When Sydney synth pop rock duo Royel Maddell and Otis Pavlovic aka Royel Otis began levelling up their live shows in 2023, it took FOH Engineer & Production Manager Chris Braun, hearing just half a song to want to come on board.
“I got a call from the band’s manager, Andrew Klippel, about a new band he really believed in, and I’ve been mixing them on average for about 100 shows a year since. It never gets old,” begins Chris.
A relentless touring schedule over the last few years, combined with viral song covers and a top 5 album, has seen the band’s exciting global growth, and led Chris, and Monitor Engineer Zach Stern, to Britannia Row Productions, a Clair Global brand, for audio reinforcement services.
Chris continues: “I’m lucky enough to have a great partner in crime with Zane Phillips, our tour manager, too. Having Brit Row and Clair Global in our corner is effectively a non-negotiable for me; our touring schedule has got to be one of the busiest out there, and the show is growing, fast. We’ve gone from the band and I in a van with me running monitors from FOH in 500 cap rooms, to having two tour buses, two trucks and a touring party of 18 playing 6,000 cap venues within two years. Having the international support network and the staff knowledge from Clair reduces my workload greatly, which is very much appreciated!”
As an example, Chris designed the tour’s audio requirements to cover most scenarios: “Outside of our Yamaha and DiGiCo native audio protocols, we use quite an extensive MADI network to move audio around, covering playback, broadcast, B-Stage, tie lines, servers, outboard and records. There’s a lot of pieces to that puzzle and with Brit Row / Clair, I know I have access to the gear I need to get the job done without compromise. I have some of the most talented people in the world at my disposal, and if we do have an equipment failure, we have a replacement within 24 hours – Clair will move mountains to deliver a solution.”
The FOH Mix
Chris describes his mix as being “between the rawness of their first album, ‘Pratts & Pain’ and the modern, cleaner sound of their second full length release ‘Hickey’.
“I want the fans to enjoy themselves first and foremost. Royel Otis are a band that have a very loyal, wide-ranging fan base and it’s been truly heartwarming to see what this music means to so many different people. Everyone goes to a concert for a different reason and the way they experience it is very important.”
Chris uses a Yamaha Rivage PM5 with an RX-EX engine, loaded with MADI cards. “It’s a great-sounding console, especially with the RPio attached,” he notes. “I run a hybrid set up at FOH with quite a bit of outboard involved across my output stems and master bus. The only single source I process is Otis’s main vocal, everything else in the rack is across master stems.”
The result is a big and full-sounding dynamic mix.
He continues: “All of the FOH io is done with RPio’s on a Twin Lane fiber loop. On stage we have an RPio622 for the main stage inputs, an RPio222 for my primary playback inputs along with a second RPio222 at FOH picking up our B-Stage inputs – these sources get fed to monitors via a MADI card in the stage RPio622.”
Every instrument, pedal, sound and tone on stage is highly considered too, according to Chirs: “I work very closely with the band, their techs and our MD to ensure everything in the sonic field is correct on stage before we pick it up. With the right sound hitting the console, I can take that anywhere sonically, which goes a long way to making our show sound so consistent across all venue PA systems – indoors, outdoors, headline or at a festival set.”
Monitors
Monitor Engineer Zach Stern is generating 18 mixes in total to cover all necessities: 4 x band mixes, 5x crew mixes and a cue, plus 7 x wedge/sub mixes, 1 x Aslan / Interpreter mix, 1 x FOH back up.
“There are 4 x band members, 2 x downstage and 2 x upstage. Downstage I have for Roy (Royel, guitar/vocals stage right) and Otis (lead vocals/guitars stage left), each has a mono pair of M4’s and 1x SL Sub delivering the low end up punch on either side of them in the side-fill position,” he says.
“Otis also uses JH16v2 IEMs. Upstage, TC (Tim Commandeur, drums, stage right) is on JH16v2 IEMs paired with a Porter & Davies BC2 throne, while Timmy Ayre (keys, stage left) uses JH16v2 IEMs along with a V-Sub for low-end reinforcement. Roy doesn’t wear IEMs but does put them in when he moves to the B-stage. Otherwise, he relies on a loud, punchy groove mix with his guitar sitting clearly in the mix. A combination of M4 wedges and SL subs has really helped him to find his comfort spot over the last year.
“Otis runs a vocal-forward FOH mix in his IEMs, with some of his vocal and guitar also present in his M4 wedges. TC’s drum mix focuses mainly on drums, click, and some tracks to support the groove whereas Timmy’s mix includes all his keys, along with some drums, track, and click. His vocal also sits prominently on top of the mix, as he performs most of the backing vocals.”
To master his workload, Zach mixes on a DiGiCo Quantum 326 + SD rack for monitor control (although he squeezed into the truck for a 338 for the EU/UK leg last year).
He continues: “This surface/combo has been flawless. I’m a long time DiGiCo user and this choice was an easy one to make. My IEMs are Shure PSM1000’s, d&b M4’s, SL Subs and a VSUB on either D80’s or D90’s. I use 2 x Titan Waves Servers with super-rack for output and a tiny bit of saturation on a few inputs. In the stage rack I also have a Neve 5045 for Roy and Otis’s main vocals, and a Cedar Audio DNS8 for all band IEM’s matrixes.”
Zach too is a fan of Britannia Row, having worked with the supplier previously on a Crowded House tour. He explains the trust between this crew and Account Executive Ed Shackleton has been key to this delivery: “Ed’s support from day one has been incredible. We have prepped in LA, Lititz, Weybridge, Tokyo and Melbourne, and always had exactly what we needed each time. We even had a brand-new package delivered to us at a festival in Germany for a show the same night, and it was flawless!
“The wider Clair team of AJ Robbins, Andy Turner, Meegan Holmes, Jay Roome and the Tokyo crew made our year easy. The global support network when you run into issues or need something on the fly is only a phone call away and that is one of the many advantages of using Brit Row. Everyone works together and is always looking out for us.”
Chris and Zach mixed the band’s highly anticipated and consequently highly praised Coachella debut in April, and will resume headline tour shows with Britannia Row this June.
