You Am I, on their Hi-Fi Daily Double Down tour, performed at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre, playing their classic albums Hourly Daily and Hi-Fi Way in their entirety.
Geoffrey “Tonksy’ Tonks wears three hats on tour: Tour Manager, Production Manager and Monitor Engineer, roles he effortlessly slips into, having been with the band on and off for around five years.
“Our FOH Engineer Clinton Stagoll asked me to fill in for him mixing front of house a few times, as he knew I was a fan,” explained Tonksy about how he ended up with the band. “This tour is the first time I’ve done monitors for them because it’s a bigger-scale show doing the two albums live. They normally don’t have a monitor engineer on the road, so initially, I was asked to be the tour manager. Then we thought I might as well do monitors, especially as we have a few back-to-back shows and can keep that consistency and, as we move along, shorter sound checks.”
Production had a truck on the road for the Sydney to Melbourne leg for the first time in a while, touring their lighting, audio consoles, and backline. Clinton typically tours his own SD11 console, but both have gone bigger for these shows – an Allen & Heath dLive on Monitors and SD12 at FOH.
“I was lucky enough to do some pre-production in Perth at CCA Productions because they’ve got a bunch of dLive consoles,” he said. “I could do a bit of pre-production there building files, and then everywhere else over the next few weekends, I’ll just use an Avid Profile because they’re everywhere in-house, and I’ve got a few decent show file these days, so it’s easy for me to fall back on, and it’s a cost saver as well.”
Eighth Day Sound and Phaseshift Productions supplied the audio and lighting, respectively, for the Sydney and Melbourne shows, with the rest of the tour picked up locally.
“It’s a bit of a weekend warrior tour,” Tonksy added. “The band is great to work for, but the biggest challenge as TM of this is bringing everyone together. I normally tour manage international bands, so they fly in together; we go around, and they all fly out together. With You Am I, I’ve got to bring them all together from different home bases, so that kind of scheduling and everyone has other things on. Davey’s always playing with other people, and Tim’s doing multiple things and filming, so scheduling is the biggest thing I’ve had to do. The production side has been straightforward, but it’s a new team. I haven’t worked with Craig before; this is Craig’s first tour with the guys, but I’ve got an old relationship with Clint, so that’s great, and we trust each other. We’ve got a VIP meet and greet/soundcheck experience as well on this tour, which has to be done close to doors, so that chews up a lot of my time pre-show”
Over the years, Tonksy has run monitors for various bands, including Karnivool, Dead Love Circus, Blue King Brown, Cat Empire and Dan Sultan.
As he now lives in Perth, Tonksy does a fair amount of ‘fill-in’ work, such as the weekend before, when he did monitors for Noiseworks. He also works full-time at a production company.
Rusty, the drummer, has always been on in-ears, but bass player Andy has only just started using them. So it’s half IEMs, half wedges. They tour Sennheiser G4.
“He’s two shows in using in-ears, so we’re just working out that happy medium and getting him dialled in,” said Tonksy. “He seems to be enjoying it, which is good for stage volume, and they’re better for his hearing. It was his idea to use them after doing JJJ Live at the Wireless a week ago, and he loved them in Canberra and again last night.”
The rest of the band relies on in-house wedges; at The Enmore these were Nexo PS15s.
Tonksy was happy to mix on the Allen & Heath dLive, as it’s a console with which he is comfortable. As the production company he works for (CCA PRODUCTIONS) owns a few different models, he has spent time on them.
With no outboard gear, Tonksy runs everything on the console. “I’m just tickling some dynamic compression on the ear sends, but otherwise, I like to keep everything pretty clean for monitors”. He says his main challenge is the stage volume and controlling the bottom end on stage to make Clint’s job out front easier.
“Stage right is pretty loud,” he admitted. “Some seasoned rock n roll musos over there like it loud. Even the keyboardist’s send is pretty cranking, so it’s just volume. But honestly, they all know what they want, so it’s not a challenging gig. I’ve gone with the luxury of four wedges over two sends for Tim on this run, which gives me headroom and separation. If he’s comfortable, it’s gonna be a good show. Everyone seems happy, so I’m happy it’s not a struggle.”
FOH Engineer Clinton Stagoll has worked with the band for several years and mixed on a DiGiCo SD12 with an SD rack. He utilised a UAD Live Rack and was thrilled to have the ‘big, old, dirty’ L-Acoustics V-DOSC in-house PA, which he describes as excellent and suited to the venue.
“I’m using a lot of UAD processing over groups; everything passes through groups, and it all goes through the UAD,” said Clinton. “I do all the heavy drum processing on the UAD and the vocal processing. The rest of it passes through, you know, just loud guitars.”
On stage, Clinton used the new Earthworks DM20 Gen 2 Tom and Snare Drum Microphones, which he says are great. They’re positioned on the toms and percussion with Earthworks DM6 microphones for the kick drum.
“I’ve got a couple of Audio Technica mics on the snare drum, and there’s a plate mic, a Shure 91 in the kick,” added Clinton. “Other than that, it’s all Earthworks. On the guitars, Davey’s got some crazy thing going on; it’s all DI’s out of the back of the amps, so there’s only one guitar mic on stage but something like six lines, and it’s all direct. Vocals are the standard old Shure Beta 58s.”
Not surprisingly, the stage volume is Clinton’s main challenge when mixing You Am I. He describes it as like a controlled explosion.
“There’s a lot of right foot coming from the drummer and a lot of bass guitar movement, and landing those two things loudly and in a PA is a challenge,” he said. “I would say the rhythm section, locking it down and making it solid, tight, and loud, is probably the hardest.
Lead singer Tim Rogers is loud, and Clinton uses a distressor on his vocal to control it, which is the secret to getting it louder.
Clinton uses very little of the DiGiCo’s onboard effects, preferring the UAD plug-ins, old EQs and other reasonably basic plug-ins.
