Paul Martin has been mixing bands since his high school days and in 1989 he opened a rehearsal room under the name of Texas Audio. Fast forward a few decades and Paul is now a front-of-house guy, production manager and stage manager plus he also does installs around Melbourne and sometimes interstate.
When he is not looking after venues such as the Corner Hotel and Northcote Social Club he hits the touring circuit although he admits less frequently since Covid.
“It’s just not the same and there’s a whole lot of young blood coming through,” he commented. “It’s alright, I don’t mind sleeping. I like to tour but I’ve got a son and so I can’t disappear for too long anymore. Fortunately, the bands I work for, I think they’re termed as legacy acts, they just do weekends or very short tours.”
Spiderbait has recently been on tour with their Black Betty 20th Anniversary show which winds up towards the end of the month. Paul has been working with them since 1989 when they used his rehearsal room. He shares FOH duties with Dylan Ransom-Hughes, who’s based in Brisbane and so he does any Queensland shows.
All shows on this tour use the in-house PAs with Paul behind either a DiGiCo SD12 or SD10 as he says it is simply the console he knows best.
“It’s the console that I don’t have to think as much on,” he added. “There’s no snapshots, there’s no presets, it’s a very organic fluid mix so I’m chopping and changing and adding and pulling. It’s just like the songs go, so for me, the layout of a DiGiCo works best. I’ve tried using Avid but I just can’t seem to get it to flow and for this kind of band, it’s pretty important.”
For the past 25 years, Paul admits that he has always used just three reverbs and a delay for the band. Five years ago he added a distortion pedal which is literally a distortion pedal for Kram’s vocals or Janet’s vocals depending on which song.
“I did decide to use a rack once but I took it to the first show and the airline company dropped it causing damage,” said Paul. “Inside it was a Yamaha SPX90 and 990, a Lexicon PCM 91 and a TC2290 so from then on, I decided to just use onboard effects and tweak them further to get what I wanted. So everything is onboard except for the distortion pedal.”
As you’d expect with Spiderbait, the mix is loud but somehow Paul maintains a good degree of clarity in his mix. The audience is a slightly older demographic described by him as ‘looking for a cathartic release of volume and memories’!
“Not ripping your head off, but still enough to shake your bones,” he explained.
Microphones are a standard kit of Shure Beta91a and Beta52as on the kick drums, and the snares and the toms are Sennheiser e904s due to positioning access. There are Audio Technica ATM450s on Hi-hats and over(under) heads. On the guitars are two SM57s, Beyer M88 with a Radial J48 DI on the bass and the vocals are Shure Beta58a’s.
A Digico SD11 is toured for monitors ably run by Mick Aarons who is described by Paul as a ‘really, really good rock and roll monitor engineer’.
“Mick understands the music and more importantly the band, so he does a really good job,” he added. “We’re also touring an IEM package for Janet (Sennheiser G4 with Ultimate Ears) who finally agreed to use them and now loves it!!! It’s only taken 20 years. The first time she used them Mick was smart, he gave her a simple mix with a bit of reverb and she was very happy and said ‘Wow, why didn’t I do this 20 years ago?’!
All the venues have been quite large on the tour with Paul saying that most PAs have been fine and he tends to balance them up a bit differently from everyone else just because he knows the band. He describes the L-Acoustics V-Dosc rig at The Enmore as very good.
“It’s a good sound in a rock box,” he said. “It’s got 15s for the mids so you get some good guitar tones out of it. Yeah, it’s just good and there’s a lot of it. And it’s been processed pretty well so it’s been fun. It’s nice to rock up and not have to fight the PA, I can just mix and not worry about anything else.”
