Emotional Roadshow World Tour
Like many original bands, Twenty Øne Piløts (TØP) have a distinctive and unique musical style that defies pigeonholing them into any easily defined genre, but has oft been described as “schizophrenic pop.” But whatever you call it, this Columbus, OH-based duo of vocalist/keyboardist/bassist Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun offers a sound that has increasingly caught on, and now grown to include legions of fans in nearly every country worldwide.
In an effort to reach out to its listeners on a more personal level, TØP is now in the midst of a grueling, 11-month marathon world tour, racking up more frequent-flier miles than anyone could use in a lifetime. Appearing at packed arenas, amphitheaters and festivals, the band’s Emøtiønal Røadshøw Wørld Tøur began on May 31 of this year, at Cincinnati’s U.S. Bank Arena, with the current North American leg wrapping on Sept 23, 2016 at the iHeart Radio Festival in Las Vegas.
A week later, after a couple dates in Mexico, it’s off to Russia, Scandinavia and Europe, ending at Le Zenith in Paris on November 17. In January 2017, a third U.S. leg begins, followed by Oceania and Australia, winding up at the Perth Arena on April 8, 2017. Don’t these guys ever sleep?
At the helm, providing live audio reinforcement for the outing is VER Tour Sound, with a sizeable sound arsenal featuring a 72-box Meyer Sound LYON linear line array rig, which so far has proven an ideal choice for the tour’s varying scale of venues. LF is handled by up to 18 of Meyer’s double-18 1100 LFC low-frequency control elements.
The Systems Approach
We caught up with audio crew chief/system engineer Kenny Sellars of VER during setup at the 8,500-seat Hearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA.
“There are 12 LYON per side on the main hangs, and 12 LYON per side on the side hangs. We have two 1100s per side and then three 1100s in the center and we have eight MINA front fills,” Sellars explains. However, the system easily expands to a full-on 72-box rig for larger venues, where “our main hangs are 20-deep LYON, side hangs are 16-deep LYON and nine 1100’s per side.”
Sound spillage and SPL restrictions are an increasingly critical issue, especially with outdoor venues in urban areas, such as the Greek Theatre. “We’ve come across many places just like the Greek that have sound restrictions, whether it be with SPL limits at the back of the lawn, or the less preferred and more difficult measurements at FOH,” notes Sellars. “I set the system up with every having its own output from the Meyer Callisto processors. Doing that allows me precise control over every nook and cranny of any given venue.”
The Greek Theatre, for example, specifies “a 15-minute LEQ, which is an average over 15 minutes of 94.8 A-weighted at front of house, which is very challenging,” he explains. “Our typical show runs at about 103 dB. Last night at the Greek, the crowd noise alone peaked at 114 dB. So you can imagine the particular challenges here of having to mix in the low 90’s to accomplish a show where the crowd doesn’t bring us over the SPL limits, especially when you’re used to mixing at 100 dB. But I’ve shaded the top two boxes on every array down to help with not disturbing the neighbors, and made sure that I didn’t point it in any direction that would cause issues with neighbors as well.”
But SPL limitations aside, what has impressed Sellars so far has been the system’s amount of available headroom, which he refers to as “fantastic. We’ve done venues like the Amway Center in Orlando and the BB&T Center in Fort Lauderdale where my backseat was 322 feet from the stage, and it still felt like it was in your face, full-range, clear and absolutely as loud as I’d ever desire it to be. Or even Hershey Stadium — with a crowd of 29,000 — we added 24 LYON cabinets and six 1100’s as delays to throw 540 feet. Twenty Øne Piløts is not one of the shows that want to be loud for the sake of loud. They want fans to have a good time and enjoy a decent level show. And this provides that with no trouble at all.”
Sellars also appreciates that the sound of the LYON rig is not tied in to any musical style. “The band’s music is very ranged,” he notes. “There are songs that are reggae-esque, songs that are rock, songs that are more EDM dance-type music. Having a sound system with no coloration — or neutral if you will — allows us to glide through the set without the P.A. fighting us on any given song.”
Sellars feels the Meyer system was the right choice. “Honestly, so far, the rig has been amazing. The scalability has been super solid for me. That’s what I planned on, but the fact that it’s worked flawlessly and easily has been the key.”
The View from FOH
At the helm at front of house is Shane Bardiau, who has been mixing Twenty Øne Piløts for about 16 months. He started out mixing at a Seattle megachurch, then branched out into small clubs, eventually ending up as house engineer at the popular The Showbox club in downtown Seattle. One of the bands he worked with ended up opening for Twenty Øne Piløts and later was brought onboard for TØP’s FOH spot.
And like Sellars, Bardiau is also enthusiastic about the Meyer LYON rig. “It’s been great,” he explains. “It’s amazing how I can just push it and it doesn’t get brighter or distorted.”
Originally the tour was going to go with the larger dual-15 Meyer LEO line arrays to handle the multiple arena dates. “However,” Bardiau recalls, “Kenny (Sellars) came back to me saying ‘we play a lot of smaller venues too, what if we did LYON? I can hang a few LYON in the smaller venues, and I’ll hang them all in arenas.” The concept was to take a larger complement of the smaller LYON boxes, which could easily scale down for any smaller venue shows. “I was skeptical at first because it is a smaller box. What would it be like in a 15,000-capacity arena? But wow, I was blown away. And to be honest, this 12-inch (LYON) driver is perfect for our music.”
Both Bardiau and monitor engineer Adam Stroop are mixing on Midas Pro X consoles with a Waves Server Extreme adding DSP punch. Asked about any fave plug-ins, Bardiau replied, there are “so many good ones, it’s hard to choose a favorite.” However, he did reveal that his top selections include the SSL bus comp on outputs and the drum group, an API 2500 on the piano, dbx 160 on kick, snare and toms, Waves H-EQ Hybrid Equalizer and Waves C6 multiband compressor on “just about everything.”
Tyler Joseph’s vocal chain begins with a Shure KSM9HS handheld condenser head on a Shure Axient wireless, then into the C6, MaxxVolume, then into the dbx 160 and a de-esser before going into the console EQ. Mics on Josh Dun’s drum kit are all Shure, including Beta 91A, Beta 52, Beta 57, SM57, KSM 137, KSM 32, Beta 98A. Bass guitar is routed from the wireless directly into a Chandler preamp. “There’s no amp or anything on stage, says Bardiau. “It’s clean and sounds good. Then I just add some stuff in Waves for effects and such.”
Monitorville
Running monitors is independent engineer Adam Stroop, who previously had spent a year working in the engineering dept. at VER — an experience he found extremely useful. “VER is an incredible company and I learned a lot there,” says Stroop. “I feel very fortunate I got to work there, meet people like Kenny Sellars, helping him prep a couple tours and I’ve gotten to work with names that I used to read articles about.”
One plus of that tenure was doing repairs at VER — skills that prove valuable on the road. “On the audio side, there are only maybe a dozen pieces of gear that I haven’t taken apart and put back together. That was something that was really useful to me as a monitor engineer — if something’s broke, and you’re on stage, fix it!”
Stroop got the monitoring gig via an indirect route. While the band was rehearsing at Soundcheck in Nashville, he was sent to assist with some issues like interfacing the Waves Server with the Midas Pro 6 — “it’s doable, but it’s a little unorthodox,” Stroop explains. After working with the band there for a few days, he was asked to mix monitors for four dates in the U.K. Clearly that worked out well and he has been with TØP ever since. “It went well, I didn’t get fired,” Stroop recalls, “and I’d like to think I’ve gotten quite a bit better over the last year and a few months that I’ve been out with these guys. It’s been a real blast.”
The monitoring setup is somewhat unorthodox. The band is on JH Audio Roxanne IEM earpieces, but occasionally also relies on side fills consisting of LEOPARD cabinets on each side of the stage.
“On some of the smaller stages, I’ll do a 3-stack/side and set it up on a corner caddy. LEOPARD is a 110-degree box, so it’s got great coverage, I can tilt it upstage, so I’m not getting in FOH’s way, yet get an excellent pattern on stage,” Stroop notes. “At any point during the set, Tyler can pull his left ear and basically nothing changes except there’s more crowd, which is just incredible. We’re on JH-16s for the in-ears and the dynamic range and clarity is excellent. I like having a loudspeaker that can behave in a similar fashion and be very controllable, very smooth and — as long as he’s not standing like a foot away — they don’t ring. That’s really hard to beat.”
For arena shows, the stage side fills step up to six LEOPARD boxes per side, flown, which provides more coverage for the larger stages. “Having six up in the air, the weight of the box is really convenient, because we run a pair of quarter tons, one for the front bar, one for the back, and I can get about 23 degrees before I start putting all the weight on one motor. We go up, so we’re out of the sight lines and tilt it down. They’re very easy to set up and sound excellent.”
Stroop is also a fan of the Meyer rigging. “We’ve had full P.A setup load-outs where audio clears the building in an hour. Hanging 20 on the main, 16 on the side, three subs in the air and then 1100s across the front, we can get all of that and the cabling and boards and monitors in trucks in an hour. I like that.”
Twenty Øne Piløts
Emøtiønal Røadshøw Wørld Tøur
Audio Crew
- Sound Company: VER Tour Sound
- FOH Engineer: Shane Bardiau
- Monitor/RF Engineer: Adam Stroop
- Audio Crew Chief/Systems Engineer: Kenny Sellars (VER)
- Audio Techs: Dustin Lewis, Murphy Johnson
P.A. System
- Main Speakers: (40) Meyer Sound LYON
- Side Hangs: (32) Meyer LYON
- Front/Out Fills: (8) Meyer Mina
- Subwoofers: (18) Meyer 1100 LFC
- Amplification: self-powered
- System Control/Drive: (8) Meyer Callisto
- AC Power Distro: Whirlwind PowerLink
FOH Gear
- FOH Console: Midas Pro X
- Outboard: Waves Server Extreme
- Microphones: Shure
Monitor Gear
- Monitor Consoles: Midas Pro X
- Outboard: API 3124 preamp/splitter
- Monitor Speakers: Meyer Leopard
- IEM Earpieces: JH Audio JH-16s
- IEM Hardware: Shure PSM-1000
- Wireless: Shure Axient
