Boogie Nights: The Seventies disco musical

From an MD point of view, most shows I’ve taken on have fallen into one of two main categories: either waving a stick at a band in the pit or playing in an on-stage band. I have enjoyed both, and each has its good and bad points. In the pit, it’s easier to direct things and cope with ‘situations’ during the performance, because my only job is to direct the musicians and cast. But this is much more difficult if I’m actually playing as well (and, being a bass player, I’m occupied with reading and playing my own part most of the time). In order to keep production costs down, we were always going to use an ‘in-house’ sound solution, by which I mean that either myself or Kevin Amies — the show’s producer and also an experienced drum-meister — would be looking after the sound and the other would be playing in the on-stage band. In the end, we agreed that Kev would play drums and that I would be on the desk and direct/cue from there as necessary, although at that early stage we had no idea how this might be achieved!

As far as the sound requirements were concerned, we would need radio mics for all the eight principal performers, plus another two for female ensemble parts. The dialogue was to be reinforced — not always essential in shows, but in the case of something like Boogie Nights, the musical numbers are often big and loud, and the dialogue is also underscored in a few places, so the mics would be used whenever the characters had anything to say or sing. During later stagger runs and continuity runs, it became clear that chasing the story on the faders would be difficult, so I started to program sound scenes for my Roland M-400 mixer using the remote control software installed on my laptop. Being MD for the show was, at this stage, proving useful, as I knew the musical numbers inside out and could predict some of the vocal variances likely to occur on stage. I was also having to integrate the click tracks, pre-recorded tracks and sound effects into my sound schedule, as I would be controlling everything from the mix position.

The Roland M-400 mixer was positioned in the very back row of the theatre, just in front of the lighting box, which was not ideal, as there was a brick wall directly behind, but was the only option within the auditorium itself. The two S-1608 Digital Snake units were located off stage right, which meant that my ready-made Cat 5 cables wouldn’t quite reach. Luckily, crew boss, Paul, is a bit of an expert at making up network cables and is sad enough to carry reels of the stuff in the back of his car, so we soon had a nice new pair of Cat 5 crossover cables, which we ran up to the desk — so much better than doing battle with an evil serpent in the form of an analogue multicore! As the M-400 contains lots of onboard goodies, I didn’t need much outboard gear, but I do like running through my DriveRack 260 (more as a limiter than anything else, although I was prepared to use the feedback filters if I had to), so I patched that as an insert into the main left/right output buses. The only other external kit was the two Tascam CD-01U CD decks, set to single-shot/auto-ready mode for the various show tracks and special effects. I had transferred the pre-show background music onto a USB memory stick for playing directly from the M-400 so that I could leave the CD decks all primed, ready to start the show.

It’s always good to hear the sound system kick into action after all the wiring has been done, and I took advantage of a relatively quiet period to check out the front-of-house sound with some test tracks (authentic stuff from the ‘70s, of course). The KX12 tops were pole-mounted above the KX1.5 subs and, let me tell you, this is an enjoyable setup to be in front of when you wind it up. This was the first time I’d used it in a bigger venue, and, boy, did it perform well! Huge bass, rock-solid mids and highs, all super-clean and with power to spare Such an impressive rig and perfect for this gig. The three downstage monitors were driven by a Crown Xti 2000 power amp tucked in behind one of the subs, and the four little Mackies on the band rostrum were cabled straight from the Digital Snake returns. Once all the monitors had checked out, we (well, Paul) tidied up all the cable runs, taped everything down securely and asked the stage manager to approve the rig. On the Sunday morning, we began to deal with the radio mics and the business of miking up the band.

The radio mics were all Sennheiser models and Kev had already set the frequencies, so all we had to do was put batteries in and try them out individually and then together to check for unwanted radio interference and shading. A production decision had been to use miniature (flesh-coloured) lapel-type mics taped to the principals’ faces rather than head-worn boom mics, so I was expecting a few issues there and I had allowed a good couple of hours for fine-tuning and problem-solving. The band requirements were straightforward enough, with a couple of DIs for keyboards and bass, and an SM57 on the Fender guitar combo. Kev was using his own set of Shure drum mics, which took up eight channels (kick, snare, hats and five toms), and the drums sounded really good more or less ‘out of the box’ with minimal tweaking. I was keen for the band to play at a decent level on stage, which I thought would sound more authentic and be easier for them, and the out-front effect was just right, with the main PA reinforcing the instruments where necessary and giving me plenty of scope for live balancing.

The usual array of minor technical issues duly cropped up, but most of the problems were associated with monitoring and not radio mics. The usual barrage of, “I can’t hear anything” or “I can only hear that thing,” was pretty much as expected, but in this case it was coming mainly from some of the band. Kev on drums was wearing headphones, as he needed to hear the cues and click tracks, and the other three had only their floor monitors. But, of course, there was the on-stage sound coming direct from the backline amps and natural drum kit to take into account. I’m a great believer in letting things settle down for a while before doing drastic changes, and I remember numerous occasions where performers have said that they could hear everything “much better now” when nothing at all had actually changed other than they had become more used to the mix of sounds around them. We had a few issues with the miniature connectors between microphone capsules and belt pack transmitters, and during the dress rehearsal we lost several mics because the batteries hadn’t been changed (oops!), but generally everything was working by the end of the Sunday tech session.

On the subject of click tracks, I didn’t find the supplied ones all that helpful, in that the click sounds were not the same on all songs and didn’t differentiate between on and off beats. So if the band and the click did happen to part company, it would have been very difficult for them to know where they were within any given bar of music. Luckily, this only happened once, and that was during the dress rehearsal. I noticed quite quickly that everything was starting to drift apart and killed the track before the number completely disintegrated. To make matters slightly more complicated, the click tracks didn’t all start at the beginning of the songs either. For example, in the song ‘Enough Is Enough’, a slow intro section is played colla voce with the singers, then at the appropriate moment I had to start the click track, which gave a voice count-in before the band started playing at the new tempo. Some of the count-ins were ‘1234’, but not all, and Kev coped remarkably well with them considering the pressure of the situation!

As I was also supposed to be directing the music, I rigged up a talkback microphone and routed it directly to Kev’s phones; as he had been at all the company rehearsals and knew all the numbers, we agreed where he would be able to follow the dialogue and cue some of the music himself, but there were other places where I needed to count him in and give warnings and so on. After a while, we both found that this setup worked very well, and I was not only able to give count-ins and warnings like, “Stand by piano cue for ‘Street Life’”, but also relay live directions — for example, when I thought that the band should back off a bit, or where a stage cue was slightly late and I didn’t want the band to play where they would normally pick up. I was also hooked up to the stage/tech crew comms, but I only used that for synchronising the pre-show music and joining in a bit of banter (all perfectly clean and innocent, you understand) before going ‘off cans’ immediately after clearance from the stage manager to go with the opening number, which was always preceded by a quick check to see if the band were all in position and Kev the drummer was wearing his headphones.

During the week-long run, there were occasional problems with the radio mics, but nothing too bad on the technical front apart from a couple of crackly leads. I soundchecked them all about 45 minutes before the show each night and made hardly any adjustments from one show to the next. A nice quick mic test consisting of “Hello, one, two” was generally enough, although I did have to adjust and store different fader settings in many of my preset scenes as the cast grew more confident and/or I got used to what they were doing at any given moment. When making changes and storing them on the hoof, it’s a very good idea to check the scenes before and after the one that has been changed, so that any channels that are left ‘up’ don’t suddenly go up or down when the next scene is recalled. The band were able to work with what they could hear on stage, but we had a conversation after each act, each night, and as a result I made quite a few changes to their monitor levels as the week progressed; I think they were reasonably content by about Thursday. I was able to make more detailed adjustments, including adding in my own count-in to one of the click tracks, which for some reason didn’t have one and was causing Kev’s blood pressure to rise above a safe level.

Dave Lockwood: Guitarist's perspective — the view from the stage

A 1968 Fender Deluxe Reverb amp was appropriate for the on-stage ‘70s band.

Surprisingly, given that it consists mostly of well-known songs, this proved to be one of the more challenging shows that I’ve done, although also, in the end, one of the most rewarding. I had the guitar part a few weeks in advance, but any familiarity with the songs in their original form was almost a handicap here, as there were innumerable little structural changes, extensive quoting from other songs and interjected linking passages to create medleys. I marked up my part with a number of unmissable yellow Post-its by way of additional guidance, and added some pink Post-its to prompt me where to change pedals too.

I normally play musical theatre dates with a Mesa Boogie Mk IV and MIDI switching rig, which allows me to reset a number of different parameters simultaneously, but there was nothing too radical sound-wise being demanded here, and the requirement for a wah pedal between guitar and amp meant that I decided I might as well do the whole show with individual pedals rather than a rack. This option would also allow me to use the most appropriately ‘period-correct’ amp in my collection (a 1968 Fender Deluxe Reverb), a consideration made necessary by the band and its gear being effectively part of the set for the majority of the scenes.

The usual lack of rehearsal opportunities was compounded by the fact that I would still be away working at the London International Music Show during the Sunday tech, so Mike would have an incomplete band to soundcheck with and none of us would get to hear the full effect of band, live vocals and playback parts before it was too late to do anything about it. In the event, there were remarkably few problems on stage, the only fraught moments being all of us immediately losing the click in the first song of the first show and those occasions when Kevin the drummer’s relayed count consisted solely of “FOUR!”

With the Deluxe set on five and the volume backed off on the guitar (Strat), I was able to take care of the ‘squeaky-clean’ Chic et al parts without a compressor, but I used two overdrive pedals — a Fulltone OCD for amp-like, touch-sensitive drive and a Keeley-modded TS-9 for more mid-rangey, ‘singing’ leads — allowing me to significantly change the character of the sound without giving FOH any nasty volume surprises (never a good idea, especially when you know he’s writing the job up for a magazine!). Unusually, I finished the show’s run with the exact amp and pedal settings that I started it with, so things must have been pretty comfortable throughout, with the only sonic challenge perhaps being the dramatic change of on-stage acoustics when playing with the curtain immediately in front of us, compared to playing to the open auditorium.

Even within this most gig-like scenario, playing for musicals is really not a bit like a normal band performance. The feeling at the end is not so much the high of a great gig, but more the satisfaction of a job well done and being part of a successful team. There will always be on-the-night cuts and adjustments (and the odd last-minute key change as the run nears its end) to prevent you from relaxing into it in the way you might with a very familiar band set. It’s not the sort of thing that you can busk, and the kind of detailed preparation that I now do for shows is as a direct result of things I have tripped up on in the past, such as lighting my pedalboard so I can see where my feet should be when all the stage lights go out, marking the optimum places for page turns (difficult in the middle of a continuous, busy rhythm part), and giving myself some prominent visual anchor points on the pages at places where I know I am going to have to be looking away to follow a visual cue from someone.

From a player’s perspective, Mike Crofts’ calm professionalism at FOH was a pleasure to work with, swiftly resolving the potentially complex monitoring and communication issues, allowing realistic on-stage volume limits that all the players could be comfortable with, and deflecting any production dramas and issues away from the band. The riotously enthusiastic audience reaction to every performance made the effort of getting it all as tight and polished as possible on stage seem more than worthwhile.

Boogie Nights: The Seventies disco musical

The Role of Musical Director in Theatre