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The following is an edited transcript of an interview EAW conducted with Rob Killenberger, Front-of-House Engineer for Counting Crows' 1996 tour. We caught up with Rob at Counting Crows' gig at Boston's famous Orpheum Theater.

EAW: How did you get involved in sound reinforcement?

Rob Killenberger: When I was high school I started working in a theater in my hometown of Peekskill, NY called the Paramount Center for the Arts. It was an old vaudeville style movie palace that had been converted into an arts center. I started out working with lights and then started hanging around the soundboard, looking over the mixers shoulder until I got a chance to do sound. It was a great place to start because we had passable equipment and were doing some pretty good productions varying from dance and theater to rock shows. I got a lot out of the variety, learning about the different sound requirements. It wasn't like starting out in dingy little hole-in-the-wall clubs with horrible sound equipment.

It's helped me because now, when I'm not on the road, I freelance with Pro-Mix and a few other companies who do all kinds of acts -- industrial, theater, whatever.

 

Counting Crows FOH Engineer, Rob Killenberger.

EAW: Was it a conscious decision to go into sound reinforcement or a series of happy coincidences?

RK: Eventually it was a conscious decision. I wanted to be a lighting designer and then a radio disc jockey and then a club DJ. I was a mobile DJ for a while which is when I was first exposed to real sound systems. I found that working with the equipment to manipulate the equalization of the music was more interesting to me than the musical selection. But all the time I was doing that, I was still working at the Paramount and other theatres doing sound as well as lighting. I felt that I was using more of my creativity, more of my brain, when I was doing the sound design than the lighting design or DJ thing.

 

EAW: What was your first big break?

My first big break was working with PM Dawn. A friend of mine had tipped me off that the tour manager was looking a sound company for the upcoming tour. I was doing rock shows in the tri-state area (NY, NJ, CT). The way I was working then, I would spec out a job (even though I didn't own any equipment) and then subcontract out the rental from a sound company. This was the first time I had been dealing with the professional entertainment industry, working with a well known act.

Anyway, I went into rehearsal to talk to the tour manager about the tour, but he was late. When he showed up he said, "I've got to go do a million things this afternoon. Can you handle this rehearsal for me?"

Naturally I said, "Sure." I was just expecting to talk to the guy, but I grabbed the chance. He came back, and thought the rehearsal was going well, so he asked me back the next day. But it wasn't another rehearsal, it was to mix front-of-house at a concert at the Jacob Javitts Center in Manhattan. I couldn't believe my luck. It was this big charity event in front of 10,000 people with over a dozen acts, mostly all track acts. PM Dawn was the only live act.

It blew my mind. The biggest crowd I had ever worked was 1,000 and this was 10,000 with a huge, flown PA. The gig went great. The console was a Yamaha PM-3000 and I had never seen one personally before. Fortunately, I had ordered all the literature on that as well as many other popular consoles (as if I was going to buy one). The literature was very specific about the VCA's and mute groups, matrixes, etc.

 

EAW: So you're self-educated? Or did you go to school to learn the craft?

RK: I did go to Hofstra University as Communications major with the thought of breaking into the television business. I took one sound class, but it was almost all review of things I had learned by doing shows on my own. I did pick up one or two things, answers to questions like how a dynamic microphone works versus a condenser mic. I new from experience that a condenser microphone has a much better high end and a dynamic mic has a warmer quality. In this class I learned why. Other than those basics, everything else I learned was through experience. I think it's the best way.

 

EAW: What is the biggest challenge that sound engineers are facing?

RK: In a live sense, the big challenge is working with the acoustics of the given space on the given night. Figuring out how to put a sound system into a space to cover the space completely and to work with the rooms natural acoustics so that you hear more direct sound than reflected sound.

To reach the upper balconies in the Orpheum,
Rob and his crew mounted two KF850's on their
sides and angled them up about 20°.

In places like this place, the Orpheum in Boston, it's as real challenge. You don't have any points to fly the PA from so you have to stack the system on a fairly small stage. You don't have anywhere to hang delay speakers, nor do you have time. The balcony covers quite a large portion of the orchestra section giving you coverage problems underneath. We stacked the PA and put some boxes on their sides on the top of the stack and crossed our fingers.

Another big problem that engineers face is dealing with the stage volume. Counting Crows is OK as far as that goes but a lot of other bands aren't. I mixed monitors for the band LIVE last year and their stage volume is very loud. Although there are still many bands that I know are louder!

 

EAW: What advice would you give to someone looking to get into sound reinforcement?

RK: That's funny because just the other night in New Haven a teenager asked me that very same question. My answer was to go find a local theater or club or performance venue of any kind and try and get a job there or help out for free, to start. Then escalate to a working position. Also, try contacting a sound reinforcement company for employment or apprenticeship possibilities. Just go and do it. Look over somebody's shoulder. Sure, you should go to college to learn the technical side, as well as receiving a good education. But in the live sound business, all of my colleagues learned by just doing it.

 

EAW: What do you look for in a loudspeaker?

RK: I want a loudspeaker that gives me back exactly what I put into it. I don't want a sound that's colored or has any artificial effects. And I don't want unpleasant interactions between devices, lobing or combing. And you also want speakers that can cover a venue well. Although it is improving, it is an area that manufacturers still need to further address; to manufacture boxes that will go into any configuration, and cover todays venues (with todays restrictions) i.e. bad fly points, no fly points.

 

EAW: How are the EAW speakers working for you?

RK: EAW speakers are very good. I like the coverage particularly. There's very little combing & lobing in the horizontal plane. There are so many PA's out there that really don't work that well. All around, it's one of the most consistently good sounding PA's you'll find around. I'm really pleased with them.

When I first did the PM Dawn, it was one of those tours that arranged by throwing darts at a map -- it was all over the place. We didn't carry our own production, so we were using local systems. I specified EAW as much as possible because I knew that with an EAW system, It wouldn't be that difficult to make it sound good.

I'm still shocked every time I see someone bring out a newly bought PA that they spent tens of thousands of dollars on and it doesn't sound good at all. One of the boxes may sound good in a shop when you play a CD through it, but when you put eight of them together, they don't sound good at all.

 

EAW: How did you get involved with Counting Crows?

RK: PM Dawn did the WOMAD Festival with Peter Gabriel and that's where I met some people that would be working with Counting Crows. They called me to do monitors at one show in New York -- the Wetlands. Counting Crows had released their CD and were starting to tour more and more. They liked my work and asked me to go on tour. I did monitors for about a month and a half until the FOH guy left. Then I had to do monitors and FOH for the rest of that leg -- about four months. I've been with this band ever since.

I must say, it's a pleasure to mix this band because they have so many different sounds and instruments and such a wide dynamic range. It's a lot of fun.

 

EAW: What is this rig?

RK: I have 10x KF850A's a side plus 6x SB850's a side so it's 32 boxes. It's a bit larger than other people might do for a venue this size, but I'm a coverage freak. When three boxes will work, I put in four. It never hurts to turn something down. I want to cover every square inch. This venue was difficult. I wanted to go higher, but the safety factor just wouldn't allow. I want the people in the top row of the balcony to understand the lyrics and get the musical nuances. This band has so many subtleties, delicacies.

 

EAW: I see that you're touring with a grand piano.

RK: Well...what the heck, I'll tell you the secret. It's not really a grand piano. It's a top-of-the-line, 88-key Yamaha sampling keyboard mounted inside a piano shell. A real piano is such a hassle on tour because you have to tune it every day which takes about an hour and they never sound right with all the other sound sources interacting with its big resonating chamber. Plus, moving it is a backache. This solution gives us that look of having the piano without the hassles. The sampling keyboards are so good these days that nobody has noticed. At least so far. (Knocks on wooden door trim.) If this was classical music, of course you'd use the acoustic piano, but in the rock and roll environment, this works out very well.

Elton John was using an acoustic piano for years with all kinds of mics and bar pickups inside it. They would do anything to get a little bit more gain before feedback and it still just sounded like a clanking racket. He finally moved to an electronic keyboard and he seems satisfied.

 

EAW: You have some speakers across the stage lip. What are they and why are they there?

RK: I have four KF300's to cover just the front three rows. Looking at them from the mix position reading left to right I wired them stereo right-left-right-left. That way, no matter where you stand you get the stereo image. If you're between the left stack and the first KF300, for example, you get left channel from the left stack and right channel from the first KF300 and so on across the stage to the right stack where the last KF300 gives you the left channel.

For a lot of bands, that kind of attention to detail wouldn't matter because When it's loud, it's all mono. But with this band, when they hit a quiet moment, and the stereo imaging comes to the fore, it really makes a big difference. The front fill gets a special mix because, in a situation like this, somebody right down front would get almost nothing but guitars from the amps onstage. The fill systems get the entire mix, minus the guitars. It's just another way of trying to give the fans a better value. They'd be right down front saying, "You're right in front of me and I can't hear what you're singing." This solution works pretty well.

 

EAW: What kind of processors do you have for the KF300's?

RK: We're using the EAW MX300i to control them. The rest of the system is using the MX800i.

 

EAW: What kind of amps?

RK: The entire system is driven by Crest 8001's. Every component -- the highs the mids, the lows and the subs. Very powerful.

 

EAW: What kinds of effects do you use for Counting Crows?

RK: They're not an effects-heavy act, so it's not that big a part of the system. I have a pair of PCM 80's that I use -- one for lead vocals and one for the drums. You can hardly tell the reverb is there. It's just to make things a little less dead. There's a lot of songs in the show where I mute the vocal effects altogether and go 100% dry. It makes it sound more intimate, that the singer is singing right to you.

I have a couple of SPX990's -- both are used for various instrument reverbs and effects.

Then I have a TC2290 that I use for a delay effect in two songs. Also, a lot of times they'll throw in a breakdown section in the middle of a song and it's different every time. I don't have anything programmed because the band is so unpredictable. I'll just tap in the delay time. The 2290 is really fast because it has the "learn" feature where you tap in a time and the 2290 "counts in" the delay time. Then you can just punch in a feedback value and it's right there rather than waiting for values to climb up, up, up to the right value.

And then I have a DBX120x that I use sparingly for a sub harmonic effect on the bass for the title song. That's it. Very seldom do I use effect. Only for specific purposes. Bring them in and then take them out.

 

EAW: Where do you see yourself going form here?

RK: I see this band getting into larger venues. And when they're not touring, I'll look for other bands and bigger gigs to get into. I like the idea of one day working for a band that's really big like the Rolling Stones. Of course, it's all luck. You've got to get your break. Maybe someday I'll work for the biggest band in the world. Maybe Counting Crows will be the biggest band in the world. Maybe they won't. Nobody knows.

Another thing I'd like to do is to be a sound designer for Broadway, but not for regular theater. I'd like to design sound for rock operas, similar to Tommy & Rent. I see these shows and I think that they could be improved by looking at them as a high fidelity rock show in a theater as opposed to a musical with rock music. I'd like to bring my experience from rock and roll to the theater. I think I'd get a good result.