The Feeling

January 2009 Issue 113

Join with us, they said...and so we did. Mark Cunningham invited Louise Stickland to share some sea air and retro-infused vibes at Southend’s Cliffs Pavilion...

While Southend reserved one of its soggier, mistier meteorological moments for this autumn day, it put no dampeners on the ebullient vibe inside at the seaside town’s flagship live venue, the Cliffs Pavilion, where a packed audience enthusiastically waited to greet The Feeling on-stage.

    Whilst many of their contemporaries appear to push politics, fashion and paparazzi-friendly coolness to the front of their agenda, The Feeling — charisma-oozing singer/guitarist Dan Gillespie Sells, bassist Richard Jones, brothers Kevin and Ciaran Jeremiah (guitar and keys), and drummer Paul Stewart — let their versatile musicianship and crowd-pleasing songs do the talking.

    Their ability to connect with their audience was mirrored by the warm welcome extended to TPi by the crew, under the production management of Jon Sword, which swept us up into the anticipation of a buoyant night of bouncy bonhomie and great tunes — including cracking covers of a-ha’s ‘Take On Me’ and, surprisingly, the Beastie Boys’ ‘You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party’.

    ‘Swordy’ began working with The Feeling as their tour manager and sound engineer three years ago when the band were playing small clubs and touring with a splitter van. As the band progressed, around half a dozen engineers passed through the ranks before Sword accepted that he would have to take the reins permanently at FOH.

    Meanwhile, having already been accustomed to a dual role, he decided to have a crack at production management. “It seemed like a natural progression as I’ve been in the business for 20 years, and doing the two jobs works for me.”

    In their years before their first hit single (‘Sewn’ in early 2006), The Feeling had plenty of time to hone their stagecraft and gather on-the-road experience as a gifted covers band performing at a ski resorts in the French Alps — a location returned to this March to film a documentary for their new DVD, Come Home.

    In many ways, Sword and The Feeling have ‘grown up’ together in their respective journeys to the top. “We’ve obviously shared a lot of history but at the same time we separate away to concentrate on our responsibilities. I’m very fortunate to have a great tour manager in Quinner which allows me to divide my time between dealing with our crew and contractors, and I’ve enjoyed the learning curve with some exceptional people.

    “Managing both roles, with a crew of 14, I’ve had to be very diligent with my time. So I made a conscious decision early on to only walk to my desk when the system is ready for soundchecks and gigs, do the mix, then walk back to my production office. I can’t be a full-time engineer... there aren’t enough hours in the day!”

    Sword is constantly in awe of the five band members’ abilities. “They can all mix sound, they can all produce and play each other’s instrument like it’s their own — they’re not daft!

    “So it could be the worst gig ever or the best gig, but they’re realists and they know they’re getting the best out of the venue they’re playing. Fortunately, the equipment that I want as a sound man is exactly what they’d want to be using.”

FRIENDS IN DIGITAL PLACES
His main tool at FOH is the Soundcraft Vi6 digital console, a choice that came about as a result of drummer Paul Stewart’s friendship with Soundcraft and Studer’s VP of marketing and communications, Keith Watson.

    “Until recently, myself and the band were very anti-digital but because this is a very busy mix, I started looking at some practical digital solutions to make the job easier,” commented Sword.

    “Even at club level, we’ve always toured our own monitor desk, which was a Soundcraft GB8, and went to in-ears very early on. But as the band’s audio needs expanded we knew we had to make a change.

    “Keith suggested the Vi6 and he brought one down to rehearsals for Andrew Greenwood [monitor engineer] to try out, along with the Studer pre-amps that go with it, and we were knocked out. It sounded so much better than the other digital desks we’d tried out. It’s got a real analogue feel, zero latency and it really reacts as an instrument.”

    The next move was to take the Vi6 on a production tour, back in February, and it passed the audition with flying colours. “Since then, Soundcraft have been very gracious about ensuring that we have one at FOH and and either a Vi6 or Vi4 on monitors.”

    Sword has been affiliated with Mansfield-based ESS (Entertainment Sound Specialists) for many years and it’s no surprise that the company has been his first choice as sound supplier for The Feeling’s last four production tours. “Andrew was originally our system babysitter and then moved into the monitor engineer position when our previous guy, Paul Roberts went on to another gig.”

    ESS is providing a mixture of Turbosound’s TA-890L and TA-890H Aspect point source PA cabinets and the brand’s entry into line array territory, the self-powered TFA-600HDP Flex Array units. Richard Baker and Gary Brookes are ESS’s system technicians for the tour.

    Said Sword: “I’m a point source man at heart, having been around the Flashlight/Floodlight systems for years, and Aspect is definitely my kind of PA system and the band like it, too. It has a hell of a lot of balls — you can nail something to the wall at 100 paces with it!

    “I’m no Luddite though. I do like some line arrays, particularly V-DOSC which is possibly one of the best systems on the planet, but you need a bit of beef to make things move sometimes.

    “We’re using Turbo’s Flex Array as a flown central cluster for infill at the venues where we can fly, or alternatively on the deck, turned on their sides. It’s proven to be a great solution.”

    For stage monitoring, the band use Martin LE1200 wedges to augment their Sennheiser G2 IEM systems. Vocals are reinforced with the Neumann KM105 mics they’ve used since the club days and Gillespie Sells has a ‘blinged-up’ wireless version.

    “As far as I’m concerned, nothing touches those mics for clarity and depth of sonic character,” Sword informed. “I’ve nothing against the SM58 — it’s still a fabulous mic. However, Paul’s a very unforgiving drummer and obviously playing in small clubs, we found that there’d be bleed down the 58s.

    “With this band and their very intricate vocal parts it’s crucial that I get as much gain as possible from their voices. With the Neumanns, I still get bleed because they’re very sensitive but it’s sweeter, and I can’t imagine us stepping back to anything ever again.”

TOM LESH: LIGHTS & VIDEO
It was great to catch up with LD Tom Lesh again at the end of a busy year. He’s been working for The Feeling since they hit the ‘up-and-coming’ status line in 2006, and this section of the Join With Us tour was their fourth major production tour of the UK and Ireland.
 
  Lesh took the slightly retro ’80s feel of the Join With Us album’s title track as one starting point for his lighting design. He wanted to keep the stage and the sightlines clean, clear and uncluttered.

    For the first time on the road, the band decided they wanted to use video, as they were keen to associate specific images with particular songs, so the screens entered Lesh’s creative mix at that point, along with the suggestion of projection to make a change from LED.

    The portrait format screens measured 7.5’ wide with a 10’ drop and were hung off the back rail of a box truss, just downstage of a rear cyc. Lesh wanted a layered feel to the stage to create a perception of depth, so the cyc and the screens became the first layers. Others were added with black legs, moving lights and i-Pix BB7 LED wash fixtures.

    The three upstage screens were fed by three High End DL2 moving projectors rigged on the front truss. These were supplied by Neg Earth, the tour’s lighting contractor.

    A projector stationed at FOH was used for the show intro, beaming on to a front kabuki that dropped out as they steamed into the first number, ‘I Thought It Was Over’. The intro consisted of a hilarious collection of quirky footage featuring Feeling fans of all descriptions, ages and musical abilities performing renditions of their songs. This was compiled from YouTube postings, and established a jaunty old skool VHS feel that followed through the set.

    Playback screen video content was supplied by a Catalyst media server being run by Lesh, with some clips also stored in the heads of the DL2s. The custom footage was all produced by Marco Perendija, based on ideas initiated by the band, and ran for approximately half the show. Lesh created some extra generic wallpaper elements to this to maximise the video, which he developed from Catalyst library footage.
  
Lesh initially thought that getting the DL2s lenses to line up in the wide variety of venues on the itinerary would be a challenge, but they proved a lot more adaptable than he originally thought.
   
Video consumed a substantial chunk of the visuals budget. This, coupled with the  heterogeneity of venues involved saw Lesh’s lighting rig based on prudence, practicality and a design that would fit in and work everywhere – in the same configuration. He thought laterally and concentrated on using less fixtures but brighter, well placed light sources.

    Just six i-Pix BB7s were used for the back wash, with eight more — four per side — on two towers to sweep across the stage for front side washes. Fourteen BB7s replaced what 60 odd PAR cans might have done a few years ago, drawing just 12.6 Amps as opposed to 252!
  
It’s the first time that Lesh has designed the BB7s into a show. He recalled experiencing “LED overkill” at PLASA08 with so many LED lookalike products, but when he came to the i-Pix stand, the BB7s stood out from the crowd. He then visited i-Pix in Manchester to take a better look and an in-depth demo, which confirmed that it was “a completely different type of LED fixture”.

    The BB7 is a self-contained device rated at 210W and noted for very fast, super-smooth control due to its 16-bit fine resolution DMX input. It also has a distinctive petal-like shape which looks great, even when the fixture is off.

    Lesh likes the shape and the colour options, particularly the pastels which the BB range achieves particularly well. “Just six on a back truss will do the work of a bunch of PARs — they look good and really kick, brightness-wise.”

    He added: “The quality of the light output is excellent, especially for face lighting.” The units were also suitably dynamic to use as strobes.
 
   Ten back truss Martin Pro MAC 700 profiles were the main high level moving lights, and upstage on the floor were five Coemar Infinitys, used for the first time by Lesh, for the “cathedral of light” and other aerial effects.

    Lesh proved that with good programming and imagination you can produce a diverse and interesting show that pumps energy and mood from start to finish with 14 powerful LED washes and 15 moving lights.
   
Other kit included 14 4-lite Moles, six on the front truss and four each under the kit and keyboard risers. Ten Omnis were rigged on mic stands and dotted around the stage. The between-song state was produced by eight PARs and six Source Fours rigged on the front truss were used for key lighting. They also used two FOH follow spots.

    “It’s a straightforward flexible show,” stated Lesh. “I didn’t want to have to struggle with dropping fixtures out of the rig at any point, so everything on there works hard and has both specific and general purposes.”

    He ran the show on a grandMA console, with a second desk for tracking back-up. This was the first time he’d fully programmed and operated a touring show on the grandMA — a decision made after seeing how well it performed on the Chemical Brothers’ We Are The Night 2007/2008 tour, which he also designed.

    “It ran for 15 months without a hitch on the Chemicals,” said Lesh. This and also being impressed with its networking and video and timecode-triggering capabilities, spurred him to get to know it himself. “It’s been a joy to use,” he concluded, saying that he intends to continue working with grandMA from now on.

    Lesh’s Neg Earth crew for this section of the tour were Luke Radin, Phil Deboissiere and Haydn Corps.

TPi
Photography by Louise Stickland