Live shows Jankees

April 4th 2010, Bosuil, Weert (NL): Ulysses

Easter Sunday! We enjoy an Easter Breakfast with Michael and Peter (who stayed the night over at our house) and are joined by Arie round 10:00. We drive to Limburg, Weert to be correct. And Arie already warned us: we should not expect to much: it is an old shed and everything. But to our surprise they have rebuild the BosUil into something pretty nice actually.

The venue.

Setting up 3 bands on a small stage.

We unload the gear and Andromeda arrives just as we are ready so start setting up. Today it is a 3 band gig and first band starts early: round 15:30. So Andromeda should be finished by 19:30. Means we could get an early night sleep today? But hey: rock n roll and work waits! Lets get on with it.
Set up goes smooth, and sound check does not give much problems. I set up Andromeda on the first 16 channels of the desk and Ulysses on the 17 till 28 channels.  So the first band to play today will share channels with Ulysses.

Front of House world

Arie with the local light engineer

Setup and sound check are uneventful. Problems start right after that: waiting. We didn't get much sleep, we all are tired. So backstage it is a matter of staying awake. Not enough time to do a proper power nap. Not enough space either. Arie also handles the lights with the first band, so at last he has got something to keep him awake

Ron, Rene and me, trying to stay awake

Arie "Ghost behind the Machine"  ;-)

What strikes me during the Ulysses show, is that during prog concerts there is a trend visible: The number of visitors is going down and the number of photographers is going up.  Is it that more people rather read about music than actually go to it. Do they just list to it on the internet and at home? Watching DVD rock concerts? At least yesterday in the Boerderij was an exception. Good crowd! But the bands perform as if the house packed. First songs a bit tired, but then the adrenaline and magic kicks in, and they just rock. 

Oke, before we forget: the guys:

Rene van Haaren

Ron Mozer

Peter Boer

Sylvester Vogelenzang-de Jong

And Michael "Mad Maikie" Hos

Ulysses during show

Andromedas famous last notes ;-)

20:00 o'clock diner time, 2 bands sharing a cosy table.

So, that wraps it up. Get the gear in the van and drive home. It was a fatiguing weekend, and I am glad I have 2 days holyday after this. 
Everybody enjoyed it, and although it was a tough weekend, most guys had trouble adopting to every live with a job and a wife and so on. It is kind of addictive... ;-)
And ofcourse this show would not have been possible without:

Sylvester: making the arrangements in the first place

Arie Groen, Light Enigineer

Vincent van Haaren, Merchandise, Photos and helping hand

Yours truly handling sound.

Happy Easter! And see you soon.

April 3rd 2010, Boerderij, Zoetermeer (NL): Ulysses

First things first today: break-fast! We meet at 8:30 in the restaurant for some very good food and coffee. Which is essential, the coffee that is! I only slept 3 hours this night and had to wear ear-plugs because of Arie snoring. I think it is a first ever that a sound engineer has to wear silencers because of the light engineer, usually it is the other way round :-) 

The band and crew, more or less awake at breakfast.

Breakfast of champions! Michaels...

Then it is highway time again. We have to drive to Zoetermeer, we drive via Peters house to pick up his car. Before we drive off, Ron (the keyboard player and van driver) does a refill on the oil. Because last night a lot of warning lights suddenly appeared on the dashboard. Does not help! Still warning lights but engine runs pretty good. So: "en-route"! We pick up Peters car and Ron wonders whether he will come in for a quick coffee or just drive on to Zoetermeer? He decides to drive on, and that is our luck! Because the van only makes it to the Boerderij in Zoetermeer, and when parked there the engine no longer starts! Batteries dead? Luckily the loading dock is on the end of a ramp. So take of the hand break, push the car down the ramp, and it starts again (will it be the last time?)
Sylvester manages to hire a replacement van, so that we are not forever stuck in Zoetermeer. 
After this it is time to set up! 

Setting up here is great fun. Because it is a bigger venue with lot's of helpful people walking around. And the great thing is: they actually help! That is why I like performing with bands in the Boerderij, not only do I know a lot of the guys (a couple of years ago I got a chance to do some trainings there) but they all know what they must do and they do it! 
Example: the stage manager walks up to the band, introduces the two stage-hands and says: "they are yours, everything you need, all that needs repairs, anything just ask". The bands looks at me with a strange look full of questions in their eyes, "There yours! use them!" I tell them.
After a while someone from the band comes over to me and says: "We don't have to ask anything, even before we can think of something the have it fixed or show up with the stuff we need".
In a smaller venue you have to do much more yourself, and things end up chaotic and stressful. In a venue like this, I can wire up my own equipment to the desk, knowing that when I am ready and turn around, everything on stage will be fine. 
Makes it a great experience! So from me: "Guys from the Boerderij: thanks for a great evening!"

Not only do we need to get a band on stage, also all the lights need re-adjusting for the locations. And different colour filters have to be applied.

FOH world in the Boerderij

This is how FOH looks with venue lights on,

and this is how all the lights and knobs look during shows.

So how do you remember all these settings? With 2 bands and a venue like today, it is no problem: the drums are shared and all the other instruments are separated and spread across the FOH desk. But with smaller desks and venues you have to share instrument channels also. This means that you have to recall your changes. On a digital desk this is no problem, but on an analog-desk like this weekend you have to do the recalls manually. You can write the settings down, but with digital photography it has become very easy: just take snap shots like this:.

And you have (all though not instant) total recall. People always look funny when they see me taking close-ups of the mixer.
Meanwhile in the normal world, the musicians take their time to relax and prepare for the show.

Dressing room snap shot #1 This is where the musicians dwell when not on stage.

Snap shot #2. Another view on this endangered species in their natural habitat that we don't get to see often.

Then it is time for Ulysses to hit the stage. And the show goes very well! Lights are great, sound is good and the energy flowing from stage is tangible. And after the introduction to "Anat", suddenly the magic is there: you can feel that special "something" going through the crowd, the vibe and the connection with the musicians and the music. Magic! Very cool!

...Anat...

... good bye and thanks for all the fish ;-)

A quick change over, basically just getting Ulysses of stage and plug Johans amp into the Box of Doom instead of Sylvesters amp and away we go. Well that was what should have happened, but during the first song: no guitars! Johans cables were faulty, and first on stage they thought it was a patch error from the changeover but after much cable swapping we again had Johan with us. Rock on!

Andromeda during a more quiet song,

and again: a heavy song! These guys ROCK!!!

And after two energizing gigs: 

It was hard work, but it was worth it! Great shows!

April 2nd 2010, Romein, Leeuwarden (NL): Ulysses

12:45 Arie picks me up for a drive up north. It is the begin of a 3 day tour with Ulysses and Andromeda from Sweden. Arie and I will be handling the light and sound for the Swedish guys also, so we have been listening to their songs for the last 2 weeks. We drive North to pick up Michael and Peter and in the car we listen to Ulysses and Andromeda. 
The first gig is in Leeuwarden in the North on the Netherlands, it is in an old Church that is transformed into a theatre. Usually churches are a disaster because of their boom and echo, but here they installed bass traps and did a lot to get the acoustics right.

The 'Romein' from the outside...

...and from the inside during set up.

We meet up with the Andromeda guys who are already a bit tired, having done a gig yesterday in Denmark on a festival. We get them on stage and start the sound check. We will be using their drums so that makes it more efficient during the change over between shows.  Both the Ulysses guys and the Andromeda guys use in-ear-monitoring (IEM), so for them no big monitors on stage and no loud guitar amps and base amps, just a loud drummer. And loud he is! It is amazing! I now understand why they use IEM, any normal guitar or bass amp is useless on stage with this guy ;-)
Setting up the backing tracks (click track and sound effects) is more of a problem and it takes a while and some re-routing to get everything right. For their IEM Andromeda relies on an external monitor mixer, while Ulysses has a mixing desk next to Rene (the drummer) and all their signals are split at that desk, with some going to their IEM  and some coming over to me to front of house (FOH). Advantage of that system is that we only need a line check (see if al the signals from the stage reach the FOH) and away we go. Setting up the compressors and EQ on the FOH desk is basically always the same for them, using the same settings. 

Arie settings up some lights,

and Sylvester (right) can't stand Michael's jokes anymore.

After the sound checks it is time to eat and to relax. And of course, time to set up the rest of the stuff. Clean up the stage and venue, get the merchandise set up and than: just wait for the shows to start.

Michael and his lovely assistant in merchandise world,

venue as seen from FOH world,

The musicians relaxing (not! all very nervous :-) in their back

stage dressing room world.

First is a Brazilian Metal band, then Ulysses and last band is Andromeda. 

The Brazilians rocking away,

rock Ulysses, rock!

more Ulysses, and ...

Andromeda.

Of course on a tour like this you can't work without sponsors ;-)

So it is of to bed, get some sleep and tomorrow we will be playing the Boerderij in Zoetermeer.

November 27th 2009, P3, Purmerend (NL): Knight Area + Ulysses 

Tonight another gig with three bands: Ulysses, Knight Area and Sons of Seasons. For 2 of the 3 bands it is the last show in 2009, only Knight Area has another show in 2 weeks. 
The place to be tonight is P3 in Purmerend (what happened to P2 and P1, we will never know), but they seem eager to have us here tonight, we are up on the light signs. Seems they are not only happy to have us, they want other people to come and join as well! Sounds like a recipe for a great evening. 

This seems to be the place

The venue

We run into a couple of familiar faces: the sound engineer also work with Anathar, a band Knight Area gigged with a couple of years ago. 
Sons of Seasons is first to do the sound check , and Roland, their sound engineer, has a bit of a problem trying to get the band below the 105 dBa, just their back line, and the vocals from the PA its already in the red. So: not so loud on stage and try again. 
After that we move their stuff out of the way and add Ulysses’ equipment. In between we also find room to already get Knight Area’s stuff on stage. Stage is pretty big, and with al the equipment, the guys still have room to move around. 

FOH world with Roland for Sons of Seasons and Rene watching how his drum kit gets mutalized ;-)

Sons of Seasons Sound check

Arie our light Engineer having some trouble with Ulysses' singer...

...for Michael it is difficult to stand still, so getting him in one place so Arie can set the lights is a challenge

Sound check for Ulysses is extra critical tonight, because they will be filming for a DVD and we will run a 24 track digital recording direct from the mixing desk in to a hard disk recorder. Sound check goes well, and you can hear what a difference it makes to run everything from lines and have the band on in-ear-monitors: you only hear the drums on stage, rest is almost silence. It is just a matter of getting a good balance on the rest of the band, and then add the amount of drums we need.
Knight Area is not on in-ears, but their stage volume is so much lower than SoS’ because they rely on the monitors for the rest of their sound. Which gives me more room to maneuver sound wise, you could say I trained them well, but it is also in their interest. Requires a bit more from the monitor guy, but hey: it makes for a happy band. 
After diner we have time to check Gerben’s keyboards, because we don’t want the same experience as in Metropool, but everything is working fine, he already check that during the week a couple of times. So it must have been some sort of interference there, maybe the dimmers from lights? 

Back in the lobby there is other activity. Not only do we have a band that must play, we also need to sell stuff: merchandise. Touring and gigging costs money, so merchandise is a way to get at least some money out of it ;-). Chris and Eveline share duties in ‘merchandise world’ waiting for all the enthusiastic new fans, eager to buy the albums. 

Pre-sales rest in 'Merchandise world'

Was that an Am7 or and Dmin7added5 ?

Then 20:30 it’s show time, Ulysses hits the stage, dive into the first song, and dives into it again! Rene, the drummer, was so impressed by Michael’s singing, that he lost track of the backing track. And that doesn’t look pretty on DVD, so again. Rest of the show is good, sound is good, lights are good, Arie had done a nice job programming the light desk, combining the lights for both Ulysses and Knight Area, but still giving both bands their own atmosphere and appearance. 

After an hour we change over to Knight Area, basically getting Ulysses of stage and reconnecting Knight Area’s gear. Most important is getting a decent sound on stage, and from the looks of it that works. We have a bit of a problem with the guitar microphone, causing a feedback in to the PA. Seems the speaker was not loud enough, when I say I don’t want it too loud, there is no reason to turn it down completely, turned it up a notch and ready to rock. Show goes very, very smooth, band is very good, lights are beautiful, and I am very happy with the sound I get. I my opinion: best ‘Realm of Shadows’ mix so far. It is a pity it is the last show :-( 
No big mistakes, and the crowd is very happy, lot’s of new faces, but al seem to know the lyrics to the songs! 

Change over again, and Sons Of Seasons do their thing, during their show we do the load-out and get everything in the cars again. Then back to the lobby for a beer and watch the last bit of their show. 

All in all, I think it was a great show, for both Knight Area and Ulysses. Something to remember and be proud of!  

November 21st 2009, Dynamo, Eindhoven (NL): Ulysses

Today’s gig brings us to the beautiful city of Eindhoven. Yeah, right! We have lots of problems getting to the venue. The navigation seems to think we are on a parallel road to the highway instead of on the highway. When we finally make it into the city, one of the main roads is closed for repairs. Then after a while we end up in a pedestrian area, but no sign of the venue. The suddenly, behind a gate, we see a familiar Van and Rene and Ron, busy unloading that van. Seems we somehow made it! Tonight’s venue is called Dynamo, and we share the stage with Sons of Seasons again, third time. Stage is in the cellar and the dressing room is bigger than the venue! Check out the pictures…

SoS' drummer (2nd left) wondering if this is the place...

Rene busy trying to fit everything in.

So: time to get Ulysses on stage, do a sound check and then: diner. The Sons of Seasons guys arrive and settle in the dressing room, preparing their equipment, so we can do a quick change over. Simone Simons came to join them, but she won’t be singing tonight, just here for fun. 
19:30, still no diner, the bands are getting hungry, and Michael especially is famished, he is willing to eat the flyers we have for merchandise. Then 20:10 the Chinese take-away arrives, and have you ever seen a hungry pack of metal-heads charging into their long awaited diner? Trust me: lots of fighting and yelling, not a pretty sight ;-) 

Mixing area: Allen & Heath desk, and some racks.

Then 9 o’clock, show-time for Ulysses. Sound is OK for such a small venue, and the people seem to like the band. After an hour, it time to clear the stage, and with a joined effort of both bands, we manage to get SoS on stage within half an hour. 

Band backstage, with Ron being funny (as always)

And on stage, again with Ron being funny ;-)

They seem to enjoy themselves on the tiny-stage and their playing is very tight and the show rocks!

One more show next week with Knight Area, Ulysses and Sons Of Seasons in P3, Purmerend. Bands sharing the bill, just as in Metropool yesterday.

November 20th 2009, Metropool, Hengelo (NL) Knight Area + Ulysses

Today three bands in one evening: Ulysses, Knight Area and Sons of Seasons. Location is the brand new venue Metropool in Hengelo. It has only been officially open for 3 weeks now, but counting the try-outs and stuff: 7 weeks. Beautiful venue, nice people and great selection of gear for us to play with. We will be playing the hall called: “Het Paradijs” (the Paradise) equipped with a DiGiCo SD8 and EAW ‘air movers’. 

The stage,

DiGiCo desk, Avalon light desk, and a couple of 'locals'

The stage is small, and schedules are tight, so sound check for SoS and Ulysses, just line-check for Knight Area. After SoS sound check is done, the drums are moved to side and covered, leaving us with a even smaller, but nice looking stage. Then it is over to important things: diner! 

Diner! The venue is actually a building inside a building.  The halls are concrete structures, outside is glass, and In between is room for a cafe and restaurant.

After that we setup Ulysses and while they are busy, I get a crash course SD8 from the local venue sound guy, it will be the first time for me to work with a DiGiCo, luckily I have 2 bands to work with. The desk is cool, but I need so time to find my way round it, but I hope that by the time we are half way through the Ulysses set, the desk and I will have become friends. 
We start right on schedule, and after the first song I am pretty happy with the sound I get from the board. Location of the desk is a bit of a bummer though: against the back wall, so the bass range of the sound builds up there. But Ronald the local guy walks to the center of the hall a couple of times and comes back with a full report. 
Arie runs the lights on this show for KA and Ulysses and he does a great job on that, lights are beautiful, even though that the equipment is al so new, that the haven’t had time yet to connect everything and to program all the equipment. 
They do a pretty good show, with Peter the Bass player suffering from a fever!

Yes, I want one!

Ulysses in full show

Then its change-over time, Ulysses leaves the stage, KA enter, only drums remain. We have 20 minutes, and that is not enough, and after we finally get everything on stage and in the monitors for KA, Mister Murphy enters the venue: Gerbens Keyboards develop a major fault, and for a chance it is not in sound but somewhere in the Midi side of things. He runs 3 keyboards into 1 module, and Mark Smit also runs a keyboard into that module. But keyboard 1, which is used for piano a lot, only makes sounds every now and then. Broken midi cable? We loose a lot of time finding out what is wrong. A they decide to skip the ‘piano-heavy songs’. Then it is Murphy time again when Peter breaks his skin of his snare drum. He gets a replacement from Rene (Ulysses’ drummer) and we go on again. 
But apart from all the errors the audience is patient and the sound is pretty good. When the guys come of stage they are all a bit (or a lot) disappointed and disillusioned. 

Arie our light designer

Mark Smit standing out of the focus of the lights, which irritates Arie...

They gather in the dressing room for an interview, while on stage with Sons of Seasons, Murphy is at again: computer crash. The drummer (just like Ulysses) uses a computer with a backing track with samples and stuff, combined with a click to keep proper time. So with no computer to back them up, they have to wait for the beast to reboot before they can continue the show. 

Questions, more questions,

An hour and a half interview!

Tomorrow again with Ulysses and Sons of Seasons, no Knight Area, so maybe a bit more rest, less problems?
But I can imagine why all the bigger acts want to work with a DiGiCo desk ;-)

November 6th 2009, De Baroeg, Rotterdam (NL): Ulysses

Yes, heavy prog-rock bands this evening. In Rotterdam's hard rock temple Baroeg. Three bands, and we are second: means no sound check, just a line check. Boy am I glad that the guys are on in-ear-monitors. Today Ron has a show with FAF so we will have a keyboard player 'in the box' He will be part of the backing tracks.
We arrive at 17:30, for diner will be served round 18:00. Well it won't until 19:30, so we just wait, hang around, chat a bit with the other bands, while the main act 'Cirrha Niva' does their sound check. 
At 21:30 we are ready to begin the show, line check was oke, but I was not to happy with the mixing desk: analog Yamaha, though the digital ones I worked with are oke, the old analog Yamaha desks and I don't mix well (pun intended). Don't like the sound and the are counter-intuitive, if you own the desk you might get used to it, but as a guest mixer... I would rather have a Midas or a larger Allen & Heath. 

Especially my gain structure was not what I want it to be, pushing my compressors a bit to hard, but got it sorted out during the first song. But they only play 4 songs. Well: can't have it all, show must go one. Show was pretty good, Ulysses being the 'softest' band of the evening.
Didn't bring my camera so no pictures, sorry.

October 17th 2009, Het Paard, Den Haag (NL): Knight Area + Ulysses

First show in a row of double gigs with Ulysses and Knight Area. Load-in time is set at 16:00, and we have to be ready for diner by 18:30, that's just 2.5  hours to get everything set up and ready. Desk is cool: Soundcraft MH3 en cool outboard gear. Venue is a smaller than I expected, but oke. 
First Knight Area, we setup everything and are done by 17:45 or so, bit longer than expected. Ulysses is fast getting their gear up there, we'll be sharing drum kits so that's easy, patch everything alongside KA on the desk, no monitors to check, they got in-ears.
I manage to get everything done by 18:30, with the production manager already standing at my desk and looking at her watch. 
It's of to get some food, we end up in a Irish pub and go for some pub-food, fish and chips English style. After that back to the venue, people are already in. Not as much people as we had hoped for, but that is maybe due to the fact that we played in Alphen a couple of weeks before.

This will be my office for today.	This how Ulysses normally looks, yep like idiots.
Look at the beautiful art our lampie, Arie,  is creating...	Luckily, they are more serious when on stage rocking!

Ulysses' show goes fine, not much to tell about. For a lot of people in the audience it came as a bit of revelation / discovery, because they came for KA and are very pleased with this 'support-act' they had heard about, but not yet heard live.
Ok, change over done, than its time for KA to hit the stage.

Another picture of my office during the busy hours with:

Knight Area playing Realm Of Shadows

Nice show, people are happy. We have to clear the place very quickly because there is a House of whatever kind of party booked after our show. Get everything back into Pieter's Chevrolet Suburban, because this was also a kind of a test case to see whether we could all our gear and people in 2 cars for England. And it seems like it will fit. Great Band-Van ;-)

October 9th 2009, Dock 03, Hendirk Ido Ambacht (NL): Ulysses

A small gig in the local venue, for Sylvester lives in this place. Michael and I have problems finding it, but we are 'talked-in' by Sylvester with his mobile. Small venue, and 4 bands, no sound-checks, just line-checks and go.
The 2 band before us are nice, a bit young an lacking experience, but nice music and good guys.
Then it's time for us to hit the stage, this time without a bass player, that will come from a sequecer.

We, I, have lots of problems getting the correct signals from their mixer to my mixer, there is something wrong but we cannot find it. We patch and re-patch and than we have some kind of working solution. But by then it is late, but the venue let us play the entire set.
Bit stressed, not best of show, Sylvester's vocals go missing halfway, but only on my desk, on theirs it is fine, bizarre evening.

September 3rd 3009, Nieuwe Nor, Heerlen (NL): Ulysses

This is a show together with Sons Of Seasons from Germany, tonight also featuring Simone Simons from Epica. Nice venue, only mixing position is a bit odd: on the balcony. That means that what I hear upstairs is not what they hear downstairs. Also the bass is building up on the mix location. Means I will be running up and down the stairs during the show to check the sound down stairs. Well, it is good for my health!
First is Sons of Seasons with their sound check, the have a line from the computer to check Simone's vocals while she is not there, and it is kind of, ehh... sensual? After that all guys needed clean underwear. And that is only the beginning of the evening. Or was it the real Simone, sitting in the dressing room with a wireless microphone? We, poor souls, will never know.

FOH up high, to the left is Joris, Lampie for Ulysses.	Sound check with the real Simone.
Ulysses kit from the balcony view.	Ulysses rocking away.

Show goes well

July  4th 2009, GetRythm, Ridderkerk (NL) : Ulysses

Just a small gig in the same build as where the band has its rehearsal room. Load in is early, and we have plenty of time to go to a restaurant and have a good meal.
Back at 'Get Rythm' the waiting begins, and it takes a long time for al the friends and family to make their way to Ridderkerk, but they find it and show starts. 

This is also the first time to check out my new outboard rack. I have build myself a new rack with compressors, multi-FX units, equalizer, and CD player in 1 rack, with just 2 multi cables as break-out / inserts / returns. Plus switches on the back to switch the send/return settings.
Set-up is fast and everything works ok. After the show everything is packed pretty fast. Looks like we've got ourselves a winner.

From top to bottom: Numark CD player Drawmer 24 dual compressor / gate ART TCS dual compressor.  DBX compressor (in current set-up no longer used) Presonus EQ for oldradio voice, custom build switch box,  mixer for FX returns and CD TC-Electronic M-One multi FX, for reverb and delay Lexcion MX-100 for snare reverb. (in current set no longer used)

top row: inputs for CD, followed by tip/ring switching for inserts bottom row:  4 inputs to the FX,  4 inputs/outputs for the compressors/inserts 4 outputs for CD direct en FX returns

Only drawback is: it is heavy!

July  4th 2009, Willems Wondere Weiland, Amersfoort (NL) : Ulysses

Open Air Concert with Ulysses on WWW. First time to check out their new life set up. Using in-ear monitors, their own microphones etc. Also the first show with Peter Boer (S.O.T.E. / Ilumion) as a replacement bass player. 
Atmosphere is great, sun is shining, it is hot and people are happy and having fun. So: audience is great, we will have to see how the band behaves. 
Short time to set up, just a line check and then hit it, I have a Roland M400 digital desk, first time use for me, but works out ok.
Audience likes the band a lot, and despite from a view technical issues before show, everything goes pretty good. And hey, it is mid-summer, so who is complaining?

The band on WWW	Michael Hos: vocals
Ron Moser: keyboards and funny faces	Rene van Haaren: Drums and looking serious
Sylvester Vogelenzang-de Jong: Guitars	Peter Boer: bass

Photos by Courtesy of Utrecht ROXX