Supported by triple j, The Rubens’ 27-date tour sees the five-piece play a combination of metro and regional venues from May through June in celebration of their infectious Live In Life. The tour dates were rescheduled three times due to Covid restrictions and ALIA caught up with them, albeit a year late, at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre.
FOH engineer Clinton Stagoll says he is fortunate to have worked with The Rubens for approximately nine years now. He comments that the band have changed over the years from being guitar-driven to a more polished sound now, adding that they try and recreate the albums as closely as possible.
Clinton was using the in-house audio system at the Enmore Theatre which has recently been upgraded to an L-Acoustics V-Dosc consisting of eight boxes per side in the hang and six L-Acoustics SB218 Subs per side. Not a new PA but a significant upgrade from the previous system that had been there for years.
Clinton has been using DiGiCo consoles for many years now and for this show he used his own DiGiCo SD11.
“It’s small but more than enough as long as you don’t mind scrolling back and forth through banks and layers,” he said. “The real secret weapon I have is the UAD 2 Live Mix Rack with all UAD plugins. I love this piece of kit, it sounds amazing.
“The first thing I do is pay most of my initial attention to the vocal. I still tune a PA up the old school way with a mic and my voice. Sometimes embarrassingly mimicking the singer I am mixing. Next, it’s the drums. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and remember watching the sound engineers as a kid spending 45 min on drum checks always trying to get them bigger and fatter but still sit perfectly in the mix with a large clear vocal. I like to have the vocal and snare drum right on each other but still separate.”
Clinton uses mainly Shure mics but he does have a bit of a hodge-podge mixture of various flavours thrown in there.
Monitor engineer is Fraser Walker who Clinton describes as an absolute genius and highly skilled.
“He’s always fast on his feet to fix not only his tech issues but also mine if and when they may occur,” added Clinton. “He is currently using the Waves eMotion LV1 console for control.”
All of the band members except the bass player use IEMs. Will Zeglis still likes his old school fold back wedge. The band has been using IEMs for the past three years and they love them as it has given them consistency in their monitoring which has aided in making performing more comfortable.
“The Enmore show was fantastic,” concluded Clinton. “It was probably one of my best shows and also the bands. This could also be due to the long break during Covid and the steady crawl back doing seated gigs to this one being all of our first real standing/dancing rock concerts.”
Lighting
The band have been used to playing pubs and smaller venues, and as such, are used to a much more grungy and moody feel on stage. For them, this is how they like to be lit on stage – minimal front light, lots of stabs and hits from upstage. They asked lighting designer Matt Jones that the feel of the show reflect their grassroots origins while incorporating newer lighting technologies.
“A few ideas were thrown up at the beginning, and in the end, I opted to use Sunstrips, as they have the traditional tungsten warmth like blinders and Jrags, but on mass, Sunstrips allow for much more creative programming and much broader effects.”
The new album is much more “pop” than “rock”, while a lot of their catalogue songs are more alternative rock, so Matt wanted to create a design that allowed him to blend and merge these two styles into one show.
“I also wanted to create a floor package that could be easily added to small venues and that could be set up in under a minimum call without the need for an army of loaders,” he added. “Most of the shows we are loading into the venue on the show day, so time is critical. I still need to be able to clone my show into the house rig and update the cloned show and position and focus presets. Essentially, the design needed to be logistically flexible, but also creatively flexible.”
The biggest challenge was coming up with a design that was flexible enough to fit into some smaller regional venues, while still looking impactful at other venues that have a larger stage space. It was also challenging building a show to deliver that the band were going to see for the first time when they were on stage for the first show. This meant that they didn’t know exactly how the show looked, as they were on stage with the show and effects happening around them. There was a bit of back and forth initially to smooth out some of their requests, once they were able to get a feel for how the show felt while they were on stage.
House rigs were used in all venues with a floor package consisting of 20 x Sunstrips, 12 x Martin MAC Aura XB, 4 x Claypaky Mythos and an MA Lighting grandMA2 full-size was picked up locally. The Melbourne and Bendigo supplier was PRG in Melbourne, the Sydney supplier was Chameleon Touring Systems and the Brisbane supplier was Creative Productions.
The Auras were used primarily to provide colour wash on the band from the sides and upstage. Often, using a combination of two colours – either complimentary or opposing colours, depending on the mood of the song.
“The upstage Auras were great for providing a silhouette wash in colour that could then have colour or intensity stab that would provide greater impact on key moments of songs,” said Matt. “The Mythos were also upstage and were great for gobo breakups that could silhouette the band in a deferent way to the Sunstrips or Aura washes. This gave a more pretty and delicate look to some songs and was a nice alternative to a harsh “rock” look. The wide beam angle of the Mythos was perfect for some of the venues with small or shallow stages.”
The Sunstrips were essentially the set piece of the show and were arranged in such a way, that the gaps between the strips represented either a whole or half a Sunstrip. This allowed Matt to create a Layout view on the MA with “Dummy” fixtures so that he could create effects across the Sunstips as if there were a wall of Sunstrips in a matrix setup.
“This meant that an effect wipe from stage left to right visually looked correct, as the phase on the effect was correctly adjusted for with the gaps,” he explained. “This just made programming easier, and made some of the effects look as though a pixel map had been applied.”
The show is programmed in a very structured manner. Each song is its own page and cue list, with “Hits”, “Stabs” and “Bumps” applied over the top of each song. Each song was essentially broken down into Into, Verse, Chorus, Bridge or Instrumental and then Outro.
“Generally, the show is a rather static show,” said Matt. “I don’t generally favour using movement effects all that much unless the mood or feel of the song calls for it. And when a movement effect is used, I try to be rather creative and conservative in the use of it. I think a Circle effect is just a bit too easy of a look to use and is overused a lot of the time.
“The execution of the show is all live. There is no Timecode, however, there is a click track for me to listen to during the show, so my timing is accurate to the band.”
Matt’s favourite part of the show is the opening sequence as it sets the tone for the show and opens the show with a bang! Matt says it was fun to program and come up with something that would wow the crowd – who haven’t seen live shows for some time – with something big, powerful and exciting.
Photos: Ashley Mar @pixbyash
