It’s essentially a band of producers,” says FOH engineer Neal Jensen of The Arcs. “All five of them are really experienced beyond just being great musicians, and it’s a powerful formula. They are pulling a lot from old-school R&B and blues, taking a step back for the roots of it all, particularly Dan, who is really having fun playing the songs that got him interested in music in the first place.” In this case, Dan is Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, and while The Arcs is officially a “side project,” it’s certainly taking on a life of its own on its current tour. Besides a performance at Coachella, they are hitting the theaters and mid-sized venues performing songs of their first album, Yours, Dreamily, which has original songs from each of the band’s five members.
The first leg of the tour wrapped up on May 1 at Beale Street in Memphis; a second leg kicks offs in mid-July and concludes with major festival appearances at Lollapalooza in Chicago on July 28 and Osheaga in Montreal on July 31.
Take Five, and Then Some
Jensen, from greater Chicago, graduated high school in 1981. “Chicago had such a great music scene in the ‘80s,” he says. “There were so many great bands, it was easy to be part of it.” It was a scene Jensen participated in more ways than one — he played guitar and sang in bands in addition to drifting behind soundboards. He figured he could either perform on stage “once or twice a month” or work sound “eight days a week!” His first professional road gig tweaking knobs was lofty indeed: He was monitor engineer for Dave Brubeck. “I’m a trial-by-fire guy,” he says.
He would later get on at Bridgewater Rentals and Productions (acquired by Sound Works Productions in 2012), working everything from the festivals that frequent Chicago down to a Mayor’s press conference calling for a Soundcraft 200 mixer and a couple of EV speakers on sticks. He would shift to a freelance career from there, working both as a monitor mixer and a FOH engine — among other gigs.
For the last 10 years, he’s been Andrew Bird’s principle FOH engineer. “I like working both monitors and FOH — it keeps your pencil sharp,” he says. “It’s too easy to just slide back into the comfortable FOH position on the same console, and fun to throw yourself back into the ground zero [that is monitor world].” This gig came about when The Decemberists’ tour manager Jason Tobias got the call to take The Arcs on the road. “When tour managers find crew members they like and can count on, they tend to stick with them,” Jensen says.
No “More Me” in the Monitor Mix
Monitor-wise, it doesn’t get more old school then this: no IEMs, not even any wedges. Just four giant sidefills. Christopher DeLucien is making it happen for the band, which he drives with a Midas PRO2. The sidefills are d&b Audiotechnik C7 stacks connected to D80 power amps in a four-foot sidefill configuration. “It puts everyone in the same headspace because everyone on stage is hearing the same thing — it’s like they are all just playing in one giant living room,” Jensen says, theorizing that it’s acting as a “glue” and causing everyone on stage to listen to each other a little closer.
Out in the house, Jensen is using a Midas PRO6, which he says gives him that analog sound more than others. “I started mixing on Studer Vista, and those things were so syrupy. I am always looking for that.” His rack is loaded with four reverbs (for plate and spring sounds), two analog tape delays and eight channels of dynamic equalization. “I especially like the five different compressors on the board that completely eliminate any need for plug-in capability,” he says. “They sound and work much smoother than any digital comps I have used in the past.”
There are two drum kits on the stage, and Jensen works to separate them and mix them differently so they sound like the two different instruments and musicians they are, and that involves good old-fashioned panning. There are three women singers who vary between soft level midtones to loud with a lot of brights, and getting them to fit with the mix without riding the faders constantly is part of his daily job. He says he relies on the dynamic EQ in the desk to make it work. Otherwise, “the band kind of mixes itself. Because they all listen to the same mix they adjust their own levels on stage.”
Most of the vocal mics are Shure Beta 58s, and Jensen chose Shure Beta 57s for the women because they also needed something that had a good side rejection.
In terms of instrument miking, Jensen uses a lot of SM57s for sources such as trumpet and percussion, but did select Beyerdynamic M 201 TGs on the snares and Sennheiser 441s as the overheads hovering above two kits. The two drum kits sit side by side on stage, and Jensen employs a single 441 on the stage right side and a second 441 on the stage left side with both drummers in-between, creating an ultra-wide and expansive stereo image.
Concerning his choice of the 441s, Jensen said, “I found the 441s to be soft and creamy. I’m not a big fan of highs in general — if you go through my desk, you’ll see every single channel is mixed toward the darker end.” The main advantage of them is the tight pattern they ensure, necessary as these kits are getting blasted by the sidefills. That was a problem from the beginning — so much so that it sent him to his closet to go through his 60-plus mics looking for the one that had the rejection on the side he needed, settling on the 441s. Kicks on both drummers’ kits are captured using Shure Beta 52s, with Sennheiser e609s on all the toms.
Close-miked Sennheiser e609s were the right choice on the wide variety of guitar amps onstage. Z Right Stuff Z-Bar mic mounts offer precise positioning and eliminate the excess stage clutter of additional mic stands. The DI’s are Radial. “They are bulletproof,” Jensen adds.
Eighth Day is supplying it all, and Jensen is happy to be working with them, noting that the sound company is also in Australia in addition to having a London office, so when he’s on tour in the States and then goes to Europe or down under, he gets the exact same package right down “to the drawers — you open the second one down from the left, and it has the same stuff in it,” he laughs. “It’s brilliant!”
Regrets? He Has a Few
The band is using whatever speakers are in the house they are playing at. On one hand, it’s fun to play through a lot of different speakers; on the other hand, it makes for a constant variable (or, if you prefer, “known unknown”). The first thing Jensen does when arriving at a venue is talk to the house engineer in-depth about the system and the room. “I always listen to the house engineer first and then make adjustments accordingly,” he says, adding that the adjustment almost always includes pulling back on the speakers, as typically those rooms host loud bands and DJs. Otherwise, almost all of these rooms have line arrays, and “they are all good. If you can’t mix on a VerTec or one of the others, you have a problem.” In general, he says, his biggest challenge is pulling the room together and tuning it for the band.
A fun part of it all is that Auerbach delights in having guests join him, including the likes of John Prine and Chrissie Hynde. At Coachella, Joe Walsh joined the band, and he just walked on stage and plugged in. For a feverish minute, Jensen worked to get his sound exactly right, and then Walsh noticed he plugged into the wrong guitar amp channel and switched it, undoing everything. “When it’s Joe Walsh, it’s all hands on deck, and when something like that happens, that’s when it’s exciting!” Jensen laughs.
Any regrets? “If I had it my way, I’d have a Midas XL250 with custom accompaniment of processing as I still don’t think the digital desks sound quite as smooth as the analog ones. But convenience, size, and weight are big considerations. They just don’t give you the footprint for those any more. Sometimes all I get is a little card table!”
