A year ago, Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, joining other 2022 inductees including Duran Duran, Eminem, Eurythmics, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie and Carly Simon. But instead of taking a year off to savor that success (each at an age when many others have already retired), the veteran power rock duo, joined by Mick Mahan on bass and Tony Pia on drums, hit the road with their Funtastic 2023 tour.
After a few warmup dates earlier this year, the tour took off in earnest in late July, wrapping up with a final headlining festival slot Nov. 8 at the Hard Rock Hotel in Cancun, Mexico. Along with their usual role as headliners in a wide variety of venues, ranging from theaters and arenas to festival dates and country fairs, the duo and their band also opened at stadiums from Boston to L.A. for seven stops on P!NK’s massive Summer Carnival tour.
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The View from FOH
FRONT of HOUSE caught up with FOH engineer Matt Fox, monitor engineer Leslie Chew and production manager (and former FOH engineer) Nate Lettus just before the band performed at the 2,500-capacity Pearl Theater at Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas on Sept. 29, with singer/songwriter (and comedian) Chris Trapper as the opening act.
Longtime audio vendor Sound Image is supporting the tour with a control package at FOH and monitors along with backline gear and mics for the stage, but “we’re we’re just using whatever P.A. the venues have,” Fox says, of the one-truck production. The need to adjust to a different P.A. each night, he adds, was part of the reason he was chosen as Lettus moved from FOH engineer to production manager.
“That’s kind of how I got the gig,” says Fox. “I’ve done a fair amount of mixing, but I’ve also been a systems engineer.” (And not, as it turns out, just any old systems engineer; he received a Parnelli Award, in 2010, for Audio System Tech of the Year.)
“Part of this job is being your own system tech. You have to be able to tune and time them correctly,” Fox continues. “For a lot of places, it’s like this,” he adds, pointing to the L-Acoustics K2/Kiva/KS28 system at the Pearl Theater. “It’s dialed in, and it sounds great right off the bat. But you go to other places and it’s not even close; you have to basically start over with some of them.” Instead of naming and shaming the worst venues, Fox simply noted that “there are old school arenas that get real boom-y, and there’s not a lot you can do to fix it.”
Fox, now based in the Nashville area, got his start as a stagehand, “then from there kind of became local crew for the sound companies,” starting with Delicate Productions in L.A. “I worked for them, worked for Electrotec, which became part of PRG, and then a lot of Rat Sound tours,” also mixing and handling P.A. for comedy shows, steadily adding skills with each new assignment. “I went from feeder to fader,” he says.
Fox notes that the quality of the Pearl Theater’s installed arrays isn’t the only perk within the venue. Another advantage: the location of the FOH area itself. “In a lot of these theaters, you’re at the mercy of where it goes in,” he said. “It might be shoved in the corner or under a balcony. This is a great spot for a change.”
Regardless of venue, however, Fox underscores the point that getting the P.A. properly tuned is essential before mixing a successful show. “If you can get that right, everything falls in after that.”
At the Pearl, Fox provides a tour of his FOH setup, which starts with a Midas PRO X console working with 55 active channels on the input list. “It sounds great,” he says, of the console. “It sounds really warm, and kind of reminds me of the analog days.”
Fox adds that the Midas PRO X at FOH shares a stage box with a second Midas PRO X that Leslie Chew uses at monitor position. “Tracks come out to me via AES50,” Fox says. “We’re also recording every show with Pro Tools. And I always record myself on my Zoom and kind of listen to it later to give myself my own notes.”
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As for FOH outboard gear, “the only thing I use is the Rupert Neve 5045 on their vocals. You can tighten up the pattern and keep the drums out of it.” Also helping toward that goal is the mic chosen for Benatar’s vocals, a wireless Shure SM58.
Fox uses standard reverbs and effects, a dynamic compressor and a de-esser, which are all aboard the console. “And that’s really it. She’s got such a powerful voice… I’m in awe of it every night, how amazingly it pops out. Makes it easy out here.”
If Benatar’s remarkably powerful voice is the single biggest draw for fans at these shows, Giraldo’s guitar playing is a strong second. Fox describes the tried-and-true setup. “He has two amps. One amp is from Marshall; the other is from Divided by 13. On each amp, we have a Shure SM57 and a Royer R-121. That gives me a nice blend, I can pan that out and get it real fat. And he has the ability to switch it to play only one, but he always plays with both amps going, and that gives me all four lines.”
For bassist Mick Mahan, Fox had been using a Beyerdynamic M88 on the Fender amp, “but the low-end got too much up there,” so now he just uses “the [Radial] DI off that; I don’t use the mic.” For Tony Pia’s Dixon drum set, the setup includes a mix of Shure, Sennheiser and Beyerdynamic mics, with a Beta 91 and Beta 52 for kick in and out, SM57’s for snare top and bottom, SM81 for hi-hat, SM81 for ride, e904 for rack tom and floors, plus AKG C414 XLII’s for overheads.
Frequent opening act Chris Trapper, an old friend of the band and crew, is not really part of the tour, and at the Pearl Theater, the setup was minimal, limited to two DI lines and a vocal mic, with the house staff using the venue’s DiGiCo SD5 console to easily handle the mix.
For Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo’s own opening act performances on P!NK’s stadium tour, their performances were heard via a d&b audiotechnik GSL/KSL system provided by Clair Global’s Eighth Day Sound division, with Fox and Chew still relying on their Sound Image-supplied consoles to mix the shows before hustling to get everything disconnected in time so P!NK’s production could take the stage.
At Monitor Position
Monitor engineer Leslie Chew admits that it was a challenge for him when Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo first opened for P!NK’s massive Summer Carnival Tour at Boston’s Fenway Park on July 31 and Aug. 1, where band and crew were faced with the need to adapt to a new mindset. “We’re used to headlining,” he says, and while band and crew were “all in” on supporting P!NK’s shows, the time constraints required a significant adjustment. “We were looking at a 15-minute changeover to get P!NK on, and they wanted me off in five,” he laughs.
As for the artists, Benatar, and especially Giraldo, appreciated the chance to perform once again before massive stadium crowds. “We really like the stadium sound. Pat and Neil just sat right into it – they’ve been doing this for over 40 years, and they’ve done their share of stadiums; they completely know the drill. And Spyder – Neil – just loves it.”
Describing his mixes for bassist Mick Mahan and drummer Tony Pia as “pretty straightforward,” Chew notes that Giraldo’s sonic preferences are more exacting. The settled-upon sound, Chew notes, can best be described as how things might have sounded “in the 1980’s, in big arenas, with monitors and everything just huge and kind of blended. It’s not a studio mix — dry and discrete and with lots of clarity. He likes it big, reminding me of the way a stage of monitors sounded. And actually, Pat’s is similar. Lots of reverb in there, I’m trying to recreate the sound of the venue and stage.”
While Giraldo’s preferences lean toward the stadium gigs, Benatar favors “the smaller, more intimate rooms – 2,000 to 3,500 maybe, where she’s actually singing directly to the audience, and she can talk with them and engage.”
Chew notes that, in 2020, Benatar and Giraldo spent much of the time during the Covid shutdowns working on Invincible, the theatrical musical that has been staged and is in development for a Broadway run. “She spent a lot of time around the piano, just singing acoustically into the room. And when she came to rehearsals for the 2021 tour, she said, ‘You know, I’ve enjoyed so much, just singing in the room, hearing my voice fill the room, I want to try to get that on stage.’” For that tour, “she decided to experiment wearing just one ear monitor, really working off of the stage and front of house sound.” “I often joked with Matt [Fox], our front of house person, that he’s doing half of Pat’s monitor mix with me.”
Earlier this year, Chew notes, the artists got new custom IEMs from Future Sonics. “Pat and Neil use Future Sonics in-ear monitors exclusively and have been since they started using them over 20 years ago. Marty Garcia, the founder of Future Sonics and an award-winning in-ear monitoring pioneer, has been a guru of mine since I started my career as an engineer. I began mixing monitors for his sound company, Crystal Sound, in the mid 1980s.” (Garcia was honored with the Parnelli Audio Innovator Award in March, 2023.)
Armed with the new in-ear gear, “as soon as she started singing, Pat liked the high fidelity and clear sound she got wearing both IEMs,” Chew says. So together, she and Chew worked on creating the monitor mix that supported her wide vocal range, from delicate falsettos to powerful rock anthems.
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Benatar’s decision to perform using both IEMS paid a particularly handsome dividend on P!NK’s stadium tour. “One of my main goals is to keep their listening volume as low as possible to minimize fatigue and to not induce unnecessary hearing damage or loss,” he says. “We look to use the room’s acoustics, if possible; not to overpower it.”
Like Fox, Chew, who has an extensive background as a studio mixing engineer, is happy with the console setup and the support the tour has been getting from longtime vendor Sound Image. “Although we do use Avid S6L and DiGiCo consoles for broadcast shows or one-off dates during the year when we’re not on tour, I still like returning to the Midas for a self-contained tour.
“Dave Shadoan takes very good care of us, year after year,” Chew adds. “For the past few years, we’ve been using the Midas PRO X consoles with a pair of DL431 active mic splitter input boxes. It gives us independent head amps for FOH and monitors and a third split for broadcast, when needed.” Chew credits the mic pre’s and head amps as “very musical. I can address them like I do a Neve. They’ll take gain, and will give you a range of coloration, depending how you use, and how you drive the front end… the head amp;” all in all, a particularly good fit for “a guitar-driven rock show like this.”
Along with his mixing duties, Chew manages all the RF on tour using Shure Wireless Workbench. I’ve got a combination of [Shure] PSM 1000s and [Sennheiser] G4’s, and Shure Axient for microphones. It’s only about 16 channels. It’s not too crazy. I’ve got a couple of channels of guitar that I manage through here as well. And we’re using an older AKG wireless for the bass that, surprisingly, is still hanging in there. I can still find frequencies for it – we’re squeezing every last drop out of it.”
On the whole, Chew notes, “I’ve always preferred mixing monitors to FOH. Even though the seat can be a little hot at times, I enjoy the interaction with the artist and being an integral part of the show. I like problem solving and figuring out what makes an artist comfortable enough to forget about the technology, the fact that they’re wearing in-ears, and just let themselves go to freely perform.”
Managing the Whole Shebang
Along with Chew and Fox, the Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo Funtastic 2023 tour has one more audio engineer on the crew – Nate Lettus, but for this trek, he’s serving as production manager. “I came in in 2016, did FOH for 2016 and 2017, then in 2018, I was both the FOH and production manager guy. In 2019, I was doing something else, and then I was supposed to come back in 2020, but then Covid hit. Since then, I’ve come back as just the production manager.”
Lettus learned the concert touring ropes with Chicago over a nearly 12-year span after getting his start before that as an intern with PRG. “I was a patch guy, then a P.A. guy, then front of house engineer for about eight years.”
Looking back on the tour as it was starting to wrap up, Lettus also noted the mindset adjustment required as the crew supporting a headlining act for so many years found themselves in a new supporting act role for the Pink stadium shows. “It was a challenge for the crew because it was, you know, ‘hurry hurry hurry, wait wait wait, and hurry hurry hurry.’ But the shows were really good for Pat and Neil. She still sounds amazing, and he’s playing really really well.”
Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo Funtastic 2023 Tour
CREW
- Sound Company: Sound Image
- FOH Engineer: Matt Fox
- Monitor Engineer: Leslie Chew
- Production Manager: Nate Lettus
P.A. GEAR
- P.A. System: Venue Supplied
FOH GEAR
- FOH Console: Midas PRO X
- Outboard: Rupert Neve Designs 5045
MON GEAR
- Monitor Console: Midas PRO X
- Outboard: Lexicon PCM70 (on guitar)
- IEM Hardware: Shure PSM1000; Sennheiser G4
- IEMs: Future Sonics Custom
- Wireless Mics: Shure Axient with Shure SM58 heads
- Guitar Microphones: Shure SM57 and Royer R-121 (guitar); Shure Beta 91 and Beyerdynamic M88 (bass)
- Drum Mics: Shure Beta 57 and SM57 (snare top/bottom); Shure Beta 91 and Beyerdynamic M88 (kick in/out), Shure SM81s (hi-hat and ride), Sennheiser e904s (toms); AKG C414 XLIIs (overheads).
- DI’s: Radial Engineering
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