Eric Welsh has some crazy road stories to tell. He was initially in on the ground floor of DiscLive, a service that provided live concert CDs at the venue — immediately post gig, no less. He then created his own venture, The Show, which specializes in live concert recording, packaging and delivery. His new company has produced some amazing live CDs for The Pixies and Dead Can Dance. He also co-owns and runs the busy Chillhouse Recording Studio in Charlestown, MA, with partner Will Holland. My main interest was to pick Eric's brain about doing live multitrack recording on the road. It was of special interest to me, as I had recently built a small mobile rig for people to rent out of my studio to use for live recordings.
How did you get started with DiscLive?
A family friend came up to me and said, "The concert I just saw was amazing. What if I had a recording of that?" We thought that was a good idea. He and his friends were business majors in school — they put together a proposal. We were able to get some backing for the project, and the backing lead to getting an ex-executive of BMG, Sami Valkonen, to be the president of DiscLive. He was friends with the former founder of Loud Records, Rich Isaacson, who also came on board. We had a little bit of money — they set up an office in New York and I was here in Boston. The first recording we did was Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra in March of 2003 at a place called SOB's in New York City. It was great. We did about a hundred CDs and gave them away as a test run. I think all I had was a Mackie mixer and some ambient mics at that time. I was getting a left and right board feed from the house mixer.
Pretty basic.
It came out good. I was very careful of the ambient mics. Luckily the room wasn't too big so I wasn't getting big reflections. I think Clear Channel was coming out with Instant Live at the same time. We had a publicist and it was becoming a big deal for concert revenues. We did a couple of things with Jefferson Starship — I think the first big one we did was Billy Idol. We finally constructed our own truck with a small mixing setup and at least ten duplication burners. It would burn six discs at a time very quickly — like robots. We had a whole technology that we created in a way. A CD only holds so much information. I would record on two different computers. When we got to that hour point, or where I thought a good segue could be, I would stop recording on one of the computers. The second one would still record the concert. I'd send that first disc over to them [the burners] as the concert was actually happening. Disc one would already be done; then after the concert was over, I would quickly do the small edits. I had indexing and the fade-outs — I'd send that over. In about twenty minutes we would have the second disc done. We would sell tickets and they [the concert-goers] could wait in line or go online afterwards and redeem it. That's how that whole thing started and it went pretty strong for a while.
Were you getting multi-channel feeds from an isolation transformer box?
I remember right at the top, especially during Billy Idol, the people at DiscLive were very conscious of what they would call "creative control." They didn't want us to be blamed for anything the artist didn't like in the mix. I would get a stereo mix from the board. However, these guys weren't mixing for a CD, they were mixing for the house. The mix engineer would say, "Oh, wow. I'm providing this now?" His name would be on the line regarding the band. It would be possible that a band could listen to the mix at the end of the night — if they're not pointing the finger at us, they could point the finger at their house guy. The house guy would have a separate auxiliary mix — I would take a left and right off of the aux mix. He could beef up whatever was different from the live experience. He wouldn't get this [mix] right the first show. It would take a couple of shows. That's what I meant about the control thing — the rest of my company wouldn't let that go, so I had to ruffle some feathers. I did have some cool gear though. I had an EQ system for the left and right mix — also for the ambient mics — either two to four mics in front of house and also in front of the stage — being careful of the side fills. I had a pair of [Empirical Labs] Distressors and a dbx DriveRack to delay the entire aux stereo mix, or board stereo mix, to the ambient mics.
To line them up a little more?
Yeah. That would be a very quick process during soundcheck. That's when I would hear the house engineer say to the drummer, "Okay for kick, now the snare." I had to find the time-alignment for ambient mics versus board mix quickly. There was not enough time to analyze it, but I'd get it very close and sometimes it came out very well.
As you were working on the DiscLive stuff, did they finally move over to doing full multitrack sends to the truck?
What happened was The Pixies contacted us. We were running out of funds and nobody had any idea how big this Pixies thing was going to be. We put DiscLive out there and sold it to a company called Immediatek. Right at the time we sold, we did four consecutive nights with The Pixies at a venue in England. The idea was to record the concerts via multi-track and make them available for download within an hour or two after the show was over. I recorded everything onto a Pro Tools LE rig — Digi 002. I was getting some latency when I was mixing, not too bad. I brought all of these recordings into a regular studio afterwards and remixed. This was for the downloading thing that Immediatek wanted. I drove directly back to the hotel and mixed in Pro Tools to allow for a decent sounding mix. I put the [Waves] L2 [plug-in]on the master fader and we uploaded them. That was the first kind of multitrack recordings. I was finally able to get aux sends for The Pixies' warm up tour: Charles [Thompson's] voice, Kim [Deal] and the full drum set in stereo — I put my own kick drum mic in. I had all the guitars going through whatever auxes we had available. A multitrack feed that I could work with, and the results came out much better. After that experience, we had one last run with Kenny Loggins. Our truck had been back and forth across the United States without any problems. Then we decided to update everything, like the Ethernet to all the computers. We also decided to test the CD burners again. I got the company to buy a Yamaha DM1000 mixer. With that, we did the Kenny Loggins show in Foxwoods [Resort Casino Ledyard, Connecticut] and it came out unbelievable. It was about thirty-two channels. I had an expansion card in the back of the mixer just so I could handle them all. It was the best thing we've ever done, sound- quality wise. I remember the president [of DiscLive] took it in his car driving home and immediately said, "This is a fantastic recording." I could time-align everything right in the desk.
Exactly. Every channel has it.
I made a subgroup for all the direct lines onto two linked faders panned hard left/right and put that somewhere on the board near the end channels and delayed that appropriately for the ambient microphones I had in the audience. We went to another show for Kenny Loggins and Clear Channel Instant Live was hot on our tails at this point. For some reason, they wouldn't allow us to record. Now people are getting into this "initiation fee" business — which had been going on before, but it started to get really heavy. Venues would ask you for five grand just to record the concert. Who owns the venues?
Clear Channel.
Most of them. So, we started butting heads. Did you read about all the patent problems they had? [Clear Channel applied for a patent on live recording and post show delivery — later rejected. -ed.]
It sounded like a load of hooey to me.
Well, kind of. We were definitely the top independent and they were the counterpart. There were some other cool companies that we met along the way that were trying to get involved with this same thing. I'm not sure what the [Clear Channel] patent said, but something along the lines of being able to record something and sell it right after the concert. They gave that to all the major management companies and made their intent known. When anyone else wanted to try and get a piece of the pie, the first thing the managers would say was, "Oh, you can't do that. You don't have the patent for it." Game over. We had a little more clout at that time; we were able to get through and do a couple more things, but it really hurt. Our packaging consisted of CD-Rs. They would skimp and the packaging was just generic for the show. After that Kenny Loggins show, all I can remember was that the original DiscLive team was not comfortable anymore and we all started to leave one by one. We all resigned and let the new purchasers of the company run it the way that they wanted to. It was unfortunate. I had finally gotten things the way I wanted them to be from the multi- track recording standpoint. I wish I had done that earlier. I never really had a chance, with DiscLive, to do that again and show my chops.
Did that morph into this idea of doing The Show?
It did. We weren't able to do anything for a while because of paperwork we had signed. We had become friends with the management of the Pixies. You become close and have people trust in you and your work and everything you do. They hired the new DiscLive team to do some shows. The Pixies management included a clause that stated the band would only work with the crew that had recorded their previous shows. We came in with a "for hire" contract. The idea was that Jake Walker, a co-founder of DiscLive, and myself would travel in The Pixies tour bus. When we got there, we saw a big tour bus — an old one at that — right in front of the DiscLive offices. We had a meeting and we asked, "What's with the tour bus?" We were supposed to travel with The Pixies, which would have made sense because it would have saved a ton of money. They said, "No, we've got this all set up. We're going to have our own bus and we're going to bring our own guys for help. They'll assist you with whatever you need." I asked, "Where's the truck?" "It's being driven to Arizona," they said. So, light bulbs start coming up. We were told to go to this storage area and to pick out what we needed for our duplication recording truck. We go in there and everything is on the floor and scattered: the mixing desk, speakers, cabling — equipment everywhere. We had this nice bench that harnessed everything to distribute the weight properly, which had been ripped out. We thought, "What the heck could possibly be in that truck?" The management of The Pixies wasn't fully aware this was happening. Things got a little heated and then calmed down. We got on the bus and traveled for about four hours; then the air conditioning went. So we turned around and they had to get a new bus. Things got even more heated after that. We finally got to the venue.
The truck has been sent ahead but the gear wasn't in it?
I guess some of it was, but a lot of it wasn't. We got to Arizona — I think it was the first show. We saw people moving speakers, a mixing desk and cords into this duplication/mixing truck we had designed. We felt very uncomfortable because soundcheck was happening in a couple hours. One guy said, "Do you want to look at the truck?" and I said, "No. I don't want to. I don't want to be legally responsible for anything." We're in the back of our tour bus with the executives of the new DiscLive and we said, "We need to sign a waiver saying that we are not responsible if this does not turn out right. We don't know what we're getting ourselves into." The new DiscLive execs would not agree to this, so we got on an airplane and left. They were never able to record the concert.
How could they if they were still putting the gear together?
It was told to me that they drove up to the venue and the Pixies' management said, "Get away." Then The Pixies rolled through Lowell, Massachusetts, and their management called me and Jake — we were both living in Boston — to come to the show. When the show was over, we were talking with everybody and I asked, "Where's the DiscLive truck?" "Oh, we had to release them from the tour." That was when we started The Show. What we realized from our experiences was that the whole DiscLive operation only yielded profits during that one Pixies warm up tour. We decided to scale back the operation and provide better results. The only thing we would lose was the ability to provide the: "right after the concert you would get your CD."
I think the thing you gained was being able to do a real CD pressing and better artwork, obviously.
Oh yeah. I went out there with an [Alesis] HD24 — I had two of those. Actually, the first tour we did, I had a Digi 002. It was the last twelve shows of the United States 2004 tour for The Pixies. We put this [The Show] together within three or four days. It was me, Jake and Jim Coudal from Chicago — a very talented graphic designer. I remember The Pixies were on tour and we said, "Okay, we'll meet you in Washington." I set up the Digi 002 and I had sixteen tracks coming in. I had eight analog inputs and I had an Alesis piece that converted the next eight inputs into lightpipe. I could track sixteen in that way, and then I had seventeen and eighteen through the DAT machine.
You just put it into record standby?
Yeah. I put it into record and I recorded two tracks that way [through S/PDIF], so I had eighteen coming in. Just before the first show, the Firewire [connection] started screwing up on my Digi 002. All of a sudden my external drive was not responding. Have you ever heard of this thing — the harness wiring being bad [in the 002]?
I know exactly what you're talking about. The power supply problem. That happened about three hours before soundcheck. I
got a runner to go to the closest store and buy another one and got the show going. We did the next twelve shows leading up to The Pixies' New York stint at the Hammerstein Ballroom and something else happened on that one too. I was thinking in the back of my mind, "I'm in New York City. I should pick up a backup battery. If the power goes out, at least I won't lose my Pro Tools tracks before they render." I never got around to doing it and guess what happened that night?
The power went out.
I asked the technical director where to plug in to avoid lighting hum and things like that. He said, "Plug it in right there." [At the end of the gig] The Pixies were walking off the stage and the guy started shutting power down — the band had just stopped, so I was getting that little pinwheel. Talk about a sinking heart.
Did you lose it?
I was taught that when you make a mistake, don't let anyone know you made a mistake.
Don't say anything.
No. And I'm paid for that. I made a phone call that night. This goes along with knowing people on the road, networking, not being a dick and not being on an ego trip. I talked to all the video guys and luckily they had a [Tascam] DA-88 that was running and recording eight channels of The Pixies concert. They were doing a DVD at the same time. "Can I grab your Tascam before the concert real quickly and record it into my computer?" They said, "Fine, just leave everything as it is." I got up really early the next morning and I did it so I had something. I'm not going to tell you which one it is, but you'll notice because the stereo spread's a little different.
Was it basically some of the same sources you were getting?
I probably lost the kick, but the nice thing is I was able to bring this into the studio, which is part of The Show's focus. After the tour is over we bring tracks into the studio and professionally multi-track mix the recordings. I got a [Yamaha] DM2000, which I'd been using. I can do all the time aligning and really get some good EQ, some good shelving and work to re- create the concert. That's what we did. We had the set lists inserted and we used real, mastered, silver- plated CDs — they were a superior-sounding product with good packaging. I'm sure people would have liked more information and a little booklet, but we had to do what we could within a price point. We sold an amazing amount of CDs that way.
How much were the concert CD's going for back then?
They were double discs. For the last twelve shows we chose to use CD Baby, because we didn't have anything set up to get them out to people — they did a great job. I believe those were $25 dollars when they came out. I don't know if that's changed. I know some of them sold out immediately. We made a thousand apiece at each of those concerts so it's a real collector's edition. After that tour we then went on Pixies' express everywhere. We were in Japan and Europe. It was awesome. We had so many discs — at a point I had to send the actual caddy — the hard drive for the [Alesis] HD24 — back home so it could be mixed because I was gone for so long. The studio co- owner, Will Holland, mixed a couple of those shows while I was gone so we could get those CDs out. Those HD24's are really nice. That's what they're for. I didn't want to bring a laptop-based audio rig into different countries and have to deal with the different voltages issues. Alesis HD24s contain a universal power supply, so I could plug into anything and be safe. The people from PreSonus were really, really good to us. I have an endorsement deal with them and they provided us with [foreign] power supplies for their units. My rig included three racks of PreSonus DigiMax — the XT ones with the limiters — and the Alesis HD24. I think I had some isolation transformer things too.
Those DigiMax units have digital outputs and plug directly into the Alesis.
Yeah, lightpipe right in.
I assume you were recording it at 44.1 or 48 kHz sampling rate?
It was at 44.1, 24 bit. Those recordings are unbelievable too. The only thing was that we had cornered the Pixies market; we had a lot of overstock because we had so many discs. We weren't using CD Baby anymore. We had generated a really strong customer list via email, so we were able to send that out for updates.
To inform them what new shows were available?
Yeah.
When you're tracking with the Alesis HD24, do you bring a small mixer or something to monitor through? Are you tracking blind — just setting the levels?
On the Dead Can Dance tour, it was blind. I had headphones and I would listen to the ambient microphones — I had a little Mackie 1202 [VLZ] mixer and I would be able to check, buffering it down to a headphone level. As far as the tracks that went to the desk and to me, that was blind. I didn't listen to any of those. If something was not clear coming out of the desk that way, the front of house guy would hear it.
What would be your advice for working with front of house engineers, monitor engineers and stage crews?
The biggest thing is getting the okay from the band and the management and making sure you're typing out whatever you need. Make sure it very clear what is needed before you get there. I would to talk to the front of house guys. I would talk to the technical director before the tour. Discuss what you need and what they can supply and what they can't supply. Once you arrived to the venue you've already talked about it, unlike the old DiscLive days when you would roll in and you're an annoyance. People need to do their jobs just like I do. My job is dependent upon them helping me in those situations.
You've said that you put some mics on the stage. Where do you find good spots for positioning those to get a real good balance of the band?
When I first started, I would try to put the mics near the house board. A lot of times the house board was centered, so I did these really creative things — like hanging mics from balconies — anything I could get away with so that I could keep the ambient microphones in a crowd. I did not want the mics near a reflective surface; not pointing at each other and not pointing away from each other too much. Generally, I try to get something where the speaker arrays are hitting the mics directly so I won't have so much of a phasing issue when I'm mixing. With Dead Can Dance, they were in Europe in some really nice venues that were [sound] treated perfectly. I could place the mics on the T-bar properly. During soundcheck, I would record a little bit and then listen to it afterwards and make adjustments if needed. In front of the stage was very tricky and sometimes I wouldn't even use those mics. With The Pixies, they had their wedges behind them.
Kind of backwards?
Everything was pointing towards the audience. I had to be careful to not put the mic too close to any kind of speaker. It worked really good. It was a very interesting stage plot, the way they did things. With a band like Dead Can Dance; there were a massive amount of people on stage. I had two Alesis HD24s for 48 tracks total. It's a lot of sound coming in. I don't know if you're familiar with this band.
Oh yeah. I've seen them live and I've got all their records.
They're very particular people, very fantastic. I had to be really careful because there could be a lot of phasing. There were many individual players; each played different, weird instruments — mics everywhere. If I wanted to utilize stage mics, I was looking just to get the fans. I wanted to raise the microphone to a certain point and angle down in order to be able to capture the fan reactions, otherwise it would sound like a dead room. There are some really cool things to be done with phase that way. Keeping the mics at a certain level and finding a sweet spot can achieve some phase cancellation that works to your advantage when mixing. They'll kick in a little higher when the fans are actually cheering to the songs but not [affecting the mix of] what is happening on stage. That was the most challenging live mixing I had done and it was also the last thing we did with The Show.
Are you looking for more projects with that venture or are you going to wait and see?
We had such a great market. We had a niche because these bands, like Dead Can Dance, didn't have record deals. We weren't dealing with the label. There are reunion tours looking to make some money and they're looking to kick ass. That's the perfect thing. How many of those can you find? Are they willing to sacrifice and play live and have us multi-track record it all? That's a bold statement for the artists — The Pixies and Dead Can Dance chose to do it. They knew it was good profit because that's what we delivered — good product and good profits for them. Plus, we were tight with these people and their management.
There are two ways of looking at a live recording. You do something like this, a whole string of shows. Or you do several nights at the same venue, and you record that and make a "proper" album.
For the Dead Can Dance US tour, we made a "compilation" CD [Selections From North America 2005]. Brendan [Perry] from Dead Can Dance and David Badrick, who helped out with sound and mixing, and Lisa Gerrard and I compiled a CD of the entire tour. It wasn't a limited offering — you can simply buy it. It's the best thing I've done sonically with live recordings. The last show was in Chicago and we released that as a thousand CDs, but we also made 300 four-sided record vinyl sets. Both Lisa and Brendan signed them. It sounds fantastic. It was an interesting thing to do. It's a very small niche to be able to find that opportunity.
Have you done any work with local bands using your rig?
No, I haven't. The reason is that when we started The Show, we were only going to do things that would make a profit. There was a period of time where I was on the road all the time — I lost all of my studio clients, except for one or two singer/songwriter guys who were faithful and stuck around. It took me a year to build it back. Do I want to have a studio or do I want to be a road warrior?
It seems like you can't be speculative on it, either.
You're right, but over the last eight years I've taken a lot of those chances already, so I have an idea of what I can take a chance on.
You've had a couple of years without doing one of those tours. Do you miss the excitement of some of that?
Yes, but the thing is that I always want it to be me on stage, you know?
Well, don't we all?
It goes to what I was saying before; you've got this big circle of being on the road all the time and you are sucked into thinking that the next big thing is going to happen just because you're on the road. It's a false mind state. I didn't really get out of it by choice. There were some other options available; we could've gone on the road again, but we didn't find it profitable enough. I can't complain because I've got a studio that's been doing really well. I'm working on two movies right now and teaching part-time at New England Institute of Art. I have stable ground. I just bought a car for the first time in my life. I'm in my mid-thirties and I just bought a car. If the right situation comes around, I'll jump on it. r
www.chillhousestudios.com www.theshowlive.com www.ericwelsh.com
