Featuring founding members guitarist Ed Kuepper and drummer Ivor Hay alongside honorary Saints; singer Mark Arm of Mudhoney, bassist Peter Oxley of Sunnyboys fame and former The Birthday Party / Bad Seeds guitarist Mick Harvey, The Saints ’73-’78 recreated the sounds of The Saints hugely influential first three albums (I’m) Stranded (1977), Eternally Yours (1978) and Prehistoric Sounds (1978).
After four days of rehearsals, they went straight into the first show at Adelaide’s Hindley Street Music Hall before touring the country for a mostly sold-out run of shows.
Mixing the show was Derek Bovill, touring gear from his own Brisbane-based company, Production Dungeon. Derek has been mixing Ed Kuepper for over 20 years: different bands and solo and joint projects. He has also worked extensively with the Sunnyboys, making him the ideal fit for the job.
Having worked with the artists so much in the past, the band trust him to simply make it happen.
“Their manager is very hands-on with how the show sounds and looks,” said Derek. “If anything doesn’t sound right to his ear, he’ll tell me about it, but he hasn’t had to say anything so far.”
Having his own production company, Derek brought his own FOH console and a complete mic kit and backline to keep many variables consistent throughout the tour.
“I would rather just have to set up the console once, which we did at the rehearsals, so when we get to the gig, it’s 90% dialled in already,” he said. “Then I go to the next gig, turn the console on, tune the PA, line check and you’re ready for the band to sound check.”
Derek toured an Avid SC48 with a remote stage rack, which is on the elderly side as far as consoles go, seeing as they don’t have a very long life cycle these days.
“Of course, now everybody wants the Allen&Heath D-Lives and the AVID S6Ls, although not many venues take up on the S6L as it’s quite expensive,” noted Derek. “D-Live is half the price, and there’s a D-Live here at the Enmore Theatre. I have a 3-way split running all stage inputs to monitors and both FOH consoles. If something fails during the show, I switch to the D-Live, where I already have a basic mix dialled in, and the show continues. I’m also multi-track recording all the shows for potential later re-mixing and release.”
Derek had Waves plugins running and has maxed the console out, saying he couldn’t add any more plugins because it’s full, but it’s enough for what he does.
With space in the van tight, Derek had no outboard gear. Onboard, he used quite a lot of compression and EQ to get Mark’s vocals sitting right in the mix. He adds that sometimes this can take some work, depending on the venue, PA and other variables.
“There are a couple of guitarists blasting away either side of him, plus a drum kit and vintage SVT bass rig behind, and the onstage level is fairly high, so there is quite a lot of EQ going on at soundcheck and show, both FOH and monitors” added Derek. “As you know, between sound check and show time, with the audience coming in, temperature and humidity changes, the frequencies going to go off will change, or the crowd could absorb them. So, it’s mainly compression to tame what’s going on around Mark and lift his vocals.”
All vocal mics were Shure SM58, SM57 and Sennheiser e906 on guitars, Beyer Dynamic M88 on bass, beta 91a and beta 52 on kick, Shure SM57 and Sennheiser e604 on snare, Rode NT5 on hats and an M69 on sax.
Steve Palmer was mixing monitors on the tour except WA where the house tech was used. House monitor consoles were used with a mix of Avid Profile, DiGiCo 225, A&H D-Live & Yamaha PM5D.
On stage were twelve wedges plus a pair of subs for the drummer. Also, there was an IEM send for the stage tech and listen wedge for the monitor engineer.
A pair of Turbosound TFM-450 wedges were toured for when the venue did not have enough monitors in house. Steve found during A/B testing early in the tour that in all cases, the TFM-450s outperformed the likes of d&b M4s, Nexo P15s and L’Acoustics 115XT, so the TFMs became the ‘monitor of choice’ on all shows.
