Sound Profiles: One of Austin’s Finest
For Jeff Tucker, it’s about getting it done right

By Chris Kathman

I gave a talk last year at the Ex’pression Center for New Media entitled “My School of Two-Fisted Sound Mixing”. This phrase doesn’t just refer to slugging people and being slugged - it also means a sound mixer who can actually do fader rides if there are no compressors, or a mixer who can talk to a drummer about how a tom is tuned rather than just automatically gating it. A mixer who can still do a show even without the luxuries of carrying his/her own microphones and fashionably state-of-the-art effects! Jeff Tucker, although now involved with some pretty upscale corporate work, definitely understands two-fisted mixology. - C.K.

Tucker (right) in the cockpit having a look at a sound level meter with promoter Charlie Jones.

After spending time bouncing around America with Joe Ely and Rick Trevino, and then being part of Big House Sound in Austin, Texas, Jeff Tucker is proud to report that, on this New Year’s Eve past, “I was in bed by 12:05!” As a result of his most recent move to Austin-based corporate supplier Media Event Concepts, Tucker says, “I get to see my kids grow up, and I get to go to church on Sunday.” Instead of dealing with a Dutch-born, trained-in-Spain flamenco guitarist, like he did during his time with Joe Ely’s band, a current workday for Jeff more often involves tweaking out 14 channels of lavalier mics, which he often accomplishes by inserting a BSS graphic on a subgroup.

“This is all I’ve ever done,” Tucker told me. “I started when I was 12 with a TAPCO mixer.”

Media Event Concepts (MEC) is a “...total event solution company. It’s not as easy as it used to be when all the racks were the same size...” like in the Big House days. A typical corporate presentation can be for 3,200 people and involve two semi-trucks full of video, lighting, set pieces, and backdrops in addition to audio. “The warehouse is my turf, and making sure it gets to the gig is my job. I’m the sound guy and also the truck monkey,” he explains.

FUN CHALLENGES

Quite a change from the days and nights spent in an RV with Ely. “The band just smoked,” he recalls. “I had a lot of good times with them.” I asked if he even carried a vocal mic for Ely... nope. “Part of the challenge was going into a hall where the local sound guy dragged his PA down there in a horse trailer! I loved it. Bus life is fun, but it was hard on the family.”

Flying Meyer rig at an MEC corporate gig.

Then the rock life started to get a little ridiculous, such as the time when someone in the crowd at a radio festival hurled a bottle through the air that impacted Tucker’s face, breaking his nose and giving him a concussion. “When I came to, I was laying in a pool of my own blood. I did a show the next day, and then went to the hospital.” Of course, he also recalls that Big House Sound “had a reputation - good people, great gear. If a guy had a bad show, it was because of him, not me. It ain’t the car, it’s the driver. “It burns me up when a band guy starts with a kick and tunes the system to it,” he continues. “If the vocal is good in the house, the drums are tuned well, and the bass tone is good, you shouldn’t have to EQ that stack. It is sound reinforcement - you can’t correct an acoustical problem with an electronic device.”

I concur. I can live without the characters who are so scrupulous about their stinking delays and reverbs and spend eternities equalizing the toms but can’t be bothered to ring the room with the vocal mic, even when they know the artist will be working the lip of the stage and going out into the crowd.

SHARE THE WORD

“If it’s not important to the drummer to make his drums sound pristine, why should I? I would spend 20 minutes tuning the kick after soundcheck,” Tucker emphasizes. That is two-fisted sound mixing in a nutshell! I once was able to show a drummer how to sit in such a way that she was supporting, instead of stressing, her diaphragm when singing a backing vocal. If you have the knowledge, share it - don’t just sit behind the console and mutter to the LD (lighting director)!

Okay, enough editorializing - back to Tucker. He is one of the many mixers I talk to these days who feels like digital consoles are “the way everything is moving.” MEC’s most recent purchase was a Yamaha PM3500 from Sound Productions in Dallas, but a digital desk may be not too far off in the future. MEC also has about 15 or so Mackie 1402s in cases, as well as Yamaha GA 32s and 60 channels of wireless.

Walking the streets of Austin, two fists firmly in pockets.

MEC is a mostly-Meyer loudspeaker company, often flying six MSL-3As, frequently with one or two additional delay points. It also owns MSL-2 boxes, with JBL EON compact loudspeakers used for breakout rooms at corporate events and meetings for smaller groups away from the main ballroom. You have to be able to get audio out of somebody’s laptop, he points out, with so many multimedia presentations now arriving that way. “I must have made 40 adapters,” he laughs, for going from 1/8-inch stereo to XLR. I first met Tucker a few years ago when I went into the Austin Music Hall with Cake and Babe the Blue Ox, and I could tell when stepping onto the mix riser and shaking his hand that things would be ship-shape and properly set up. I was also really happy that night with how Big House’s trapezoidal Adamson cabinets sounded, and wrote about the experience in a column for another industry publication. I think my favorite story from Tucker’s tales of touring with Joe Ely has to do with the two powerful weapons he carried. No, not a Glock and a Desert Eagle! One was a phase popper, and the other a copy of Lyle Lovett’s Joshua Judges Ruth.

“That’s all I need,” he said. “The first track has piano, and the third song has one of the top floor tom hits in history!”

CORPORATE INPUTS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Many of us were delirious with joy the first few times someone paid us thousands of dollars to run a couple of mics and a CD player through a little Mackie console for a corporate presentation or trade show gig. Well, the dream is over - they’re making us work our butts off again! But at least we get to stay in better hotels.

On a recent corporate show, Jeff Tucker’s input list included four podium inputs with two mics apiece and 18 channels of wireless - 12 for lavalier mics and six for handheld mics primarily used for audience Q & A sessions

Looks like a split and distro to us... the back end of a recent system used by Tucker.

This takes us up to 26 channels. Add three stereo computer inputs for customer presentations and we’re now up to 32 channels. Moving on to source devices, add two Beta playbacks (stereo), VHS playback, CD player (stereo) and CD/MiniDisc combo deck (stereo). Okay, we’re at 41 channels. Let’s now add a director voiceover (V/O) mic and a sound engineer V/O mic (Tucker generally does all on-site voiceovers), as well as a telephone interface for live conference calls.

“On one show,” Tucker recalls, “we took a phone call from the CEO, who had a conversation with the executive VP onstage, gave a little speech and then answered a couple of audience questions. He was calling on a cell phone from an airplane hanger. Boy, talk about pressure! Honestly, that was as intense a situation as I’ve ever been in.”

Finally, there’s a shotgun mic for ambience. “I essentially just use the mic pre, come out of the direct out and go directly to the record machines,” he explains, and thus a grand total of 44 inputs.

“On this particular show, I used every matrix, every aux and four subgroups on my (Yamaha) PM3500 to get to all the different places that signal needed to go: record Beta decks, main PA, front fill, center fill, subs, three delay lines, phone hookup, cassette record, MD record, overflow rooms, translation booth and so forth,” Tucker adds. “Dat’s a lotta spaghetti, if ya know what I’m sayin’.”

We know what you’re sayin’! As we go to press, Tucker is preparing for the annual Lance Armstrong Foundation Gala. “Robin Williams comes every year and says something super un-PC,” he concludes with a laugh. That show’s got to be a blast, but the pressure for a flawless evening will be on - a situation tailor-made for a veteran like Jeff Tucker.

Based in the Los Angeles area, Chris Kathman is a working mixer, live editor for ProSoundWeb, and associate editor of Live Sound. He can be reached at chris@prosoundweb.com

April 2003 Live Sound International