a few older songs both nights, since it was their hometown. Circles and The Party Scene was crowd favorites both nights.

In the end, I couldnt have asked for much more. I was very happy with both nights, and the crowds were just amazing.

The RHL Crew. From left to right: Tom Manchester - Matt Moser - Jim Bowersox - ME - Roxanne

A BIG thanks to the amazing TOM MANCHESTER for driving down from DE to help out, and Moser and Brianna for helping with stage changes and load in.

7/20- The National, Richmond VA

This was my last stop with the boys for this tour. And, I picked a good day to call my last. I had a very nice theatre, and a very nice L’Acoustic V-dosc rig to work with. Sound check went very well. I only had 2 complaints- Going from 12 21’s to 8 18’s is not fun. I had “enough” sub for this gig, but man, I missed all the extra PA. The V-Dosc’s were also almost too “dull” sounding to me. This was a very reverberant room, and the extra HF could have helped a bit. But, I still managed to pull of a very good sounding mix.

This was a smaller show, crowd wise. As of the show day, there were only 374 presales. Luckily, the total crowd topped out around 800 kids for the night. Since it was a smaller crowd, I took it easy on them all and mixed around 101dBA most of the night. I had a very solid, lower SPL mix going. There were many compliments on how everything sounded.

No pictures from this show yet. Coming soon!

I cant believe this tour is already over. Just as soon as it began, it’s already over. Oh well, thats the way it goes. Look for BIG things in the fall!

Back to the world of Rock and Roll…