Home At Last
An API 2500 stereo optical compressor is inserted on the XL4’s main mix bus, which Dowdle notes that he prefers whether using a digital or analog console.
“I just give it light compression, just tickle it, and it brings the whole thing to a nice level where it’s very pleasing and extremely musical,” he elaborates. A second API 2500 is inserted on Fagen’s vintage Fender Rhodes, one of three (dubbed “Grace,” “Wilma,” and “Lucy”) carried on tour and lovingly refurbished by RetroLinear.
Twin Tube Tech CL-1B optical compressors are inserted for Fagen’s vocal mics, both when he’s sitting at the Rhodes or standing. Four more CL-2A dual-channel optical compressors are applied on backing vocals and the horn mics.
Digital effects include a TC Electronic 2290 delay for “Black Friday,” a vintage AMS RMX16 reverb for drums, a TC M5000 reverb for horns, and a dual-machine Lexicon 960L for both main and backing vocals, along with an Eventide H3500 to fatten background vocals.
Peter D. Thompson, a 24-year veteran of Thunder Audio (Livonia, MI and Nashville) has mixed monitors for Steely Dan since 2007, and does the same for Squeeze and Bob Seger.
Recently, he also mixed FOH for The Strypes. Thompson employs a Soundcraft Vi6 digital console for his mixes, delivered to 13 Meyer MJF-212A self-powered floor monitors, using singles for everyone except Fagen and keyboardist Beard.
“It’s nice to have stage monitors that sound like studio monitors,” he says. “I’m running all the mixes flat, other than some minor graphic EQ adjustments during the show to the vocal mixes. A majority of the equalization is made on the channels so everyone hears the same thing in each mix.”
The sax players are provided with Meyer UPJ-1P compact self-powered loudspeakers on custom stands. Herrington, Leonhart, and Carlock receive in-ear mixes via Shure P6HW hardwired belt packs, and the drum IEM is supplemented with a pair of Meyer 600-HP dual-15-inch self-powered subs.
As with most FOH engineers of Dowdle’s vintage and background, Steely Dan’s catalog and Donald Fagen’s solo album The Nightfly are standards for tuning and evaluating sound systems. To answer the perennial question, “what’s used on a Steely Dan tour to tune the PA?” he replies that he uses Steely Dan live every day during sound check.
But prior to that, he plays Thomas Dolby’s “My Brain is Like a Sieve” from Aliens Ate My Buick and Frank Zappa’s “Lucielle” from Joe’s Garage, which has a very natural sounding vocal. A Shure KSM9 condenser mic then helps in the fine-tuning of its response.
Mark Frink is an independent author, editor, consultant and engineer.