![The four-man band from Chicago, known
to the world as Fall Out Boy, is on album
number five. Not bad, considering the over-
saturated music industry the guys have had
to endure. How do they do it? Perhaps it’s
the catchy hooks? Maybe it’s the relatable
lyrics? Still, it could be the mass appeal
they’ve garnered by touring the world?
What about the collaborations they’ve done
with other bands and artists? All of the
above would probably be a safe answer
here. With their latest release, Folie á Deux,
Fall Out Boy is still a viable force when it
comes to music, and whatever the reason for
their success, the fans love it and the critics
are left in disbelief.
ON TOUR WITH SHURE: A while back, you
guys were trying to do the entire contin-
ental run within nine months, but due to
inclement weather, it didn’t happen. What
inspired that thought, that you would go
for such a feat from the Guinness Book of
World Records?
PETE WENTZ: Um… I had been over-served
one evening. [laughs] I don’t know if it was
over-served… I was in a state of mind one
evening, and I hit our manager up and I
told him I wanted Fall Out Boy to play on
all five continents. The rest of the band and
the manager were like, ‘There’s seven,’
[laughs] and we went from there. As a
band, we’ve always tried to be innovators;
that’s our goal. It’s a pretty lofty goal, so you
don’t always get there. It’s something that
we wanted to do…
PATRICK STUMP: Anytime I’ve opened my
mouth up about this stuff, I feel like such a
jackass, but there was an environmental
angle. The reality is that at the exact time
we were talking about doing that, that week
that we decided to go, a chunk of Antarctica
fell off… the size of Texas. So, it’s one of
those things where there’s a little bit of an
urgency to it too. Like, pretty soon there’ll
be six… We were going to bring out a
couple of organizations to help.
WENTZ: We were in conjuncture with Green
Peace…
STUMP: Exactly, we were going to bring out
Green Peace and draw a little attention into
what’s going on there. But, “two birds with
one stone,” also maybe set a record, which
would be pretty cool.
WENTZ: And I think it would just be insane,
because we’ve traveled to many places in
the world. We’ve been to Uganda, South
Africa, South America, Australia, Asia… It’s
just cool, because when else would you
have the chance to do that?
STUMP: Yeah, I think that’s the other thing
too…
WENTZ: It’s partially the adventure.
STUMP: Every so often, stuff gets brought up
and people will say, ‘Yeah, you’re just doing
that for press.’ No, honestly, if you had a
chance to go to Antarctica, you would prob-
ably do it too. [laughs] I don’t care if any-
one found out about it, I just wanted to go.
WENTZ: We got as close as humanly possible
at the time.
STUMP: We were really close. We were at the
bottom tip of Patagonia. We saw penguins,
we hung out with penguins.
WENTZ: We were in the southern most pop-
ulated area.
OTWS: Are you going to do it again, give it
another shot?
WENTZ: I would say that definitely the whole
thing is a continued attempt. We don’t have
specific plans for attempting it again, but
definitely not giving up yet.
OTWS: Now that you’ve achieved the level
you’re at, you guys are sought after for cre-
ative input and production, and you’re
reaching out to a bunch of different artists
as well. How has the collaborative role
changed some of the ways you guys go
about making a record?
STUMP: Well, I think you just learn a lot
more. You’re more educated… It’s one of
those things where so much stuff with music
is intuition, either you have it or you don’t,
as far as what you’re gonna know. I took a
music theory class in high school, and a lot
of the stuff you just kind of know… ‘Okay,
well that sounds good in a major.’ It’s kind
of the same thing with a lot of production
ideas. You know some things implicitly, but
then you become more armed with the
nomenclature. I think that’s one of the big
things, the more collaboration we’ve done,
the more work we’ve done, the more we
know about our work. Going into this
record, we’re so much more educated than
we were the first time. Thinking generally
about… What mic is on the snare? How far
is it away? Now these are things the band
knows, in addition to the engineer and the
assistant. I think that’s a huge step.
WENTZ: [cups hand over mouth, points to
Stump and whispers] Some of the band
knows it… [laughter]
WENTZ: It’s like… when you’re just starting
out, you have peanut butter and jelly, be-
cause that’s all you can really afford, and
that’s all you can really get to. Then all of
the sudden, you can afford to have all of
these cool… like caviar or whatever. But at
the same time, peanut butter and jelly al-
ways tastes really good, so you always go
back to it.
OTWS: You guys are obviously reaching out…
Pete, you’re very entrepreneurial. Patrick,
you’re working on a lot of production now
for a lot of different bands. Does that bring
different perspectives into the music?
STUMP: I absolutely think so. It’s one of those
things, Pete will never say it, but I think one
of the things that gets glossed over a lot
whenever someone is talking about “Pete
Wentz: Entrepreneur,” is that anything that
he does that ultimately may incidentally
make money, he’s doing for artistic reasons. I
think that’s one of the things…
WENTZ: Thanks man.
STUMP: It’s true. It’s one of those things that
always blew my mind. He printed shirts
because he wanted to see those shirts exist.
It was more of the creative aspect of it. I
think that’s the thing when I’m producing,
I think ultimately, it’s thinking outside of
the box of making records. Ultimately we
are still making records, and this is all really
outside of the studio, making a “record.”
6 www.shure.com On Tour with Shure 7](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-4-320.jpg)
![8 www.shure.com On Tour with Shure 9
WENTZ: And definitely the influences…
you get to interact with other people and
interact with other ideas, and that,
obviously, you bring back to your band,
‘This worked, this didn’t. Maybe we could
push ourselves here. I worked with these
guys. I produced this record. We did this.
I definitely do want to do this. I definitely
don’t want to do that.’
STUMP: I think there’s also simple things
like… the more you know, the more exper-
iences you have in the music industry and
watching other people work, the more you
know what your capacity is to do those
things.
WENTZ: There’s a huge list of “do’s and
don’ts,” but they’re all printed via other
people’s careers, with what they’re doing.
STUMP: Yeah, pretty much.
WENTZ: You could fall out very easily, I
think anyone can.
STUMP: And the other thing I think about…
Again, I picked the entrepreneurial stuff as
an example because it’s something that you
would think is non-musical, right? But the
opportunity for so much music happens
because of things like that. I can’t think of
how many awesome musical experiences
I’ve had because of some connection with-
in… Pete and the fashion world or some-
thing, where you will have met somebody
at some sort of fashion function, and then
music happens out of it.
OTWS: That’s what I was curious about, the
outreach towards other creative types that
maybe aren’t musicians.
STUMP: Exactly, and that’s the thing, because
at the end of the day, you’re a specialist,
right? Maybe you’re a cardiologist. Maybe
you’re… We are musicians, ultimately we’re
all under the umbrella of the arts, we’re
artists, right? But, we’re musicians first and
foremost, and you can appreciate the other
arts, but at the end of the day that’s going to
be your main squeeze, that you are going to
make music. So, I think that’s the thing that
is cool, you can take influences from other
arts, and apply it to music.
OTWS: Do you guys have home studios
where you jot down ideas and the like, and
is Shure a part of that at all?
STUMP: Working on it right now, actually.
I’m remodeling a house to include a studio.
Actually, our long time producer Neal
Avron just finished his home studio in time
to do pre-production for this record, and
yeah, Shure is absolutely a part of it. The
funny thing is that some of the… This is a
fun note, our new single, “I Don’t Care,”
most of the backgrounds, including most of
the harmonies are [captured with] just a
[SM]58®
. We had some other mics up, but
[that] was a 58 straight off the demo. It just
vibed well, it just sounded best with the
song. That’s not even the best Shure mic out
there, but it still held up, so I think that’s
definitely a part of what we do.
OTWS: It absolutely is part of what sounds
right to you…
STUMP: Yeah, and it’s one of those things
where sometimes you want something like
that. Also, just musically speaking, I would
never consider miking a guitar amp
without having a [SM]57 on it, or a snare
without a 57 on it, for example. There’s so
many things… Definitely, Shure mics have
been a big part of this record.
OTWS: How are they working for you on
stage, in terms of the wireless that you guys
are using?
STUMP: I was actually gonna say, one of the
things that bugs me, and I probably
shouldn’t say this, but… I was gonna say,
on tour, we’ll be across the world, and
everybody has different things or whatever,
and I don’t want to put anybody else down,
but I’m always much happier when I have
my Shure for my ears. I remember we were
in… I don’t even want to disparage the
country, because it’s not their fault. So I
won’t even name names as far as the
country. I can’t remember where we were
playing… Well, I remember exactly where
we were playing, but for the purposes of
this, I can’t remember where we were
playing. We were on some other brand’s
wireless pack, and it was miserable.
Fall Out Boy Theirs On A Budget
Lead Vocals SM58 PG58
Backing Vocals SM58 PG58
Kick Beta 91 PG52
Hi-Hat KSM137 PG81
Guitar UR14D* PGX14*
Monitors PSM®
700 PSM 200
* wireless system
engineered
wisdom
or front-of-house engineer Danny Kis-
sane, working at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz
Club is a dream job, and you can hardly call
it work when you attain the enthusiasm he
has for the gig. Almost fifty years ago, Brit-
ish tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott had his
dreams come true when he finally opened
the now legendary jazz landmark in 1959.
It’s a place where legends have played and
new ones are made every night, and for
Danny Kissane, a little bit of luck and big
dreaming led to him being a part of the
club’s past, present and future.
ON TOUR WITH SHURE: How did you get into
venue engineering?
DANNY KISSANE: As a teenager in bands, I
always wanted my sound to be the best it
could possibly be. My interest grew and
grew until the point that I didn’t want to
make music anymore; I just wanted to
make it sound good.
OTWS: Did you do engineering for bands
before you did Ronnie Scott’s?
KISSANE: Yes. I did live engineering before I
went to work in television. Before that, the
only experience I had was doing live bands.
OTWS: What’s it like being in-house at
Ronnie Scott’s?
KISSANE: It’s a dream job, the perfect job. I
get to do what I love every day. I don’t go to
work, I go to play!
OTWS: What’s the biggest challenge for you
when miking up bands or performers?
KISSANE: Time restraints are the only factor
really, as we sound check on the afternoon
of the performance. The mics we use are
great, Beta 56, Beta 57A, Beta 58As, and
therefore we don’t seem to have any serious
problems. This small group of mics pretty
much covers any instrument we want to
use. If I’m doing overheads and I want a
wider sound, then I use a KSM27 or the
[KSM]137.
OTWS: What is it about Shure mics that you
like?
KISSANE: It’s the durability and the reliability
more than anything. Ronnie Scott’s is a hard
venue to mic because it’s so dry. I know if
there is a problem on stage, the SM58 will
work through it. Given that, I know exactly
how it’s going to sound. It’s an honest sound
that we can rely on time and time again.
OTWS: Is there a particular Shure mic that
you always turn to?
KISSANE: For percussion and louder drums,
I always go for the SM57, for vocals I will
always use the SM58; no matter the
performer. Vocalists can come in with their
expensive mics, and I will say, ‘That’s very
interesting, but try this.’ It’s [the SM58]
such an honest and reliable sound, I can’t
really fault it in any way.
OTWS: Have you any stories where a Shure
mic has saved you?
KISSANE: Not really, but we have had
countless artists turn up with condenser
mics and I have swapped them out for SMs
and Betas before they have performed
without them realizing! They are always
really happy with the performance.
OTWS: If someone said to you tonight, you
can only use two models of microphones,
what would you pick?
KISSANE: No prizes for guessing, the SM57
and SM58.
OTWS: What is your favorite performance or
artist who has been at Ronnie Scott’s?
KISSANE: There are too many to mention.
There has been some really jaw dropping
events, like when Jeff Beck was here and the
artists that he brought with him. That was a
once-in-a-lifetime chance thing to see
Vinnie [Colaiuta] on drums and Jeff on
guitar; something you’re not going to see
very often. We have had Wynton Marsalis
here, which was absolutely amazing. We’ve
also had Hiromi here a couple of times. Her
performances are always full of so much
energy. It’s difficult to pick out a few when
we have so many amazing names coming
through here.
OTWS: If you could pick one artist that
hasn’t performed at Ronnie Scott’s, a per-
sonal favorite of yours, who would it be?
KISSANE: I would have to go back in time,
and I would choose John Coltrane or Miles
Davis to play here.
OTWS: If you weren’t working at Ronnie’s
what would you being doing?
KISSANE: I honestly don’t know. I was quite
lucky that I fell into Ronnie’s. I wanted to
come to London and do live sound, and
there was a space that I fit into, which
everyone was happy with. I don’t want to be
anywhere else; I am pretty much a white
glove man now, I prefer being indoors and
not having to move around to different
venues all the time.
OTWS: Have you got any advice for aspiring
sound engineers?
KISSANE: Just keep at it and don’t ever give
up. It took me nearly three years before I got
my first sound engineering job. Just don’t
give up and keep doing the “toilet tours.” Just
keep trying and trying, because one day you
will get your break if you want it enough.
Making It Sound Good
by Paul Crognale
F](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-5-320.jpg)
![On Tour with Shure 11
Little Big Town Theirs On A Budget
Lead Vocals UR24D/SM58* PGX24/SM58*
Backing Vocals UR24D/SM58* PGX24/SM58*
Kick Beta 52®
A & SM91 PG52
Snare SM57 PG57
Toms KSM27 PG56
Hi-Hat KSM27 PG81
Overheads KSM27 PG81
Guitar Cabinet KSM32 & SM57 PG57
Bass Cabinet SM57 PG57
Monitors PSM®
700 PSM 200
* wireless system
OTWS: Were there any individual milestones
in your careers that you would like to men-
tion that have helped to catapult you to
enjoy the successes you all share today?
SCHLAPMAN: I think our “Crossroads” show
with Lindsey Buckingham was a huge mile-
stone for us because it brought a whole new
world of fans for us. The old Fleetwood
Mac fans saw Lindsey, and of course they
wanted to watch him and then became our
fans. So, it really took us to another level,
that show did, definitely.
WESTBROOK: We’ve done that a couple of
times. We did a tour with John Mellencamp.
Anytime you do shows like that, it’s just what
she said, it’s reaching out to people who don’t
normally see you. A lot of times you kind of
hang in your country world. It’s great to do
those things, and we were fortunate enough
to sing on his record, a couple of records ago.
Karen just cut some songs with him on his
latest record. Those moments are definitely
special moments that we won’t ever forget.
SWEET: Yeah, and I think we carry that with
us into recording and into our live show. We
watch other artists perform. I think when
we toured with Keith Urban, we learned so
much and gained a lot of confidence when
we got off of that tour. We were a different
band when we came off of that tour. We just
grew up so much I think.
FAIRCHILD: For me, getting nominated for a
GRAMMY®
was an early milestone that I
didn’t think we would achieve. I’d always
hoped, but it was so quick. Even though
we’d been a band for ten years, when The
Road To Here came out, it got nominated the
year that it came out I think, maybe that
fall. We were just blown away. We got nom-
inated for CMA awards. We had never been
nominated for anything, and so that was a
whirlwind of a year. Then we ended up
taking home our very first award, and we
would like another one. [laugher]
OTWS: How long have you all been using
Shure products and do you remember what
the first Shure product you had used was?
SWEET: We’ve had an SM58®
as long as I can
remember. It is like the go to microphone.
FAIRCHILD: It’s just the mic we always want.
I think you guys sent us some other things
to try, and we loved ‘em, but we always
come back to the 58.
WESTBROOK: Yeah, that’s just reliable, and
you know what you’re getting and it sounds
great. As far back as when I was kid singing
at church, I sang on those mics and [SM]57s.
We even used a 57 recording a song. She
[Karen] cut a vocal on the 57 on…
FAIRCHILD: It was on “Looking For A Rea-
son” on The Road To Here. We couldn’t hone
in on the right… We had all these crazy
mics in there, and then we’re like, ‘Let’s grab
a 57 and see what happens.’
WESTBROOK: It sounded great.
OTWS: What would you say has been the
most challenging part of your career?
SCHLAPMAN: The middle years, I think.
[laughter] Because in the beginning we
were so excited and happy and green and
on top of the world, and then…
FAIRCHILD: We thought it was gonna happen
fast. We got a record deal and then we flew
to Las Vegas and we sang on an HBO fight…
SCHLAPMAN: …and we did the Opry the
same weekend…
FAIRCHILD: Then it went like… [slopes hand
downward].
SWEET: It kind of went into limbo for eight
months.
WESTBROOK: It’s definitely… it’s like life I
think. It’s just… you have ups and downs,
you have great moments, you have not-so-
great moments. I think that journey makes
you who you are. We wouldn’t trade any of
it because it brought us to where we are
now and made us the band that we are.
10 www.shure.com
ON TOUR WITH SHURE: Your latest album A
Place To Land has been getting some fan-
tastic reviews. What were some of your
main influences behind the songwriting on
this album?
KIMBERLY SCHLAPMAN: We like to write about
real life, so we write from our own exper-
iences and from our friends’ experiences or
stories that we hear about. We just think that
when we write about real life, it’ll connect
more with the fans. We just kind of tell our
story or tell stories that we know of…
PHILLIP SWEET: Yeah, we write what moves
us, and when it moves us, hopefully it will
move other people, too.
KAREN FAIRCHILD: After we finished The Road
To Here, and it had such good… great suc-
cess, then the pressure was really on to
make another album, and we were trying
not to put pressure on ourselves, but people
were putting it on us. I’m so happy with A
Place To Land, ‘cause I think it’s actually
better than The Road To Here. We spent a lot
of intense time writing on the road, writing
at home, in the studio, and then we go back
on the road, then back in the studio… it
was crazy. We were happy to be finished
with… the child. Now, it’s coming back out,
a re-launch…
OTWS: So what does it feel like to have your
harmonies often compared to legendary
names in music such as Fleetwood Mac and
The Eagles?
JIMI WESTBROOK: That’s crazy to me.
FAIRCHILD: It’s laughable that we would be
compared to that, I mean I love it, I love it.
WESTBROOK: We’re very appreciative, but
that always makes me…
FAIRCHILD: It makes me nervous.
WESTBROOK: It makes me nervous, too. It’s
cool. Those were definitely bands that we
loved. All of those ‘70s harmony bands, to
me that was pride in music.
SWEET: Who was it that said something
about… ‘Oh, Graham Nash, yeah he’s heard
about you guys. He thinks you’re good. He’s
heard about you kids.’ I was like, ‘Graham
Nash knows who we are?’ [laughter]
Little Big Town (l-r): Phillip Sweet, Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-6-320.jpg)
![On Tour with Shure 1312 www.shure.com
MICHAELWAYNEBUTLER: Sure, I mean the fact
that we have the background that we do in
engineering and production really helps to
streamline the whole process of us making
a record. It’s sort of a unique situation be-
cause we don’t need to have any other mid-
dlemen in the process. We can really get to
the heart of what we want to do quickly and
without having to explain [it] to somebody
else, another engineer or producer. It just
sort of happens really naturally and hap-
pens really quickly. That’s been nothing but
beneficial to us, it’s been great.
OTWS: Considering the subject matter of the
stories on these projects, can you see any of
these songs or a combination of them, be-
coming movie scripts maybe featuring the
group?
THORNTON: J.D., would you like to field that
one?
J.D. ANDREW: I know absolutely nothing
about movies.
THORNTON: I’ve done a couple, but the
songs, the original songs, were about The
Boxmasters, our narrative story. So I can
absolutely see some of them being movies
or possibly songs in movies. But like I said,
they’re all story songs, so I guess you could
make a movie out of any of them. You never
know, we might do it someday.
OTWS: With new ways to distribute and
promote music, along with the ever-
changing record label landscape, how do
you feel about the music industry today?
THORNTON: The music business has gotten a
lot tougher, and they’re putting everything
in boxes now. It’s become more of a
product, and we don’t write songs with the
intention of becoming successful or writing
hits or anything like that. We write what we
feel and play what we feel, and we don’t
really try. We know we’re not gonna sell ten
million records, and not many people are
doing that now. So, we stick to what we
love and what makes us feel good, and
whatever happens, happens. I think it’s that
way in a lot of the entertainment businesses
these days. I’m hoping that someday it gets
back to the real stuff, and we’re trying our
best to give our little-bitty part of it, to do
our little part to get it back there.
ANDREW: And at the same time, our CD is
in a box. [laughs]
OTWS: If you could tour with any group
today, who would it be?
THORNTON: Gosh, if we could tour with any
group today…
BUTLER: As The Boxmasters, I think Billy
Bob Thornton.
THORNTON: Yeah, probably so, which by the
way we’re doing right now. Well, I think a
Boxmasters/Drive-By Truckers tour would
be nice. I think that could be a lot of fun. It’d
be great if Jerry Lee Lewis went out on the
road again. I think we’d be good with Jerry
Lee, or the Creaking Chairs would be fun.
BUTLER: That would be good. I like that
band a lot. I was just playing them.
ANDREW: Also, we’d let The Beatles open for
us… that would be alright.
OTWS: Similarly, is there anyone you’d like
to invite to perform on the next record?
THORNTON: The Boxmasters are kind of a
self-contained unit. We don’t really have
guest stars on there, but if we did have one,
I would say it would be Jimmy Vaughan, if
we get Jimmy in there to do a little thing
with us sometime. Yeah, or maybe the
fiddle player from It’s A Beautiful Day… or
possibly their drummer.
OTWS: With so many recording credits and
so much performance experience, can you
tell us about when and how you were first
introduced to Shure products?
THORNTON: I was in bands from the time I
was a little kid… we all were. Tom, with so
many bands as a tour manager and pro-
duction manager, he’s dealt with Shure for a
long, long time. When I was a kid, that was
the only microphone that anybody would
even pretend to use. All the years that we
played and when I worked as a roadie also,
Shure microphones were all we had;
[SM]58’s and [SM]57’s, which we still use to
this day. Shure mics are like the Cadillac of
mics to us. Just the tradition of it… If there’s
some new thing that comes out, and it’s
some name you never heard before, it
doesn’t feel as good as saying, ‘We use Shure
mics.’ It’s like saying we drive a Cadillac.
OTWS: Your tour brings you through many
markets across the U.S. before ending up in
Vegas. What happens next?
THORNTON: We’ve already got two records
in the can, past the one we have out now.
We have a Christmas record, as well as the
next regular Boxmasters record coming out
in the spring, and we’re gonna go home and
start recording again. We can’t stop
recording, we’re kind of obsessed and we’ll
probably do another tour in the winter and
spring when we get done with this one.
We’ll be pretty antsy to get back out there.
The Boxmasters Theirs On A Budget
Okay, yes, there is a famous movie star in this band.
And yes, he did have a bit of a music career in the past. Honestly
though, with the camaraderie prevalent in The Boxmasters, none of
those facts seem to be an actual factor in their success. Besides the
status that comes with the “lead singer” title, Billy Bob Thornton
does not consider himself any more important than his two musical
counterparts. I guess you could say there’s somewhat of a Three
Musketeers vibe among them. That seems to be the key factor in
what makes them The Boxmasters.
ON TOUR WITH SHURE: How does it feel to be back out on the road?
W.R.“BUD”THORNTON: We feel pretty good about it. We love being on the road. I mean
we all miss the kids and everything, that’s about the only thing that’s bad about being
on the road, is missing your family. But we love playing for the fans and we like to
see the people that buy the records. We’re a pretty close-knit family, so we like being
out here together; the camaraderie and everything. I mean just playing live is a thrill.
OTWS: There are so many credits and musical history between the three of you
individually. Bringing that into the studio must have been a huge benefit when you
got together for this project. Does it also cause any roadblocks along the way?
THORNTON: Well, we pretty much have the same musical tastes… all of us. It’s a pretty
eclectic mix of music that we all grew up with, and I don’t think we’ve ever had any
differences in opinion about music to tell you the truth. Even though we’ve all work-
ed with various kinds of people, we don’t always work with the people that we listen
to sometimes. In terms of J.D. and Mike and Tom, they’ve worked with a lot of people
as engineers and production managers, tour managers; people that might not be their
exact musical taste. In terms of what we all feel, we’re kind of in the same vain.
“SHure mics
are like the
cadillac of
mics to us.”
—W.R. “Bud” thornton
Lead Vocals UR2/KSM9* PGX24/SM86*
Backing Vocals SM58®
PG58
Kick Beta 52®
A & SM91 PG52
Snare SM57 PG57
Toms Beta 98D/S PG56
Hi-Hat KSM137 PG81
Overheads KSM32 PG81
Guitar Cabinet KSM27 PG57
Bass Cabinet KSM27 PG52
Lap Steel KSM27 PG57
Leslie Cabinet Top/Bottom Beta 98/KSM27 PG56/PG52
Organ Cabinet KSM27 PG57
*wireless system](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-7-320.jpg)
![On Tour with Shure 1514 www.shure.com
bracelets. Then we also, for the band at
night, we record CD copies, just straight to
disc. That’s what we use as a reference copy,
and we’ll sit in the back—sometimes a few
of us, sometimes all of us, sometimes just
one of us in the back of the bus—and just
kind of review the show, see what we did
well, see what we can improve upon. We’ve
done that for eight years now, that’s been
the common practice.
OTWS: How has the process of working out
a song changed from when you were in
eighth grade or say, Ohio State? How has it
stayed the same?
CULOS: [laughing] Good question. Yeah, we
have been a band for a very long time. We
started… The roots of the band started, yes,
when we were in eighth grade. Then O.A.R.
formed when we were juniors in high
school, which was 1996. So, when we were
young, I think we struggled with trying to
find meaning and what our songs would
have to say; what we were trying to convey
to an audience. Really, at sixteen years old,
we knew that we didn’t know anything
more than just a little [of what] we’d
experienced. We hadn’t experienced real
life, love, all that kind of stuff, and we didn’t
feel right about singing about those kinds of
things directly. Marc [Roberge], our lead
singer and songwriter, he would sing lyrics
through the eyes of characters that he had
written about in a short story, and he’d base
songs off of these different characters. I
think it was a way for him to talk about
certain things like that, but not have to feel
like he was older or experienced more than
anyone else our age. We were just trying to
reach people our age, and I think that idea
of being honest through our music is
something that has stayed the same from
the very beginning to where we are today.
The actual songwriting has changed
dramatically. It’s gone from where we just
sat around and jammed out ideas until a
song forms or sort of came about and then
we worked it out on stage until we
developed somewhat of a finished idea, and
then went in and recorded it and then
always looked back and said, ‘Hey, it really
wasn’t finished, we need to get better at this.’
So, throughout the years, the main song-
writers in the band have really stepped it up
and taken the time to really sit down and
hash every little detail out. They’ve even
worked with some outside songwriters to
bounce ideas off of, and we’ve come back
with great results from that stuff. I think it’s
also helped them step up their own game
when they write by themselves. I feel like
we’ve matured a lot as songwriters since
when we started in eighth grade. The basic
foundation of just trying to be honest in
what we’re saying, both musically and,
Marc, lyrically, is the same.
OTWS: I see some UHF-R stuff on the stage,
wireless systems. How’s that been working
out for you?
DePIZZO: I love the wireless systems, and it’s
funny… We did a small club show at the
end of our Summer tour, and my guitar tech
handed me my guitar and I played it half
the show with it unplugged, because I’m so
used to it being wireless. Plugging in a cable
is just too much work for me these days.
[laughs] It was funny and extremely em-
barrassing, but very liberating. I think I was
the first to use the wireless stuff, because of
the saxophone. I’d been using the UR stuff
and a Beta 98 for over eight years, and it’s
really been a part of my sound for almost
the entire time I’ve been in the band. Slowly
but surely, the guitar players and such
started going wireless. It’s great. You get to
move around the stage and it provides more
interaction and more options, and that’s
always a good thing.
OTWS: Can we talk about your support
from Shure?
DePIZZO: The relationship that we’ve had
with Shure has been really great for us. I
know that we obviously use the products up
on stage, and we’ve been doing so for years
and years. It’s been great. We’ve been using
them at home as well. I know that in my
home studio I use the [KSM]44s… I’ve used
them for everything. I’ve used them to mike
guitar cabs, I’ve used them for overheads,
vocals, acoustics, saxophone, whatever it is,
you name it. Like I said earlier, the Beta 98’s
been a part of my sound on the horn for a
better part of eight years. The funny thing
is, the [SM]57 on the alto sax… When I
went into the studio this past time to record
the All Sides record, it was the first time that
I’d used multiple horns—the bari, the alto,
and the tenor—and we tried a number of
different microphones. It’s funny, the 57
was the one that worked the best on the
alto. It gave the most true sound. Every-
thing alto on the record was just a good ‘ol
$100 57. It was great.
CULOS: I also think that it carries over into
our personal use, too. I know we all wear
Shure earphones when we’re riding on the
bus or flying from city to city, and listening
to music. On the personal pleasure side, we
use Shure earphones just to listen to tunes.
O.A.R. Theirs On A Budget
Lead Vocals UR24D/Beta 58* PGX24/Beta 58*
Backing Vocals Beta 58A®
& SM57 PG58
Kick Beta 91 & Beta 52®
A PG52
Snare Top/Bottom SM57 PG57
Toms SM98 PG56
Hi-Hat KSM32 PG81
Overheads KSM32 PG81
Percussion SM98 PG56
Djembe Top SM57 PG57
* wireless system
ON TOUR WITH SHURE: Taping and tape trading can
be a blessing to some artists and a curse to others.
As a band you are very supportive of tape trading.
Can you explain why you think this has helped you
thrive and grow?
CHRISCULOS: I think the reason that tape trading has
helped to build the fan base of the band, is because
it gives people something to talk about. It gives
them something… an activity that they can sort of
partake in. They can tape the show, go home, talk
about it, trade it for other shows and compare. It
actually sparked a whole community of people
who’ve come out to shows, and I think it gets
people interested in coming back to shows, rather
than seeing one show and saying, ‘Alright, I’ve seen
them live, that’s enough for me.’ And for us, it’s good
because it keeps us on our toes. We have to work on
new arrangements for songs, work on different set
lists, things like that, so it’s great for everything.
OTWS: Why did you decide to go with USB wrist-
bands as the medium for physical distribution of
your live shows?
CULOS: Because USB headbands were sold out.
[laughter]
JERRY DePIZZO: There’s that, which is true. Then the
other side of it is the media’s always gonna change.
The wristband is just the latest piece of media that
we’re actually gonna use, and it’s gonna change and
evolve into a number of different things. It was
something that we thought the audience would be
interested in, our kids are young, they’re tech savvy,
they challenge us. So, it felt like something that was
both wearable and re-useable and something we
were able to brand and easily distribute.
OTWS: Do you record reference copies of all of your
shows? How, and what do you use to record them?
DePIZZO: Well, we do a number of different things.
We record a multi-track version of each show every
night. We record an mp3 format version of the show
every night, and that’s what we use for the USB
ome of us probably had a band when we were in grade school or even high school, and the rest
of us might have known someone in a band during those trying scholastic years. Most bands back
then barely made it out of the garage or broke up after their first gig, but how many do you know
that actually stayed together and just kept on evolving and evolving to one day turn into the darlings of the
college rock scene? Well, O.A.R. is a band that tells that very story, and it seems that the elongated version
of their name, Of A Revolution, is more than just a clever tag for the six-member band from Rockville,
Maryland, it’s a statement of longevity.
We sat down with Jerry DePizzo [saxophone, guitar, backing vocals] and Chris Culos [drums, percus-
sion] before their sold-out night at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. We talked about tape-trading, song-
writing, and, of course… microphones.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-8-320.jpg)
![16 www.shure.com On Tour with Shure 17
coverstory
the record in Mexico as part of a tour where
we were meeting the press from time to
time, and at times we would go out to play
to keep the band alive, and because we
enjoy playing. In reality, we are performers,
and going on tour also turns us on. [It was]
an enormous surprise, because each time
we incorporated a song from the new list,
the people went crazy and already knew it.
Well, little by little we incorporated them.
Now we are in the process of debuting the
entire album, starting in Luna Park, which
is a stadium in Argentina where we are go-
ing to do two nights in
July that already
are sold out.
It’s already
winter
vacation, and it’s already so full of shows
that we can’t add [any], so we are going to go
to an open stadium towards the end of the
year. In the open stadiums, you are allowed
40,000-50,000 people, so we are going to go
to that, I believe.
OTWS: Well, in the time that you have been
in the studio and on stage, what thing has
never changed for Babasónicos?
DÁRGELOS: Well, I think the epic essence,
the search for vertigo, the desire to incor-
porate some elements, experimentation…
We have always had our own rehearsal
room, and we have set up our own studio,
starting as carpenters and as electricians. We
all know the recording field well, but I
believe that it’s always good to take
risks, to feel vertigo, and to incor-
porate error as a new element of
experimentation. Because when
one knows everything, and has
filled himself with certainties, one no
longer has anything else to learn. One no
longer makes mistakes, and does things
perfectly, and they don’t have flavor; they
have no taste. Then, the best thing is to go
off in search of new things.
OTWS: Of course. In your shows, Shure
microphones are always present. How long
have you been using Shure?
DÁRGELOS: Yes, practically since the first
show that I did in my life. We started re-
hearsing in ’85—look how long ago, right?
It is the same line-up we have now, but with
other names, because we were very young.
We were friends in what is called secondary
school, high school here. At that time, we
were a band with three keyboard players, a
drum set, and a bass, because we had not yet
found a guitarist within our area. Our first
microphones were an introductory model
or the five guys in the Argentine
band Babasónicos, album number
nine, Mucho, brings a lot more to its
fans from around the world. After becoming
one of the most significant groups of the
underground rock movement in Argentina
during the ’90s, Babasónicos has been a band
that has never been afraid to experiment with
many different musical styles. We sat down
with lead singer, Adrián Dárgelos, to talk
about the new material, performing live and
the philosophy behind Babasónicos and the
sound that keeps them on top of the charts.
ON TOUR WITH SHURE: Tell us the story about
the new material from Mucho?
ADRIÁNDÁRGELOS: Mucho is an album record-
ed [last] December in the Panda and Circo-
beat studios of Argentina, and it was com-
posed between the months of November and
October. It was mixed in London by Phil
Brown, who is a legendary rock engineer,
that has [been recording] since Led Zep-
pelin IV. He mixed the recordings of Marley
and Eddie Burns, and he did stuff like
Robert Palmer, The Rolling Stones, Talk
Talk, right up to our era with Beth Gibbons.
Well, [he’s] a mythical rock engineer that we
always loved, so one day we checked to see
if, with a rock in Spanish budget, it was pos-
sible to be able to work with such a god of
recording engineering, of studio engin-
eering. And the truth [is], that he surprised
us, because he is at an age where he only
does what he likes, because he doesn’t need
the money to live on now. He said that if he
liked the band, he would do it. We sent him
a previous album that we had, because he
didn’t know that we had so many records,
and he accepted right away.
And from there, we mixed the Anoche
album and Mucho, which is the latest that I
was talking about, that ended up being
released in the middle of May 2008. Now
that we are at the end of June, it has already
been on the street for a year-and-a-half, and
it is an album that is a sales hit in Mexico,
the United States and Latin America. In
Argentina, it came out in an innovative for-
mat. It debuted on cell phones, so right
away, in the first week, it was a platinum
record on cell phones, and a gold record in
physical format in another week. For Latin
American markets that is a lot, given the
piracy that there is now. But, [I’m] very
happy because it’s an album that brings us
a lot of satisfaction. Best of all, it’s a very
inspired record, where really we brought
our work to another level. I believe it
shows some facets, that until this moment,
we had not shown, and that covers, in-
cludes, catalyzes a lot of the freshness of the
band, and well, it crystallizes the moments
of spontaneity.
OTWS: Tell us, what has been the reaction of
the public to the new material?
DÁRGELOS: Well, we began to play](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-9-320.jpg)
![18 www.shure.com
for that era, and right away, since the mic
had an on/off switch, we realized that they
didn’t work for us. The introductory model,
at least, gave us an idea of what microphones
are like. Right away, we bought ourselves
our first [SM]58®
, which is probably one of
the ones we still have now, all old and all
beat up. We keep [them] because we collect
them. We have many Shure microphones,
and we believe that they always have, at
minimum, their perfect sound. What
surprises me most is how a microphone
bought twenty years ago still works the
same. They have no noise at all. At times
they die, but they die because they have
been struck aggressively. They can fall in
thousands of ways and not break.
I believe that I have not sung with other
brands of microphones. You see many
bands, including… The other day, it sur-
prised me, because in Live Aid, Elton John
sang with a 58. Elton John can sing with
anything! For me, it’s a microphone that
helps me, because of the particularity of my
voice. There are people that have a deeper
voice, and they can use microphones that
have more sharpness. The 58, [has a flat
response], and it softens my voice for me. I
have tried to sing in the harmonica micro-
phone [520DX], I used to use it with dist-
ortion pedals. During ’95/’96, there was a
record that we had called Dopádromo, and I
sang various numbers with the harmonica
microphone. I keep it, I hang onto it with
love, because it’s a microphone that we
bought in ’93/’94. They belong to our whole
history.
OTWS: The in-ear personal monitors…
Have they changed the way you perform
on stage?
DÁRGELOS: Yes, yes, and more for the coun-
tries where the technology has not arrived
yet. If you are accustomed to the northern
hemisphere where the technology is re-
placed immediately, new lines of permanent
monitor systems come out, and the floor
monitors that have evolved a lot keep on
changing. If you take a look at the monitors
from the decade of the ’70s, they were
wooden boxes with two speakers, a woofer
and a tweeter. It wasn’t until the in-ears
came out… for me they were a revolution.
That’s when I began to really hear myself. In
Latin America, the sound systems were
older, and because of economic issues, the
equipment couldn’t be renewed every year.
At times you were with technology from ’95
and it was already 2000. When [in-ears]
came out, from the time they were
available… I had to do three shows in the
same theater in Buenos Aires, it was a
theater similar to the one in which we are
going to play today, without seats, but very
big. I had to do three days in a row, and I
had a cold. I was afraid that my voice would
not endure the three days in a row, having a
cold. I asked a friend of mine, who is the
singer from Illya Kuryaki, if he would lend
me his in-ears to be able to sing. After that I
wasn’t able to do it again, I was never again
able to sing without the in-ears.
OTWS: Who have been the greatest influ-
ences for the Babasónicos?
DÁRGELOS: Well, the music of the late 60s
influences us a lot. For example, bands like
The Beach Boys, The Hollies, The Rolling
Stones. Later, Zeppelin and Black Sabbath
are great influences on us. On the other
hand, Sly and the Family Stone and Funk-
adelic, those were the bands that impacted
us the most. Also, Marc Bolan and T. Rex is
a great influence for us. After that, I sup-
pose The Clash a bit, folk music a little, like
Tim Buckley, Roy Harper. Psychedelic folk
has influenced us a lot, also. We are big
music fans, so pop music in itself is an
influence. I have consumed, purely and ex-
clusively, rock records, but the other [in-
fluences] have come through my family,
through movies, through television; it has
come not directly from a rock record that I
have bought, but it is a part of my back-
ground of influence.
OTWS: You have had an incredible trajectory.
What motivates the Babasónicos?
DÁRGELOS: Well, Babasónicos is a band that
is hungry, that doesn’t settle for its achieve-
ments, that does not feel that nominations
or prizes really do justice with what they are
seeking. Babasónicos is a band that tries to
subvert and to change what is understood
by music, what is understood by social
communication, and what is understood by
attitude. We believe that rock also is a form
of sharing of politics, even intellectual, and
that the youth do it without filters, nor
interests of the business in the world of con-
sumption. Then we believe that is a rather
free way of giving your opinion, and as long
as we feel that way, we are going to continue
doing music.
Babasónicos Theirs On A Budget
Lead Vocals UR2/Beta 87C* PGX24/SM86*
Backing Vocals SM87 & SM58 PG58
Kick Beta 91 & Beta 52®
A PG52
Snare Top/Bottom SM57 PG57
Toms Beta 56®
A PG56
Hi-Hat SM81 PG81
Overheads SM81 PG81
Guitar Cabinet KSM27 & SM57 PG57
Bass Cabinet KSM27 PG52
Bongos SM57 PG57
Monitors PSM®
700 & PSM 600 PSM 200
* wireless system](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-10-320.jpg)
![On Tour with Shure 2120 www.shure.com
ajor label equals mainstream,
right? If you’re Mastodon, that’s
the furthest thing from the
truth. Take the band’s third album and first
major label release, Blood Mountain, a col-
lection of tracks that are quite possibly the
band at their heaviest. Thank you major
label status, you’ve made one of the heaviest
rock bands out there even heavier. On Tour
with Shure sat down with drummer Brann
Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher during a
tour stop in Chicago to talk about the
method to their madness.
OTWS: With your albums being conceptually
based, do you guys all sit down together and
decide how that works out, or is that one
person’s vision?
BRANN DAILOR: Well, I guess I come up with
some storylines. But, once the initial story
comes, once it’s pitched and everyone gets
on the same page with it, then it factors into
everybody’s writing. Usually the purpose for
it is to lead the way and get us all on the same
page with writing. It’s easier for us as a
group to be unified to write a record, if we
have some semblance of a basic, cohesive
storyline of what’s going on, or an element…
even water or earth.
OTWS: Now have you guys tried the other
approach, a more traditional band ap-
proach, of individuals bringing songs to the
table and assembling and recording that
way?
KELLIHER: There’s some songs that are
collaborations… just messing around and
[realizing], ‘Hey this part fits there, and one
of my riffs for your riff.’ Sometimes it’s one
person bringing the whole thing together,
and everybody puts there own two cents in
there and flavors it here and there. It’s never
quite the same as it was if one person brings
it… things change.
DAILOR: Once we introduce it to the class,
then everybody puts their spin on it and
puts their touch to it, so that’s what makes it
Mastodon.
OTWS: Excellent. Now when you guys bring
these songs to each other, do you have pre-
production studios that you’re working in,
or home studios?
DAILOR: We have a practice space that we go
to pretty much every day and we sit-down
there from either noon or one ‘til five or six,
and just try to be as organized as we can
about it. It takes months and months. When
you first start going down it’s like, ‘Okay, I
got this riff. Okay we got this riff.’ Every-
thing’s kind of a bit of a mess.
KELLIHER: This time we got into Pro-Tools
for computers and sat around my house
trying to put something together. Then we
go down to the space and try to play it live.
We’ve got an 8-track digital recorder down
there. So, we’ve got pre-pre-pre-production.
We did a lot of pre-pre-ing for this record.
DAILOR: We worked hard and we took our
time with it. We really made sure that every-
thing was just right.
OTWS: Have any of you guys been bitten by
the producer bug?
KELLIHER: Well, we all have ideas to kind of
throw around like, ‘Hey, I think we should
be doing this.’
DAILOR: Yeah, we don’t just roll in, we write
the songs ourselves to an extent.
KELLIHER: We usually listen to everybody. If
Brann has a… ‘I think we should do the
chorus four times,’ and I say, ‘No, we need
to do it two times,’ and we try it both ways.
We record both ways and see what every-
body thinks.
DAILOR: It’s based on feel… you just kinda
know, that’s what I guess being a musician
or artist is kind of all about, is knowing
when something should happen. You know
what I mean? That’s what’s up to us.
OTWS: Do you guys at this point have your
choice of producers? Do you pick who you
work with or collaborate with in the studio?
KELLIHER: Well, we definitely have our
choices, it’s not like the record company
says, ‘You have to use this person.’ We had a
bunch of guys we had picked out, star guys.
But it’s just so… The ways the stars aligned
with working at home, was a lot more com-
fortable for me and I think the rest of the guys.
DAILOR: Everybody, yeah
KELLIHER: To be at home and not have to live
in Seattle or New York or whatever… All the
hard work that we had done ahead of time,
to go in the studio and just knock it out, it
was so much easier than anything that I’ve
been used to doing. It’s just amazing.
DAILOR: Seattle was… Seattle was awesome,
I mean it was fun to make those records, but
it was kind of a struggle because we were
away from our families and away from
home… living in a hotel.
KELLIHER: Living in an apartment in a hotel
out there… it wasn’t that comfortable.
Spending twelve hours a day in the studio is
working.
DAILOR: Even if you’re not working, just be-
cause there’s a lot of downtime in the studio.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-11-320.jpg)
![22 www.shure.com
Someone else is doing something all day
long and you’re just kind of sitting there in
a small room.
KELLIHER: So, at home we can just come in,
and it was easy. Just play your part and…
DAILOR: Go back home.
KELLIHER: You can go back home now and go
sit in your bed if you want to…
DAILOR: Go cook steak on the grill if you
want to.
KELLIHER: If we could continue doing that
for the rest of our career, that’d be great.
DAILOR: Yeah we hope to a long lasting rela-
tionship.
KELLIHER: Even if we end up flying produc-
ers and engineers in…
DAILOR: Yeah I like doing it at home.
KELLIHER: Yeah, working with Brent [Hinds,
vocals/guitar] was just amazing… just easy.
He’s smart, fast, and quick.
OTWS: You guys are wearing in-ear personal
monitors now? How is that transition for you?
DAILOR: We’ve had a few friends of ours that
use them and swear by them. I think it’s
either you love ‘em or you hate ‘em. For me
it’s been tremendously better. There’s just so
much clarity. I can hear the guitar and make
it sound like the record, in my mix. I can
control the mix and I know how to work the
board and everything. I can go over there
and mess with stuff and it’s awesome.
OTWS: Is there anyone that’s not taken to it?
I mean… there’s no right or wrong answer
for monitoring, I’ve found.
KELLIHER: Yeah, Brent was good with them
for a couple of days but we just… on the
big, big stages, he’s always had kind of an
issue with monitors in general, but every
day, it’s different. People are picky, they need
to hear exactly what they want to hear. If
you’re singing and screaming you don’t
wanna throw your voice out becuase you
can’t hear yourself. I understand, but for me
they’re… I like them.
DAILOR: I think Brent would probably go
back to them when we go back to theatres
and stuff, when you can control it a little
more.
KELLIHER: Get a proper sound check and all
that stuff, to sit there and dial it in. The first
day that we got them, I was kind of nervous
just about going out in front of a bunch of
people without monitors in front of me. I
was just like, ‘I’ve never done this before, in
twenty years of playing.’ We did get the
chance to spend an hour and a half, two
hours, checking. We played with these
songs [from Blood Moutain], and I think we
played our best show ever that night.
DAILOR:Yeah, pretty much.
KELLIHER: Perfect, like every note was perfect
and everyone’s like, ‘Wow, these are great,
you can hear everybody.’ When you change
venues and you go to an outdoor amphi-
theatre, you gotta go mess with it again, but
it’s pretty constant.
OTWS: Excellent. Now your vocal mics are
Beta 57As. Do you guys notice a little bit
more oomph in your sound with those mics?
KELLIHER: All I know is that when I’m
screaming in the mic, what I can hear now
sounds amazing. It’s a very clear, clear
sound. The clarity is really good and we’ve
never had so many fans, people, even our
manager… anyone watching us is like,
‘You guys never sounded so good.’ So I
don’t know if it’s… We do have a new tour
manager and sound guy, and we all have
brand-new Shure microphones, so it’s a
combination of the two maybe?
Mastodon Theirs On A Budget
Lead Vocals Beta 57A®
PG57
Backing Vocals Beta 57A PG57
Kick Beta 91 PG52
Snare Top/Bottom Beta 98D/S PG56
Toms Beta 98D/S & Beta 52®
A PG56
Hi-Hat KSM109 PG81
Overheads KSM32 PG81
Guitar Cabinet SM7 & SM57 PG57
Bass Cabinet Beta 98D/S PG56
Robot Beta 57A PG57
On Tour with Shure 23](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-12-320.jpg)
![24 www.shure.com On Tour with Shure 25
thing. So, I challenge young songwriters,
think of that, when you sit down to write a
song, try to write a song.
SPREADIN’ THE WORD ON IN-EARS
OTWS: How was the conversion from floor
wedges to in ear personal monitors? How
would you describe the experience?
ROBINSON: My production manager is this
guy named Brian French, and Brian had
tried to get me to switch to the ear monitors
for probably eight years. I went to see
Luther Vandross—who was a really good
friend of mine—I went to see Luther, and
he was at the Hollywood Bowl. So after-
wards I went backstage to see him, and he
had used the ear monitors. He said, ‘Smoke,
let me tell you, the ear monitors, they are
really what’s happening. It’s like singing to
yourself in the studio. When you saw me,
when I came on, I was barely singing, be-
cause I could hear myself. I don’t have to
strain, I don’t have to do anything.’ So, I
came and I told Brian, I said, ‘Brian, I saw
Luther and he was telling me…’ Brian said,
‘Great man! I’m gonna have the lady come
down to the studio…’ because we were re-
hearsing, ‘…and fit you.’ I said, ‘Okay, fine.’
Because I was a wedge man, you know, I
don’t want the ear monitor and all that stuff
like that. So, they fitted me and the first
concert that I did them on, I had two. So,
for the first three or four songs, I could hear
You could have a guitar player, and every
string on his guitar could be on a separate
track now, but not then.
A TRUE CALLING
OTWS: At what point did you realize that
music would be what you did for the rest of
your life?
ROBINSON: I think that I realized that music
would be what I was gonna do for the rest
of my life after we had started Motown and
we were three or four years into it. [laugh-
ter] Up to that point, I wasn’t sure, because
we were fledgling. The fortunate thing for
us at Motown is that back in the days when
we started, when Barry started Motown…
Small record companies, a lot of them had
one hit record, and if they got paid at all for
that record, it was a rare occasion. Distribu-
tors and people like that, there were so many
record companies, they weren’t thinking
about a one-hit-wonder record company.
The great thing that happened at Motown,
is that we bombarded them with hits, over
and over and over and over and over again.
It got to the point where they were calling
us to see what we were gonna release next.
Same thing, I think about payola, when
people were paying the disc jockeys to play
their music and all that. Payola was a big
thing. We never really had to go through
that. We went through a period of time when
the disc jockeys would call up and say, ‘Hey
man, give us the record first!’ They were
warring over who was gonna get the next
Motown record, which is a great place to be
in, man. Motown was a phenomenon, it was,
what I call, a once-in-a-lifetime musical
event. Nothing like that had ever happened
prior to that time, and I doubt seriously if
anything like that will happen again.
OTWS: Any words of wisdom for the aspir-
ing songwriter, specifically?
ROBINSON: Well yeah, for the aspiring song-
writers, I say to them, nothing is too far-
fetched, your ideas. Write them down,
work on them. Always try to write a song.
See, my main goal, when I sit down to write
a song, is to write a song. The first time that
I record it on myself or someone else, I may
not give it the right treatment for the
masses of people to say, ‘Oh, I love this, let
me get this.’ But if it’s a song, I want to write
a song that if I had written it fifty years
before then, it would have meant something
to people. Today is gonna mean something.
Fifty years from now is gonna mean some-
myself great, better than I ever could. It was
like I was in a studio signing, but I couldn’t
hear the people. I couldn’t hear what was
going on around me. I couldn’t hear
everybody in the band, it was just whatever
my mix was in there, that’s what I got. So, I
took one out and I stuck it down in my
shirt, and I used the left ear to wear my
monitor in. It is a God send. It doesn’t
matter where you’re playing. It doesn’t mat-
ter what the acoustics are. It doesn’t matter
if you’re outside or inside. It doesn’t matter
if the wind is blowing. It doesn’t matter,
whatever is happening, you can hear your-
self. I tell everybody, I tell all the singers
that I know, that haven’t tried them. I told
Gladys Knight, ‘Gladys, get the ear monitor.
Get it baby, because it is what’s happening.’
I told Aretha, ‘Get the ear monitor because
it’s what’s happening.’ Man, it’s a God send.
It saves your voice. When we do concerts,
I’m not kidding, I sing for two-and-a-half
hours. I don’t have to strain because I can
hear me. Without the ear monitors, even
with the floor monitors, there’s sometimes
when you’re straining because the crowd
may be up or it may be outside or
something and you’re not getting the
acoustic bounce back or whatever. Some-
times you go to over sing, trying to hear
yourself. Rather than you just standing
there singing and you can hear every
[breath]. They’re wonderful.
Smokey Robinson Theirs On A Budget
Lead Vocals UR2/KSM9* PGX24/SM86*
Snare KSM27 PG57
Overheads KSM44 & SM81 PG81
Monitors PSM®
700 & PSM 600 PSM 200
* wireless system
a different time or a different week. So, we
decided, no we’re gonna go back to old
school, and we had the musicians in there
playing while I was singing, and we had a
blast. We did two CDs like that. We did the
Timeless Love one like that, the only thing
we had to end up over-dubbing again, were
the strings because they fed in on each
other. So, we over-dubbed the strings on
the Timeless Love thing, but [on] the new
CD, there’s only a couple of songs on there
that have strings. We just did the stuff live
ON TOUR WITH SHURE: Tell us about the new
album, what was the writing process like?
SMOKEY ROBINSON: Well, the writing pro-
cess for the new album was kind of normal
for me. I write songs all the time. Hardly a
day goes by when I don’t hear something of
a song. Some words, a melody, something
will come to me, of a song. I just think that
everybody has gifts, and that’s probably one
of my gifts, to be able to write songs, be-
cause I’m not a laborer songwriter. I’m not
one of those writers who needs to isolate
myself, go away to the woods or to the
mountains somewhere for a month just to
write. It just happens all day long for me. I
can be in the car, in the bathroom, on the
plane, wherever it strikes me, I try to jot it
down so that I can save it to work on it or
what-have-you. So, the songs on the new
album came basically the same way. I’d
been working on the songs for longer than
I’d been recording them, of course, but
some of the songs I wrote after we started to
record. We were doing two CDs at the same
time. I did a CD of all standards, Gershwin,
Cole Porter, and people like that, because it
was the music that I’d grown up on and I’d
been singing those songs in my live show
for about fifteen years, so we decided to
record them. My original thought was to
record them live. To rent out a place, some-
thing very intimate, five to six hundred
people, and just do a whole show, an eve-
ning of doing those types of songs. It ends
up that I never got around to doing that,
but we did do the next best thing, because
we recorded them live as well as my new
CD, in the studio. What I mean by that, is
that we had the guys in there playing while
I was singing. People don’t record like that
anymore man. People who play and sing on
the same song, don’t even see each other.
Everybody comes in on a different day or at
man, and I have had a ball. [I] haven’t had
that much fun recording in years, because it
was like doing a concert in the studio.
GOIN’ OLD SCHOOL
OTWS: Now, back in the Motown days, that
was how you guys had always recorded.
ROBINSON: Back in the Motown days, that’s
how we recorded, really because we started
off with one track. I take my hat off to Barry
Gordy, who is the founder of Motown, and
he was our producer before he started
Motown. The Miracles and I were with
him before he started Motown. I take my
hat off to him and guys like him, who were
producing records in those days. He taught
me how to produce records, so I had a bit of
that experience myself. But, you had to be
producing while you were recording, and
the engineer had to be on it, because he had
to be mixing while you were recording,
‘cause there was only one track. Everybody
who was gonna be on that record had better
be in that studio, then. The most you might
be able to do, is get two takes of almost or
relatively the same tempo, if you wanted
to, and splice something in from one take
to another. But other than that, there was
no remixing and all that stuff like that. I
recall, when we first got two tracks at
Motown, where we could have our lead
singer on a separate track than all the other
stuff, boy we thought we were the most
innovative company in the world. We
probably were at that point. We had the
lead singer on a different track, oh boy that
was something. Then we got three tracks
and then we got eight and then we got
sixteen and then we got twenty-four. The
progression is really something, and I
think that’s probably the biggest difference
in the record business now, other than the
record market itself, is how you record.
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![On Tour with Shure 2726 www.shure.com
ON TOUR WITH SHURE: Alright, so start at the
beginning, when did you get into music?
What were your influences? How did this
crazy journey start?
SERJ TANKIAN: I was one of those kids that
wasn’t into music when I was young, unlike
most musicians that have been playing
since they were six or eight years old. My
parents actually wanted me to get into
music when I was younger, ‘cause my dad’s
a beautiful singer. He’s a musician and he’s
got a gorgeous voice. So they bought me a
guitar when I was younger… an acoustic
guitar, I gave it away. I never used it. They
wanted me to take piano lessons, but I
never did, I didn’t want to. Then something
clicked in me when I was in college, when
I first got into college. I don’t know what it
was. I bought a little Casio keyboard and
started messing around with it, then I went
and got a Roland D50, which I still keep.
That was my first professional musical in-
strument, and I went from there and started
playing guitar, and I’ve been playing music
for twenty-one, twenty-two years now. That
shows you how old I am. So, it’s kinda like,
I started late but it was kinda funny that…
I think when you start things late and you
really like them, you are more hungry for
them, ‘cause there’s all this stuff you want to
catch up on. So I went really fast… anything
that I was learning, I went through it fast.
Even though I was going to college full-
time and working, any chance I got I’d be
playing music and writing music, and, of
course, it was all because I loved it. It was
the passion driving what I was doing, and
then at one point, I realized that this is what
I have to do to be happy. No matter what
else I do, this is what I need to do with the
majority of my time, and that was a huge
realization, obviously. That happened one
late evening, I remember it specifically. It
was an actual incident. I was taking these
Kaplan classes for… I signed up to take the
LSAT to go to law school, and I had just
finished Cal State Northridge… I got a
bachelor’s degree in marketing and busi-
ness. I was working in the jewelry industry
in the day, just totally busy, traveling
around, doing conventions and all that stuff,
and at nights I was taking these Kaplan
classes. It was a rainy day, I was in my jeep,
I was driving back home, and it was like an
epiphany. I’m [thinking], ‘Do I want to be a
damn lawyer?’ I had to kind of push myself
into different things to realize that no, this
is not for me.
OTWS: Your latest album, was that your fifth
that you’ve been a part of?
TANKIAN: If I count the System ones, it would
be the seventh. There are five System al-
bums, there’s Serart and Elect The Dead…
and then a bunch of collaborations as far as
tracks.
OTWS: How has the sound changed from
album to album?
TANKIAN: As far as the progression of sounds
between records over the years… Well I
guess the first record that I ever put out was
the first System record, and that was pretty
raw. It was very energetic, kind of like a live
vibe, recording-wise, even though it wasn’t
a live recording, but it was that kind of vibe,
and I think it progressed over the years.
With Toxicity, our second record, I think it
was a little more mature, a little more of us
taking our time in the studio and getting to
know the studio a little better; getting to
know sounds and tones better in a lot of
ways. Steal This Album was kind of like a
piggyback of Toxicity in a way, the record
that we all had recorded at the same time,
and then kind of perfected thereafter, that
was a cool record. To me, that was one of
my favorite System records actually… Steal
This Album. It’s a really diverse record, it’s
more like my vibe, I think. Then after that
we did Mezmerize and Hypnotize, and that
was our last two records which we put out
within the same year; those had a different
variation, I think. Daron [Malakian, System
of a Down guitarist] had a bigger input, and
he grew more as a lyricist and came on
board. As a songwriter, even though I don’t
have a lot of physical music that I’ve written
on those last two records, whatever I did
write, I wrote them fully because I became
more of a songwriter in terms of instrumen-
talists and writing and playing my own
stuff. So it was all a progression over time,
and the music tastes changed, and the vibe
changed. Then with Serart, which was put
out actually, let me see… I think we put
that out before Steal This Album, with Arto
[Tunçboyaciyan]. It was an improvisational
record that I did, and I put it out on my
own label, Serjical Strike. It was seven days
of improvisation in the studio basically, and
just two artists, myself and my friend, Arto.
He’s a multi-instrumentalist, I’m a multi-
instrumentalist, he’s a singer, I’m a singer,
so we both just went in and dabbled. You’ve
got stuff from world vibe to experimental to
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![28 www.shure.com
Serj Tankian Theirs On A Budget
LeadVocals UR24D/Beta 58* PGX24/Beta 58*
Guitar UR14D* PGX14*
Monitors PSM®
700 & PSM 600 PSM 200
* wireless system
electronic to dance, all sorts. It’s a really
good visual record, it would be great as a
soundtrack kind of thing. With Elect The
Dead, it was kind of like a composer
making a rock record. Instead of having a
band and making a rock record, which is
typically how you’d make a rock record,
starting with the drums and building it up.
I started either with piano or acoustic
guitar, and I’d have one main instrument
with rough vocals, and then using ACID or
some other programs, I’d build the drums
around it.
OTWS: What are some Shure products that
are staples for you in the studio?
TANKIAN: As far as Shure products, I’ve used
a lot of Shure mics… SM58®
s obviously, as
far as singing, from day one. With System,
we used a lot of SM58s, Betas, we used
[SM]57s a lot, from the beginning. As far as
my own studio, I’ve used the KSM44s on a
lot of the amps. On Elect The Dead, I had
them on all the guitar amps and bass amps.
I used the SM7 for vocals, especially the
heavy vocals. When I want [it] to distort, I
just grab the head, you know, that kind of
stuff [grabs microphone by the grill]. On
tour we use a lot of UHF, a lot of your
wireless products. The KSM9, Beta 58 wire-
less, and we use the ear monitors, the Shure
packs, the [PSM®
] 600s, the 700s.
OTWS: How was that transition, going to the
in-ears from the conventional floor wedges?
TANKIAN: Transitioning to in-ears was ama-
zing originally, because as a singer, you
can’t hear a certain frequency of your own
voice on stage, especially with a really loud
band, and System is… The stage volume of
System is deafening. Even with ear moni-
tors on, if I went to Shavo’s [Odadjian,
System of a Down bassist] side, I wouldn’t
hear anything but bass. The Who might
have had the biggest stage volume, but I
think we’d get a pretty close second or
third, maybe to another band, but it was
loud. So that really helped me. It really
helped me define the instruments better
and hear my voice better, so that if I sing
low I can hear it amongst the whole stage
volume. With ear monitors, the most
important thing is having a monitor guy
that’s mixing it right, otherwise you could
hurt yourself. You could be too loud, or it
could be a horrible mix, so that’s the thing
that I always struggle with, having the right
mix, and every room is different, every-
where you play is different.
OTWS: Any words of wisdom for aspiring
musicians out there?
TANKIAN: Well, as far as performance, I al-
ways say, as tough as it is being out there
and having that attention, you have to be
yourself, and you have to project that self
beyond your physical surroundings into a
bigger space. You communicate that with
people, and you have to take it to the next
level, because that’s what performing is.
You have to make people feel something,
not something that’s not true, something
that’s true to you and them as well. You
have to have that connection, that’s what
performance is. If you don’t make them feel
that, then you’re just there playing your
record, and that’s cool. Some artists do that
successfully and I’m cool with that, too. As
far as new aspiring musicians, I always
say… like with Serjical Strike, when we’re
looking for bands, there’s three important
things for me, that I look for. Originality in
the music, performance… they’ve got to be
amazing performers, their shows have to be
undeniably powerful. You can’t walk away,
whether you like that kind of music or not,
whether you’ve heard them before or not,
you’ve got to walk away going, ‘That’s an
amazing band. I don’t care if I’ve never even
heard that music before or I’m not a fan of
this type of music, but that was an amazing
band.’ You’ve got to walk away impressed.
Third, they’ve got to be modest, cool
people. With musicians, and I’ve met a lot
of different musicians and artists, I find
over the years it’s more the younger ones
that get the big heads. The ones that have
been in it for a while realize that, ‘This is
just what I do.’ I’m a plumber… I’m a
glorified plumber really, because a plumber
doesn’t go, ‘Hey, I just put in these amazing
copper pipes,’ and talks about it for hours,
they don’t. They go home and they’re like,
‘I did my job.’ You leave your egos at the
doors, they say. You walk in and you do
your thing and you’re out. It’s just what you
do and be privileged to be doing it. If you
can’t build a fire within your own city, you
can’t translate that fire elsewhere. No label,
no amount of money or marketing will help
you as a band or as an artist, if you can’t
make people come and watch you in your
own town where you have your friends,
your family, all the people you’ve grown
up with. If you can’t create a buzz around
that, where people are just lined up to see
you, then I don’t wanna say you don’t
deserve it, but you’re not gonna get
anywhere. Like I said, someone could
come spend a million dollars on you, and
they’re not gonna get people to come and
see you, if you can’t do it on your own.
That’s what it comes down to ultimately…
unless you’re on “American Idol.”
On Tour with Shure 29](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-15-320.jpg)
![30 www.shure.com On Tour with Shure 3130 www.shure.com
ON TOUR WITH SHURE: What influences
brought on the strong desire to take on the
world of electronic music?
JULIAN HAMILTON: While we were studying
classical music at university, we studied a
lot of electronic music there. I mean, some
of our favorite classical composers were
sort of electronic guys. Guys like… Steve
Reich and [Karlheinz] Stockhausen. You
know, they did some really cool things with
computers and synthesizers. I think we
were always attracted to that sort of infinite
sound world that you can create. There’s
only so many sounds you can make with a
violin or a piano. With synthesizers and
samplers, you can create totally new worlds.
OTWS: How much customization do you
guys do? Do you start sometimes with raw,
acoustic sound and modify that? How often
do you create your own patches?
KIM MOYES: I guess a lot of the stuff that we
do is with synthesizers and we kind of try
to find sounds that we really like in the
machine. We don’t get too heavy into the pro-
gramming side of things. We record mainly
synthesizers and live sounds, and combine
all of these things together and layer them up
until we get the sounds that we want.
HAMILTON: Yeah, I think The Presets sound
is not any one keyboard patch, it’s like that
patch combined with that snare and that
vocal effect. You know what I mean? It’s
more of a combination of sounds thrown to-
gether. That’s, I think, where probably more
of our originality comes from, as opposed
to getting into one sound and going crazy.
OTWS: The new album is Apocalypso. Is there
a stylistic element or genre that you bor-
rowed more for this record?
MOYES: There’s definitely… maybe an ess-
ence of techno in it, but also I guess electro-
pop is the best way to kind of… stuff from
the ’80s I guess. There was pop music when
synthesizers and stuff were becoming big ,
and that’s kind of where it really comes
from. I mean, it’s not replicating the ’80s or
anything, but it has a certain tinge to it.
Bands like the Pet Shop Boys and…
HAMILTON: …New Order and stuff like that.
It’s funny, it’s really hard for us to describe
that, too. I mean, really, The Presets is what
happens when Kim and I get together, we
have all of our synthesizers and drum
machines, and we just start making music
out of them. I guess we try not to sound
like anything. Of course, there’s a whole
world in a lifetime, or two lifetimes of
music inside of us, and so some stuff’s gonna
sound like the techno we were hearing in
Berlin when we were living there last year.
Something’s gonna sound like science
fiction soundtracks from movies that we
saw when we were young. There’s gonna be
all sorts of little nods to this and that, just
because that’s our musical life.
OTWS: Speaking of each record, you’re kind
of building on the previous, right? How do
you feel Apocalypso has grown since the
previous efforts?
HAMILTON: So much…
MOYES: We were a lot more sure of ourselves
when we did Apocalypso. Our identity had
been formed a lot more. I guess we just had
a confidence and an urgency about it that
we didn’t have before last time. Particularly,
in terms of production, we realized quite a
few things about space. Also, after touring
the last record, maybe [with] some of the
themes in the songwriting, there was more
of a shift towards more mature sentiments.
HAMILTON: Yeah, so much change… The first
record, Beams, was sort of just this collec-
tion of scraps—some of the demo songs,
some songs from early EPs, and a few new
ones thrown together, and we made an
album out of it—and that was Beams. We
really liked it, we were really proud of it.
Then we took that on the road and played
it heaps and heaps for three years, and in
the meantime we bought new keyboards,
and like Kim was saying, learned more about
production and all that stuff. Yeah, so Apoc-
alypso has a very different theme to Beams.
And also, Apocalypso was a completely clean
slate as well, we had nothing except just a
whole lot of experience of airports and
motorways and things… and nightclubs.
So, yeah, it was a completely fresh start.
OTWS: Being based in Sydney and having
toured the UK and the States, how do you
feel the electronic music scene differs?
MOYES: Well, it’s funny… when we were
discovering electronic music, Detroit music
has been a big influence on us. There’s a lot
of great house music from Chicago, and lots
of great stuff that’s coming out of New York.
I think the biggest shock to us when we got
out of Australia, and started seeing the
world in terms of dance music, was going
to Europe and seeing it there. We always
knew it was big in England, and I guess it is
part of the European thing, but when we
started touring places like Spain and Ger-
many and France, we realized that dance
music and party culture and all that sort of
stuff was really the king. So, that was a really
great eye-opener and it was a really good
inspiration, getting out there and playing
these crazy raves in deserts in Spain at 6 a.m.
HAMILTON: Yeah, it’s totally a Europe thing. I
mean, it’s funny, the dance music scene is
kind of king at the moment in Australia. It’s
so fleeting . There’s always a cool club for a
few months and then it’ll move onto this
next cool club. It’s more about the party. It
seems like it’s the same thing in the States
and in the UK as well. It’s more about the
partying and the scene. Then when you go
to Germany, Berlin, it seems to be way more
about the music there.
OTWS: How does performing live influence
your songwriting, and how do songs evolve
in a live atmosphere?
HAMILTON: When we write our music,
especially for this last record, it’s a very
computer-based thing, we’re sitting down
in our studios. We’re hitting keyboards and
Kim’s hitting drums and playing hi-hat. It’s
a live thing, but I guess we’re conscious that
we’re gonna take it on the road and really
play a lot of the stuff. I guess it does take on
a whole life of itself, and once it hits the
stage, it does step up in terms of energy,
because it is live vocals and live playing and
live drums, and it’s a really explosive thing.
I guess that’s one way it sort of develops.
MOYES: Also, once we had toured Beams,
and we started to see the way people re-
acted to certain elements in the songs or
certain parts of the songs, we started to
realize that that was forming the way that
we were gonna approach the recording
side. So, it sort of does both.
HAMILTON: Yeah, the live experience feeds
the record.
MOYES: Then we do the stuff in the studio
and then we put it together as if it’s a seam-
less event.
OTWS: You guys use KSM9s for vocals on
stage and PSM®
700s for your monitors. Do
you feel that the sound on stage has im-
proved and added to the way you perform?
HAMILTON: Yeah, for the ears, definitely. As a
singer, having your monitors in your ears,
it’s so much better than having them in a
wedge in front of you. I remember we used
to do shows, and there’d be the live drums
right next to me and I’d be trying to scream
as loud as I can to hear myself come through
the wedge. It was a really unmusical kind of
way to… it was more just like this war of
attrition, to just kind of get through a show,
beat down a show. Now with in-ear [person-
al] monitoring, you can actually be musical
and sing softly if you want to sing softly and
sing loudly when you want to sing loudly.
It’s really good.
MOYES: Definitely. It definitely helps me in
terms of damage control, after years of play-
ing the drums with nothing in my ears. I
always hated putting ear plugs in my ears
‘cause the vibe would just die. It’s like a half
way point between not having anything in
my ears and having ear plugs in my ears.
Yeah, it’s good.
OTWS: What drew you to the wireless KSM9
for your live vocals?
HAMILTON: It’s incredible. Apart from being
wireless, which is great, you can run
around… I remember the first time we used
it in rehearsal, and it made the vocal sound
so much better. We actually realized we had
to upgrade the computer system because
the vocals sound so good. We were using an
old sound card, and we were like, ‘Oh [man]
we’ve really got to upgrade this sound card
because suddenly the computer stuff
sounds like crap.’
OTWS: What other artists today do you guys
both listen to and you feel are really doing
something truly innovative for the scene?
MOYES: In terms of people inspiring…
There’s quite a few people, but they’re not
worth mentioning. [laughter]
HAMILTON: There’s lots of innovative stuff
out there every once-in-a-while. Generally,
we’re pretty bored with what’s going on in
music, but occasionally you see something
that’s just amazing. Like Daft Punk, their
live show. They’ve been doing that stuff for
thirteen years or something, and to come
out with such an innovative, huge show
that’s so new, that’s incredible. It’s sort of rare
for all acts that have been around for such a
long time to still be the leaders, but I guess
they kind of are. There’s so many bands
around that are doing fun things, they’re not
changing the world, but they’re having a
great time doing great stuff. I don’t want to
say who they are, but there’s plenty of them,
all the current popular bands. [laughter]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/OTWS28all1221-123000869258-phpapp02/85/On-Tour-with-Shure-Winter-2009-Issue-16-320.jpg)
On Tour with Shure - Winter 2009 Issue
- 2. 2 www.shure.com AL16481/09 45K On Tour with Shure® Editor Mark Brunner Managing Editor Cory Lorentz Associate Editor Kevin Spiegel Artist Relations Nelson Arreguin, Bill Oakley, Richard Sandrok, Ryan Smith, Kevin Spiegel Art Director/Designer Kate Moss Writers Nelson Arreguin, Paul Crognale, Cory Lorentz, Dave Mendez, Bill Oakley, James Oakley, Ryan Smith Contributing Photographers Getty Images, Jordan Graham, Karen Hoyt, Kirsty Lamport, Paul Natkin, Randi Radcliff, Myriam Santos, Bobby Simmons Printing Triangle Printers Inc. On Tour with Shure is published three times yearly by Shure Incorporated, 5800 W. Touhy Avenue, Niles, IL 60714-4608. Each separate contribution to Volume 10, Issue 1 and the issue as a collective work, is copyright ©2009 by Shure Incorporated. All rights reserved. All trademarks are property of their respective owners. All product specifications and appearances are subject to change without notice. Use of an artist’s name in this publication does not constitute an official endorsement of Shure products. Free Subscription! To receive your free copy of On Tour with Shure, please: • Go to www.shure.com • Fill out the enclosed postage-paid subscription card. • Send a note to On Tour with Shure, 5800 W. Touhy Ave., Niles, IL 60714-4608. We are not responsible for unsolicited material,which must be accompanied by return postage. All mail will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and subject to Shure Incorporated’s unrestricted right to edit and comment. Shure Incorporated assumes no responsibility for errors in articles or advertisements.Opinions expressed by authors are not necessarily those of Shure Incorporated. On Tour with Shure 3 tableofcontents 20 The Sleeping Giant That Is, Mastodon Are you ready for the heavy stuff? Major label status hasn’t changed a thing about the Mastodon approach to making music, and Blood Mountain is the band at their heaviest yet. It’s almost like they’re still trying to convince the world that they’re label worthy,still pulling out all the stops to thoroughly impress the masses.Whatever it is, the masses like it. 23 Back In The Day: A Moment With Smokey Robinson There are legends in rock ‘n roll, and then there are Motown legends. Sorry, but that’s a special, one-of-a-kind legend. So much of today’s music gets its roots from the Motown sound, and for Smokey Robinson, one of the founding fathers of that sound, it’s a phenomenon that may never happen again.These days, Smokey finds inspiration in all kinds of music, and still knows how to write those Motown-style hits. 26 Serj Tankian: Attorney At Law? Oh, thank you music gods for the power and influence you have over young impressionable minds. For it is your infinite wisdom and guidance that kept Serj Tankian from becoming an attorney at a law firm. Can you imagine what that would have been like? Although, with the evidence of his vocal powers on stage and in the studio, he’d be a pretty intimidating prosecutor. 29 Kicking And Screaming With The Presets Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes make sounds with keyboards and drums, other than that, the music is best for you to judge yourself. To curb your curiosity a bit and put it as vaguely as possible, electronica has been tossed around the genre pool. You’re gonna have to listen for yourself, and then you’re gonna probably like it... just a warning. 9 Making It Sound Good So, who’s the young cat running sound at the legendary Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club? Danny Kissane is heavily immersed in his job as front-of-house engineer at the club, and he couldn’t be happier about it. As a teenager in bands, he always wanted things to sound good, and now he gets that chance every night. o, I’m gonna be a dad, and there’s so much excitement and anticipation associated with this life changing event, it’s sometimes enjoyably over- whelming. There’s also lots and lots of questions that you never thought you would ever be concerned with… Is it gonna be a boy or a girl? What are we gonna call this new bundle of joy? More importantly, what kind of music is my kid gonna listen to? I know it’s nothing to be concerned with in the immediate future, but still I can’t help thinking of clever ways to gracefully influence my offspring’s de- cision to shy away from an overdose of Disney “tween” rock or to not demand The Wiggles on repeat during long road trips. A friend of mine introduced me to a collection of rock-inspired lullabies, called Rockabye Baby, where a com- poser morphs material from artists such as The Beatles, Radiohead, and even AC/DC into soothing, sleepy-time soundtracks. It’s definitely a shift from the classic “Rock-A-Bye Baby” lullaby, besides, that one always concerned me, what’s a baby doing in a treetop anyway? What kind of parents are these? Anyway, I figure that could be one method to subliminally instill some taste in music, but what about when nap time is over? I pondered the visual aspect of it all… maybe some music videos? Then again, MTV doesn’t play those any- more. Maybe some concert videos? Those could be a little lengthy for an infant’s attention span. Maybe some books with lots of pictures of influential musicians throughout history? Then I thought about books and kids and crayons… bad idea. Finally, I thought about dressing the kid in some kid-sized rock t-shirts. Upon further review, I decided this desperate attempt would only act as a way to display how cool and hip me and my CD collection are. No one gonna’s be- lieve that my newborn actually listens to, or furthermore, favors a particular band at the ripe-old age of six months. Besides, I don’t think Wilco makes onesies… I guess, I could just hope for the best, and go about my music listening habits as I always have. Maybe my offspring will show some signs of enjoyment when I play Stevie Wonder during a feeding? Perhaps, Jeff Buckley will induce some air drumming on the car seat during a quick jaunt to Grandma and Grandpa’s house? Who knows what things may come, but I promise that I’m not going to make my kids listen to one type of music or keep them sheltered from any others I’m not a fan of. I believe music sparks creativity, and not just for musicians. People find inspiration in music every day, in everything they do. If your kid plays soccer better because he listened to some Jonas Brothers on the car ride over, that’s awesome. If your child studies better when Demi Lovato is on the radio, turn it up! After all, I listened to all kinds of terrible stuff growing up, and I turned out okay. My parents never censored what I listened to… well, there was that N.W.A. tape, but I can’t say that I blame them on that one! Enjoy the words and pictures in this latest installment of On Tour with Shure, and we hope your new year is off to a rockin’ start! Rock Out, Cory Lorentz Managing Editor, On Tour with Shure editor@shure.com S 4 Mic Check Two pages of pictures and words that describe what is happening in those pictures, it’s reading as you remember it as a kid! Of course, the words may be a little more difficult to sound out and the content is factual and not from imaginary land. Either way, enjoy the latest Mic Check tidbits we’ve gathered for you. 6 Fall Out Boy:World Records, Famous Friends And Favorite Mics Try as you may (haters), you can’t stop Fall Out Boy. After five albums, it’s quite evident the Chicago-based quartet is in it for the long haul. You should give them a try sometime, after all, millions and millions of kids can’t be wrong, right? 10 Little Big Town Just Got Bigger It’s a countrified version of The Mamas & The Papas, or as Vince Gill likes to call them,The Mamas & The Bubbas! Two girls, two guys, and a truck full of musical talent make up the Nashville country band Little Big Town, and things are getting a lot bigger and better for the band these days. 12 The Propinquity Of The Boxmasters These guys are so close as a band, they could be related, they could be brothers. You would never know there’s a famous movie star in the band, until you saw them live and thought, ‘That one guy looks like Billy Bob Thornton…’Well, it is him, and as part of The Boxmasters, he plays the part of drummer and lead singer, and it’s no act folks! 14 Rockin’ Since The 8th Grade Sure O.A.R. has been a band for a long time, lots of bands have been around for a few years, but how many are actually getting better and becoming more popular and still have their original line-up? It seems that evolution is the key to the bands longevity, that and a pretty sick underground college rock following! 16 Babasónicos: Much More In The Music The Argentine quintet didn’t want to sound like every other band when they began their musical journey, so Babasónicos changed the musical landscape of Argentina completely. That philosophy of experimenting with musical styles has taken the band from underground popularity to worldwide phenomenon. On their latest release, Mucho, they give the fans more of what they expect, something different, something more. 10 16 12
- 3. On Tour withShure 5 Ladies & Gentlemen… UK Beatboxing’s Finest: MC Zani Who would have thought that after twenty some odd years,beatboxing would still be a relevant form of making music? At its inception,horrible renditions of this art form were hastily performed by hip-hop haters as an ill-founded description of the music they despised.Well,the haters can keep hating,beatboxing is still here! Long gone are the days of the beatboxing styles of The Human Beat Box from The Fat Boys, Doug E.Fresh or even Biz Markie,the new school of beatboxers has a style all its own. Making Silly Songs With Shure For musical director and composer Kurt Heinecke,playing and singing those silly songs for Big Idea Productions and VeggieTales is serious business. For over fifteen years,Heinecke has provided the musical composition to VeggieTales classics such as Jonah andThe PiratesWho Don’t Do Anything. As a former band director, Heinecke brings years of classically trained music experience to the work he does with the VeggieTales movies. It’s not the stuff of big budget productions such as Pixar and Disney,so being clever with the resources available has always been the key in creating the compositions for any of the projects from Big Idea. Starting from humble beginnings— meager store fronts and sub-par equip- ment—Heinecke now enjoys working out of his fully-equipped home office/studio when creating compositions. Of course when a score requires a fifty-piece orchestra,Heinecke resorts to the studios of Big Idea Productions. No matter the location,Shure microphones have been used to capture the music of several of the latest VeggieTales releases,proving,once again,that if you’re serious about capturing your silly songs,Shure is the way to go. Winning Big At The Bluegrass Music Awards Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Entertainers of the Year, Vocal Group of the Year, and Emerging Artists of the Year…Jamie Dailey & Darrin Vincent. That’s three of the awards the bluegrass duo took home at this year’s 2008 International Bluegrass Music Awards. The duo also received Album of the Year honors for their self-titled debut, Dailey & Vincent,Gospel Recorded Per- formance of the Year for their song, “By The Mark”and Jamie Dailey received the award for Male Vocalist of the Year. It’s safe to say these guys cleaned house! There’s just one more title to add to the pile for Dailey & Vincent, Shure en- dorsers.Congratulations gentlemen, and welcome aboard. Î The SM58® vs. The Tractor Now,we don’t condone this type of behavior,but accidents can happen. I guess the lesson to take away from this situation is,be careful where you put those mics kids! You’ve heard the stories… You can use an SM58 to hammer nails and still use it to sing. My SM58 was burned in a fire and it still worked! I dropped my SM58 in a pitcher of beer and still finished my set. Yes,all of those things happened,and the mic did survive.Yet to be confirmed was how an SM58 would fair against a farming tractor… until now! We received this story and a few pictures from Jim Unsworth of Video-Prom Inc. in Hamilton Ontario,Canada. On a video shoot,Unsworth was performing his duties as host with an SM58 LX Wireless System.Prior to heading out on a tractor ride to provide additional footage for the shoot,Unsworth inadvertently dropped the mic on the ground near the tractor’s gigantic wheels. Upon returning from his ride,the mic was discovered on the ground,showing tire tracks from both the tractor and the attached trailer. Other than having a slightly crushed grill,the mic still passed audio,SM58:1-Tractor:0. Thankfully,the tractor was not damaged, just a little confused at its lack of destruction. Now,did you think the tractor would actually win? Montreux Jazz Fest In 2008 the 42nd Montreux Jazz Festival took place,and for fourteen years Shure has been the official technical partner for microphones and wireless systems. While Montreux turned into the mecca of the International music scene from July 4th to the 19th,Shure ensured a smooth execution behind the scenes and a perfect sound on stage. Shure had almost sixty channels of UHF-R in use as well as twenty channels of PSM® spread over eight stages in the convention center and the boardwalk. Also the contingent of microphones was quite considerable—(48) KSM9s,(96) SM58s,(96) SM57s and (263) different Beta microphone models. In addition to a technical partnership, Shure also sponsored the 6th Annual Montreux Jazz Voice Competition,which took place during the festival. This challenging competition,founded by Shure and the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2003,provides aspiring jazz vocalists the opportunity to compete in front of an international jury and audience. Prizes were awarded to the competition finalists including an invitation for the competition winner to perform at the festival in 2009. The Montreux Jazz Festival is currently accepting entries from candidates until April 15,2009. Detailed information on the competition can be found on www.foundation2.ch. Î Bill Chrysler In Argentina So the people of Argentina wanted an expert panelist on monitor mixing for the 2008 Expo Show,and they turned to Shure for a recommendation. A few names came to mind,and ultimately we gave the reins to one of the best in the game,Mr.Bill Chrysler. Armed with Shure’s very own Gabriel Benitez to play the role of co- presenter and translator,Chrysler shared his background and experience,along with a few tips and tricks,to an engaged audience over a two-day period. Chrysler discussed technical matters like gain structure,microphone placement,and loudspeakers,but also included the less technical,but still important topics,like working with production managers and top-rated artists while out on tour. Chrysler has been in the industry for almost thirty years,mixing acts such as Christina Aguilera,Maroon 5,and Alicia Keys. Î On location at Montreux Jazz Fest Î Kurt Heinecke Bill Chrysler (L) with Gabriel Benitez Jamie Dailey & Darrin Vincent In the UK,there’s even an Annual Beatboxing Championship,and Shure is one of the sponsors for the event...after all, without a microphone,a beatboxer has no instrument.This year’s winner and current best in the game,MC Zani was awarded with a brand new KSM9 wired microphone and a pair of SCL5 sound-isolating earphones for his valiant effort. Upon picking up his loot from our Shure UK office,MC Zani had this to say,“The SM58® is the industry standard for beatboxing,and is far superior to anything else on the market. The results are even better with a KSM9; less sibilance,crisper trebles and tighter bass.” Congratulations to MC Zani,keep making the music with your mouth and keep beatboxing alive! 4 MC Zani Î Î Î
- 4. The four-man bandfrom Chicago, known to the world as Fall Out Boy, is on album number five. Not bad, considering the over- saturated music industry the guys have had to endure. How do they do it? Perhaps it’s the catchy hooks? Maybe it’s the relatable lyrics? Still, it could be the mass appeal they’ve garnered by touring the world? What about the collaborations they’ve done with other bands and artists? All of the above would probably be a safe answer here. With their latest release, Folie á Deux, Fall Out Boy is still a viable force when it comes to music, and whatever the reason for their success, the fans love it and the critics are left in disbelief. ON TOUR WITH SHURE: A while back, you guys were trying to do the entire contin- ental run within nine months, but due to inclement weather, it didn’t happen. What inspired that thought, that you would go for such a feat from the Guinness Book of World Records? PETE WENTZ: Um… I had been over-served one evening. [laughs] I don’t know if it was over-served… I was in a state of mind one evening, and I hit our manager up and I told him I wanted Fall Out Boy to play on all five continents. The rest of the band and the manager were like, ‘There’s seven,’ [laughs] and we went from there. As a band, we’ve always tried to be innovators; that’s our goal. It’s a pretty lofty goal, so you don’t always get there. It’s something that we wanted to do… PATRICK STUMP: Anytime I’ve opened my mouth up about this stuff, I feel like such a jackass, but there was an environmental angle. The reality is that at the exact time we were talking about doing that, that week that we decided to go, a chunk of Antarctica fell off… the size of Texas. So, it’s one of those things where there’s a little bit of an urgency to it too. Like, pretty soon there’ll be six… We were going to bring out a couple of organizations to help. WENTZ: We were in conjuncture with Green Peace… STUMP: Exactly, we were going to bring out Green Peace and draw a little attention into what’s going on there. But, “two birds with one stone,” also maybe set a record, which would be pretty cool. WENTZ: And I think it would just be insane, because we’ve traveled to many places in the world. We’ve been to Uganda, South Africa, South America, Australia, Asia… It’s just cool, because when else would you have the chance to do that? STUMP: Yeah, I think that’s the other thing too… WENTZ: It’s partially the adventure. STUMP: Every so often, stuff gets brought up and people will say, ‘Yeah, you’re just doing that for press.’ No, honestly, if you had a chance to go to Antarctica, you would prob- ably do it too. [laughs] I don’t care if any- one found out about it, I just wanted to go. WENTZ: We got as close as humanly possible at the time. STUMP: We were really close. We were at the bottom tip of Patagonia. We saw penguins, we hung out with penguins. WENTZ: We were in the southern most pop- ulated area. OTWS: Are you going to do it again, give it another shot? WENTZ: I would say that definitely the whole thing is a continued attempt. We don’t have specific plans for attempting it again, but definitely not giving up yet. OTWS: Now that you’ve achieved the level you’re at, you guys are sought after for cre- ative input and production, and you’re reaching out to a bunch of different artists as well. How has the collaborative role changed some of the ways you guys go about making a record? STUMP: Well, I think you just learn a lot more. You’re more educated… It’s one of those things where so much stuff with music is intuition, either you have it or you don’t, as far as what you’re gonna know. I took a music theory class in high school, and a lot of the stuff you just kind of know… ‘Okay, well that sounds good in a major.’ It’s kind of the same thing with a lot of production ideas. You know some things implicitly, but then you become more armed with the nomenclature. I think that’s one of the big things, the more collaboration we’ve done, the more work we’ve done, the more we know about our work. Going into this record, we’re so much more educated than we were the first time. Thinking generally about… What mic is on the snare? How far is it away? Now these are things the band knows, in addition to the engineer and the assistant. I think that’s a huge step. WENTZ: [cups hand over mouth, points to Stump and whispers] Some of the band knows it… [laughter] WENTZ: It’s like… when you’re just starting out, you have peanut butter and jelly, be- cause that’s all you can really afford, and that’s all you can really get to. Then all of the sudden, you can afford to have all of these cool… like caviar or whatever. But at the same time, peanut butter and jelly al- ways tastes really good, so you always go back to it. OTWS: You guys are obviously reaching out… Pete, you’re very entrepreneurial. Patrick, you’re working on a lot of production now for a lot of different bands. Does that bring different perspectives into the music? STUMP: I absolutely think so. It’s one of those things, Pete will never say it, but I think one of the things that gets glossed over a lot whenever someone is talking about “Pete Wentz: Entrepreneur,” is that anything that he does that ultimately may incidentally make money, he’s doing for artistic reasons. I think that’s one of the things… WENTZ: Thanks man. STUMP: It’s true. It’s one of those things that always blew my mind. He printed shirts because he wanted to see those shirts exist. It was more of the creative aspect of it. I think that’s the thing when I’m producing, I think ultimately, it’s thinking outside of the box of making records. Ultimately we are still making records, and this is all really outside of the studio, making a “record.” 6 www.shure.com On Tour with Shure 7
- 5. 8 www.shure.com OnTour with Shure 9 WENTZ: And definitely the influences… you get to interact with other people and interact with other ideas, and that, obviously, you bring back to your band, ‘This worked, this didn’t. Maybe we could push ourselves here. I worked with these guys. I produced this record. We did this. I definitely do want to do this. I definitely don’t want to do that.’ STUMP: I think there’s also simple things like… the more you know, the more exper- iences you have in the music industry and watching other people work, the more you know what your capacity is to do those things. WENTZ: There’s a huge list of “do’s and don’ts,” but they’re all printed via other people’s careers, with what they’re doing. STUMP: Yeah, pretty much. WENTZ: You could fall out very easily, I think anyone can. STUMP: And the other thing I think about… Again, I picked the entrepreneurial stuff as an example because it’s something that you would think is non-musical, right? But the opportunity for so much music happens because of things like that. I can’t think of how many awesome musical experiences I’ve had because of some connection with- in… Pete and the fashion world or some- thing, where you will have met somebody at some sort of fashion function, and then music happens out of it. OTWS: That’s what I was curious about, the outreach towards other creative types that maybe aren’t musicians. STUMP: Exactly, and that’s the thing, because at the end of the day, you’re a specialist, right? Maybe you’re a cardiologist. Maybe you’re… We are musicians, ultimately we’re all under the umbrella of the arts, we’re artists, right? But, we’re musicians first and foremost, and you can appreciate the other arts, but at the end of the day that’s going to be your main squeeze, that you are going to make music. So, I think that’s the thing that is cool, you can take influences from other arts, and apply it to music. OTWS: Do you guys have home studios where you jot down ideas and the like, and is Shure a part of that at all? STUMP: Working on it right now, actually. I’m remodeling a house to include a studio. Actually, our long time producer Neal Avron just finished his home studio in time to do pre-production for this record, and yeah, Shure is absolutely a part of it. The funny thing is that some of the… This is a fun note, our new single, “I Don’t Care,” most of the backgrounds, including most of the harmonies are [captured with] just a [SM]58® . We had some other mics up, but [that] was a 58 straight off the demo. It just vibed well, it just sounded best with the song. That’s not even the best Shure mic out there, but it still held up, so I think that’s definitely a part of what we do. OTWS: It absolutely is part of what sounds right to you… STUMP: Yeah, and it’s one of those things where sometimes you want something like that. Also, just musically speaking, I would never consider miking a guitar amp without having a [SM]57 on it, or a snare without a 57 on it, for example. There’s so many things… Definitely, Shure mics have been a big part of this record. OTWS: How are they working for you on stage, in terms of the wireless that you guys are using? STUMP: I was actually gonna say, one of the things that bugs me, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but… I was gonna say, on tour, we’ll be across the world, and everybody has different things or whatever, and I don’t want to put anybody else down, but I’m always much happier when I have my Shure for my ears. I remember we were in… I don’t even want to disparage the country, because it’s not their fault. So I won’t even name names as far as the country. I can’t remember where we were playing… Well, I remember exactly where we were playing, but for the purposes of this, I can’t remember where we were playing. We were on some other brand’s wireless pack, and it was miserable. Fall Out Boy Theirs On A Budget Lead Vocals SM58 PG58 Backing Vocals SM58 PG58 Kick Beta 91 PG52 Hi-Hat KSM137 PG81 Guitar UR14D* PGX14* Monitors PSM® 700 PSM 200 * wireless system engineered wisdom or front-of-house engineer Danny Kis- sane, working at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club is a dream job, and you can hardly call it work when you attain the enthusiasm he has for the gig. Almost fifty years ago, Brit- ish tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott had his dreams come true when he finally opened the now legendary jazz landmark in 1959. It’s a place where legends have played and new ones are made every night, and for Danny Kissane, a little bit of luck and big dreaming led to him being a part of the club’s past, present and future. ON TOUR WITH SHURE: How did you get into venue engineering? DANNY KISSANE: As a teenager in bands, I always wanted my sound to be the best it could possibly be. My interest grew and grew until the point that I didn’t want to make music anymore; I just wanted to make it sound good. OTWS: Did you do engineering for bands before you did Ronnie Scott’s? KISSANE: Yes. I did live engineering before I went to work in television. Before that, the only experience I had was doing live bands. OTWS: What’s it like being in-house at Ronnie Scott’s? KISSANE: It’s a dream job, the perfect job. I get to do what I love every day. I don’t go to work, I go to play! OTWS: What’s the biggest challenge for you when miking up bands or performers? KISSANE: Time restraints are the only factor really, as we sound check on the afternoon of the performance. The mics we use are great, Beta 56, Beta 57A, Beta 58As, and therefore we don’t seem to have any serious problems. This small group of mics pretty much covers any instrument we want to use. If I’m doing overheads and I want a wider sound, then I use a KSM27 or the [KSM]137. OTWS: What is it about Shure mics that you like? KISSANE: It’s the durability and the reliability more than anything. Ronnie Scott’s is a hard venue to mic because it’s so dry. I know if there is a problem on stage, the SM58 will work through it. Given that, I know exactly how it’s going to sound. It’s an honest sound that we can rely on time and time again. OTWS: Is there a particular Shure mic that you always turn to? KISSANE: For percussion and louder drums, I always go for the SM57, for vocals I will always use the SM58; no matter the performer. Vocalists can come in with their expensive mics, and I will say, ‘That’s very interesting, but try this.’ It’s [the SM58] such an honest and reliable sound, I can’t really fault it in any way. OTWS: Have you any stories where a Shure mic has saved you? KISSANE: Not really, but we have had countless artists turn up with condenser mics and I have swapped them out for SMs and Betas before they have performed without them realizing! They are always really happy with the performance. OTWS: If someone said to you tonight, you can only use two models of microphones, what would you pick? KISSANE: No prizes for guessing, the SM57 and SM58. OTWS: What is your favorite performance or artist who has been at Ronnie Scott’s? KISSANE: There are too many to mention. There has been some really jaw dropping events, like when Jeff Beck was here and the artists that he brought with him. That was a once-in-a-lifetime chance thing to see Vinnie [Colaiuta] on drums and Jeff on guitar; something you’re not going to see very often. We have had Wynton Marsalis here, which was absolutely amazing. We’ve also had Hiromi here a couple of times. Her performances are always full of so much energy. It’s difficult to pick out a few when we have so many amazing names coming through here. OTWS: If you could pick one artist that hasn’t performed at Ronnie Scott’s, a per- sonal favorite of yours, who would it be? KISSANE: I would have to go back in time, and I would choose John Coltrane or Miles Davis to play here. OTWS: If you weren’t working at Ronnie’s what would you being doing? KISSANE: I honestly don’t know. I was quite lucky that I fell into Ronnie’s. I wanted to come to London and do live sound, and there was a space that I fit into, which everyone was happy with. I don’t want to be anywhere else; I am pretty much a white glove man now, I prefer being indoors and not having to move around to different venues all the time. OTWS: Have you got any advice for aspiring sound engineers? KISSANE: Just keep at it and don’t ever give up. It took me nearly three years before I got my first sound engineering job. Just don’t give up and keep doing the “toilet tours.” Just keep trying and trying, because one day you will get your break if you want it enough. Making It Sound Good by Paul Crognale F
- 6. On Tour withShure 11 Little Big Town Theirs On A Budget Lead Vocals UR24D/SM58* PGX24/SM58* Backing Vocals UR24D/SM58* PGX24/SM58* Kick Beta 52® A & SM91 PG52 Snare SM57 PG57 Toms KSM27 PG56 Hi-Hat KSM27 PG81 Overheads KSM27 PG81 Guitar Cabinet KSM32 & SM57 PG57 Bass Cabinet SM57 PG57 Monitors PSM® 700 PSM 200 * wireless system OTWS: Were there any individual milestones in your careers that you would like to men- tion that have helped to catapult you to enjoy the successes you all share today? SCHLAPMAN: I think our “Crossroads” show with Lindsey Buckingham was a huge mile- stone for us because it brought a whole new world of fans for us. The old Fleetwood Mac fans saw Lindsey, and of course they wanted to watch him and then became our fans. So, it really took us to another level, that show did, definitely. WESTBROOK: We’ve done that a couple of times. We did a tour with John Mellencamp. Anytime you do shows like that, it’s just what she said, it’s reaching out to people who don’t normally see you. A lot of times you kind of hang in your country world. It’s great to do those things, and we were fortunate enough to sing on his record, a couple of records ago. Karen just cut some songs with him on his latest record. Those moments are definitely special moments that we won’t ever forget. SWEET: Yeah, and I think we carry that with us into recording and into our live show. We watch other artists perform. I think when we toured with Keith Urban, we learned so much and gained a lot of confidence when we got off of that tour. We were a different band when we came off of that tour. We just grew up so much I think. FAIRCHILD: For me, getting nominated for a GRAMMY® was an early milestone that I didn’t think we would achieve. I’d always hoped, but it was so quick. Even though we’d been a band for ten years, when The Road To Here came out, it got nominated the year that it came out I think, maybe that fall. We were just blown away. We got nom- inated for CMA awards. We had never been nominated for anything, and so that was a whirlwind of a year. Then we ended up taking home our very first award, and we would like another one. [laugher] OTWS: How long have you all been using Shure products and do you remember what the first Shure product you had used was? SWEET: We’ve had an SM58® as long as I can remember. It is like the go to microphone. FAIRCHILD: It’s just the mic we always want. I think you guys sent us some other things to try, and we loved ‘em, but we always come back to the 58. WESTBROOK: Yeah, that’s just reliable, and you know what you’re getting and it sounds great. As far back as when I was kid singing at church, I sang on those mics and [SM]57s. We even used a 57 recording a song. She [Karen] cut a vocal on the 57 on… FAIRCHILD: It was on “Looking For A Rea- son” on The Road To Here. We couldn’t hone in on the right… We had all these crazy mics in there, and then we’re like, ‘Let’s grab a 57 and see what happens.’ WESTBROOK: It sounded great. OTWS: What would you say has been the most challenging part of your career? SCHLAPMAN: The middle years, I think. [laughter] Because in the beginning we were so excited and happy and green and on top of the world, and then… FAIRCHILD: We thought it was gonna happen fast. We got a record deal and then we flew to Las Vegas and we sang on an HBO fight… SCHLAPMAN: …and we did the Opry the same weekend… FAIRCHILD: Then it went like… [slopes hand downward]. SWEET: It kind of went into limbo for eight months. WESTBROOK: It’s definitely… it’s like life I think. It’s just… you have ups and downs, you have great moments, you have not-so- great moments. I think that journey makes you who you are. We wouldn’t trade any of it because it brought us to where we are now and made us the band that we are. 10 www.shure.com ON TOUR WITH SHURE: Your latest album A Place To Land has been getting some fan- tastic reviews. What were some of your main influences behind the songwriting on this album? KIMBERLY SCHLAPMAN: We like to write about real life, so we write from our own exper- iences and from our friends’ experiences or stories that we hear about. We just think that when we write about real life, it’ll connect more with the fans. We just kind of tell our story or tell stories that we know of… PHILLIP SWEET: Yeah, we write what moves us, and when it moves us, hopefully it will move other people, too. KAREN FAIRCHILD: After we finished The Road To Here, and it had such good… great suc- cess, then the pressure was really on to make another album, and we were trying not to put pressure on ourselves, but people were putting it on us. I’m so happy with A Place To Land, ‘cause I think it’s actually better than The Road To Here. We spent a lot of intense time writing on the road, writing at home, in the studio, and then we go back on the road, then back in the studio… it was crazy. We were happy to be finished with… the child. Now, it’s coming back out, a re-launch… OTWS: So what does it feel like to have your harmonies often compared to legendary names in music such as Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles? JIMI WESTBROOK: That’s crazy to me. FAIRCHILD: It’s laughable that we would be compared to that, I mean I love it, I love it. WESTBROOK: We’re very appreciative, but that always makes me… FAIRCHILD: It makes me nervous. WESTBROOK: It makes me nervous, too. It’s cool. Those were definitely bands that we loved. All of those ‘70s harmony bands, to me that was pride in music. SWEET: Who was it that said something about… ‘Oh, Graham Nash, yeah he’s heard about you guys. He thinks you’re good. He’s heard about you kids.’ I was like, ‘Graham Nash knows who we are?’ [laughter] Little Big Town (l-r): Phillip Sweet, Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook.
- 7. On Tour withShure 1312 www.shure.com MICHAELWAYNEBUTLER: Sure, I mean the fact that we have the background that we do in engineering and production really helps to streamline the whole process of us making a record. It’s sort of a unique situation be- cause we don’t need to have any other mid- dlemen in the process. We can really get to the heart of what we want to do quickly and without having to explain [it] to somebody else, another engineer or producer. It just sort of happens really naturally and hap- pens really quickly. That’s been nothing but beneficial to us, it’s been great. OTWS: Considering the subject matter of the stories on these projects, can you see any of these songs or a combination of them, be- coming movie scripts maybe featuring the group? THORNTON: J.D., would you like to field that one? J.D. ANDREW: I know absolutely nothing about movies. THORNTON: I’ve done a couple, but the songs, the original songs, were about The Boxmasters, our narrative story. So I can absolutely see some of them being movies or possibly songs in movies. But like I said, they’re all story songs, so I guess you could make a movie out of any of them. You never know, we might do it someday. OTWS: With new ways to distribute and promote music, along with the ever- changing record label landscape, how do you feel about the music industry today? THORNTON: The music business has gotten a lot tougher, and they’re putting everything in boxes now. It’s become more of a product, and we don’t write songs with the intention of becoming successful or writing hits or anything like that. We write what we feel and play what we feel, and we don’t really try. We know we’re not gonna sell ten million records, and not many people are doing that now. So, we stick to what we love and what makes us feel good, and whatever happens, happens. I think it’s that way in a lot of the entertainment businesses these days. I’m hoping that someday it gets back to the real stuff, and we’re trying our best to give our little-bitty part of it, to do our little part to get it back there. ANDREW: And at the same time, our CD is in a box. [laughs] OTWS: If you could tour with any group today, who would it be? THORNTON: Gosh, if we could tour with any group today… BUTLER: As The Boxmasters, I think Billy Bob Thornton. THORNTON: Yeah, probably so, which by the way we’re doing right now. Well, I think a Boxmasters/Drive-By Truckers tour would be nice. I think that could be a lot of fun. It’d be great if Jerry Lee Lewis went out on the road again. I think we’d be good with Jerry Lee, or the Creaking Chairs would be fun. BUTLER: That would be good. I like that band a lot. I was just playing them. ANDREW: Also, we’d let The Beatles open for us… that would be alright. OTWS: Similarly, is there anyone you’d like to invite to perform on the next record? THORNTON: The Boxmasters are kind of a self-contained unit. We don’t really have guest stars on there, but if we did have one, I would say it would be Jimmy Vaughan, if we get Jimmy in there to do a little thing with us sometime. Yeah, or maybe the fiddle player from It’s A Beautiful Day… or possibly their drummer. OTWS: With so many recording credits and so much performance experience, can you tell us about when and how you were first introduced to Shure products? THORNTON: I was in bands from the time I was a little kid… we all were. Tom, with so many bands as a tour manager and pro- duction manager, he’s dealt with Shure for a long, long time. When I was a kid, that was the only microphone that anybody would even pretend to use. All the years that we played and when I worked as a roadie also, Shure microphones were all we had; [SM]58’s and [SM]57’s, which we still use to this day. Shure mics are like the Cadillac of mics to us. Just the tradition of it… If there’s some new thing that comes out, and it’s some name you never heard before, it doesn’t feel as good as saying, ‘We use Shure mics.’ It’s like saying we drive a Cadillac. OTWS: Your tour brings you through many markets across the U.S. before ending up in Vegas. What happens next? THORNTON: We’ve already got two records in the can, past the one we have out now. We have a Christmas record, as well as the next regular Boxmasters record coming out in the spring, and we’re gonna go home and start recording again. We can’t stop recording, we’re kind of obsessed and we’ll probably do another tour in the winter and spring when we get done with this one. We’ll be pretty antsy to get back out there. The Boxmasters Theirs On A Budget Okay, yes, there is a famous movie star in this band. And yes, he did have a bit of a music career in the past. Honestly though, with the camaraderie prevalent in The Boxmasters, none of those facts seem to be an actual factor in their success. Besides the status that comes with the “lead singer” title, Billy Bob Thornton does not consider himself any more important than his two musical counterparts. I guess you could say there’s somewhat of a Three Musketeers vibe among them. That seems to be the key factor in what makes them The Boxmasters. ON TOUR WITH SHURE: How does it feel to be back out on the road? W.R.“BUD”THORNTON: We feel pretty good about it. We love being on the road. I mean we all miss the kids and everything, that’s about the only thing that’s bad about being on the road, is missing your family. But we love playing for the fans and we like to see the people that buy the records. We’re a pretty close-knit family, so we like being out here together; the camaraderie and everything. I mean just playing live is a thrill. OTWS: There are so many credits and musical history between the three of you individually. Bringing that into the studio must have been a huge benefit when you got together for this project. Does it also cause any roadblocks along the way? THORNTON: Well, we pretty much have the same musical tastes… all of us. It’s a pretty eclectic mix of music that we all grew up with, and I don’t think we’ve ever had any differences in opinion about music to tell you the truth. Even though we’ve all work- ed with various kinds of people, we don’t always work with the people that we listen to sometimes. In terms of J.D. and Mike and Tom, they’ve worked with a lot of people as engineers and production managers, tour managers; people that might not be their exact musical taste. In terms of what we all feel, we’re kind of in the same vain. “SHure mics are like the cadillac of mics to us.” —W.R. “Bud” thornton Lead Vocals UR2/KSM9* PGX24/SM86* Backing Vocals SM58® PG58 Kick Beta 52® A & SM91 PG52 Snare SM57 PG57 Toms Beta 98D/S PG56 Hi-Hat KSM137 PG81 Overheads KSM32 PG81 Guitar Cabinet KSM27 PG57 Bass Cabinet KSM27 PG52 Lap Steel KSM27 PG57 Leslie Cabinet Top/Bottom Beta 98/KSM27 PG56/PG52 Organ Cabinet KSM27 PG57 *wireless system
- 8. On Tour withShure 1514 www.shure.com bracelets. Then we also, for the band at night, we record CD copies, just straight to disc. That’s what we use as a reference copy, and we’ll sit in the back—sometimes a few of us, sometimes all of us, sometimes just one of us in the back of the bus—and just kind of review the show, see what we did well, see what we can improve upon. We’ve done that for eight years now, that’s been the common practice. OTWS: How has the process of working out a song changed from when you were in eighth grade or say, Ohio State? How has it stayed the same? CULOS: [laughing] Good question. Yeah, we have been a band for a very long time. We started… The roots of the band started, yes, when we were in eighth grade. Then O.A.R. formed when we were juniors in high school, which was 1996. So, when we were young, I think we struggled with trying to find meaning and what our songs would have to say; what we were trying to convey to an audience. Really, at sixteen years old, we knew that we didn’t know anything more than just a little [of what] we’d experienced. We hadn’t experienced real life, love, all that kind of stuff, and we didn’t feel right about singing about those kinds of things directly. Marc [Roberge], our lead singer and songwriter, he would sing lyrics through the eyes of characters that he had written about in a short story, and he’d base songs off of these different characters. I think it was a way for him to talk about certain things like that, but not have to feel like he was older or experienced more than anyone else our age. We were just trying to reach people our age, and I think that idea of being honest through our music is something that has stayed the same from the very beginning to where we are today. The actual songwriting has changed dramatically. It’s gone from where we just sat around and jammed out ideas until a song forms or sort of came about and then we worked it out on stage until we developed somewhat of a finished idea, and then went in and recorded it and then always looked back and said, ‘Hey, it really wasn’t finished, we need to get better at this.’ So, throughout the years, the main song- writers in the band have really stepped it up and taken the time to really sit down and hash every little detail out. They’ve even worked with some outside songwriters to bounce ideas off of, and we’ve come back with great results from that stuff. I think it’s also helped them step up their own game when they write by themselves. I feel like we’ve matured a lot as songwriters since when we started in eighth grade. The basic foundation of just trying to be honest in what we’re saying, both musically and, Marc, lyrically, is the same. OTWS: I see some UHF-R stuff on the stage, wireless systems. How’s that been working out for you? DePIZZO: I love the wireless systems, and it’s funny… We did a small club show at the end of our Summer tour, and my guitar tech handed me my guitar and I played it half the show with it unplugged, because I’m so used to it being wireless. Plugging in a cable is just too much work for me these days. [laughs] It was funny and extremely em- barrassing, but very liberating. I think I was the first to use the wireless stuff, because of the saxophone. I’d been using the UR stuff and a Beta 98 for over eight years, and it’s really been a part of my sound for almost the entire time I’ve been in the band. Slowly but surely, the guitar players and such started going wireless. It’s great. You get to move around the stage and it provides more interaction and more options, and that’s always a good thing. OTWS: Can we talk about your support from Shure? DePIZZO: The relationship that we’ve had with Shure has been really great for us. I know that we obviously use the products up on stage, and we’ve been doing so for years and years. It’s been great. We’ve been using them at home as well. I know that in my home studio I use the [KSM]44s… I’ve used them for everything. I’ve used them to mike guitar cabs, I’ve used them for overheads, vocals, acoustics, saxophone, whatever it is, you name it. Like I said earlier, the Beta 98’s been a part of my sound on the horn for a better part of eight years. The funny thing is, the [SM]57 on the alto sax… When I went into the studio this past time to record the All Sides record, it was the first time that I’d used multiple horns—the bari, the alto, and the tenor—and we tried a number of different microphones. It’s funny, the 57 was the one that worked the best on the alto. It gave the most true sound. Every- thing alto on the record was just a good ‘ol $100 57. It was great. CULOS: I also think that it carries over into our personal use, too. I know we all wear Shure earphones when we’re riding on the bus or flying from city to city, and listening to music. On the personal pleasure side, we use Shure earphones just to listen to tunes. O.A.R. Theirs On A Budget Lead Vocals UR24D/Beta 58* PGX24/Beta 58* Backing Vocals Beta 58A® & SM57 PG58 Kick Beta 91 & Beta 52® A PG52 Snare Top/Bottom SM57 PG57 Toms SM98 PG56 Hi-Hat KSM32 PG81 Overheads KSM32 PG81 Percussion SM98 PG56 Djembe Top SM57 PG57 * wireless system ON TOUR WITH SHURE: Taping and tape trading can be a blessing to some artists and a curse to others. As a band you are very supportive of tape trading. Can you explain why you think this has helped you thrive and grow? CHRISCULOS: I think the reason that tape trading has helped to build the fan base of the band, is because it gives people something to talk about. It gives them something… an activity that they can sort of partake in. They can tape the show, go home, talk about it, trade it for other shows and compare. It actually sparked a whole community of people who’ve come out to shows, and I think it gets people interested in coming back to shows, rather than seeing one show and saying, ‘Alright, I’ve seen them live, that’s enough for me.’ And for us, it’s good because it keeps us on our toes. We have to work on new arrangements for songs, work on different set lists, things like that, so it’s great for everything. OTWS: Why did you decide to go with USB wrist- bands as the medium for physical distribution of your live shows? CULOS: Because USB headbands were sold out. [laughter] JERRY DePIZZO: There’s that, which is true. Then the other side of it is the media’s always gonna change. The wristband is just the latest piece of media that we’re actually gonna use, and it’s gonna change and evolve into a number of different things. It was something that we thought the audience would be interested in, our kids are young, they’re tech savvy, they challenge us. So, it felt like something that was both wearable and re-useable and something we were able to brand and easily distribute. OTWS: Do you record reference copies of all of your shows? How, and what do you use to record them? DePIZZO: Well, we do a number of different things. We record a multi-track version of each show every night. We record an mp3 format version of the show every night, and that’s what we use for the USB ome of us probably had a band when we were in grade school or even high school, and the rest of us might have known someone in a band during those trying scholastic years. Most bands back then barely made it out of the garage or broke up after their first gig, but how many do you know that actually stayed together and just kept on evolving and evolving to one day turn into the darlings of the college rock scene? Well, O.A.R. is a band that tells that very story, and it seems that the elongated version of their name, Of A Revolution, is more than just a clever tag for the six-member band from Rockville, Maryland, it’s a statement of longevity. We sat down with Jerry DePizzo [saxophone, guitar, backing vocals] and Chris Culos [drums, percus- sion] before their sold-out night at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. We talked about tape-trading, song- writing, and, of course… microphones.
- 9. 16 www.shure.com OnTour with Shure 17 coverstory the record in Mexico as part of a tour where we were meeting the press from time to time, and at times we would go out to play to keep the band alive, and because we enjoy playing. In reality, we are performers, and going on tour also turns us on. [It was] an enormous surprise, because each time we incorporated a song from the new list, the people went crazy and already knew it. Well, little by little we incorporated them. Now we are in the process of debuting the entire album, starting in Luna Park, which is a stadium in Argentina where we are go- ing to do two nights in July that already are sold out. It’s already winter vacation, and it’s already so full of shows that we can’t add [any], so we are going to go to an open stadium towards the end of the year. In the open stadiums, you are allowed 40,000-50,000 people, so we are going to go to that, I believe. OTWS: Well, in the time that you have been in the studio and on stage, what thing has never changed for Babasónicos? DÁRGELOS: Well, I think the epic essence, the search for vertigo, the desire to incor- porate some elements, experimentation… We have always had our own rehearsal room, and we have set up our own studio, starting as carpenters and as electricians. We all know the recording field well, but I believe that it’s always good to take risks, to feel vertigo, and to incor- porate error as a new element of experimentation. Because when one knows everything, and has filled himself with certainties, one no longer has anything else to learn. One no longer makes mistakes, and does things perfectly, and they don’t have flavor; they have no taste. Then, the best thing is to go off in search of new things. OTWS: Of course. In your shows, Shure microphones are always present. How long have you been using Shure? DÁRGELOS: Yes, practically since the first show that I did in my life. We started re- hearsing in ’85—look how long ago, right? It is the same line-up we have now, but with other names, because we were very young. We were friends in what is called secondary school, high school here. At that time, we were a band with three keyboard players, a drum set, and a bass, because we had not yet found a guitarist within our area. Our first microphones were an introductory model or the five guys in the Argentine band Babasónicos, album number nine, Mucho, brings a lot more to its fans from around the world. After becoming one of the most significant groups of the underground rock movement in Argentina during the ’90s, Babasónicos has been a band that has never been afraid to experiment with many different musical styles. We sat down with lead singer, Adrián Dárgelos, to talk about the new material, performing live and the philosophy behind Babasónicos and the sound that keeps them on top of the charts. ON TOUR WITH SHURE: Tell us the story about the new material from Mucho? ADRIÁNDÁRGELOS: Mucho is an album record- ed [last] December in the Panda and Circo- beat studios of Argentina, and it was com- posed between the months of November and October. It was mixed in London by Phil Brown, who is a legendary rock engineer, that has [been recording] since Led Zep- pelin IV. He mixed the recordings of Marley and Eddie Burns, and he did stuff like Robert Palmer, The Rolling Stones, Talk Talk, right up to our era with Beth Gibbons. Well, [he’s] a mythical rock engineer that we always loved, so one day we checked to see if, with a rock in Spanish budget, it was pos- sible to be able to work with such a god of recording engineering, of studio engin- eering. And the truth [is], that he surprised us, because he is at an age where he only does what he likes, because he doesn’t need the money to live on now. He said that if he liked the band, he would do it. We sent him a previous album that we had, because he didn’t know that we had so many records, and he accepted right away. And from there, we mixed the Anoche album and Mucho, which is the latest that I was talking about, that ended up being released in the middle of May 2008. Now that we are at the end of June, it has already been on the street for a year-and-a-half, and it is an album that is a sales hit in Mexico, the United States and Latin America. In Argentina, it came out in an innovative for- mat. It debuted on cell phones, so right away, in the first week, it was a platinum record on cell phones, and a gold record in physical format in another week. For Latin American markets that is a lot, given the piracy that there is now. But, [I’m] very happy because it’s an album that brings us a lot of satisfaction. Best of all, it’s a very inspired record, where really we brought our work to another level. I believe it shows some facets, that until this moment, we had not shown, and that covers, in- cludes, catalyzes a lot of the freshness of the band, and well, it crystallizes the moments of spontaneity. OTWS: Tell us, what has been the reaction of the public to the new material? DÁRGELOS: Well, we began to play
- 10. 18 www.shure.com for thatera, and right away, since the mic had an on/off switch, we realized that they didn’t work for us. The introductory model, at least, gave us an idea of what microphones are like. Right away, we bought ourselves our first [SM]58® , which is probably one of the ones we still have now, all old and all beat up. We keep [them] because we collect them. We have many Shure microphones, and we believe that they always have, at minimum, their perfect sound. What surprises me most is how a microphone bought twenty years ago still works the same. They have no noise at all. At times they die, but they die because they have been struck aggressively. They can fall in thousands of ways and not break. I believe that I have not sung with other brands of microphones. You see many bands, including… The other day, it sur- prised me, because in Live Aid, Elton John sang with a 58. Elton John can sing with anything! For me, it’s a microphone that helps me, because of the particularity of my voice. There are people that have a deeper voice, and they can use microphones that have more sharpness. The 58, [has a flat response], and it softens my voice for me. I have tried to sing in the harmonica micro- phone [520DX], I used to use it with dist- ortion pedals. During ’95/’96, there was a record that we had called Dopádromo, and I sang various numbers with the harmonica microphone. I keep it, I hang onto it with love, because it’s a microphone that we bought in ’93/’94. They belong to our whole history. OTWS: The in-ear personal monitors… Have they changed the way you perform on stage? DÁRGELOS: Yes, yes, and more for the coun- tries where the technology has not arrived yet. If you are accustomed to the northern hemisphere where the technology is re- placed immediately, new lines of permanent monitor systems come out, and the floor monitors that have evolved a lot keep on changing. If you take a look at the monitors from the decade of the ’70s, they were wooden boxes with two speakers, a woofer and a tweeter. It wasn’t until the in-ears came out… for me they were a revolution. That’s when I began to really hear myself. In Latin America, the sound systems were older, and because of economic issues, the equipment couldn’t be renewed every year. At times you were with technology from ’95 and it was already 2000. When [in-ears] came out, from the time they were available… I had to do three shows in the same theater in Buenos Aires, it was a theater similar to the one in which we are going to play today, without seats, but very big. I had to do three days in a row, and I had a cold. I was afraid that my voice would not endure the three days in a row, having a cold. I asked a friend of mine, who is the singer from Illya Kuryaki, if he would lend me his in-ears to be able to sing. After that I wasn’t able to do it again, I was never again able to sing without the in-ears. OTWS: Who have been the greatest influ- ences for the Babasónicos? DÁRGELOS: Well, the music of the late 60s influences us a lot. For example, bands like The Beach Boys, The Hollies, The Rolling Stones. Later, Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are great influences on us. On the other hand, Sly and the Family Stone and Funk- adelic, those were the bands that impacted us the most. Also, Marc Bolan and T. Rex is a great influence for us. After that, I sup- pose The Clash a bit, folk music a little, like Tim Buckley, Roy Harper. Psychedelic folk has influenced us a lot, also. We are big music fans, so pop music in itself is an influence. I have consumed, purely and ex- clusively, rock records, but the other [in- fluences] have come through my family, through movies, through television; it has come not directly from a rock record that I have bought, but it is a part of my back- ground of influence. OTWS: You have had an incredible trajectory. What motivates the Babasónicos? DÁRGELOS: Well, Babasónicos is a band that is hungry, that doesn’t settle for its achieve- ments, that does not feel that nominations or prizes really do justice with what they are seeking. Babasónicos is a band that tries to subvert and to change what is understood by music, what is understood by social communication, and what is understood by attitude. We believe that rock also is a form of sharing of politics, even intellectual, and that the youth do it without filters, nor interests of the business in the world of con- sumption. Then we believe that is a rather free way of giving your opinion, and as long as we feel that way, we are going to continue doing music. Babasónicos Theirs On A Budget Lead Vocals UR2/Beta 87C* PGX24/SM86* Backing Vocals SM87 & SM58 PG58 Kick Beta 91 & Beta 52® A PG52 Snare Top/Bottom SM57 PG57 Toms Beta 56® A PG56 Hi-Hat SM81 PG81 Overheads SM81 PG81 Guitar Cabinet KSM27 & SM57 PG57 Bass Cabinet KSM27 PG52 Bongos SM57 PG57 Monitors PSM® 700 & PSM 600 PSM 200 * wireless system
- 11. On Tour withShure 2120 www.shure.com ajor label equals mainstream, right? If you’re Mastodon, that’s the furthest thing from the truth. Take the band’s third album and first major label release, Blood Mountain, a col- lection of tracks that are quite possibly the band at their heaviest. Thank you major label status, you’ve made one of the heaviest rock bands out there even heavier. On Tour with Shure sat down with drummer Brann Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher during a tour stop in Chicago to talk about the method to their madness. OTWS: With your albums being conceptually based, do you guys all sit down together and decide how that works out, or is that one person’s vision? BRANN DAILOR: Well, I guess I come up with some storylines. But, once the initial story comes, once it’s pitched and everyone gets on the same page with it, then it factors into everybody’s writing. Usually the purpose for it is to lead the way and get us all on the same page with writing. It’s easier for us as a group to be unified to write a record, if we have some semblance of a basic, cohesive storyline of what’s going on, or an element… even water or earth. OTWS: Now have you guys tried the other approach, a more traditional band ap- proach, of individuals bringing songs to the table and assembling and recording that way? KELLIHER: There’s some songs that are collaborations… just messing around and [realizing], ‘Hey this part fits there, and one of my riffs for your riff.’ Sometimes it’s one person bringing the whole thing together, and everybody puts there own two cents in there and flavors it here and there. It’s never quite the same as it was if one person brings it… things change. DAILOR: Once we introduce it to the class, then everybody puts their spin on it and puts their touch to it, so that’s what makes it Mastodon. OTWS: Excellent. Now when you guys bring these songs to each other, do you have pre- production studios that you’re working in, or home studios? DAILOR: We have a practice space that we go to pretty much every day and we sit-down there from either noon or one ‘til five or six, and just try to be as organized as we can about it. It takes months and months. When you first start going down it’s like, ‘Okay, I got this riff. Okay we got this riff.’ Every- thing’s kind of a bit of a mess. KELLIHER: This time we got into Pro-Tools for computers and sat around my house trying to put something together. Then we go down to the space and try to play it live. We’ve got an 8-track digital recorder down there. So, we’ve got pre-pre-pre-production. We did a lot of pre-pre-ing for this record. DAILOR: We worked hard and we took our time with it. We really made sure that every- thing was just right. OTWS: Have any of you guys been bitten by the producer bug? KELLIHER: Well, we all have ideas to kind of throw around like, ‘Hey, I think we should be doing this.’ DAILOR: Yeah, we don’t just roll in, we write the songs ourselves to an extent. KELLIHER: We usually listen to everybody. If Brann has a… ‘I think we should do the chorus four times,’ and I say, ‘No, we need to do it two times,’ and we try it both ways. We record both ways and see what every- body thinks. DAILOR: It’s based on feel… you just kinda know, that’s what I guess being a musician or artist is kind of all about, is knowing when something should happen. You know what I mean? That’s what’s up to us. OTWS: Do you guys at this point have your choice of producers? Do you pick who you work with or collaborate with in the studio? KELLIHER: Well, we definitely have our choices, it’s not like the record company says, ‘You have to use this person.’ We had a bunch of guys we had picked out, star guys. But it’s just so… The ways the stars aligned with working at home, was a lot more com- fortable for me and I think the rest of the guys. DAILOR: Everybody, yeah KELLIHER: To be at home and not have to live in Seattle or New York or whatever… All the hard work that we had done ahead of time, to go in the studio and just knock it out, it was so much easier than anything that I’ve been used to doing. It’s just amazing. DAILOR: Seattle was… Seattle was awesome, I mean it was fun to make those records, but it was kind of a struggle because we were away from our families and away from home… living in a hotel. KELLIHER: Living in an apartment in a hotel out there… it wasn’t that comfortable. Spending twelve hours a day in the studio is working. DAILOR: Even if you’re not working, just be- cause there’s a lot of downtime in the studio.
- 12. 22 www.shure.com Someone elseis doing something all day long and you’re just kind of sitting there in a small room. KELLIHER: So, at home we can just come in, and it was easy. Just play your part and… DAILOR: Go back home. KELLIHER: You can go back home now and go sit in your bed if you want to… DAILOR: Go cook steak on the grill if you want to. KELLIHER: If we could continue doing that for the rest of our career, that’d be great. DAILOR: Yeah we hope to a long lasting rela- tionship. KELLIHER: Even if we end up flying produc- ers and engineers in… DAILOR: Yeah I like doing it at home. KELLIHER: Yeah, working with Brent [Hinds, vocals/guitar] was just amazing… just easy. He’s smart, fast, and quick. OTWS: You guys are wearing in-ear personal monitors now? How is that transition for you? DAILOR: We’ve had a few friends of ours that use them and swear by them. I think it’s either you love ‘em or you hate ‘em. For me it’s been tremendously better. There’s just so much clarity. I can hear the guitar and make it sound like the record, in my mix. I can control the mix and I know how to work the board and everything. I can go over there and mess with stuff and it’s awesome. OTWS: Is there anyone that’s not taken to it? I mean… there’s no right or wrong answer for monitoring, I’ve found. KELLIHER: Yeah, Brent was good with them for a couple of days but we just… on the big, big stages, he’s always had kind of an issue with monitors in general, but every day, it’s different. People are picky, they need to hear exactly what they want to hear. If you’re singing and screaming you don’t wanna throw your voice out becuase you can’t hear yourself. I understand, but for me they’re… I like them. DAILOR: I think Brent would probably go back to them when we go back to theatres and stuff, when you can control it a little more. KELLIHER: Get a proper sound check and all that stuff, to sit there and dial it in. The first day that we got them, I was kind of nervous just about going out in front of a bunch of people without monitors in front of me. I was just like, ‘I’ve never done this before, in twenty years of playing.’ We did get the chance to spend an hour and a half, two hours, checking. We played with these songs [from Blood Moutain], and I think we played our best show ever that night. DAILOR:Yeah, pretty much. KELLIHER: Perfect, like every note was perfect and everyone’s like, ‘Wow, these are great, you can hear everybody.’ When you change venues and you go to an outdoor amphi- theatre, you gotta go mess with it again, but it’s pretty constant. OTWS: Excellent. Now your vocal mics are Beta 57As. Do you guys notice a little bit more oomph in your sound with those mics? KELLIHER: All I know is that when I’m screaming in the mic, what I can hear now sounds amazing. It’s a very clear, clear sound. The clarity is really good and we’ve never had so many fans, people, even our manager… anyone watching us is like, ‘You guys never sounded so good.’ So I don’t know if it’s… We do have a new tour manager and sound guy, and we all have brand-new Shure microphones, so it’s a combination of the two maybe? Mastodon Theirs On A Budget Lead Vocals Beta 57A® PG57 Backing Vocals Beta 57A PG57 Kick Beta 91 PG52 Snare Top/Bottom Beta 98D/S PG56 Toms Beta 98D/S & Beta 52® A PG56 Hi-Hat KSM109 PG81 Overheads KSM32 PG81 Guitar Cabinet SM7 & SM57 PG57 Bass Cabinet Beta 98D/S PG56 Robot Beta 57A PG57 On Tour with Shure 23
- 13. 24 www.shure.com OnTour with Shure 25 thing. So, I challenge young songwriters, think of that, when you sit down to write a song, try to write a song. SPREADIN’ THE WORD ON IN-EARS OTWS: How was the conversion from floor wedges to in ear personal monitors? How would you describe the experience? ROBINSON: My production manager is this guy named Brian French, and Brian had tried to get me to switch to the ear monitors for probably eight years. I went to see Luther Vandross—who was a really good friend of mine—I went to see Luther, and he was at the Hollywood Bowl. So after- wards I went backstage to see him, and he had used the ear monitors. He said, ‘Smoke, let me tell you, the ear monitors, they are really what’s happening. It’s like singing to yourself in the studio. When you saw me, when I came on, I was barely singing, be- cause I could hear myself. I don’t have to strain, I don’t have to do anything.’ So, I came and I told Brian, I said, ‘Brian, I saw Luther and he was telling me…’ Brian said, ‘Great man! I’m gonna have the lady come down to the studio…’ because we were re- hearsing, ‘…and fit you.’ I said, ‘Okay, fine.’ Because I was a wedge man, you know, I don’t want the ear monitor and all that stuff like that. So, they fitted me and the first concert that I did them on, I had two. So, for the first three or four songs, I could hear You could have a guitar player, and every string on his guitar could be on a separate track now, but not then. A TRUE CALLING OTWS: At what point did you realize that music would be what you did for the rest of your life? ROBINSON: I think that I realized that music would be what I was gonna do for the rest of my life after we had started Motown and we were three or four years into it. [laugh- ter] Up to that point, I wasn’t sure, because we were fledgling. The fortunate thing for us at Motown is that back in the days when we started, when Barry started Motown… Small record companies, a lot of them had one hit record, and if they got paid at all for that record, it was a rare occasion. Distribu- tors and people like that, there were so many record companies, they weren’t thinking about a one-hit-wonder record company. The great thing that happened at Motown, is that we bombarded them with hits, over and over and over and over and over again. It got to the point where they were calling us to see what we were gonna release next. Same thing, I think about payola, when people were paying the disc jockeys to play their music and all that. Payola was a big thing. We never really had to go through that. We went through a period of time when the disc jockeys would call up and say, ‘Hey man, give us the record first!’ They were warring over who was gonna get the next Motown record, which is a great place to be in, man. Motown was a phenomenon, it was, what I call, a once-in-a-lifetime musical event. Nothing like that had ever happened prior to that time, and I doubt seriously if anything like that will happen again. OTWS: Any words of wisdom for the aspir- ing songwriter, specifically? ROBINSON: Well yeah, for the aspiring song- writers, I say to them, nothing is too far- fetched, your ideas. Write them down, work on them. Always try to write a song. See, my main goal, when I sit down to write a song, is to write a song. The first time that I record it on myself or someone else, I may not give it the right treatment for the masses of people to say, ‘Oh, I love this, let me get this.’ But if it’s a song, I want to write a song that if I had written it fifty years before then, it would have meant something to people. Today is gonna mean something. Fifty years from now is gonna mean some- myself great, better than I ever could. It was like I was in a studio signing, but I couldn’t hear the people. I couldn’t hear what was going on around me. I couldn’t hear everybody in the band, it was just whatever my mix was in there, that’s what I got. So, I took one out and I stuck it down in my shirt, and I used the left ear to wear my monitor in. It is a God send. It doesn’t matter where you’re playing. It doesn’t mat- ter what the acoustics are. It doesn’t matter if you’re outside or inside. It doesn’t matter if the wind is blowing. It doesn’t matter, whatever is happening, you can hear your- self. I tell everybody, I tell all the singers that I know, that haven’t tried them. I told Gladys Knight, ‘Gladys, get the ear monitor. Get it baby, because it is what’s happening.’ I told Aretha, ‘Get the ear monitor because it’s what’s happening.’ Man, it’s a God send. It saves your voice. When we do concerts, I’m not kidding, I sing for two-and-a-half hours. I don’t have to strain because I can hear me. Without the ear monitors, even with the floor monitors, there’s sometimes when you’re straining because the crowd may be up or it may be outside or something and you’re not getting the acoustic bounce back or whatever. Some- times you go to over sing, trying to hear yourself. Rather than you just standing there singing and you can hear every [breath]. They’re wonderful. Smokey Robinson Theirs On A Budget Lead Vocals UR2/KSM9* PGX24/SM86* Snare KSM27 PG57 Overheads KSM44 & SM81 PG81 Monitors PSM® 700 & PSM 600 PSM 200 * wireless system a different time or a different week. So, we decided, no we’re gonna go back to old school, and we had the musicians in there playing while I was singing, and we had a blast. We did two CDs like that. We did the Timeless Love one like that, the only thing we had to end up over-dubbing again, were the strings because they fed in on each other. So, we over-dubbed the strings on the Timeless Love thing, but [on] the new CD, there’s only a couple of songs on there that have strings. We just did the stuff live ON TOUR WITH SHURE: Tell us about the new album, what was the writing process like? SMOKEY ROBINSON: Well, the writing pro- cess for the new album was kind of normal for me. I write songs all the time. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t hear something of a song. Some words, a melody, something will come to me, of a song. I just think that everybody has gifts, and that’s probably one of my gifts, to be able to write songs, be- cause I’m not a laborer songwriter. I’m not one of those writers who needs to isolate myself, go away to the woods or to the mountains somewhere for a month just to write. It just happens all day long for me. I can be in the car, in the bathroom, on the plane, wherever it strikes me, I try to jot it down so that I can save it to work on it or what-have-you. So, the songs on the new album came basically the same way. I’d been working on the songs for longer than I’d been recording them, of course, but some of the songs I wrote after we started to record. We were doing two CDs at the same time. I did a CD of all standards, Gershwin, Cole Porter, and people like that, because it was the music that I’d grown up on and I’d been singing those songs in my live show for about fifteen years, so we decided to record them. My original thought was to record them live. To rent out a place, some- thing very intimate, five to six hundred people, and just do a whole show, an eve- ning of doing those types of songs. It ends up that I never got around to doing that, but we did do the next best thing, because we recorded them live as well as my new CD, in the studio. What I mean by that, is that we had the guys in there playing while I was singing. People don’t record like that anymore man. People who play and sing on the same song, don’t even see each other. Everybody comes in on a different day or at man, and I have had a ball. [I] haven’t had that much fun recording in years, because it was like doing a concert in the studio. GOIN’ OLD SCHOOL OTWS: Now, back in the Motown days, that was how you guys had always recorded. ROBINSON: Back in the Motown days, that’s how we recorded, really because we started off with one track. I take my hat off to Barry Gordy, who is the founder of Motown, and he was our producer before he started Motown. The Miracles and I were with him before he started Motown. I take my hat off to him and guys like him, who were producing records in those days. He taught me how to produce records, so I had a bit of that experience myself. But, you had to be producing while you were recording, and the engineer had to be on it, because he had to be mixing while you were recording, ‘cause there was only one track. Everybody who was gonna be on that record had better be in that studio, then. The most you might be able to do, is get two takes of almost or relatively the same tempo, if you wanted to, and splice something in from one take to another. But other than that, there was no remixing and all that stuff like that. I recall, when we first got two tracks at Motown, where we could have our lead singer on a separate track than all the other stuff, boy we thought we were the most innovative company in the world. We probably were at that point. We had the lead singer on a different track, oh boy that was something. Then we got three tracks and then we got eight and then we got sixteen and then we got twenty-four. The progression is really something, and I think that’s probably the biggest difference in the record business now, other than the record market itself, is how you record. N
- 14. On Tour withShure 2726 www.shure.com ON TOUR WITH SHURE: Alright, so start at the beginning, when did you get into music? What were your influences? How did this crazy journey start? SERJ TANKIAN: I was one of those kids that wasn’t into music when I was young, unlike most musicians that have been playing since they were six or eight years old. My parents actually wanted me to get into music when I was younger, ‘cause my dad’s a beautiful singer. He’s a musician and he’s got a gorgeous voice. So they bought me a guitar when I was younger… an acoustic guitar, I gave it away. I never used it. They wanted me to take piano lessons, but I never did, I didn’t want to. Then something clicked in me when I was in college, when I first got into college. I don’t know what it was. I bought a little Casio keyboard and started messing around with it, then I went and got a Roland D50, which I still keep. That was my first professional musical in- strument, and I went from there and started playing guitar, and I’ve been playing music for twenty-one, twenty-two years now. That shows you how old I am. So, it’s kinda like, I started late but it was kinda funny that… I think when you start things late and you really like them, you are more hungry for them, ‘cause there’s all this stuff you want to catch up on. So I went really fast… anything that I was learning, I went through it fast. Even though I was going to college full- time and working, any chance I got I’d be playing music and writing music, and, of course, it was all because I loved it. It was the passion driving what I was doing, and then at one point, I realized that this is what I have to do to be happy. No matter what else I do, this is what I need to do with the majority of my time, and that was a huge realization, obviously. That happened one late evening, I remember it specifically. It was an actual incident. I was taking these Kaplan classes for… I signed up to take the LSAT to go to law school, and I had just finished Cal State Northridge… I got a bachelor’s degree in marketing and busi- ness. I was working in the jewelry industry in the day, just totally busy, traveling around, doing conventions and all that stuff, and at nights I was taking these Kaplan classes. It was a rainy day, I was in my jeep, I was driving back home, and it was like an epiphany. I’m [thinking], ‘Do I want to be a damn lawyer?’ I had to kind of push myself into different things to realize that no, this is not for me. OTWS: Your latest album, was that your fifth that you’ve been a part of? TANKIAN: If I count the System ones, it would be the seventh. There are five System al- bums, there’s Serart and Elect The Dead… and then a bunch of collaborations as far as tracks. OTWS: How has the sound changed from album to album? TANKIAN: As far as the progression of sounds between records over the years… Well I guess the first record that I ever put out was the first System record, and that was pretty raw. It was very energetic, kind of like a live vibe, recording-wise, even though it wasn’t a live recording, but it was that kind of vibe, and I think it progressed over the years. With Toxicity, our second record, I think it was a little more mature, a little more of us taking our time in the studio and getting to know the studio a little better; getting to know sounds and tones better in a lot of ways. Steal This Album was kind of like a piggyback of Toxicity in a way, the record that we all had recorded at the same time, and then kind of perfected thereafter, that was a cool record. To me, that was one of my favorite System records actually… Steal This Album. It’s a really diverse record, it’s more like my vibe, I think. Then after that we did Mezmerize and Hypnotize, and that was our last two records which we put out within the same year; those had a different variation, I think. Daron [Malakian, System of a Down guitarist] had a bigger input, and he grew more as a lyricist and came on board. As a songwriter, even though I don’t have a lot of physical music that I’ve written on those last two records, whatever I did write, I wrote them fully because I became more of a songwriter in terms of instrumen- talists and writing and playing my own stuff. So it was all a progression over time, and the music tastes changed, and the vibe changed. Then with Serart, which was put out actually, let me see… I think we put that out before Steal This Album, with Arto [Tunçboyaciyan]. It was an improvisational record that I did, and I put it out on my own label, Serjical Strike. It was seven days of improvisation in the studio basically, and just two artists, myself and my friend, Arto. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, I’m a multi- instrumentalist, he’s a singer, I’m a singer, so we both just went in and dabbled. You’ve got stuff from world vibe to experimental to W
- 15. 28 www.shure.com Serj TankianTheirs On A Budget LeadVocals UR24D/Beta 58* PGX24/Beta 58* Guitar UR14D* PGX14* Monitors PSM® 700 & PSM 600 PSM 200 * wireless system electronic to dance, all sorts. It’s a really good visual record, it would be great as a soundtrack kind of thing. With Elect The Dead, it was kind of like a composer making a rock record. Instead of having a band and making a rock record, which is typically how you’d make a rock record, starting with the drums and building it up. I started either with piano or acoustic guitar, and I’d have one main instrument with rough vocals, and then using ACID or some other programs, I’d build the drums around it. OTWS: What are some Shure products that are staples for you in the studio? TANKIAN: As far as Shure products, I’ve used a lot of Shure mics… SM58® s obviously, as far as singing, from day one. With System, we used a lot of SM58s, Betas, we used [SM]57s a lot, from the beginning. As far as my own studio, I’ve used the KSM44s on a lot of the amps. On Elect The Dead, I had them on all the guitar amps and bass amps. I used the SM7 for vocals, especially the heavy vocals. When I want [it] to distort, I just grab the head, you know, that kind of stuff [grabs microphone by the grill]. On tour we use a lot of UHF, a lot of your wireless products. The KSM9, Beta 58 wire- less, and we use the ear monitors, the Shure packs, the [PSM® ] 600s, the 700s. OTWS: How was that transition, going to the in-ears from the conventional floor wedges? TANKIAN: Transitioning to in-ears was ama- zing originally, because as a singer, you can’t hear a certain frequency of your own voice on stage, especially with a really loud band, and System is… The stage volume of System is deafening. Even with ear moni- tors on, if I went to Shavo’s [Odadjian, System of a Down bassist] side, I wouldn’t hear anything but bass. The Who might have had the biggest stage volume, but I think we’d get a pretty close second or third, maybe to another band, but it was loud. So that really helped me. It really helped me define the instruments better and hear my voice better, so that if I sing low I can hear it amongst the whole stage volume. With ear monitors, the most important thing is having a monitor guy that’s mixing it right, otherwise you could hurt yourself. You could be too loud, or it could be a horrible mix, so that’s the thing that I always struggle with, having the right mix, and every room is different, every- where you play is different. OTWS: Any words of wisdom for aspiring musicians out there? TANKIAN: Well, as far as performance, I al- ways say, as tough as it is being out there and having that attention, you have to be yourself, and you have to project that self beyond your physical surroundings into a bigger space. You communicate that with people, and you have to take it to the next level, because that’s what performing is. You have to make people feel something, not something that’s not true, something that’s true to you and them as well. You have to have that connection, that’s what performance is. If you don’t make them feel that, then you’re just there playing your record, and that’s cool. Some artists do that successfully and I’m cool with that, too. As far as new aspiring musicians, I always say… like with Serjical Strike, when we’re looking for bands, there’s three important things for me, that I look for. Originality in the music, performance… they’ve got to be amazing performers, their shows have to be undeniably powerful. You can’t walk away, whether you like that kind of music or not, whether you’ve heard them before or not, you’ve got to walk away going, ‘That’s an amazing band. I don’t care if I’ve never even heard that music before or I’m not a fan of this type of music, but that was an amazing band.’ You’ve got to walk away impressed. Third, they’ve got to be modest, cool people. With musicians, and I’ve met a lot of different musicians and artists, I find over the years it’s more the younger ones that get the big heads. The ones that have been in it for a while realize that, ‘This is just what I do.’ I’m a plumber… I’m a glorified plumber really, because a plumber doesn’t go, ‘Hey, I just put in these amazing copper pipes,’ and talks about it for hours, they don’t. They go home and they’re like, ‘I did my job.’ You leave your egos at the doors, they say. You walk in and you do your thing and you’re out. It’s just what you do and be privileged to be doing it. If you can’t build a fire within your own city, you can’t translate that fire elsewhere. No label, no amount of money or marketing will help you as a band or as an artist, if you can’t make people come and watch you in your own town where you have your friends, your family, all the people you’ve grown up with. If you can’t create a buzz around that, where people are just lined up to see you, then I don’t wanna say you don’t deserve it, but you’re not gonna get anywhere. Like I said, someone could come spend a million dollars on you, and they’re not gonna get people to come and see you, if you can’t do it on your own. That’s what it comes down to ultimately… unless you’re on “American Idol.” On Tour with Shure 29
- 16. 30 www.shure.com OnTour with Shure 3130 www.shure.com ON TOUR WITH SHURE: What influences brought on the strong desire to take on the world of electronic music? JULIAN HAMILTON: While we were studying classical music at university, we studied a lot of electronic music there. I mean, some of our favorite classical composers were sort of electronic guys. Guys like… Steve Reich and [Karlheinz] Stockhausen. You know, they did some really cool things with computers and synthesizers. I think we were always attracted to that sort of infinite sound world that you can create. There’s only so many sounds you can make with a violin or a piano. With synthesizers and samplers, you can create totally new worlds. OTWS: How much customization do you guys do? Do you start sometimes with raw, acoustic sound and modify that? How often do you create your own patches? KIM MOYES: I guess a lot of the stuff that we do is with synthesizers and we kind of try to find sounds that we really like in the machine. We don’t get too heavy into the pro- gramming side of things. We record mainly synthesizers and live sounds, and combine all of these things together and layer them up until we get the sounds that we want. HAMILTON: Yeah, I think The Presets sound is not any one keyboard patch, it’s like that patch combined with that snare and that vocal effect. You know what I mean? It’s more of a combination of sounds thrown to- gether. That’s, I think, where probably more of our originality comes from, as opposed to getting into one sound and going crazy. OTWS: The new album is Apocalypso. Is there a stylistic element or genre that you bor- rowed more for this record? MOYES: There’s definitely… maybe an ess- ence of techno in it, but also I guess electro- pop is the best way to kind of… stuff from the ’80s I guess. There was pop music when synthesizers and stuff were becoming big , and that’s kind of where it really comes from. I mean, it’s not replicating the ’80s or anything, but it has a certain tinge to it. Bands like the Pet Shop Boys and… HAMILTON: …New Order and stuff like that. It’s funny, it’s really hard for us to describe that, too. I mean, really, The Presets is what happens when Kim and I get together, we have all of our synthesizers and drum machines, and we just start making music out of them. I guess we try not to sound like anything. Of course, there’s a whole world in a lifetime, or two lifetimes of music inside of us, and so some stuff’s gonna sound like the techno we were hearing in Berlin when we were living there last year. Something’s gonna sound like science fiction soundtracks from movies that we saw when we were young. There’s gonna be all sorts of little nods to this and that, just because that’s our musical life. OTWS: Speaking of each record, you’re kind of building on the previous, right? How do you feel Apocalypso has grown since the previous efforts? HAMILTON: So much… MOYES: We were a lot more sure of ourselves when we did Apocalypso. Our identity had been formed a lot more. I guess we just had a confidence and an urgency about it that we didn’t have before last time. Particularly, in terms of production, we realized quite a few things about space. Also, after touring the last record, maybe [with] some of the themes in the songwriting, there was more of a shift towards more mature sentiments. HAMILTON: Yeah, so much change… The first record, Beams, was sort of just this collec- tion of scraps—some of the demo songs, some songs from early EPs, and a few new ones thrown together, and we made an album out of it—and that was Beams. We really liked it, we were really proud of it. Then we took that on the road and played it heaps and heaps for three years, and in the meantime we bought new keyboards, and like Kim was saying, learned more about production and all that stuff. Yeah, so Apoc- alypso has a very different theme to Beams. And also, Apocalypso was a completely clean slate as well, we had nothing except just a whole lot of experience of airports and motorways and things… and nightclubs. So, yeah, it was a completely fresh start. OTWS: Being based in Sydney and having toured the UK and the States, how do you feel the electronic music scene differs? MOYES: Well, it’s funny… when we were discovering electronic music, Detroit music has been a big influence on us. There’s a lot of great house music from Chicago, and lots of great stuff that’s coming out of New York. I think the biggest shock to us when we got out of Australia, and started seeing the world in terms of dance music, was going to Europe and seeing it there. We always knew it was big in England, and I guess it is part of the European thing, but when we started touring places like Spain and Ger- many and France, we realized that dance music and party culture and all that sort of stuff was really the king. So, that was a really great eye-opener and it was a really good inspiration, getting out there and playing these crazy raves in deserts in Spain at 6 a.m. HAMILTON: Yeah, it’s totally a Europe thing. I mean, it’s funny, the dance music scene is kind of king at the moment in Australia. It’s so fleeting . There’s always a cool club for a few months and then it’ll move onto this next cool club. It’s more about the party. It seems like it’s the same thing in the States and in the UK as well. It’s more about the partying and the scene. Then when you go to Germany, Berlin, it seems to be way more about the music there. OTWS: How does performing live influence your songwriting, and how do songs evolve in a live atmosphere? HAMILTON: When we write our music, especially for this last record, it’s a very computer-based thing, we’re sitting down in our studios. We’re hitting keyboards and Kim’s hitting drums and playing hi-hat. It’s a live thing, but I guess we’re conscious that we’re gonna take it on the road and really play a lot of the stuff. I guess it does take on a whole life of itself, and once it hits the stage, it does step up in terms of energy, because it is live vocals and live playing and live drums, and it’s a really explosive thing. I guess that’s one way it sort of develops. MOYES: Also, once we had toured Beams, and we started to see the way people re- acted to certain elements in the songs or certain parts of the songs, we started to realize that that was forming the way that we were gonna approach the recording side. So, it sort of does both. HAMILTON: Yeah, the live experience feeds the record. MOYES: Then we do the stuff in the studio and then we put it together as if it’s a seam- less event. OTWS: You guys use KSM9s for vocals on stage and PSM® 700s for your monitors. Do you feel that the sound on stage has im- proved and added to the way you perform? HAMILTON: Yeah, for the ears, definitely. As a singer, having your monitors in your ears, it’s so much better than having them in a wedge in front of you. I remember we used to do shows, and there’d be the live drums right next to me and I’d be trying to scream as loud as I can to hear myself come through the wedge. It was a really unmusical kind of way to… it was more just like this war of attrition, to just kind of get through a show, beat down a show. Now with in-ear [person- al] monitoring, you can actually be musical and sing softly if you want to sing softly and sing loudly when you want to sing loudly. It’s really good. MOYES: Definitely. It definitely helps me in terms of damage control, after years of play- ing the drums with nothing in my ears. I always hated putting ear plugs in my ears ‘cause the vibe would just die. It’s like a half way point between not having anything in my ears and having ear plugs in my ears. Yeah, it’s good. OTWS: What drew you to the wireless KSM9 for your live vocals? HAMILTON: It’s incredible. Apart from being wireless, which is great, you can run around… I remember the first time we used it in rehearsal, and it made the vocal sound so much better. We actually realized we had to upgrade the computer system because the vocals sound so good. We were using an old sound card, and we were like, ‘Oh [man] we’ve really got to upgrade this sound card because suddenly the computer stuff sounds like crap.’ OTWS: What other artists today do you guys both listen to and you feel are really doing something truly innovative for the scene? MOYES: In terms of people inspiring… There’s quite a few people, but they’re not worth mentioning. [laughter] HAMILTON: There’s lots of innovative stuff out there every once-in-a-while. Generally, we’re pretty bored with what’s going on in music, but occasionally you see something that’s just amazing. Like Daft Punk, their live show. They’ve been doing that stuff for thirteen years or something, and to come out with such an innovative, huge show that’s so new, that’s incredible. It’s sort of rare for all acts that have been around for such a long time to still be the leaders, but I guess they kind of are. There’s so many bands around that are doing fun things, they’re not changing the world, but they’re having a great time doing great stuff. I don’t want to say who they are, but there’s plenty of them, all the current popular bands. [laughter]