THE PIGEON DETECTIVES

Sometimes you’ve just got to defer to the younger generation, and as a result of my 14 year old daughter Luci’s badgering, I found myself in the middle of a full-frontal audio and beer-tossing assault by The Pigeon Detectives and their fans at Westcliff-on-Sea’s Cliffs Pavilion.

    What is it about this new stream of post-BritPop Yorkshire bands — the Arctic Monkeys and the Kaisers among them — that inspires their audiences to douse themselves with beer? Such behaviour has provoked a new stream of waterproof FOH attire to protect expensive equipment from water ingress. Now there’s a branding opportunity for the console giants!

    Fortunately, I think we were only dealing with first-generation beer at the Cliffs, as opposed to the post-bladder kind that often sullies some of the outdoor rave-ups... for the slightly more refined type of gig-goer, that is.

    In 2007, The Pigeon Detectives followed the success of their afore-mentioned Yorkshire peers with a relentless series of festival appearances, four singles releases and Wait For Me, their top five debut album. A year later, armed with yet another chart-hugging album, Emergency, the prolific riffmongers’ hard graft has paid off and the hungry ticket applications for their first ‘production tour’ serves as evidence that the big league is just months away.

    Production manager Mark Dempsey came into the fold earlier this year to prep the Pigeons’ live plans. He was due to make an exit by May 27 to put a tour in motion for his other main band, The Zutons, handing over the reins to Jim Webb, the New Zealander known for his work with the Pet Shop Boys.

    Said Dempsey: “Justin Slee has been tour managing but his hands have become a lot more full with the current scale of the tour. I knew one of the band’s managers, and he asked me to come in to look after the production. The transition’s worked fine and I’ve really enjoyed it.”

    The band effectively rehearsed the production at Carling Academy Glasgow in May 15, a day before they played the first two dates of the tour at the venue.

    The dates have not passes without drama — two dates in Ireland were pulled when lead singer Matt Bowman suffered an injury, as Dempsey explained: “Matt’s famous acrobatics got the better of him at One Big Weekend and he tore a hamstring. It looked pretty nasty but you wouldn’t know it the way he’s performing tonight! He costs us a lot in monitor grilles! We can thank Chelsea’s physiotherapist for saving the tour — I gave him a bell and he sorted Matt out the next morning.”

SOUND
Founded in Leeds back in 2002, The Pigeon Detectives were joined two years ago by FOH engineer Andy Hawkins. His choice of the W.E. Audio-supplied Turbosound Aspect system as the core of the touring PA was influenced by “a series of positive experiences”, including last summer’s Underage Festival in London’s Victoria Park and Jersey Live, both of which had Aspect systems supplied by Wayne Barker’s company.

    “I’d already used it a couple of times with the band on some quick walk-on spots at festivals, and thought it sounded pretty good,” said Hawkins, who is partnered on the tour by PA tech ‘Stosh’ and monitor engineer Chris McCarron.

    “Even though we were operating under quite tough noise restrictions, the system was very impressive to the point where I asked Wayne if he could do a few dry room gigs at the end of last year to see what Aspect could really do, and I was knocked out. That made my mind up about this tour and as far as I was concerned it was Wayne’s gig.”

    Being a point source system, Aspect was of immediate interest to Hawkins: “Although I don’t have a problem outdoors, my theory remains that smaller venues do not benefit from line array solutions. A lot of the time, when you can’t get enough boxes in, you’re forced to spread it too wide and it doesn’t couple so it just sounds miles away from the source. Or sometimes it just sounds too ‘in your face’. Some people like that but it’s not for me.

    “I want this band to sound hi-fi — loud without being distressing to the ears. The Pigeons’ records have a certain quality about them that I aim to reproduce as faithfully as possible. I’m a studio engineer so my angle is on totally clean signal paths, flat EQs and maximum purity.

    “When I switched over to the Yamaha LS9-32 console [at the Kaiser Chiefs crew’s recommendation] it made me think harder about mic choices and also bring in a few bits of studio outboard processing that my LS9 couldn’t offer. At that point I started to think about the sound system, and I was always coming back to point source.”

    The ground-stacked system at Cliffs Pavilion featured 24 TA-890H top cabinets, 24 TA-890L lows and 12 TSW-218 subs, all powered by MC2 E45 and E25 amps, and processed by eight XTA DP448s. Chris McCarron mixes monitors on a Midas Heritage 3000 desk, sending to 18 Turbosound TFM-450 wedges and Sennheiser G2 in-ear systems.

    Hawkins and Barker — the founder of W.E. Audio — share the mentorship of the late Pete ‘Skan’ Howard, who died last year, and by the same token also live by similar audio principles.

    Said Hawkins: “I met Pete many years ago on The Damned and it was really him who turned me on to Turbosound in the beginning. Wayne and I were orbiting each other for a long time before we properly met. We both learned an incredible amount by working alongside Pete, and come from the same school of thought in that we’re both always looking to make improvements.

    “I’ve got no reason to switch from using W.E. Audio and Aspect. Wayne’s not the biggest operator out there but he’s got enough to do the job, the quality of his gear is first class and he knows exactly what to do with it. He’s got the right attitude and he‘s a total perfectionist which I respect massively. It’s not a traditional engineer and rental company relationship — we’re both in it together.”
    
MICS
Hawkins’ microphone choices are fairly standard with a few interesting twists. “I don’t put condensers on [Oliver Main and Ryan Wilson’s] guitars, mainly because the audiences tend to throw a lot of liquid on stage and the mics would just die. So I revert to standards like Shure SM57s or Sennheiser e609s.”

    The pairing of a Shure SM91 and a Sennheiser e602 on the kick drum results in a very tight, American-style sound. Hawkins places an e604 underneath the snare and an Audix I-5 (“like a 57 with more crack”) on top. Audix D-2s are on rack toms and a D-4 is on the floor tom.

    Commented Hawkins: “Jimi Naylor is quite a ‘washy’ player and I like to hear cymbal articulation, so I mic cymbals individually with Shure KSM 137s and have an AKG C451 on hi-hat.

    “For Matt Bowman’s lead vocals we have a Beta 58 which is the only mic that’ll get through the gig. Sennheiser e845s are on BVs, although I’m considering a move to Audix OM-7s. The e845 is brilliant but probably too smooth for these guys and now that we’ve got a hi-fi sounding PA, I think the slightly more ‘nasal’ OM-7s could be the preference.”

VISUALS
Other companies on the tour include Fastway (buses), Fly By Nite (two artic trucks) and the recently-founded catering firm A Bit Of A Mouthful. Norfolk’s finest, Hangman produced the band’s logo-adorned backdrop. “I’d used them for The Zutons and Supergrass before that, and they can always be relied on for a great job,” said Mark Dempsey, whose crew also includes backline techs Digby Cleaver and Lee Laverack.

    Staying loyal to the band’s roots, Leeds-based Zig Zag supplied all of the lighting requirements, with LD Paddy Sollitt specifying a number of Robe moving lights for his design. Sollitt has used Robe fixtures for the last four or five years, and they are currently his first choice of moving light. “The units are good and reliable, and Robe has a very good team of people,” he commented.

    Sollitt’s style of lighting is very much suited to the band’s frenetic set which has no dull moments. For this tour, his design is based on multiple layers of lighting — the idea being that he has an infinite variety of beam patterns, looks and effects at his fingertips to deal with the sharp, punky, flashy nature of much of the set. It’s a heavily back-lit show, with a ‘wall of death’ upstage to ensure plenty of retinal burnout for the audience.

    The Robe fixtures in the rig are 10 ColorSpot 575E ATs, 11 ColorWash 575E AT Zooms and nine ColorSpot 700E ATs, the latter of which were purchased from Robe UK by Zig Zag especially for the tour.

    Sollitt chose the Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs for their “incredible brightness and their superior colour mixing which is far better than any other 700 currently fixture on the market”. He expanded: “Fixtures with good colour mixing facilities are a must for a show like this and it’s one of the things I like about Robe.” He added that working with a mixture of different Robe fixtures is also good as the colours all match each other.

    Also in the rig are numerous generics including two and four-cell Moles, strobes, CS4 moving ACL bars and DB4 LED fixtures. These and all the Robes are controlled via a Chamsys PC Wing with an additional playback wing. Zig Zag also supplied two technicians: Gareth Lonsdale and Martin Barrowclough.

    The Emergency tour is currently scheduled to run to the end of the year and will visit the U.S., Japan and Europe amongst other territories.
TPi
Photography by
Mark Cunningham & Louise Stickland