Esther Hannaford, star of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, has been touring the country with an all-star band to celebrate 50 years of Carole King’s landmark album, Tapestry.
FOH engineer James ‘Oysters’ Kilpatrick had worked with musical director Mark Wilson on previous acts such as Jet and he was thrilled to be back out on the road after many lean months.
“Esther comes from a musical theatre background, so a monitor rig, line array PA and a band being right on your back instead of being in a pit or hidden in a corner is a bit of a transition,” he commented. “Usually there’d be a mic in her hair/wig or a headset, so finding what worked the best audio-wise and make Esther comfortable took a little work as you would expect. However, as the band were quiet with most amp sounds through the monitors via simulators it wasn’t hard work figuring out how far forward to stand and how much PA she would hear. Luke Stabb and David Darlington did a great job interpreting that and got it bang on throughout the tour.”
Oysters toured all control monitors and mics and used house speakers everywhere. It’s a quiet show and album with the audience being 35 – 80 years old so it was a matter of getting it evenly quiet across the whole audience, hence house PA’s played a part but Oysters would usually be turning them down or the subs off.
“The biggest issues would be hearing loss in older people so making sure a clear vocal and melody across the audience is what was needed from a PA on this run,” added Oysters. “Also, I’d remove speakers like subs that when they were near grandma’s head … never a good look, but especially on this run.”
Oysters ran a DiGiCo SD9 due to size in venues and truck space with an Extreme Waves server to replicate a 1970s API console and vintage compressors on each channel. Left and Right had a vintage summing bus and a Waves classic 31 band system EQ and he used the RTA function on it as well.
“I used Waves C6 compressors to keep intelligibility at low levels and cut back the horn band when getting louder,” he said. “Tapestry had very understated effects so I used a single simple plate (H reverb) for when that was required. Occasionally if Esther was way forward in a challenging room I’d notch a few frequencies out with Waves X-feedback but minimal.
“I just tried to be true to the record as it’s indented into my brain from my mother singing it cleaning the house on a Sunday (I did do the dishes sometimes btw) It is not only one of my favourite recordings of all time, the band also played it very skilfully and faithfully. Nothing I did was automated or modern apart from the gear of course … all fat fingers.”
This is a tour that Oysters clearly enjoyed saying Esther, Clio and Oliva had great voices to work with and sounded fantastic together. Mark, Peter, Louis, Clio and Olivia’s playing was always controlled and in the pocket.
“Boomers are a big audience Australia-wide but easily frightened by audio/bright lights (don’t feed them after midnight though!) and happy punters mean work for us all,” he concluded.
MONITORS
Monitor engineer David Darlington mixed on a DiGiCo SD12 with the set up consisting of SD12 mixing for 12 x d&b M4 wedges powered from eight channels of D12 amplifiers.
“We didn’t use IEMs due to the nature of the music and the disconnect band members get when on ears,” he added. “It’s a pretty small set-up with only 34 channels of audio over eight mixes. There weren’t any challenges with this show, I suppose if I had to find one it would be the joining of Esther and the band. Esther’s background is in theatre, where audio monitoring is very different and foldback wise you have a basic orchestral mix at a very low level on stage with no vocal foldback at all. However, in the rock and roll environment levels of vocals and onstage level is much greater to complete with the natural acoustics of the instruments.”
Fortunately, David originates from a theatre background having mixed shows such as Phantom of the Opera and Les Mis in the UK so having this experience was a helping hand in integrating Esther into the rock and roll world.
“From the start, she had very little in her wedges except for the piano at a very low level and was very dependant on hearing the FOH sound as per theatre world,” he said. “However, as we progressed through the tour, her mix became a different thing entirely with high levels of band and vocals throughout …. she became a rock and roll star.
David says that he’s worked for numerous big names in the industry including The Libertines, Toto, Stereophonics and Liam Gallagher to name a few however this has got to have been one of his most enjoyable shows to mix.
LIGHTING
Lighting designer Steve ‘Flea’ Molloy says there was no brief as such from the artist although he had a lot of talks with Mark Wilson (Bass and MD) regarding the lighting of the show.
“My thoughts after revisiting the album was that it is more about the music and the artist than some major light show,” he remarked. “The overall design I was trying to achieve was a simple bunch of looks that would complement the music without being too busy or so visually overwhelming, it took away from the performance of the band. The music told the story that they were trying to get across and I found that that less would be more for this particular tour.”
There were a few challenges along the way for Flea but nothing that got in the way of getting the job done. The main challenge was that as this was a theatre run, the stage sizes were ever-changing and in turn lamps needed to be moved around to fit in some venues. The backdrops were designed for large to medium stages so sometimes trying to get the gaps between was not always perfect.
“On a side note, one big challenge was getting Oysters to deliver Gin & Tonics to the truck on loadout in time,” added Flea.
The lighting rig consisted of 12 x Martin MAC 700 Profiles, 12 x Wash beams similar to a MAC Aura, four Mole Richardson 5K lamps with a 2K lamp and six Lekos. They also integrated house lighting where possible and hung five white silks across the back.
Most of the lights were supplied by Johnston Audio Services except for the Mole Richardsons that were sub hired through Phaseshift Productions.
The rig was designed as a floor package that kept the fixtures hidden from the audience and out of the way of the performers and stage/monitor crew. Six of the MAC700s were placed on top of cases between the rear whites to make them disappear as much as possible and at the base of each white was a wash/beam lamp to uplight the silk. The other six MAC700s were placed on the floor at the rear (three per side) of the outer risers and three wash/beam lamps on either side front/mid-stage to light the band. The four Mole Richardson fixtures were placed further back in between the silk to hide them as they were only used a couple of times throughout the show.
When it came to programming this show, Flea listened to the album over and over again concluding that there is so much to light but at the same time so little. He ran the show on an Avolites Quartz with a wing.
“There are so many little bits inside the music – a little bass bit there, a little guitar bit here and a few other bits everywhere else – I found it easier not to get too over-complicated with it all,” he said. “I had a lot of time at home to just sit, listen and program song by song. I was lucky enough that all my ideas were taken on board by everyone so the execution of the show was very easy for me.”
“To sum up the whole experience I have to say it was great to be back on the road after the year we didn’t have and I was blessed to work with such an awesome crew. Our sound god James ‘Oysters’ Kilpatrick, monitors David Darlington, stage tech Luke Stabb, truck driver and all-round great guy Seb Brown and our tour manager/glue master Scott Westerweller.
“I would also like to thank Phaseshift for their truck and driver, also Live Nation and the band members for entrusting me with lighting this show and also all the in-house crew along the tour.”
Photos: Eric ‘Chowie’ Chow
