Frontman Chris Robinson, brother of guitarist Rich, has presented Coke with some unique challenges. “He has moments when he’ll hold a guitar and sing into the mic while it’s on a stand, and then others where he’ll just take the mic in his hand,” Coke relates. “Sometimes, as an aid to cutting through the sound onstage, he’ll cup the entire capsule in his hand and sing through a hole he makes between his thumb and forefinger to accent certain frequencies.
“The technique works great to help him get on top of all the sound coming off everyone’s wedges, but it generates a lot of offending frequencies at 800 Hz, 1k-2, 1k-6, and 2k-3 at different times. To compensate, I’ve split his vocals two ways coming into the board, and treat each split with a different array of devices.”
On the first split, which goes straight into the preamp of the board, Coke squashes a pair of frequencies using BSS DPR 901 sequential compressors. From the 901s, signals can be treated further with Distressor EL8 units from Empirical Labs which also reside in his outboard collection.
Conversely, signals run through an Avalon VT-737SP tube preamp/opto-compressor/sweep equalizer on the second vocal channel split. From the VT-737SP, signals come back to the preamp of the console. In practice, Coke mixes the different colors afforded by both splits as needed, depending upon how Chris Robinson is managing his mic.
“I have one finger on Chris’ vocals all night,” Coke notes. “My one direct channel with the BSS 901 and Distressor takes some of the edge off of those harsh frequencies and EQs them away, making them infinitely more listenable. They sit better in the mix too because now they’re not so aggressive.
“This channel is probably 10 dB higher than the Avalon VT-737SP channel. When he grabs his guitar and sings into the mic while it’s on the stand, I’ll switch up and boost the VT-737SP channel, and pull the other down 10 dB.”
Drawing from the Avalon catalog once again, Coke calls upon VT-747SP compression and EQ to smooth out his entire mix. Essentially utilized as a quasi-mastering device in his hands, the VT-747SP is a compressor with a tube circuit and six-band graphic EQ that he uses to push the mix down a bit so the vocal will ride on top better. The unit’s 6-band graphic is put to work “religiously” to contour the whole mix.
“If the band starts getting really loud I’ll pull out the fader at 2k and 5k,” Coke says with a quick sweeping motion, illustrating some of the action routinely observed at his outboard racks. “And if at some point I need a lot of kick drum or something, I’ll just push up the 30 Hz fader. It’s really my go-to EQ that lets me perform a lot of tasks quickly. I’m on this thing all the time.”
Nothing Flashy
Fulfilling Coke’s requests for gear required some dedicated searching, as analog gear is just not as common as it once was given that many sound companies routinely sell off the components to make room for more digital pieces. Having just sold all of its Aphex 661 Expressor comp/limiters – a piece Coke also swears by for acoustic guitars in these kinds of applications – Delicate Productions had to scramble to find a suitable replacement, in this case the 661’s predecessor, the 651.
Stripped down to its bare essentials in terms of production, this one-truck tour doesn’t carry its own “stax and rax,” choosing to rely on whatever PA it may find at any given venue. “You adapt,” concedes monitor engineer and production manager Drew Consalvo, “and at this point I feel like it’s a nice way to go. There are special challenges though. We don’t enjoy the uniformity of loading-in our own rig everyday, putting it in just like the day before, and then off to catering we go. Some days go smoothly, others are longer, and still others seriously task you at a professional level to bring the show up to the high levels we demand with the tools at hand.”
As a digital yang to Coke’s analog yin (he’s on an Avid VENUE Profile), Consalvo nonetheless maintains an honest reverence toward the traditional approach both engineers feel the band is best served by.
“My corner of the stage may be digital,” Consalvo says, “but it’s straight-ahead with no funny stuff. I’m not using anything flashy in terms of plug-ins. What’s in the machine is fine. I’m not doing any effects or in-ear work.
“Everything is loudspeakers, so compression is minimal, gates are where you’d expect to find them on the drum kit, and from a mixing standpoint it’s all about the cues and just getting a lot of level out of the wedges. The last part hasn’t changed at all since I first came here 15 years ago. It’s loud. Freaking loud.”