Legendary Australian rock group Hoodoo Gurus have been touring Australia through September in celebration of their 40th Anniversary since their first live show in 1981.
Sound engineer Marshall Cullen has worked with the band since 2007 on the road but he worked with them in the studio way back in the 80s and 90s on various demos, preproduction and albums.
“So I have known them and their sound a long time,” he said. “They are still using my studio – Damien Gerards – to this day and some of the tracks for the new record were cut there.
“Their sound is the 60s so there’s not a lot of subs. Rather they look back to seminal USA punk acts like The Sonics who were punk before it had a name, even the Stones sound in the 60s/70s would be a good reference. They can get lumped in with Oz rock bands because of the hits but that’s not the case sonically/live – it’s a pretty heavy guitar and vocal mix rather than it being very wet with huge bombastic 80s drums.”
JPJ Audio are supplying audio on this run as well as riggers. Obviously in many of the venues line array stacks and racks are already in and up in the air so Marshall just brings in all the control elements and the monitor system.
So with that being the case, they had L-Acoustic – his favourite – K2 boxes at the Hordern, d&b J-Series at Riverstage, L-Acoustics vDosc in Adelaide and d&b KSL at the Bowl.
“You need to be aware of the nuances of each FOH system and room then tune and time accordingly,” added Marshall. “My system tech Luis Hird is a genius with all of that and it’s been brilliant every show with plenty of good reports.”
Marshall runs the show on an Avid S6L saying he has tried many of the new digital consoles and this one always wins for him.
“I like the ergonomic layout and touch-screen plus you can still use a mouse, snapshots, not having to punch through pages to get to what you need,” he said. “Also, ease of digital patching, you can easily get to the matrixes (and there are lots of them) plus the onboard dynamics sound amazing without plugins as do the preamps. Avid boards have never broken on me, although I know that’s not always the case so I have been lucky. So far Digico, Midas and Allen & Heath boards have all failed in some way on a show for me. Yamaha is the only other one I can think of that hasn’t. Plus I use Pro Tools in the studio so the architecture makes sense to me too.
“I did recently use a new Midas HD96 up in Cairns on our warmups and was impressed but it still didn’t have the same level of outputs and flexibility.”
When mixing The Hoodoo Gurus, Marshall ensures that the in-fills run vocals only as the backline level from the stage is too much otherwise and the punters down on the barrier that can look right at Dave singing complain if they can only hear his guitar.
“Then the mix itself has tonnes of riding faders and quite a few pan and fx cues, commented Marshall. “The band and songs are so diverse and dynamic sonically, when you get into the detail of it there’s a lot to do. Every song is different and to mix it well you can’t just be hands-off.”
For microphones, it’s a pretty basic rock’n’roll drum mic up with Shure SM91A kick in, Beta 52 kick out, two 57s for snare and the clip-on Sennheisers e904 on toms. Marshall loves the Neumann 184s for hats and ride and AKG 414s on overheads.
“Then, because of the onstage volume, even though I have tried many ribbons and condensers on guitars over the years, I am now firmly back to good old SM57s. For the same reason, Beta 58As are across all the vocals. We are using Rick’s trusty Sansamp for a bass di but with it bypassed, it still adds something even in that mode and I go between an M88, MD421 or RE20 on bass mic depending on the run or the rig, it’s not that critical. In Spain 2019 for small club shows there was nothing left except a beaten-up old SM58 and that worked too as it’s not a low-end capture on the mic, it’s all about mids on that line.”
The other interesting addition on this run is Marshall has added a left-centre-right large diaphragm condenser array at FOH to capture the room sound at the console. It’s three Neumann TLM170s pre-amped via the S6L and then sent at line level back to Davros on monitors along with Marshall’s desk mix lines.
“In these days of 5.1 and even more sources for atmos mixing, having these extra captures are great if they need to make a live album or video, remarked Marshall. “I also found it a good ‘room’ reference as I could solo on my cans, just another perspective on what the room was responding to in the mix.”
Mixing monitors is Davros (Nick Cave, Joe Satriani, Paul Kelly) with a Yamaha CL5 so they can easily record multitrack every show. In Tasmania, it was a Digico SD5. Davros can cope with anything really and they have show files for everything from M7s up.
“I remember a corporate gig in Hong Kong where he couldn’t come and it was an LS9,” reminisced Marshall. “He said “just plug in my file, unmute the sends, and don’t touch anything”. I did, and he was right!! I walked back out front and the monitors ran by themselves all night!!”
Dave has been on IEMs since the early 2000s, currently Sennheiser G3 system with the EMA (Aussie-made) dual driver custom mould IEMs, but still has active wedges – usually M4s – as well. Rick and Brad have a pair of M4 boxes each. The band is transitioning a new drummer, Nik Rieth, to IEMs (Shure e535) and a thumper (Porter Davies) in preparation for Brazil, the USA and Europe 2023 but still run wedges and a small sub for backup.
“Plus the other guys have to get used to fewer drums coming from behind the kit so that’s ongoing,” added Marshall. “We only use sidefill on large outdoor stages so there was a little of it at Riverstage on this tour but it’s not essential. Davros probably ran sidefills at Bluesfest as well.”
In line check Marshall found way more low sub coming off stage than at any other shows, tracking it down to a combination of the bottom head on the floor tom and side fill sub on stage right which Rick’s been needing on this run. Once sorted sound check ran smoothly for the band. Then on the show itself, there was, as always, a massive difference between sound check FOH and show FOH once the punters filled the space. Marshall had to make some simple EQ changes but nothing too radical. He was concerned about the 100 dBA limit but again the absorption from the crowd turned the tide there too and they sat close enough all night.
“The Frontier team with Shannon Vanderwort event managing and legend Dougal McAndrew stage managing meant everything on every show has run to the minute time-wise along with all the other endless details,” said Marshall. “It’s a very happy cohesive bunch of crew, drivers and bands working together as a team. It’s been a pleasure.”
