Cam Trewin has mixed FOH for RÜFÜS DU SOL for close to eight years. In March 2020, he was mid-tour with them in Texas when he was sent back home with a full remaining years’ worth of US and European touring abandoned.
The past eighteen months have seen Cam do a combination of studio and live stream/broadcast work and he also mixed an album in the new Dolby Spatial audio format for Apple Music.
RÜFÜS DU SOL started to re-book shows at the start of 2021 in confidence that the US market would be open for festivals and touring by mid-year. With the current state of play in Australia and the prospect of six months of paid work in the US, Cam decided to relocate for the interim.
“The decision was incredibly difficult,” said Cam, who has a young family here in Australia. “Like many, being so hard hit financially along with the ongoing uncertainty of how the Australian live scene was being impacted, it solidified my decision to make the move across.”
On arranging to get to and into the US, Cam says they were incredibly fortunate to have the amazing team at Sounds Australia help advocate on their behalf and acquire his travel exemption. Once this was in place, he was able to have access to the vaccination. He already had an active Visa so this was in place and flights at the time of departure were still accessible.
It’s currently festival season in the US so RÜFÜS DU SOL has a lot of upcoming weekend shows like Austin City Limits, Governors Ball in NYC, Outside Lands SF and iii Points in Miami.
“Our first point of call was two nights at the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver CO,” added Cam. “We had nearly four weeks of rehearsals, two of which were in LA with the band only, then we transitioned the show into an Arena in Denver before our shows. The rest of the year we have our headline tour which is a combination of Stadiums and Amphitheatres in the south and west coasts of America.”
Cam says that Covid-19 safety practises can vary from state to state. California has a mask mandate, so this is heavily enforced whereas some other states are a lot laxer about their procedures. The production and management team for the band however have implemented Covid-19 safe practices within the touring party.
“We have a FOH bubble where we travel separate to the stage crew, as we are technically considered more compromised,” explained Cam. “We also have rapid testing in place along with a fully redundant crew who shadowed us on the first shows and can be called upon in the case of somebody contracting the virus.”
RÜFÜS DU SOL is a great example of an electronic act that is a balance of both live music and playback. It’s treated much the same as any other live band, they play a majority of the instrumentation live. It’s a very sonically dense and dynamic mix of sounds throughout the show.
“We have been using d&b GSL for our shows,” said Cam. “This changes from show to show and is completely scalable. It’s a mix of main hangs which can vary anywhere from 18-22 deep along with flown SL subs and SL subs on the ground. As for side and delay hangs this might vary from either GSL or J-Series boxes depending on what is available.”
FOH Cam has been using the AVID S6L since its introduction back in 2016. The show is very heavily programmed from his perspective and is all to timecode.
“The S6L gives me the ability to go quite deep in snapshot recall ability along with specific event cues,” he added. “To that I do all of the band live content recording and archiving, so being in the AVID landscape keeps the integration into Pro Tools very easy.
“The lead singer has a lot of very delicate nuances in his voice, so I get the instrumentation of the mix to be quite balanced so I can spend my time with my hands on the faders for his voice and effects returns.”
The lead vocal is a Shure AXD wireless with a KSM 9 HS capsule. Drums use a combination of Earthworks, Audio Technica, Audix and Shure.
Eighth Day Sound is the tour provider.
“My biggest challenge is as mentioned, the lead singer has a very quiet and delicate voice and is very suspectable to bleed into his microphone, so it’s a balance of ensuring our stage sound is managed well,” commented Cam. “We like touring with the d&b GSL box for this reason as the cardioid rejection helps keep the stage level down.”
James Gueness is the band’s monitor engineer who has been with them for nearly six years himself. He uses the SSL live console along with SSL, Neve and Empirical Labs outboard gear. It’s all IEMs with Shure PSM 1000s with JH in ears.
Cam should be back with his family for Christmas – the flight is booked and he should be clear of quarantine just in time…. fingers crossed!
