So, it turns out Charles Dickens had children. They, too, had children, who in turn had children, and then there were a few more children. One of that last batch is Gerald Charles Dickens. He is a very affable man and very effective actor. We were fortunate enough to provide sound and lights for two of his performances of A Christmas Carol at the Yankee Candle flagship store. It was the first time Mr. Dickens had performed at Yankee Candle, which, as he put it, is something of “a cathedral to Christmas”. If you get a chance to see Gerald Charles Dickens perform his kin’s classic, I highly recommend it.

A week prior we worked with the Von Trapps for their annual show. As usual, they were top notch, and the folks at Yankee Candle were supremely hospitable.

Happily, it’s been a busy Summer. I’m going to go ahead and arbitrarily mark the Diamond Collection show at The Majestic Theater as the beginning of Summer, and the Stone Soul Festival at Blunt Park as the end, though one could make a strong argument for St. John’s Picnic in the Parking Lot being the final event of the season. Fortunately, there is virtually no importance to these distinctions (a characteristic shared by many distinctions).

Rather than go on and on about shows to which I’ve mostly forgotten the details, I’ll simply post photos with captions. The caveat here is that for the vast majority of shows I neglected to bring the camera, per usual, so they are not represented. Some especially notable performances without photographic evidence are those by songwriter Kenn Morr, the guys in Johnny Six-Gun, and the ever-evolving Gut.

In the words of Keats: Goodbye tents and barbecue’s, hello bars and obstructive pool tables.

Red Zone at an employee appreciation day in CT. They rocked, as did their opener, John Street. Ironically, we had some trouble getting adequate power at first. Why is that ironic? We were in the parking lot of an electrical supply company.

Navegantes in Danbury. It rained, so we had to move inside. Beautiful Portuguese Club with a soccer field...go figure. Viva Sporting! (not sure if that's spelled correctly) ((never sure things are spelled correctly)).

The afore mentioned Diamond Collection show at the Majestic Theater. Always one of the year's highlights. You really ought to hear Kenny and the gang do "I Am, I Said."

Yup. A tractor pull. Never done that before. Rather fun, actually.

Ray Guilmette at The Majestic Theater. Great, great show. This was during the "Young Elvis" portion of the show.

A night of Roger Salloom at The Academy of Music. I could very easily listen to Roger sing his songs all evening. Great band, too. Unit 7 opened the show, making Renee especially happy.

Set Up for Banda Navegantes

Show Time

There is a tiny bug living in my DriveRack (circled in red). I do not know its ethnicity.

June 6, Newington, CT - We worked with Navegantes for the first time, providing sound. The band was keen to get Nuge and his lights, too, but he was busy at a wedding…lots of weddings in June and July. Anyways, the weather was perfect for an outdoor show (first outdoor gig of the year, actually). Navegantes plays traditional Portuguese dance music. Tight rhythm from Fernando and Paulo, great leads and vocals. From their very first song I was reminded of the gigs I did with a band called Control (roll the “r”, please) back in my early days of soundguying. In fact, I had worked at the same venue with Control several times and was happy to see all the food again, especially the fried dough (Renee even let me eat some). Not only are they solid musicians, the guys are easy-going and pleasent. I look forward to working with them again in Danbury.

Lights were provided by Andy and Steve from Ace and Son Sound/A+ Audio Visual. It was nice to meet those guys, too. As for the picture with the bug in my DriveRack…well,  a bug (or so I assume, I suppose it could be a very small, as of yet unidentified mammal) found its way in and was crawling around inside the screen. If that little thing causes a short-circuit, I will be abandoning my long-standing live-and-let-live policy.

Tech Notes: Jason, the electrician, hardwired the breakout to the 240V service at the pole; make sure to double check the 30A extension. Drummer uses in-ears. Surprisingly, no feedback problems with the wireless accordion. Forgot all about outdoor gigs and late-light condensation: bring towels. “Forwent” is a legitimate inflection of “forgo”.

~ Arthur

Old Skool

Eugene Pitt & The Jive Five

Classic Sounds

June 5, Chicopee, MA - We provided sound for The New England Doo-Wop Society show at The Night’s Castle in Chicopee, MA. These are among my favorite shows; Bobby and Gary are a hoot. Upon arriving, Ken, the drummer for Old Skool, was already there setting up his gear and lights.I’m used to being the first one to show up at these shows, so I felt as if I were running late. Turns out Ken was merely punctual. In fact, nearly everyone else was late…the backing band for the Jive Five actually missed sound check. It seems there was a broad coincidence of traffic issues on all the major routes to Chicopee. Even the crowd was late, pushing the buffet back a half hour, thus causing me tremendous discomfort.

Eventually sound check was finished, the crowd arrived, the buffet was opened (Italian), and the show started. Rich Stebbens (sorry if that’s spelled incorrectly, Rich) opened the show with a pair or strong performances to tracks. Then Bobby and Gary yucked it up a bit before introducing Old Skool. Admittedly, Old Skool is not a Doo-Wop band, but they did a great job with songs from Roy Orbinson, The Isley Brothers, and the like, and they were darn pleasent folks, too. Then Bobby and Gary yucked it up before introducing Classic Sounds; a stunningly impressive acapella group from greater NYC. They sound like a master accordian, the sort of harmonies that resonate through space. Then Bobby and Gary yucked it up before introducing the intermission. As always, there was an appearence by regional broadcasting giant Fred King. Then Bobby and Gary yucked it up and introduced the legendary Eugene Pitt and The Jive Five. I don’t know when the band actually arrived, the first time I saw any of them was when they started tweeking gear on stage during intermission. (That is not a wholly factual statement. The keyboard player had been around since before sound check. Guitar, bass, and drums were the ones I hadn’t seen until intermission.) Like every NEDWS show, they bring in performers who were at one time the upper echelon of notoriety, and are still exceedingly good at what they do. It always happens that the headliner plays songs that I know, that I’ve heard somewhere along my journey, and I find myself saying “These are the guys that wrote this song!” The Jive Five is no exception. I’m lucky to have these gigs.

Tech Notes: Decided to forgo setting up a delayed speaker in the back of the room as an experiment. I heard no reports of people missing the back speaker setup. Thanks to the late-arriving crowd and bands, I was at the front of the buffet line instead of the back as usual.

~ Arthur

Choir Rehearsal

May 29, Springfield, MA - The Western Mass chapter of the Gospel Music Workshop of America held a conference all weekend at the Alden Baptist Church on State Street. We provided sound on Saturday evening for a showcase featuring choirs from Vermont, Virginia, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The talent was fantastic, but the room was difficult. Being a large church with faux masonry and a high vaulted ceiling (I believe it was a groin vault, for my architectural friends), it sounded like the Cathedral setting on a good reverb unit. Jon Berman would likely enjoy playing his saxophone there.

Thanks to my very thick skull, I always forget how loud gospel performances can get. The church has steep stairs, built to old-time specs, making load in/out a nightmare. Anticipating this, I brought just what was absolutely necessary, gear I could carry up the stairs myself. This meant no redundancy nor handy fix-its. It also meant I was using the small 16 channel analog Yamaha board that fits in a shoulder bag, rather than the LS9 in its case with all the shelves and outboard gear. The point is I keep my earplugs in one of the rack drawers in the case with the LS9. Earplugs are the by far the lightest pieces of equipment I own, yet I neglected to bring them to the show where I was concerned about weight. Like I said, thick skull. Also like I said, gospel shows are loud, and this one was no exception. No ear plugs. Long, long gig. No ear plugs. Headache. Good music, though. Springfield has some bona fide talent.

Tech Notes: Stairs. Very reverberant space, but the HK tops mounted on stands and aimed downwards handled it quite well. The choirs were mostly unintelligible due to the reflections, but the harmonies came through nicely. Code 50. Nice job remembering to bring the camera…now if you’d only remember to take pictures of more than the rehearsal, knucklehead. Turns out the 50′ backup snake is actually 75′. It was nice to see Mark Morris again.

~ Arthur

Friday, May 22 - Middletown, Ct: This morning I got a call from Brian T. of Magnesium Jake fame informing me that their Hungry Tiger gig had been nixed because vocalist Eric had an emergency appendectomy. (Hang in there, E; you didn’t need that thing anyhow.) That left me with nothing to do but mow my lawn… until Rebbecca called.
The phone rang and I answered. For those of you who call me often, you know the answering part of that last statement doesn’t happen very often. Anyways, Rebbecca introduced herself, explained the band’s last minute need, and then told me the name of the band: Frank & Beans… or The Beans, as they declared on stage. I don’t think anyone in the band is named Frank, but that’s not important. They played a fun mix of danceable pop and rock. What struck me most about Frank and The Beans is their backing vocals. Too often, bar bands have one good lead vocalist and then a few guys who shout into mics at key times. F & B (not to be confused with FNB) have two strong lead vocals plus strong backing vox, and they use them to good effect, producing real harmonies.

It’s quite possible that I noticed the vocals so much because they were all I dealt with for most of the night. Outdoors, Harbor Park is very restrictive about volume, so except for solos, the music was pretty much stage volume… not ideal for dance music. I was specifically told not to turn on the drum mics. A few songs absolutely needed some kick, so they got them. But most of the mixing I did was for each of the four monitors. Hopefully I’ll work with The Beans again, this time somewhere we can open it up a bit.

Nuge was out at the Blackboard Cafe with… I don’t know who he and Lorna worked with, but I’m sure the show looked good.

Thanks to Johnny 5 at CT/MA Music for hooking us up with this gig.

Tech Notes: Harbor Park has one of the worst load in/load out scenarios in the area, at least outside. The Staff is friendly and the nachos are good. You have a website now, knucklehead; bring your camera. F & B is a 5-piece with 4 vocals.

Hear the result.

I don’t usually open up the production studio to people off the street, but Jon looked harmless enough. Turns out he’s a darn fine tenor player. It also turns out that he was asked by some folks at Fenway to send in a demo of our national anthem. He played; I pressed Record. We added some reverb and it sounded pretty darn good. We started to tweek it with some eq and compression, but in the end chose to leave it alone. Nicely done,  Jon. Currently, Jon is adding sax to several guitar tracks laid down by Mike Terrega some time ago.

Tech Note: Jon likes the “Cathedral” patch on the RaySpace reverb plugin. Timberlake brought sexy back; Berman will bring Muzak back.

~ Arthur

May 15th, Springfield, MA - Worked again with local giants, FNB, at Club Meadows. Singer/songwriter India opened the show, first strumming her guitar and singing some lovely tunes, then busting out to three heavy R&B inspired tracks. Great voice…will probably be hearing about her again. After India (presumptive spelling, not sure if that’s how she puts the letters together), two gents took to the stage singing to backing tracks. Fool that I am, I did not write down their names, and being a day removed, I’ve forgotten them. One of them may have been Anthony, who had a quality, pop/soul sort of voice and solid intonation. He did an exciting Latin dance song that sounded like it could legitimately be played in any dance club, and he had the moves to go with it. Later he told me that it is in fact getting a good deal of radio play outside the US. I believe it. His partner did a strong job with some Jamaican-style hip hop (powerful voice, I had to greatly reduce the gain on his microphone). Both of them worked some improv with FNB later in the show.

FNB rocked as always. Late crowd as usual; started rolling in around 11:30. They played a mix of older and newer material, as you might expect. Playing only originals, few bands in the area can draw the kind of crowds FNB can; this was the case even before they caught national attention. Ah, fame. The band is so confident these days that they even let Kevin sing a verse during “Enemy”…on stage…during the show, not soundcheck…with a live mic (Kevin implored me to soak him with reverb because he sucks…You didn’t need it Kevin! You sounded good, even without the patois.) It was a good gig.

Tech Notes: India’s guitar pickup hummed something fierce on stage; ended up miking it (the guitar, not the pickup). Club Meadows sucks the power right out of PA systems; I suspect it’s the dog-leg and stepped ceiling. 240V is available. One SR15 monitor did not survive the Back In Black show; didn’t discover it until setting up for FNB (It’s fixed now. Both 12V bulbs blew, sacrificing themselves for the compression driver. R.I.P.) You have a website now; remember to bring a camera to shows, knucklehead. It always seems to take a long, long time to load out at Club Meadows; no reasonable theories as to why.

~ Arthur

Setting Up At Crossroads

May 8th (and fairly well into the 9th) 2009; Palmer, MA: Back In Black at Crossroads! Probably the most popular spot in Palmer. The legendary AC/DC tribute band (lightning bolt forward slashes should be a standard font). We provided lights and sound; Nuge and Lorna handled the lumens, inspiring awe with deep purple lasers as usual. The band brought in their long-time engineer, Big G (Gary Belfor) to run our Mid-Size A system (our biggest mid-sized configuration…6 enclosures…more than 6 and we consider it a large system by our standards…yes, 6 is arbitrary, but elegant, and much appreciated by our polydactyl friends…it is in no way related to standard beverage packaging).

Body Shot opened the show. It was good to see them again; it had been about a year. I was lucky enough to mix these guys, and as if trying to thank me, they started off with Queen! Excellent. Then Gary took over for Back In Black. By the way, Gary’s a quick learner; he found his way around the LS9 lickety-split. That left me with nothing to do but enjoy the show and make sure the system didn’t explode! There was another episode during the night involving Renee and I driving around looking for something to eat in a town where most places close early, even on Fridays in Spring, eventually finding a Wendy’s drive-thru, ordering chicken sandwiches only to find out they were temporarily out of chicken, and getting four straws when we only needed two, and two napkins when we could have used four…but I won’t bring that up.

Tech Notes: Crossroads roads has plenty of electricity and plenty of parking. Beware of softballs. Grill closes early. Back In Black prefers 4 monitor mixes and miking bottom cabs.

~ Arthur

Lorna takes far better pictures than I do. Visit our myspace page to see images of the show itself, rather than the setup of said show.