For the third year in a row, Lime Cordiale have toured Europe aiming to grow the band overseas to the level that it’s at in Australia. Back home, the band sells thousands of tickets to their shows. ALIA caught up with them in Norwich, UK, where the venue capacity was 700.
For Production Manager and FOH Engineer Billy Psarologos, the aim is to constantly push the tech in an environmentally conscious manner, so their equipment is all small format.
“It’s all about trying to have the highest production value in the least amount of cases,” he said. “We have to make sure all our equipment is reliable and consistent. The show is quite theatrical and scripted so we try come up with ways of implementing tech that makes it easy to produce the same show night after night and build that consistency so that the band can focus on nailing the performance”.
The crew was handed a late curveball, changing two band members a week and a half before the tour which caused a certain amount of pressure as three days of production rehearsals in London turned into three days of the new guys learning for the new members.
The skeleton crew also includes Jackson McIvor who is the playback, guitar and drum tech. The entire band are hands-on with helping to get the show built.
“They’re not afraid of setting up and helping us patch in all the gear every day,” added Billy. “Without their help, it would take us four hours instead of an hour to get the show up and running. Often all the in-house venue guys are amazed by how hands-on the talent is. It’s a one team, one dream culture.”
They tour their own audio and lighting consoles. Billy flies his own Waves LV1 console which fits in two Pelican cases.
“It’s a bit fragile but we look after it very carefully,” he said. “Our gear bounces around in the trailer, so we’re constantly maintaining it and trying to make it as robust as possible, but the bumpy roads in the UK can be hell for equipment.”
Billy comments that the Waves LV1 has a lot of effects and this band has a lot of phasers, flangers and vocal effects, the LV1 is suitable because it’s so compact and he can do multiple things at the same time on one screen. He’s also running some UAD, Soundtoys and ValhallaDSP VST plugins via Superrack Performer for all the time-based effects.
As well as handling FOH, Billy is also doing the band’s In-Ear Monitor mixes from FOH.
“It’s really easy to do all that and program different scenes or snapshots for every song,” he remarked. “We do a few days of rehearsal and you dial in their in-ears and then they’re happy for the whole tour. We do some minor tweaks as we go, but apart from that, every show is pretty much the same.”
When the band returns to Australia this month to play in large auditoriums, the set-up will remain – monitors from the front, just one audio operator.
“We should technically have two operators for a band playing this size stuff in Australia, but the band has just got comfortable without sounds coming out of this console and the workflow is so streamlined, it doesn’t affect me covering both roles. I’d rather the shows be consistent and the band be comfortable. Sure, we could spec another console for monitors but that’s more cases and more cabling and we’re just really focused on keeping things as light as possible in this phase of touring we’re going through right now.”
Sennheiser G3 IEMs are used with all the boys using Jerry Harvey Audio JH16V2 custom moulded IEMs.
It’s mostly Earthworks microphones on the drums with Billy saying the company has been awesome. If something breaks, they send a replacement immediately.
“Their support’s been really good, they are so fast to replace anything that breaks down on the road, doesn’t matter which country you’re in” he added. “They just sound fantastic coming off stage. The only live microphones are on the drums and the vocals, everything else, like guitars, are all direct in. When you’ve only got a dozen mics on stage you want them to be twelve very nice mics.”
Wearing several hats, Jackson is kept busy building the tech world playback, as all the guitars, all the playback channels, everything runs from there. All the audio racks and IEM systems live with him as well, as they don’t have a monitor engineer they need someone to keep an eye on them during the show, even though it’s operated from the front of house.
While he is setting up all the racks, the keyboardist sets up his own keyboard, the drummer sets up his own drums and the other guitar player is putting microphones on the drums. In Australia, they’ll get a drum tech to assist as well.
Some of the venue PAs on this run have been somewhat hit-and-miss and the guys comment that they find that all the production in the UK is two tiers lower than what you get in Europe.
“In Europe, they tune and align them with a lot more care, they look after them better” said Billy. “The UK has a lot of L-Acoustics gear but old, run-down stuff that power off incorrect amplifiers and cheap processors. You turn it on and you’re like this doesn’t sound like an L-Acoustics PA! But that’s half the fun, you have to make it work!”
For the first time overseas, a lighting guy – Dion Prasad – joined them. Straight after the European tour, they’re doing their Australian run and they wanted him to learn every little bit of the show beforehand. It would be difficult for him to just come in and do the arena shows in Australia without having experienced all the intricacies of the show. Dion toured a handful of Astera Titan Tubes on the run to elevate and make the lighting more consistent across the tour in some of the smaller spaces.
The tour was a great success with the shows selling a lot better than they were twelve months ago. Some artists are lucky enough that they can have a viral hit that establishes their career, but Lime Cordiale’s concept is to play as many shows as possible to as many different people who have never seen the band before.
“It’s about building an audience who will come back every time you hit their city” added Billy. “We do it the old-fashioned way – tour, tour and tour again. That’s the ethos of this band and it’s easy to forget they’ve been touring for fifteen years. They know that the only way that you can grow true fans is by getting in front of people every year and presenting them with a fresh and engaging show. We try to add a new production element every tour that separates this tour from the last, this time it’s all about the look Dion is creating with Titan tubes.”
Tour Sustainability
We spoke with Lime Cordiale’s Oli Leimbach about the band’s recent efforts to make their touring sustainable. Flying all over the world and taking a tour bus across vast continents means the band makes a larger carbon footprint than they’d like and Oli admit that they feel like “hypocrites” because they call themselves “environmentalists”.
“We know that to stop touring would be the better choice for the planet but you can’t do that for every single person in every career,” said. “You can’t just stop doing what you’re doing, people need to adapt. People still want to go on holidays, people still want to have jobs and we still want to be a touring band. So, can you adapt, can you change things to keep doing what you do more sustainably?”
The band and crew were touring Europe on a bio-diesel tour bus and were trying to initiate a green rider at the various venues. Whilst no plastic and locally sourced vegetarian food was usually provided, Oli was struggling to get venues to recognise the full green rider.
“We’re struggling to get feedback from venues about whether they would consider switching to renewable energy and what’s their recycling plan, food wastage and all of this sort of thing,” Oli commented. “I’m exploring offsetting and it’s a controversial topic because you shouldn’t really burn fossil fuels and then pay a certain amount of money to offset it.”
Oli remarks that Europe is ahead of the game compared to Australia although he adds that the ICC in Sydney is doing some great stuff. The venue they played in Lucerne, Switzerland, was running 100% renewable with solar all over its roof.
The band are currently working on a documentary entitled Lime Cordiale: On The Road To A Better Tour.
Playing their biggest rooms to date, Lime Cordiale’s Enough Of The Sweet Talk Tour kicked off at Perth’s HBF Stadium on Thursday 3 October before heading through arenas in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, wrapping up at Brisbane’s iconic Riverstage on Sunday 13 October. The band then heads over to New Zealand for shows in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland in late October.
