mixing LB concert tour - article on Cubby Colby

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Modern Technology With Old School Form For Lindsey Buckingham Concert Tour

Cubby Colby talks about mixing a quintessential artist of this generation
Jan. 16, 2012, by Greg DeTogne+-


Lindsey Buckingham performing live on his recent tour, utilizing an Audio-Technica AE6100 hypercardioid dynamic mic for his vocal. (All photos by Steve Jennings.)


Life is a process of continual learning, from cradle to grave. Approach it any differently, and it stops.

This is certainly the mantra of Rob “Cubby” Colby, an industry vet with so much listed on his professional resume that it’s an order of magnitude easier to list who he hasn’t worked for as opposed to who he has.

Indeed, from Kansas to Prince and among a legion of others in between, countless artists have relied on Colby to manage either their monitor needs, those of the house, or both.

This group now also includes Lindsey Buckingham, whose just-concluded Seeds We Sow tour gained the benefit of Colby’s talents out front.

Critically hailed for his solo work as well as that with Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham is a quintessential voice of his generation, having earned a place in the pantheon of 20th century postwar performers as a guitarist, singer, composer, and producer.

On Seeds We Sow, Buckingham divided his time onstage into three distinct segments, with opening and closing solo sets sandwiching a collaboration with bandmates Neale Heywood (guitars, vocals), Brett Tuggle (keys, bass, vocals) and Walfredo “Wally” Reyes Jr. (drums, percussion).

“It’s a two-hour show,” Colby explains. “The solo performance upfront lasts 30 minutes. As an ensemble, the four-piece band with Lindsey as its frontman plays for an hour and 20 minutes. The last 10 minutes is Lindsey solo again.


Clair crew chief Rich Schoenadel (left) with Cubby Colby prior to a Buckingham show. (click to enlarge)
“We played a lot of 2,000-seaters, and he has a strong following comprising a really diverse audience - everyone from eight to 80,” he continues. “We’ve even had a couple of walkers leaning up against the front of house drawer rack on occasion, because kids are bringing their grandparents.”

Entering The Fray
Associated for the last six years with Latin artist Juanes, Colby was approached by Clair’s M.L. Procise for Seeds We Sow.

Ushered directly into rehearsals in L.A. at the beginning of summer, Colby entered the fray essentially a blank slate, having heard little other than a comment or two about the show’s stage volume.

“When I arrived at rehearsals, first thing I meet everyone,” Colby recalls, “and here, at the center of it all is this guy who is completely old school. A living legend, musical pioneer of the ‘70s, affiliated with one of the largest selling American rock bands ever. I have no idea what I’m in for, but Lindsey set the pace for things to come by telling me I have to have a console with snapshots.

Buckingham performing with bandmates on the recent tour. (click to enlarge)
“On the one hand I look around onstage and it’s totally traditional. There are wedges and acoustic guitars going through amp racks, not a stick of wireless… Then I’m asked about a console with snapshots? Old and new was clearly the dynamic, so I said to myself, ‘now this is going to be interesting’.”

A long-time DiGiCo user, Colby showed Buckingham the desk he brought with, and noted that it did indeed take snapshots. Buckingham’s existing snapshot files, however, were done on a Profile, so within a matter of hours Cubby found himself standing in front of an Avid desk.

The show was recorded during rehearsals so that the interactions among the various musical voices could be studied.

Among other things, the balance between the audio coming from the stage as compared to the house stood out, as Colby had been told.

Immediately addressing the stage sound, he continued the process on the road, eventually striking a better balance that was still subject to constant refinement.

“It’s been an evolution of mutual discovery for both Lindsey and I,” Colby relates. “I’ve learned a lot from working with him, mainly about the discipline I need to properly mix the show. Given our audiences, we started out very quietly and then ramped right up where we had to be for all of the big hits at a nice volume. Then we ramped back down for the encore.

“My main duty was to have the discipline to keep things running in a controlled manner. If I introduced volume, I did it little-by-little. I couldn’t allow myself to get into a volume war with the stage. I’ve worked a lot of the rooms we played with Juanes, which is a strictly ‘ear’s act with everything in iso-boxes onstage. Lindsey is all wedges, all backline. The difference between the shows in terms of the reflections introduced from the stage is startling.”


Snapshots dialed in on the Avid VENUE Profile. (click to enlarge)
Aiding The Cause
Onstage, eight Showco SRM wedges were deployed. Only the drummer used IEM. Monitor engineer Andy Hill gave guidance to the stage mixes, using an Avid Profile as well.

A total of 48 inputs wound its way down from the stage to the house mix position, which more often than not was off to the side or under a balcony given the nature of the rooms encountered on tour, which were not amenable to losing premium seats in the house to a console’s footprint.

Hard-wired microphones were posted at all vocal positions, with Buckingham standing in front of an Audio-Technica AE6100 hypercardioid dynamic mic and all others supplied with Shure Beta 58 supercardioid dynamics.


Monitor engineer Andy Hill at his VENUE Profile. (click to enlarge)
In keeping with the old-and-new-together vibe, drums were electronic courtesy of Roland, a fact that translated into little need for mic’ing other than a pair of AKG 414s at overheads and a mic on high-hat. Kick, snare, and rack and floor toms were taken Radial DI direct, as were keys and all other applications.

Stanley Lamendola stood in as Buckingham’s guitar tech, managing the considerable chore of wrangling a sizable collection of instruments as well as effects pedals, amps, and cabinet mics.

The crew was further complemented by Clair crew chief Rich Schoenadel, who aided the cause of sonic consistency by helping to tame the four Clair i-3 Series cabinets stacked on top of Clair BT 218 subwoofers on each side of the stage.

Beyond the i-3 stacks, the crew also tied into the house PA wherever it was feasible.

“That’s key to what we did each night,” Colby notes. “We used (Rational Acoustics) Smaart, time-aligned, and didn’t use any of the other systems’ EQ.

“We used our own Lake processing. If there was a center mono hang for the balcony, we used that, likewise bookshelf loudspeakers on the side. We added all of our own control to everything, and Rich walked the room with a wireless tablet during soundcheck to get things just right.”

The Nether Regions
The product of a consummate artist who enjoys modern technology but doesn’t necessarily use modern techniques, Buckingham’s snapshots as provided to Colby provided settings for EQ, dynamics, fader positions, VCAs, and more that served as templates from which refinements were made to optimize the tour’s sound.

Even if necessity banished his mix position into the nether regions of a room, Colby overcame the situation by using a pair of nearfield monitors set atop the doghouse of his console that brought the PA in close.

“The nearfields helped me keep things consistent,” he says. “With them I wasn’t turning the high-end up way out underneath the balcony - I had fantastic reference at low volume. After we tuned the system and Rich did all of the time alignment, I ‘noised’ the system, getting my target curve to look the same way it did the night before.

“Usually I didn’t have to change much on my desk. One night I may have moved the center frequency up slightly on the vocal, another I may have tucked it down a bit because of room acoustics or whatever.”


Clean, straightforward mic’ing on stage where needed. A lot of feeds were taken direct. (click to enlarge)
Colby has also introduced Buckingham to the modern joys of virtual sound checks. “This is another area where we evolved and learned together,” Colby says of the process. “It was something we consciously nurtured. Starting back in rehearsals, at night we would listen to what I recorded earlier in the day.

“Based upon input from Lindsey and the rest of the band as we listened, we’d try out different settings. Once everyone was happy, I’d recall the snapshot, make the move, and save it. Then it was onto the next song. The process continued on the road, and it just kept getting better and better.”

Changing Perception
Colby’s mix was “very” mono, with the exception of some overhead panning left and right, as well as some stereo sequenced passages. Drums weren’t panned as he normally would in larger rooms, and all of this was done, by his admission, as a way to maintain intelligibility in the smaller venues.

“The mix just had to have the right intelligibility,” he contends. “Lindsey’s music is complex lyrically, every song has a lot to say. The instrumentation is deep - he changes his guitar for every song. This show is a rainbow of colors. Because of the texture of its inputs, I had everything from vivid oranges to pretty pinks, nice blues, passionate purples, and blacker blacks.

“My goals were to create a good musical balance with excellent vocal intelligibility and low-end contour. Beyond that, it was probably even more vital that I strive to preserve the color of each voice and instrument. My collaboration with Lindsey has changed how I perceive many things. I know the next time I’m out with Juanes, what I’ve learned here will have me doing things a little differently.”

Gregory A. DeTogne is a writer and editor who has served the pro audio industry for the past 30 years. Photos by Steve Jennings.