Missy Higgins kicked off the new year with a hometown performance at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl on Wednesday 27 January 2021. Her concert was part of the Live at the Bowl concert series which saw Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl host a three-month-long festival featuring an all-local program of music, comedy, family-friendly events and more.
Sound Engineer Brent Gray did Missy’s first gig with a band at the Evelyn Hotel in Fitzroy about 17 years ago and has worked with her on and off since then. Initially, Brent says he just did what sounded right to him and Missy’s management liked it and that’s how it has always been.
“Having said that, during the Covid lockdown in an email conversation Missy remarked to me that she still gets the same amount of amazing feedback about my mixing that she ever did, so I think she trusts my judgment and ability,” said Brent. “What I do know is that Missy is keenly aware of her vocal tone, so that’s where I start, and to be honest she actually makes me look good a lot of the time because her voice sounds so beautiful naturally and she has excellent mic technique and control of her tone. I just make her sound like her with a hint of enhancement and then bring everything else up around that in the same light; the band sounds like it does naturally, I simply carve out space for every instrument to exist in its own space where it has its own unique voice and then give it a spit and polish. A good friend and colleague described my sound as a really nice, crisp white wine …. I guess you’d call my approach hi-fidelity in more ways than one. Beyond that, if Missy has particular balance ideas or FX in mind for certain songs she lets me know.”
The L’Acoustics K2 PA was installed by Norwest for the extended run of VIC Government-sponsored shows at SMMB. With a mix of flown and ground subs, front fills, balcony fills and delays…. Brent says it sounded like a K2 PA is meant to sound.
For control, Brent used an Avid S6L and his outboard was an Avalon 737sp (inserted on Missy’s vocal group), two TC Reverb 4000s (AES) and the Empirical Labs Arouser Plugin.
“I’ve used Avid consoles since the Profile came out, the S6L is a big improvement on that, and I’m used to it now which is probably the biggest factor,” he added. “The TC Reverb 4000s sound great and have AES I/O stock that slaves automatically to the console word clock. For years I’ve used Waves plugins pretty heavily but recently I’ve had enough reliability issues with Waves server connectivity to revisit and reflect upon what I use and why. Due to that I ditched the Waves for this show, used a lot of the onboard EQ and dynamics processing and brought back the Avalon for Missy’s vocal (which I’d used a lot in the early days) so I could always see how the compressor was reacting at all times. I also put the Arouser on the Kick, Snare, Bass and Guitar groups as it’s very flexible, is unique in that it has the soft clipper circuit and most importantly it doesn’t require an external server unit to power.
“I pretty much approach every act I mix the same way: Make them sound more like them than they do, just bigger and louder with a lot of depth, width and a bit sheen. My little bit of “Black Magic” is how I use phase and reverb to create space.”
Richie Robinson mixed monitors for this run of shows but usually, it’s Nathan Davis. Like most of Missy’s “usual” band members, Nathan doesn’t live in Victoria and Covid has the goalposts moving almost weekly so the decision was made to go with VIC based band and crew where possible for the current run of shows and Richie had previously filled in for Nathan on the Ed Sheeran tour. Both Richie and Nathan use the Avid S6L and the band uses solely IEMs: Shure PSM 1000s predominantly or Sennheiser 2000s.
The mic setup was Missy Vocal – DPA Defacto 4018, Backing Vocals – Sennheiser e935, Kick – Beyer M88 (out) & Sennheiser e901 (in), Snare – Shure SM57 (top) and Sennheiser e904 (bottom), Toms – Sennheiser e904, HiHats – Sennheiser e914, Overheads – Neumann TLM103, Bass Amp – Shure KSM 32, Guitar Amp – Sennheiser e906 & Shure KSM 32, Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Keys and Track – Radial JDI of some sort.
Brent has done may gigs at the SMMB so he’s pretty comfortable there. He says the roof isn’t amazing at soundcheck and with reduced capacity due to Covid restrictions and the associated infrastructure they’ve built to accommodate that, there’s a lot less dampening occurring via the audience at showtime.
“Before the show, I would’ve said the biggest challenge would be navigating the second gig with a brand new band whilst also navigating a new workflow, but in the end, the band played really well, my workflow was in fact simplified and more immediately available and I just used the additional ambience to my advantage; the latter being a trick I learned back in the Sound of White days,” he added. “The night was great! It’s soooo good to be back doing gigs to actual audiences, even if they are few and far between.”
Lighting designer Kait Hall has been working with Missy for over 14 years so she has a pretty clear understanding about what works for her music. Usually, with each new album release, Kait talks with her management about a broad concept for that album but other than that she gets to design pretty autonomously.
As this show is part of the festival run at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and there’s not a lot of time to reconfigure, the air lighting rig is pretty set from day to day. It was just a matter of tweaking the floor lighting positions, programming to suit the festival rig and adapting her existing video content to suit their screen.
The night before was the Australia Day public holiday so to go in late after the previous show to focus in the dark cost a fortune with Arts Centre staff at double time.
This time around there were no set pieces but video was used to replicate some custom set pieces.
“Missy had some custom light bulb letters that she used for a TV special that was filmed in a Spiegeltent so they are very small and not suitable for large festival stages,” added Kait. “We replicate that look on the video screen and can scale it to any size venue. The letter idea was a starting point for all the content on the tour. A lot of it is based around using her name to mask other content. It works especially well on festival bills but for her own shows, I tend to remove the masking layers with her name so it’s more about the content itself.”
During the first few songs, Kait was still competing with the sun so that always makes things a bit trickier but there’s that moment where it goes from twilight to darkness and the stage really starts to look it’s best that she loves.
“There were a lot of songs we haven’t played for a while in this set and also some new songs so I spent some time creating new content,” said Kait. “Otherwise, I have a pretty long-standing familiarity with her music so it’s pretty straight forward to program. I plot at home with a visualiser on my MA fader and command wing and use my own media server so when I get on site I don’t have to start from scratch.
“There was definitely a few cobwebs to get rid of leading up to the show but it’s obviously great to be working again. It was especially nice to do the first couple of shows with Missy as she has been such a loyal client over the years and really supportive through COVID. Unfortunately, her Sydney based band members were unable to make it because of border closures so we had some new Melbourne musicians for this run of shows.”
As to the future, Kait is supposed to be in SA this weekend with Missy again and then a run of shows in WA with The Waifs, and then more Missy shows also in WA in March. Currently, with the new COVID case as a result of the Tennis Quarantine Program, it looks unlikely that she will make it to WA but she is still hoping that we get some national approach to single localised cases.
“If the Government wants to encourage International Sporting events during a pandemic then they need to recognise the risk this poses to local industry and be willing to subsidise those affected by state border closures,” commented Kait.
Photos: Arts Centre Melbourne
