Hey audio geeks! Hope you are doing fantastic for another week!
Thank you for your patience, I know this article has been a long due (amongst a few other things) but although in lockdown, I have still managed to maintain my workload in crazy high levels!
So what’s best rather than some pre-COVID-19 live sound nostalgia?
If you have been around for a while, the first tour I did with Call Me Amour was back in December 2019, where we supported Dinosaur Pile-Up. Here’s the link!
Luckily, Call Me Amour did not want to fire me after the first tour, soooooooooo we did a second one back in February 2020!
On this one, we were the openers Lowlives and, the headliners, New Years Day, both bands coming from the US to tour Europe, and we had the chance to be around for the 7 UK leg dates.
More sound engineering details about the tour in a bit! For now please enjoy this tour diary video made by Warren Spencer who followed us around a bit!
Warning: Explicit language is present in this video
Let’s talk about the tour now!
Essentially we roamed across the UK for 5 tour dates: Leeds, Southampton, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, and finally Bristol over 9 days!
Let me introduce you to the little sound engineering diary of the tour now!
Stop 1: Leeds – The Key Club
I was greeted by an old friend at this venue. A Yamaha M7CL. This was the first desk I used EVER on large scale events back in Greece around 2009! It was a very innovative desk when it was released and it still very reliable up to date!
Swipe to see the mixing desk picture!
Stop 2: Southampton – The 1865
Southampton was simply incredible! We had a blast and what reception from the crowd that was! This night had the pleasure to work on another Yamaha M7CL, and this made things a bit easier as I copied the settings from the Leeds show which allowed me to save soundcheck time by only focusing on a few adjustments.
Swipe to see the mixing desk picture!
But Southampton was holding more surprises for us! A few days later, while we were at Bristol for the last show of the tour, The Mouth Of The South, was at the gig and released this LEGENDARY reaction video to Call Me Amour‘s latest release at the time, “Deeper” while also sharing his feedback for the experience he and his girlfriend had at the gig!
THANK YOU BUDDY!
Stop 3: London – The O2 Academy Islington
The O2 Academy at Islington, London was probably the largest venue we played at! I had the chance to work on an Avid Venue SC48. I have touched these desks, 3 times in my life and I absolutely hate the workflow on them. It’s not bad, just not for me! But the resident sound guys were class and we sorted everything out very quickly! Make sure you watch that INSANE video below!
Stop 4: Manchester – Club Academy
Back in Manchester for another home show! Playing at the Academy again like on the last tour but in a different room. I worked on a Soundcraft Vi1, exactly like last time. I loaded the settings from our previous show and ta-da! Almost soundcheck ready apart from some routing changes! I enjoyed the sound but I still cannot comprehend how slow this desk is when swapping pages!
Swipe to see the desk and more crowd pictures!
Meanwhile, Manchester was the second show that held a surprise for us.
These 2 guys (both called Matt – hell that was confusing) from the An Earful Podcast show were around and had interviews with all the 3 bands. You can find all of them on their Spotify, or below:
Stop 5: Glasgow – Garage
Up to the north to visit the Garage! We had played this venue on the previous tour but not on the main stage! This was the time! A massive room equipped with a Midas Pro2 desk. I can’t say much about it, can I? A splendid night!
Swipe to see the desk and more crowd pictures!
Stop 6: Birmingham – O2 Academy 2
This is the 3rd O2 venue for this tour. I almost lost count! We visited the O2 Institute while on the last tour, this time it was Academy’s turn, and it didn’t disappoint at all! Using a Soundcraft Vi6 made everything easy as all the desks on these series can load scenes from any other. I could load the settings from the Soundcraft Vi3000 we used last time we were in Birmingham but I preferred to, instead, use the settings I made on the Vi1 from the Manchester gig to be closer to the sound from this tour. Another excellent night for us!
Swipe to see more crowd pictures!
Stop 7: Bristol – Fleece
And with great sadness, we reached to our last gig for the tour. It had been a blast and it really felt as if time just evaporated! But we had no regrets because we had a great time and we were prepared for another great show to finish off! As you can see below, another Midas Pro2 to work on and another fence – remember Bristol (again!) from the last tour? This one gave us a bit of a headache as I used the Garage settings and the routing internally on the desk had to be redone almost completely due to the different nature of the venues but once we were there, it worked like a charm! Again massive thanks to the resident engineers!
Swipe to see more crowd pictures and Harry singing while on the bar!
Tour Overview
While on tour, we followed the same strategy as we did in the previous one. Used the microphones provided by the venues apart from my adorable Audix D6 which is my favourite option for a great kick drum sound! Oh, and this is not sponsored by the way!
The challenges were similar as well! Multiple offline editors for the different desks which some of them I was not super familiar with. But I went over with loads of homework, something that we are going to discuss on the “Become A Better Sound Engineer” series – if you have not seen our first 2 videos on these series you really should! Here’s “Be Proactive“ and “Be Tidy”!
Also, very important is that once again, we made new friends and created memories with them! Can’t wait for COVID-19 to go away so we can enjoy moments like these once again!
Oh! And before I forget! Call Me Amour released a new song while in quarantine and used videos from people quarantined all over the world! It’s called “Recover” and you can watch (and listen to) it on the below link, once again, through the eyes of Warren Spencer!
And guess who made a reaction video on “Recover”? Correct!
The Mouth Of The South! Thanks again mate! If music listeners were all like you, we would be living in a better place!
So, yeah. A lot of things happened in 9 days. But it deserved every second of us being on the road!
What do you think of our tour experience? Would you like to see more posts from live events (when we begin doing them again)? Anything you want to see in this blog, leave a comment and I’ll try to make it happen!
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Stay safe and we’ll talk again very soon!
