Irish rockabilly artist Imelda May has been making waves in the U.S. ever since her memorable guest appearance with guitarist Jeff Beck at the 2010 Grammy Awards.
Since then she’s been touring hard, most recently playing a string of shows backed by her 4-piece band from Providence, RI to San Francisco and numerous points between.
For May’s recent month-long U.S. tour, front of house engineer Trevor Gilligan and monitor engineer Richard McIntosh were happy to use whatever in-house gear was available at each venue.
“I’m having a lot of fun, to be honest,” says Gilligan, speaking the day after playing New York City’s Irving Plaza. “You get very complacent if you’ve taken your own desk. I’m going into these venues and some of the gear is old! It takes me back. I’ve been mixing at Irving Plaza on and off for the last 20 years. The first time I was there was with the Buzzcocks.”
Dialing It Up
This time out, Gilligan, who’s also worked with Kasabian, The Hoosiers, and Beverly Knight among numerous other artists and has been at front of house for May since the beginning of 2011, is traveling extremely light. “I haven’t got anything apart from… actually, I didn’t even bring my headphones. I’ve been using the buds I use for my MP3 player,” he laughs.
Gilligan does have a full set of Sennheiser microphones that he’s been using for the past decade and would have normally brought them on this tour. “But with the extra security at the airports, well, you can’t lock the boxes, and Heathrow Airport is not the most secure place. They’ll steal the box or rip your case open. Though sometimes I get to a small gig and wish I had my own mics.”
Happily, the in-house systems encountered on the tour have been generally well maintained on this tour, he admits, “Deep down, you’re never fully happy unless you’ve got everything you want.” What Gilligan wants has varied over the years. He terms himself “a bit of a DiGiCo guy” in terms of console preference, but at the moment, he’s also been having a lot of success with Avid desks.
After initially balking at using the Avid VENUE when it was first introduced, instead preferring an analog console, he notes that, “Over the last couple of years I’ve noticed that every time we do a gig with an Avid, it’s always a really, really good gig.” But after finally getting to spend a few hours with the console before a show, he made some happy discoveries. “There’s one of the best compressors I’ve ever used, and it’s standard. You just need someone to point it out, or have the time to sit and mess about with it.
“They also have everything I need, and are small and compact. The consoles are so easy to use once you know them. And I’ve never had a problem loading a file. The days are gone when you have to stand behind a giant mixing desk.”
Console options on this tour have varied, including models from Soundcraft, Yamaha PM5Ds for a couple of gigs, and McIntosh drawing a Midas PRO Series board at the previous show. For the show immediately following our conversation, Gilligan notes that McIntosh would be using a DiGiCo SD Series console and some “really great” d&b audiotechnik stage monitors.
“So it’s from one extreme to the other,” he says. “But you just go in and dial the stuff up. All of the venue guys have been great, and everything’s been going really smoothly.”
