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Tom
Abraham
An admission. When I put the wheels
in motion to cover Alice in Chains on
their stop in Vegas, my motives were
less-than-transparent. Truth is, FOH photographer
and production manager Linda Evans
(who also happens to be my wife) had some
really great shots of the band that she took
at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, and I really
wanted to be able to use them. So I got
with Greg McVeigh of Guesthouse Projects
who had sent me a note about AIC using
some Heil mics and asked for a hookup with
their sound guy.
So when I found out it was Tom Abraham,
I had to do some research. I thought
I did not know Tom but found very quickly
that I had at least 20 e-mails in the past year
that had come from sound guys I respect
a lot and who had sent to a group that included
both Tom and I. So we had numerous
mutual friends.
Then I got his résumé and felt kind of
silly that I did not know him already. It’s a
long and impressive list that includes everything
from symphonies in upstate New York
to stints with Garbage, Shakira and ZZ Top.
He was handed the keys to Alice in Chains by
Showco’s M.L. Procise in 2007 and has been
the band’s FOH engineer and production
manager ever since.
A big tip of the hat here. The Vegas date
was the last stop on an 18-month tour. So
in addition to the complications that Sin
City can present, the crew was looking at a
load-out that included a full inventory and
arranging for rented gear to be sent back
to various vendors. Not a night anyone is
enthused about having some dork from
the trade press hanging out. But Tom was
incredibly accommodating and took significant
time — on a day when he really had
none to spare — to talk mics, touring in general
and his hatred of large festivals. Take it
away Tom...
FOH: How did you get into the biz? I was
the guy in the band who owned the PA.
Was that your path?
Tom Abraham: Well, I did the “normal”
thing out of high school, went to a state college
in New York and got a degree in com-
puter science, got a job with General Electric
because my Dad worked there, and became
a civilian defense contractor for the Air Force
working on graphics software for radars. This
was old-skool graphics — Fortran code in the
mid-late 1980s.
I was a guitar player in a band in high
school — I quit to go to college and they replaced
me, but I still did sound for them and
other local bands — sorta built a client-base
of upstate New York bar bands. Remember,
that was a time when there was really a good
rock club scene in the late 1980s. I became
the house guy at a craphole called The Lost
Horizon in Syracuse — that was at the time
when it was really happening — we did like
20 bands a week — both national acts and locals.
I did everything — FOH, monitors, patch,
maintenance, load-in and out...you name
it. Busted ass there for three years. It was
sorta the place to play in upstate New York. I
worked my 9-to-5 gig at General Electric, then
my 5pm-to-3am gig at the club almost every
day — I was young and had energy then!
One day, a solo shredder guitar player
named Vinnie Moore played and I mixed and
his manager was there. The manager offered
“Those festivals are quantity over quality. No
time at all to put on a quality show — just bang
it out and find a way to leave ASAP. May I quote
fellow engineer Brad Madix? ‘Its like camping,
only camping doesn’t suck.’”
me a two-week run with Vinnie around the
Northeast and Middle Atlantic region. Me
and one other guy doing everything. Anyway,
we did it, and the manager, Pete Morticelli,
said he knew a guy in New York who
dealt with “big bands,” and he was going to
tell him I did a good job. Well, two days later,
phone rings and its Tony D from Q-Prime
Management in New York. Two days later,
I was doing monitors for Dokken. That was
1989 I think...and I was off and running. Quit
the “real job,” and have been engineering
ever since.
How long have you been with AIC?
Got the gig from M.L. at Clair/Showco in
July 2007. Been doing it ever since.
I don’t hear a southern accent, so why
Nashville?
From upstate New York. Lived in Madison
WI for a while due to working with Garbage
for a long time and they were based out of
there. Nashville…Hated winter, girlfriend
www.fohonline.com
bailed, had to get away. Nashville seemed
as good as anywhere, and certainly warmer
than what I have become used to.
Give me the lowdown on the gear you
were carrying. Everything but stacks and
racks, or full production?
Well, you saw the Vegas Joint show
which was not normal. We used the house
PA there just to make the day easy, and it’s
a good rig. We were carrying 28 Clair I5s, 24
Clair I3s, 20 Clair B2 subs and 12 Clair FF2
Front Fills. Great sounding rig, every damn
day. All control was two Digidesign Profiles
(FOH and Monitors). Besides the Clair controller
for the PA, there really wasn’t anything
else. We used the Clair Lab.gruppen
amps with the Dolby Lake Controllers built
into the amps. Really works great.
How did you make the switch to Heil
mics? And how did the band respond? In
my experience, I can get away with changing
pretty much any mic onstage until it
gets to vocal mics, and then I better have
a good reason and be able to convincingly
make the case. That your experience?
Toby Francis turned me onto Heil in
2007. He introduced me to Bob Heil, and Bob
is so nice and so accommodating. And Bob
actually understands the shit we go through
with certain artists. In the end, Heils sound
better than “the industry standard.” Just listen...let
the band listen. They prove themselves
by using your ears. With AIC — they
trust me to pick what’s going to work best,
so with AIC, it’s no issue making changes.
Why the Venue?
Well, it does everything I need it to...it allows
me to implement my wacky ideas more
than any other desk. That’s the number one
reason I use it. I don’t like the big Venue surface
FOH Interview
FOH Engineer, Unchained By BillEvans
at all, I use the Profile surface — I feel it’s much
better laid out. The big Venue surface is just
WAY too big for what it does. Just wish Digidesign…Avid...would
put some better faders
in the Profile surface. I have literally replaced
20 faders on Profiles just on this last AIC tour
alone. That’s on probably 10 different Profile
surfaces as well. They don’t hold up in the real
world touring beat-down. I have complained a
hundred times...nobody listens. Which I could
switch, but the Venue system allows me to
implement my concepts, and they are easy
to rent in any territory, and that’s important
nowadays, ‘cause nobody flies desks around
anymore — you pick them up territoriality.
What about the festival thing? I know you
guys did Roskilde, and I am under the impression
that you spent much of the summer
on the Euro festival circuit. How big an
adjustment is it to go from the only headliner
to a top band but still one of a dozen on
any given day? What kind of adjustments
and compromises do you find you have to
make?
Don’t get me started. I hate Euro festivals.
And it’s all I seem to do. Those festivals are
quantity over quality. No time at all to put on a
quality show — just bang it out and find a way
to leave ASAP. It’s miserable. And ramming
your control gear in after doors are open and
getting it out before the show is over is pure
joy. May I quote fellow engineer Brad Madix?
“Its like camping, only camping doesn’t suck.”
Festivals are an evil we just have to deal with
nowadays. Its trench warfare mixing. Damage
control mixing. You are just trying to make it
“not suck.” Half of mixing is tweaking/working
with the PA to make it do what you want —
and that is taken away from you at a festival.
The whole deal is crap. Don’t get me started
more than I already have. Headline shows are
PURE JOY, comparatively.
2011 JANUARY
25