Winwood Jazz: Vintage Veterans
Polished pros grace the everyman
There’s a certain unique resonance to any Steve Winwood performance.
After an absence from the live circuit of several years, his presence
at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival is all the more enigmatic for his choice
of musical vehicle. The Jose Neto band is not the world’s most well known
jazz outfit (but well worth checking out) and certainly not from the usual
musical genre of bands that one associates with Winwood.
OPULENT & INTIMATE
This was a very special musical occasion. The set list included material
that delighted both the more catholic fans of the Neto band, and Winwood’s
R&B devotees. “Neto has wanted to rearrange Steve’s songs for some time
now” informed John Davies.
Davies is a long-time friend and supporter of the Neto band, and a near
neighbor of Winwood’s in the pastoral reaches of the English Cotswold
hills. “Each time he (Neto) and the band visit England they end up down
here doing stuff together”. (The Neto band played on the last Winwood
album.)
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So much for the event’s catalyst. What about the presentation?
If you’ve never heard of Cheltenham, let alone the Jazz Festival,
you’re not alone. Though Cheltenham is an ancient city it’s jazz
festival has been in existence just five years. Currently bands
perform at three locations around the city, the Everyman Theatre
being the host for the Winwood/Neto fusion. |
Small it may be, but what a great place to see a band. From any seat
in the house you can almost reach out and touch them.
The proscenium is barely seven yards wide, and wings on which to stack
a PA are virtually non-existent; flying is similarly limited. The room
acoustic however is kind, decorated in the opulent rococo style that was
fashionable in the Victorian era. There’s hardly a flat surface in the
auditorium. Fitted with lush carpets and deeply upholstered seats, reverberation
at the Everyman is a non issue.
CO-OPERATIVE PA
The PA system was very much a co-operative effort between Richard Nowles
Sound Services, a London based rental company with many years of experience
in the jazz field, and German manufacturer d&b audiotechnik, who’s UK
office is just twelve miles away. Nowles supplied all FOH and monitor
control equipment. The practiced hands and ears of Annette Guilfoyle made
a first class job of running house sound at this venue for the entire
festival.
The loudspeaker system featured d&b’s C7-TOPs and C7-SUBs for main system
providing wide field coverage and power, with C6’s for the Upper Circle
and E3’s as front fills.
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The d&b RIB/ROPE control system allowed system trim adjustments to be made via a laptop from the house console including delay of the E-PAC power amplifier controller to time align the Upper Circle C6s with the main house system. Simon Johnston engineered the show, using a Midas Heritage at FOH. Processors included Yamaha D1500, SPX990 and PCM70. A pair of Drawmer Gates lay in the rack to the side, just the Rev 500 was working to provide a little reverb. Alan Burgess operated monitors from a Crest Century board, using d&b MAX cabinets, and a Shure earworn system for Celso Alberti. |
This was a relatively rare gig for Johnston, who relinquished regular
control of knobs and faders and left Autograph in the mid to late eighties.
In 1989 d&b audiotechnik found him in Gloucestershire where he now heads
their UK operation. “I’ve done a few shows for the Neto Band in village
halls here over the past five years, and I’ve worked with Winwood’s voice
on one of those shows. The Neto band is a hobby for me, John Davies is
a friend from way back, and as with Jose and Steve, he drew me into the
circle.”
CAREER MOVES
Johnston remains circumspect about why he quit mixing. “There were several
reasons. It was a bit of a grind at the time, I felt I was repeating everything
and not learning anything new, so moving to Autograph Sales (at that time
the European distributor for Meyer Sound) was a new learning curve, technically
the theatre approach of our parent company and what Meyer were doing were
both new for me.”
Johnston also admitted the lure of stepping ‘off the road’ and having
a regular day job was a big temptation. On the previous show with Neto
and Winwood, Johnston had encountered some difficulties. “His voice can
be tricky; he uses dynamics and moves on and off mic when you wouldn’t
expect it. I hadn’t got the right tools with me to deal with that at the
time.”
For this show he took a practical solution, “I called his studio engineer
and asked him what he normally uses for live performances, not an SM58,
he said immediately, and also recommended a Summit TLA100.” (An instrument
kindly loaned by Wigwam Acoustics for the show.) “My previous experience
with valve(tube) limiting was in the studio, years ago, when the things
were so old and delicate you couldn’t touch them, let alone move them.
That was before people started making them again.
The sort of instruments we had were so sensitive that as soon as you sent
them signal the meter pinned and stayed there until the program stopped.
I did know was that whatever you used them (valve limiters) on sounded
far better.”
Johnston recalled working in the studio with renowned drummer Simon Phillips,
“he had a thing called a gong drum, a large single headed drum on end
like a gong. When you patched in a valve limiter it changed the decay
envelope, as the Gain Reduction decreased, the level remained constant,
bringing up the resonance relative to the percussive impact, it sounded
fantastic.”
BLACK ART
How was that thinking to be applied to the vagaries of Winwood’s voice?
“Black Art”, chuckled Johnston in his typically dismissive manner, then
went on to explain. “It’s about presence and always being able to hear
the vocal. Winwood modulates his voice by moving on and off mic. Maybe
if you were fast enough, and could hear and move the fader in the same
relative time, you’d have it, but live you’re already at least 40ms behind
the band, even in a small venue like the Everyman.
“You set up the compressor to maintain the level while allowing singers
to change the tonality using the proximity effects they can get with a
cardioid mic. You know? Close in, singing soft with a warm low end, back
off, singing loud with a much thinner sound without all the low end the
proximity to the mic gives. These TLA100s seem to follow that more naturally,
modifying the gain so it tracks the level really nicely.”
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Winwood’s voice presented one other deviation from a normal Neto
show, “with this band vocals are not a big part, so it’s not like
you have to put a voice out there on top of everything else. There
are vocal parts, but these are more of a scat style with no words
and almost always a double for a melody with guitar or keyboards.
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Though I must say that the boys don’t quite get the same vocal effect as Flora Purim!
“For a Neto Band show I can take the most present acoustic instrument,
the drums, and work levels round that without worrying about where it’s
all going.” With Steve Winwood joining the band, Johnston had to constantly
remind himself of the need to put a voice on top. There were occasions
where Winwood, obviously submerged in the style of Neto’s music, resorted
to scat, which Johnston quickly noticed and happily reset his level accordingly.
TASTY & TASTEFUL
Beyond the cache of Winwood’s presence, the Neto band is blessed with
some outstanding musicians. Celso Alberti’s drumming is little short of
mesmerizing. Bassist Gary Brown is surely amongst the world’s top ten.
And Frank Martin on Keys? This is a musician who spreads his talents far
and wide, from Sting to Ray Charles to Al Jarreau.
“There was a Grand Piano available at the Everyman and as soon as Frank
saw it he wanted to use it,” said a slightly woeful Johnston. “On such
a small stage how was I going to get level on the mics without picking
up the kit?” For reasons of habit and familiarity Martin plays stage right;
with the piano facing upstage, this meant the mouth was open directly
onto Alberti’s kit barely three feet away.
“We closed the lid as much as we could, and laid thick carpet over the
gap, which luckily was enough, we didn’t have time to find any other solutions.
The thing is, when a musician wants to do something like that and I’d
never mixed for Neto when they’d had a Grand before you have to figure
there’s a good reason.
“Sometimes you have to be prepared to trade off the sound for the sake
of a great performance, his piano playing was absolutely astonishing.”
Johnston had a pair of AKG414’s hidden beneath the carpet, and although
the piano wasn’t as open and resonant as it might be, the virtuosity of
Martin’s playing was plain for all to hear.
“Neto himself plays a Paradis Avalon guitar. If you never heard one there’s
nothing quite like it… a nylon strung electric guitar with the most exceptional
tonal quality. He has a rack of effects; you can hear he’s using delay
and reverb for various parts.
Johnston commented, “Ok so it’s noisy, but that’s only a problem between
songs. When you listen to his playing and think, that sounds just great,
who cares about a little noise between songs? Anyway, the sound - it’s
all in the fingers!”
MUSICAL NOTES
Neto has always exhibited a frustrated Hendrix syndrome and this was a
loud sounding show. Winwood’s presence caused the band some obvious added
enthusiasm. Winwood performed, among other classics, Low Spark of High
Heeled Boys from his Traffic heyday, and a fantastic rearrangement
of the classic I’m a Man from the Spencer Davis era. Although the
influences of Neto’s Brazilian roots were clearly visible on both songs,
each stayed recognizably a Winwood song.
Should such collaborations ever make it to CD fans will be delighted.
Meanwhile, Winwood just completed an album of his own, and in the absence
of a recording contract, will be self-releasing in the near future. Watch
that website.
July/August 2001 Live Sound International