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Thursday, July 30, 2009
THE TASTING ROOM - "High Volta, Not Volume"
-- A Taste from TheInkFlowsLikeWine.com
This is a piece from a couple years back when I got to meet Björk during her sound check. That's Antony and her in the pictures as they checked their duet. The concert was one of the crazier experiences I had while living NYC. This was also my first time in the illustrious Radio City Music Hall. Björk killed it, in case you were wondering.
Published in Pro Sound News Aug 2007-- All photos are by me.
Björk’s latest effort, Volta, is a hodge-podge of styles and sounds that swirl around the songstress’ radiant voice. To re-create such a diverse catalogue, Björk recruited a wide array of musicians for her latest tour, including a concert pianist and a 10-piece, all-female, Icelandic brass band. Most of Björk’s live repertoire is backed up by even employed the use of experimental new digital instruments, such as the Reactable— a digital table that creates different sounds based on where items are placed upon it.
Kevin Pruce is mixing FOH for the jaunt (much as he has for Björk since her Sugarcubes days in the mid-’80s), and providing audio gear for the U.S. leg of the Icelandic chanteuse’s tour is, once again, Highland Heights, OH based
Eighth Day Sound. While he may be an old hand at mixing the variety of electronic and acoustic instruments on stage to provide a proper dynamic foundation, the current tour is a series of firsts for Pruce.
Pro Sound News caught up with him at Radio City Music Hall, the first date of the tour, where he spoke on the new additions and many changes compared to the tour for her previous album, Medulla. Chief among them was the fact that Pruce has adopted a new console, as well as a new PA system. Digidesign’s newest live desk, the Profile, is at Pruce’s fingertips for several reasons, the first being Björk’s desire to record all her shows. All of the Digidesign consoles can connect to a Pro Tools rack, and Björk’s personal unit is attached to the Profile. Pruce also was drawn to the archiving capability of the console. “I can play back the whole show with a soundcheck-type vibe and adjust levels before shows with the previous night’s performance.” Pruce wanted to move away from racks of gear and focus on a simpler setup afforded by the Profile. He explained, “I wanted to get more into plug-ins with this console, I have a lot of third-party plug-ins as well as the Digidesign standard plug-ins. They all sound good, and it keeps me from having tons of racks of gear. And it’s a great-sounding console.”
An important aspect of the Profile is its size. The Profile is just below 4 feet long and 30 inches wide, giving him plenty of room to maneuver in even a small FOH position. Pruce said, “It’s a very small footprint, and we’re going to be doing a bunch of festivals. It always helps to have a smaller footprint at someone else’s show. We used it at Coachella, and it worked out great.”
Pruce doesn’t have to use too much signal processing with Björk’s live sound; most of the noise generated is from the two digital musicians on stage. Pruce expanded, “It’s all mostly straightforward—not too much special processing is needed. The boys generate a lot of the noises and effects on stage with Chaos pads and Lemurs, and those are generally not over-effected, just a little bit of reverb here and there. There are a couple of tracks with very light distortion, but we generally try to keep it quite dry.”
For the acoustic instruments on stage, Pruce employs a pretty basic mic setup. For the drums, almost every mic is a tour standard. The kick drum is fitted with a Shure SM91 and a 52, the snares with Beta 57As, an AKG 451 on the hi-hats, Sennheiser e 906 on the toms, and AKG C 414s for overheads. The mics on the 10-piece brass band are Sennheiser e 908b brass mics, and for songs where the women sing, Shure SM58s are distributed throughout. Björk uses a Shure wireless mic with a 58 capsule for lead vocals; Pruce explained, “In the early days when Björk was in the Sugarcubes, she didn’t like the wireless, but I convinced her over the years, as the technology changed, and now they sound fine in our environment. And because she’s slightly sibilant, the 58 works better than one of those condenser mics. She really likes it; she’s got a very unique vocal technique and her timbre has lots of levels within, but there’s no need to change the mic because it’s working for us.”
Another change for Björk’s tour sound is the new d&b J series PA system, which Pruce requested after a previous experience with it: “I used this PA on a show last year in Europe, and I was quite impressed. I like the d&b stuff, I’ve used a lot of their C4 system in the past, especially in theaters because it’s easier to fit in and work with. This is their first major line array, it’s relatively new and it’s got a great sound. Like all d&b products, they just sound great out of the box, and [control is] all very cleverly done within the D12 amps.”
Pruce also requested the system based on its ability to adapt to its environment. “Based on the wide array of venues on this tour, like the outside festivals and large theaters, it was an obvious choice. It’s powerful and sounds great. The cardioid sub bass, which I like a lot, has a software package that lets you change the patterns of the bass itself. That really helps onstage, where you might get a lot of rumble and roll. It helps to focus the low end forward.”
As far as mixing such a diverse sound, Pruce has always taken the same approach to Björk’s sound. “Dynamic is the thing. Hopefully it’s not all at one level, all one sound; it has to keep you interested. It’s not like the same drum kit banging away—you’ll notice there are lots of different sounds and different fills. Lots of the songs on this tour are drawn fromfour or five different albums, and they’ve all got their own nuances, so that’s the interesting part—trying to keep it fresh.”
Björk is an artist that is very aware of audio and its capabilities, so she’s an active participant in her live mixing. Pruce said, “It has to sound how she wants it to sound. She’ll come out here and we’ll run through all the songs, listening to what’s not working programming-wise up on stage or sound-wise back here, and we’ll work on fixing it together.”
Part of that presentation is Pruce’s conscious effort to avoid pushing the dBs live. Though Björk’s catalogue is filled with loud and soft songs, it’s keeping that overall level constant that’s important for the audience. “I don’t think I’m a very loud mixer,” he remarked. “At these dynamic shows, there are loud parts, but I don’t like to mix too loud. Some of her stuff is quite soft, some is quite loud, but I think that’s the beauty of it, that we keep the dynamics of it all.”
Björk’s current tour is planned to run for a year, but with plenty of month long breaks in between runs. This works out wonderfully for Pruce, who’s got a new baby at home that was born days before Coachella. “I just had a kid, she was a week old and I had to leave for the tour,” he said. “But the good thing is I get to go home after this run, come back for the festival run, and then get a break again. We all have families, including Björk, so it’s great that we don’t have to be road dogs for the tour and can focus on making it great for each performance.”
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
THE TASTING ROOM - "The Great Gig On The Fly"
-- A Taste from TheInkFlowsLikeWine.com
Another piece from a couple years back when Roger Waters decided to tour a bit. Great show overall, though the FOH guy was very dodgy and gave me the stink eye during the set as I sat in the booth (he's not a fan of journalists).
Published in Pro Sound News Aug 2007-- All photos are by me.
Arguably one of the greatest songwriters of our time, Roger Waters has jumped back onto the road for his second world tour in a year, covering Latin America and India in the process. The show features several similar elements from his 2001 tour, but this time around Waters is playing "Dark Side of the Moon" all the way through for a second set. The show also features surround sound elements that are played through speakers above FOH, bringing up the difficult task of mixing prerecorded sound FX with a live show.
System engineer and crew chief, Bob Weibel, has been working with Waters since his 2001 tour. The PA system for the show is what Weibel's crew calls a universal system, as he explains. "It's a complete FOH console system with a snake, monitor consoles, half of the monitor wedges, a transformer and a power distro. Overall it's a fairly standard Clair i4 rig, 14 high i4s in the front, eight high i4s in the side arrays, and a pair of vertical i4s to cover the back corners. Above the FOH there's three square clusters of 12 R4s, which are one of our three way cabs with an 18 inch, a 12 inch, and a horn, and those provide the three surround sources, rear, back left, and back right. We also have six Prism 2 subs. The front fill is the horn version of the FF2, a quite compact front fill cab. They're impressively small and easy on the sightlines."
The FOH area is quite full as two full size consoles surround FOH mixer James "Trip" Khalaf. While one console is primarily used for the band inputs, other is used for the prerecorded material. Weibel expanded, "The live band is on the Midas XL-4, and we have a Yamaha PM5D that does several different jobs simultaneously. Its first job is input and output routing for all the surround. It's additionally serving as submixer for effects returns, harmonizers, delays, etc., that get routed back to the XL-4. For a limited number of shows, Nick Mason, Pink Floyd's drummer, would play with us, so there's a section of the mixer that was reserved for him."
The show makes good use of the surround speakers, but the effect is not what most audiences would expect. Weibel said, "The XL-4 has primarily the band inputs because the show is not surround in the home theater, 5.1 sense, trying to put you in the midst of the band. The surround is playback of prerecorded sound FX, but there are a few instrumental solos that get brought into the surround."
The issue of how to work with the surround aspect came up in rehearsals for the tour, Weibel recalls. "As things have played out, the programmability of whatever we're using to do the surround has proven to be important more than we thought at the start. As we went through rehearsals it became more and more obvious that a digital programmable console was going to be the right way to go when handling the complexity of the surround playback. In past tours we used two Yamaha O2Rs, one for FX returns, and one dedicated to surround playback. But the PM5D allowed us to consolidate it to one console."
Also helping control the sound is a full rack of outboard gear and a couple wireless tablets. Weibel explained a creative use of the tablets. "These motion computer tablets are standard issue, and we have a primary and backup. Now we're actually using the backup to use a program Showco's chief engineer Howard Page wrote. This allows us to switch the consoles and some of the effects. It's ideal for this show because it's pretty stripped down for this kind of very limited scope show control. There are a lot of sequencer programs that could to do this and about a bazillion other things, but for this particular application all we need to make is show changes. On the other computer, we're running the software for the Lake ios, which are our system crossovers."
Weibel continued, "Lake has an additional product you can get which allows you to display Smart within one of their EQ windows, and Smart can be running elsewhere on the network. The midi program uses almost none of the CPU when it's streaming over the network and being displayed on our primary io controller. And at the same time it's not loading down the CPU, so I still have good response functionality. That's something available commercially. So if you're using Lake Contours or their new four channel units, you can get that additional io Smart controller from Lake."
The outboard gear used is most of Trip's personal favorites. Weibel expanded, "We've got DBX 903 limiters, DBX 160 SLS for Waters' vocals and acoustic guitars. There's a Crane Song Limiter, which is a favorite of Trip's for bass, so Roger's goes through that. Personally I think the Apex 622's we have are the best, least clicky sounding gates around. There's also a H3000, a couple of SPX 1000s, a TCD2 delay, and, a newer TC product, the TC helicon Voice Doubler. Lastly, the lexicon 40L. As far as these types of tours go, for an analog system there's not much ancillary here. Roger's rig itself is very straightforward and yet he has an unbelievably great sounding bass."
The mics used on the tour are quite standard for such an analog sound. Shure Beta 87c's on vocals, Beta 52 on the kick, 57s on the snare, and beyerdynamic Opus clip on mics on the toms. One of Trip's personal favorites is the Milab DC96Bs on the overheads. The DIs are all countrymen, and there's some Audiotecknica 4050s on some of the electric guitars, while others have Sennheiser 421s.
On the monitor end, the tour's monitor engineer, Robin Fox, is using a DiGiCo D5, about 18 wedges, and ACS Nearprint custom in ear monitor molds. Fox explained, "The console has 42 outputs and 119 inputs. I managed to fill all the banks up. There are effects onboard with the console, in which I'm using a little chorus, some reverb, and a little tonal processing for the ear molds for each musician. The Nearprints are very comfortable and completely soft, very good for such a long show. They're also bi-amped, so they has a very natural sound. Only some of the band use them.
They indicate how they want the sound, and you plug in the changes. It's evolved as any show does, but what the band wants overall hasn't really changed much."
For a thirteen piece band, the monitor position seems daunting, but Fox has been on all of Waters' live tours, including the Wall Tour several years back. "I've got a long history with Roger and the rest of the musicians, but each show seems fresh, the audience is different. Having a band this big is good, it's nice to be occupied. If you have a busy day at the office it's great. You don't get stuck twiddling your thumbs."
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
THE TASTING ROOM - "No Sleep To Brooklyn At Last"
--A Taste from TheInkFlowsLikeWine.com
Here's an old piece from a couple years back on the Beastie Boys' first Brooklyn show ever. I thought it appropriate based on MCA's recent diagnosis. I hope he gets better soon, they're a great bunch of guys and they had me in stitches after a press conference for their show at the Montreux Jazz Festival a couple years back as they openly mocked the foreign reporters for their ridiculous questions.
Published in Pro Sound News Oct 2007-- All photos are by me.
On Thursday night, August 9th, 2007, a trio of white musicians that made their name rapping in the streets of New York City for over two decades hit an odd milestone in their career. What made this event so strange was two of the three members are from Brooklyn and yet this concert was their first ever in the borough. The Beastie Boys found themselves in Brooklyn's Mccarren Park Pool, a drained landmark from the 1970's, for a sold out show that night. It was definitely a momentous occasion for group, a fact they frequently mentioned during the two-hour set.
For the Beasties' monitor engineer, Sean Sturge, the night was a milestone for him as well. A Brooklyn native himself, he beamed a huge grin as he explained it was his first show in the area as well. "I've been with the Beasties for two years, after doing tours with 50 Cent and Eminem. The FOH engineer, Tim Colvard, started working with the Boys after Mike D went to the Up In Smoke Tour. Mike heard the sound, and sought Tim's services. Tim then brought me on board for monitors. But this is a big deal, the Beasties back in BK! And what's great is that I live right nearby."
Sturge got his start in live sound working with Franklyn Agarrat of Rent.A.Amp in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. After working as Agarrat's assistant for a while, doing sound all over South America, someone mentioned working on tours in America, leading him to the states.
To keep the Beasties in check, Sturge works on a Digidesign Venue, which is based on their new album, as he recalled. "We're running 48 inputs and using all the aux sends and virtual groups. There's not another mix available out of this thing and there's no outboard gear. During the show there are a lot of effect changes and it's easy to transfer stuff from the studio to this board. It's got the plugins we need and we're using basically the same exact plugins they have in the studio, keeping it simple. We've got a few Focusrite plugins, and a lot of Digirack and Echo Farm plugins. They're all in the board."
For monitors, Sturge employs two d&b wedges, used only one certain songs. "They use the wedges when they're looking for certain effects live during their musical set. They go back and forth from instrumental to hip hop songs. We've got a lot of instruments on stage; keyboards, a percussion rig, a DJ rig, drums, bass, and guitars. It can get quite loud, especially when they're playing their older punk songs."
For the majority of the set, the monitor mixes are sent through in ear monitors each of the Beasties and the three other band members wear. Sturge explained, "We have a mix of Ultimate Ear and Sensaphonic in ear monitors. Some of the guys go with comfort, some go with the sound over all. They both make a good product, it's just up to user preference." The Boys all use Sennheiser's ASCAM5000 wireless microphones, which they've been using for the last six or seven years. According to Sturge, "These are our choice of mics for hip hop."
To prepare for the current tour, Sturge visited the band in their studio to figure out the best way to go about mixing a show that could pull any song from their catalog. Sturge expanded, "Basically the guys sent the record to Tim and myself a few weeks before the tour. They had rehearsed a few weeks before we did production rehearsal, and I went in then and listened to all the songs and made notes. I listened to what they did on the record with effects and such and now I try to duplicate the same thing on a daily basis."
Sturge set up presets for each song in the Boys' catalog within the Venue, allowing him to recall each song at a second's notice. Sturge described the process, "The console is remembering a lot, but I have to remember basically the sound of every single song. The mix is different for every guy for every song. I start from cueing one and getting the mix done in seconds, and going through six guys' mixes within the first eight bars of the song and hopefully get it right."
With such a large catalog, the band can throw Sturge for a loop because their sets are never similar night to night. "The first song could be hip hop, punk rock, off their new album, or off their oldest album. You have no idea where it will start, but any Beasties' fan will know where it will end. They go through and make a set list about 10 minutes before the show. So I go into my snapshots in the console, I put together the set list, and off we go to start the show. But I think it makes it more interesting."
After a fast paced, hit after hit set, Mike D stood in front of the ravenous crowd, decked out in a suit with his fellow Beasties, and spoke through heaving breaths, "This is it kids, this is your theme song." DJ Mixmaster Mike then launched into a remixed version of "No Sleep to Brooklyn" that had the crowd keeping up the entire borough with its unified rendition of the chorus.
Monday, July 27, 2009
DECANTING THE SOUL - Camping at Beacon Rock
-- A Taste from TheInkFlowsLikeWine.com
Beacon Rock is a pretty cool spot to camp, especially based on the proximity to Portland. At the boat moorage area, there's a little inlet off the river that provides a small area for fishing. It's like your own private pond. I'd been dying to fish since I lived in Ithaca five years ago going to school, so I grabbed a new pole, stopped and bought bait at a local gas station up the road from the park (worms and some alien looking shrimp things that were for sturgeon) and decided to make a try at the little lake.
We stopped at the camp grounds across the street and set up the tent before heading out for some early evening fishing. After releasing our dog to the gaggle of children that were occupying the dock, I set to seeing what I could get out of the water. The kids there were very interested in my fishing, and soon they had all rummaged through my tacklebox and made themselves some mini rigs with
some line. After a few hours of bites, a snarl from hell, and some lost bait, we decided it was better to just go back to the campsite to make dinner. We'd brought some salmon to grill, so we knew we were eating fish either way that night. The camp grounds were pretty nice for $21 a night, it had showers and bathrooms even. We got a nice space with a metal reinforced fire pit and a huge wooden picnic table. That night we feasted on salmon and drank whiskey and a growler of Laurelwood's Tree Hugger Porter. It was so nice and quiet out there in the pines, we got lucky with some neighbors that went to bed early.
The next day we awoke to grey skies and a bit of chill in the air. Of course neither of us had come prepared with pants, so we huddled around the grill as we made bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches and sipped the rest of the whiskey to keep warm. We decided to change our plans and climb Beacon Rock's trail instead of waiting until the next morning, mostly because of the cool breeze. So we packed up the essentials and took off across the street to the trail. After leasing our dog, Eve, we headed up. The path is an interesting mile climb, full of crisscrossing little bridges and walkways carved into the rock. Via Wiki:
"The park takes its name from Beacon Rock, an 848 foot rock next to the Columbia River. It was named by Lewis and Clark in 1805; they originally referred to it as Beaten Rock, later as Beacon Rock. They noted that the rock marked the eastern extent of the tidal influence in the Columbia. The rock was later known asCastle Rock, until 1916 when its name was changed back to Beacon Rock.
Beacon Rock is 848 feet tall and is composed of Andesite. Henry Biddle purchased the rock in 1915 for $1 and during the next three years constructed a heavily switchbacked trail,
handrails and bridges. The three-quarter mile trail to the top, completed in April 1918, leads to views in all directions. It is a popular hiking destination. The United States Army Corps of Engineers planned to destroy the rock, to supply material for the jetty at the mouth of the Columbia (see Columbia River Bar), and dug three caves on the rock's south side. During this time, Biddle's family tried to make it a state park.
At first Washington refused the gift, but changed its position when Oregon offered to accept.It has been variously claimed to be the second largest free standing monolith in the northern hemisphere, or in the world, just behind the Rock of Gibraltar… or Stone Mountain… or Mount Augustus."
The hike was very beautiful, with an amazing view of the valley. I got lots of pictures as you can see. The breeze coming off the south side was a relief to me after about 2/3 of the climb, though I'm way out of shape. While we climbed
we passed a pregnant lady and a kid with a foot
in a cast that hadn't even broken a sweat.
I had to take off my sweatshirt and stop every 3 or 4 levels we walked up after a while. Pretty easy hike for the most part, but Jenny and Eve like to walk fast, so I got tired out early. The views were worth the hike, though the very top was quite small and cramped.
About 7 or more people joined us after we arrived at the precipice and we had to move back down to give them all room.
Afterward we tried fishing once again in the same spot, moving over to the rocks instead of the pier. I had similar luck, lots of bites, getting caught in the rocks many times, and failing basically overall. I was sad not to have caught anything, but I really enjoyed myself and now know there's a spot I can basically escape to anytime I like. Next time I'll be better prepared on what I'm doing. That night we made some bomb Thai rubbed chicken and veggies, then drank Tecate and passed out after a long day.
The next day we woke up early, packed up and made ourselves the last of our bacon, egg, and cheeses. After relaxing a bit in the trees and breathing in the clean air, we headed back to Portland so I could get to the Oregon Brewer's Fest. On the way home Eve felt the need to crawl over all the stuff in our car and wedge herself between the window the cooler. She never ceases to amaze. Overall it was a great time, and we'll definitely be heading out there again
soon. It's always great to find a close getaway for those quick one night escapes.
Oregon Brewers Festival - BREW REVIEW
-- A Taste from TheInkFlowsLikeWine.com
After my camping trip (which will be posted about soon), I hit up the Oregon Brewer's Festival in downtown Portland by the waterfront. I literally drove into town from camping and jumped on the MAX line to head downtown. It was actually my first time riding the train, and it was pretty nice, a far stretch from the NYC subways i was used to. The trains were so clean and new they almost glowed.So onto the fest, to be honest, I had my doubts about this festival after reading the list of beers online and checking out the Portland International Beerfest last weekend. There was far less beers available and they didn't allow dogs. Two fails in my mind. But there was going to be like 3 times as many people, so I figured it'd be interesting.
I met a bunch of my friends at a table and then immediately began weaving my way through the huge crowd (in the middle of the afternoon on a friday mind you, though Portland does have a massive unemployment rate) to find my first dark beer. To my absolute horror, there was only like 8 beers of the dark persuasion at the whole festival. Out of 86 beers, that's probably nothing to be surprised at, considering most of these people wouldn't want to drink dark beer on a hot day. I'm not such an amateur though, and it was disappointing. As I spoke to a friend about it, I realized that most of these festivals are during the summertime, so there isn't much room for darker beers. Which brings this thought to mind: Why isn't there any beer festivals in the winter, where porters and stouts are aplenty? If there is one that anyone knows of, point me towards it with an empty glass.
Anyways, here's what I did try at the OBF in no particular order:
Bison Brewing's Organic Chocolate Stout is a quality beer, very smooth, very clean tasting. It isn't as sweet as most chocolate stouts, which in a way kinda kills it for me, but it's very tasty and not to be missed.
Boulder Beer's Flashback Anniversary Ale is sort of an India Brown Ale that they brewed to celebrate the brewer's 30th birthday. It wasn't too over powering even if it did have 5 different hops, but it wasn't life changing either. Overall, not bad.
Flying Fish Brewing's Abbey Dubbel was a pleasant surprise. Somewhat malty and tasty, they told me it was sometimes compared to a fine burgundy. I wasn't sure about that, but it was pretty good. Very complex flavors, yet refreshing.
Grand Teton Brewing's Bitch Creek was another surprise. Somewhat hoppy, yet pretty balanced overall. For its brown color, it didn't taste like most similar ales. I found myself getting more than one, as the rest of the fest's beers weren't as tasty.
Kona Brewing's Coconut Brown Ale was a tasty treat. With a mild flavor of coconut coming through, it was somewhat sweet, yet dark and hoppy. There was a slight taste of chocolate, but nothing as sweet. Not so bad for a little Hawaiian brewer.
Laht Neppur Brewing's Neddy's Brown Nut was pretty bland to be honest. It had a slight flavor of roasted nuts but was pretty blah. Nothing stood out really, it just was like brown water to me.
Oakshire Brewing's Overcast Espresso Stout was a slight jolt with its quick caffeinated bite. The stout was somewhat smooth and tasty, but the espresso was a bit overpowering. I'm always a bit curious about these espresso stouts enough to try them, and the best I've had was in Brooklyn. This one was ok, but not well blended enough for me.
Riverport Brewing's Old Man River Oatmeal Stout was the first beer I tried, and I found myself getting another later because of the lack of decent beers. This beer was smooth and creamy. I'm usually a big fan of oatmeal stouts, they seem to have the most attractive mix of flavors. Old Man River was refreshing as well, so it gave me a good boost to keep drinking.
Summit Brewing's Horizon Red Ale was a decent amber. Somewhat hoppy, but very floral smelling and there was a slight bitterness that balanced it out.
Terminal Gravity Brewing's Festivale was a British "old" or strong ale. It was somewhat dry, but very malty and had a nice warmth at the end. Not bad for 8% alcohol. It was pretty good for a strong ale.
Widmer Brother's KGB stout was ok. Very roasty and strong, it had a slight chocolate hint with a malty finish. Not bad, but not my favorite.
That's about it, I ran out of tickets fast after all these beers. Overall, it was a fun festival atmosphere, way more people with their kids, way more food, and some live music. PIB should take note and add some themselves. I'll probably go back next year, more for the scene than the beer though.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
THE TASTING ROOM - "A PA at the End of the Rainbow"
-- A Taste from TheInkFlowsLikeWine.com
Here's a piece I wrote for Pro Sound News last year on Radiohead's amazing tour for "In Rainbows." I saw them five times last summer, can't wait to see them again on the next go around. I'll be out for the next couple days camping and then it's on to Oregon Brewfest, enjoy these summer days that are melting away...
Published in Pro Sound News Oct 2008 -- All photos are by Arden Ash.
Infinite innovators, Radiohead recently wrapped up the second leg of its North American tour supporting the group's ground-breaking "paywhat- you-want" album, In Rainbows. The shows proved to be dazzling in both sight and sound, with an astonishing LED light show to complement the band's complex and powerful songs, performed through a brand-new K1 line array from LAcoustics.
The band's longtime North American audio provider, Firehouse Productions (Milan, NY), supported the PA as part of its participation in L-Acoustics' K1 pilot program. Radiohead's FOH engineer, Jim Warren, was once again along for the ride as the band swept through the States. After working with one of the most chameleonlike acts around for so long, Warren has learned to take the act's ever-increasing complexity with a relaxed approach. "For 16 years, I've been with Radiohead," he said, "and they were a much more straight-ahead guitar band when I first started working with them-but they've been adding stuff on stage ever since. It doesn't look like they're ever going stop, really." To handle such a complex number of channels, Warren employs Digidesign's Venue with two sidecars, and noted, "It's very flexible, and I'm not carrying any outboard at all. Everything is done with the internal processing and plug-ins. It really gives you the flexibility to change things as you go along, without needing to phone someone for another few compressors. Sonically, it's fantastic-there are lots of possibilities, and the software's improving all the time. It gives you amazing control over everything; because the band does such a large range of songs and sounds, having the amount of recall available to me on that console means that I can cater to the sound to the song. I have a snapshot for every song-at least one-and things always develop from there. Back in the good old days of analog, even before the show was this complex, I was frantic between each song, trying to throw things into the right position, so it has made my life easier to just hit one button so that everything's roughly where it should be."
The biggest difference between the first leg of the North American tour in May and most recent leg was the PA, as the tour became the first outing to sport LAcoustics' brand-new line array, the K1; Warren agreed to try it out for the second leg at the band's non-festival dates. He explained, "We were using V-Dosc before for many years and then we decided to try the K1 out. From my position at FOH, things are pretty much as they were before, but there are the people standing 100 feet back saying how much difference there is. It's still very present way back there, so it seems to be doing exactly what it's supposed to do, and the vocals sound beautiful."
"For me, the best thing is that I haven't noticed a massive difference between the two from my position at FOH. Because I was very happy with the V-Dosc, that's a great thing. I was slightly concerned it would be one of those so-called 'new and improved' versions that somehow lose all you liked about the old version, but that doesn't seem to be the case with the K1."
For such complex sounds coming from the stage, Warren uses very specific mics to capture them properly. He explained, "There are a couple of Audio-Technica 3060s I use on guitar, which I started using a couple of years ago that I'm very pleased with. I try not to do the same mic on every amp, but rather, I pick a mic that highlights the properties that I want to get from that guitar. For instance, there's one that Johnny Greenwood uses, a Fender 85 transistor amp; he's been using it ever since I started working with him, though it gets used less and less now. Well, at one point, we tried an Audix OM3 on Thom [Yorke] as a vocal mic, and I didn't like it for his voice, but it actually had a lot of frequencies I was always looking to get out of Johnny's guitar- so it's been on that amp ever since."
The drums are a different story, it turns out. "I mic the snare from quite a long bit away with a beyerdynamic 201, which is a classic, old drum mic," Warren continued. "I'm using a Røde NT4, for the first time, to mic a shaker Phil Selway is using on a couple songs. I had some problems miking it up at first; I didn't want him to have to look for the mic when he's playing, as it would throw him off when he's drumming, so I just ended up with this little shotgun mic that pokes up through his kit and is only used for that purpose. I suppose I might use it more often now that I've tried it out."
Most things are basically close-miked and ambient-miked, and, depending on the kind of sound you want, you can just change the balance of the close and the ambient mics. I do that mostly for drums and bass, but the piano also has a pickup, a mic and a MIDI output."
For Thom Yorke's pristine vocals, Warren uses a Shure 87C. Warren expanded, "I also use the ReVibe plug-in for Thom's reverb from the Venue kit. I'm not a massive fan of reverbs working live. There are obviously some songs that are absolutely soaked in it, but other than that, I find you end up with more reverb than you need in most of these venues anyways. I mostly use reverb as a special effect rather than a spatial, 'sitting in the mix'-type of thing."
For the people sitting in the audience, however, the mix is a crucial component to enjoying a show, and to date, Warren has found that the L-Acoustics' K1 allows the listener to focus on the vocals more-something he feels is missing in much of live music.
"I kind of like to hear the vocals-it's one of the things I quite often find I miss when I hear other people mixing," he said, dryly. "It's that good, old-fashioned, rock 'n' roll live sound. When I first started with Radiohead, I was working with this band called Chapterhouse, which was a 'shoegazer' band where the whole idea is that the vocals are buried right in the middle of the guitars so it's all very ambient. I remember when I heard the first demos of Radiohead, to actually hear someone singing like that and be right on top of the mix, it was kind of old-fashioned in a way. It's how songs used to sound. The K1 certainly showcases that, and that's what people want to hear the songs for, isn't it? So they can hear the words and the people singing. The average Radiohead fan may not be the overly extroverted crowd, but they're very dedicated and into listening."
VINTAGE LOVE: "A Good Man Is Hard To Find"
-- A Taste from TheInkFlowsLikeWine.com
One of my all time favorite short stories from one of the masters, Flanner O'Connor. Enjoy!
By Flannery O'Connor
The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did."
The children's mother didn't seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, "If you don't want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?" He and the little girl, June Star, were reading the funny papers on the floor.
"She wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day," June Star said without raising her yellow head.
"Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?" the grandmother asked.
"I'd smack his face," John Wesley said.
"She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go."
"All right, Miss," the grandmother said. "Just re- member that the next time you want me to curl your hair."
June Star said her hair was naturally curly.
The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn't intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't like to arrive at a motel with a cat.
She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the children's mother and the baby sat in front and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city.
The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.
She said she thought it was going to be a good day for driving, neither too hot nor too cold, and she cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small clumps of trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their mother and gone back to sleep.
"Let's go through Georgia fast so we won't have to look at it much," John Wesley said.
"If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills."
"Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too."
"You said it," June Star said.
"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved.
"He didn't have any britches on," June Star said.
"He probably didn't have any," the grandmother explained. "Little riggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she said.
The children exchanged comic books.
The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children's mother passed him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or fix graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. "Look at the graveyard!" the grandmother said, pointing it out. "That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation."
"Where's the plantation?" John Wesley asked.
"Gone With the Wind" said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha."
When the children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and would not let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out the window. When there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley took one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didn't play fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother.
The grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep quiet. When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very good-looking man and a gentleman and that he brought her a watermelon every Saturday afternoon with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday, she said, Mr. Teagarden brought the watermelon and there was nobody at home and he left it on the front porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the watermelon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A. T. ! This story tickled John Wesley's funny bone and he giggled and giggled but June Star didn't think it was any good. She said she wouldn't marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentle man and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man.
They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sand- wiches. The Tower was a part stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside of Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S YOUR MAN!
Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his head under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the highest limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run toward him.
Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables at the other and dancing space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon and Red Sam's wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The children's mother put a dime in the machine and played "The Tennessee Waltz," and the grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her. He didn't have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmother's brown eyes were very bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pretended she was dancing in her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the children's mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star stepped out onto the dance floor and did her tap routine.
"Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the counter. "Would you like to come be my little girl?"
"No I certainly wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!" and she ran back to the table.
"Ain't she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely.
"Arn't you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother.
Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up with these people's order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. "You can't win," he said. "You can't win," and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust," he said. "Ain't that the truth?"
"People are certainly not nice like they used to be," said the grandmother.
"Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?"
"Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said at once.
"Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer.
His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a tray, two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. "It isn't a soul in this green world of God's that you can trust," she said. "And I don't count nobody out of that, not nobody," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.
"Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the grandmother.
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't attack this place right here," said the woman. "If he hears about it being here, I wouldn't be none surprised to see him. If he hears it's two cent in the cash register, I wouldn't be a tall surprised if he . . ."
"That'll do," Red Sam said. "Go bring these people their Co'-Colas," and the woman went off to get the rest of the order.
"A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more."
He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy.
They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. "There was a secret:-panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . ."
"Hey!" John Wesley said. "Let's go see it! We'll find it! We'll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can't we turn off there?"
"We never have seen a house with a secret panel!" June Star shrieked. "Let's go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can't we go see the house with the secret panel!"
"It's not far from here, I know," the grandmother said. "It wouldn't take over twenty minutes."
Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. "No," he said.
The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother's shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his father could feel the blows in his kidney.
"All right!" he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. "Will you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don't shut up, we won't go anywhere."
"It would be very educational for them," the grandmother murmured.
"All right," Bailey said, "but get this: this is the only time we're going to stop for anything like this. This is the one and only time."
"The dirt road that you have to turn down is about a mile back," the grandmother directed. "I marked it when we passed."
"A dirt road," Bailey groaned.
After they had turned around and were headed toward the dirt road, the grandmother recalled other points about the house, the beautiful glass over the front doorway and the candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret panel was probably in the fireplace.
"You can't go inside this house," Bailey said. "You don't know who lives there."
"While you all talk to the people in front, I'll run around behind and get in a window," John Wesley suggested.
"We'll all stay in the car," his mother said.
They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them.
"This place had better turn up in a minute," Bailey said, "or I'm going to turn around."
The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months.
"It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder.
The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.
As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.
Bailey removed the cat from his neck with both hands and flung it out the window against the side of a pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started looking for the children's mother. She was sitting against the side of the red gutted ditch, holding the screaming baby, but she only had a cut down her face and a broken shoulder. "We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.
"But nobody's killed," June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off the side. They all sat down in the ditch, except the children, to recover from the shock. They were all shaking.
"Maybe a car will come along," said the children's mother hoarsely.
"I believe I have injured an organ," said the grandmother, pressing her side, but no one answered her. Bailey's teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as the shirt. The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee.
The road was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearselike automobile. There were three men in it.
It came to a stop just over them and for some minutes, the driver looked down with a steady expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and didn't speak. Then he turned his head and muttered something to the other two and they got out. One was a fat boy in black trousers and a red sweat shirt with a silver stallion embossed on the front of it. He moved around on the right side of them and stood staring, his mouth partly open in a kind of loose grin. The other had on khaki pants and a blue striped coat and a gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. He came around slowly on the left side. Neither spoke.
The driver got out of the car and stood by the side of it, looking down at them. He was an older man than the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. He had a long creased face and didn't have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that were too tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun. The two boys also had guns.
"We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed.
The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her life but she could not recall who he was. He moved away from the car and began to come down the embankment, placing his feet carefully so that he wouldn't slip. He had on tan and white shoes and no socks, and his ankles were red and thin. "Good afternoon," he said. "I see you all had you a little spill."
"We turned over twice!" said the grandmother.
"Once", he corrected. "We seen it happen. Try their car and see will it run, Hiram," he said quietly to the boy with the gray hat.
"What you got that gun for?" John Wesley asked. "Whatcha gonna do with that gun?"
"Lady," the man said to the children's mother, "would you mind calling them children to sit down by you? Children make me nervous. I want all you all to sit down right together there where you're at."
"What are you telling US what to do for?" June Star asked.
Behind them the line of woods gaped like a dark open mouth. "Come here," said their mother.
"Look here now," Bailey began suddenly, "we're in a predicament! We're in . . ."
The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. "You're The Misfit!" she said. "I recognized you at once!"
"Yes'm," the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, "but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me."
Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.
"Lady," he said, "don't you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don't mean. I don't reckon he meant to talk to you thataway."
"You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" the grandmother said and removed a clean handkerchief from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it.
The Misfit pointed the toe of his shoe into the ground and made a little hole and then covered it up again. "I would hate to have to," he said.
"Listen," the grandmother almost screamed, "I know you're a good man. You don't look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!"
"Yes mam," he said, "finest people in the world." When he smiled he showed a row of strong white teeth. "God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy's heart was pure gold," he said. The boy with the red sweat shirt had come around behind them and was standing with his gun at his hip. The Misfit squatted down on the ground. "Watch them children, Bobby Lee," he said. "You know they make me nervous." He looked at the six of them huddled together in front of him and he seemed to be embarrassed as if he couldn't think of anything to say. "Ain't a cloud in the sky," he remarked, looking up at it. "Don't see no sun but don't see no cloud neither."
"Yes, it's a beautiful day," said the grandmother. "Listen," she said, "you shouldn't call yourself The Misfit because I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell."
"Hush!" Bailey yelled. "Hush! Everybody shut up and let me handle this!" He was squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but he didn't move.
"I pre-chate that, lady," The Misfit said and drew a little circle in the ground with the butt of his gun.
"It'll take a half a hour to fix this here car," Hiram called, looking over the raised hood of it.
"Well, first you and Bobby Lee get him and that little boy to step over yonder with you," The Misfit said, pointing to Bailey and John Wesley. "The boys want to ast you something," he said to Bailey. "Would you mind stepping back in them woods there with them?"
"Listen," Bailey began, "we're in a terrible predicament! Nobody realizes what this is," and his voice cracked. His eyes were as blue and intense as the parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still.
The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a second she let it fall on the ground. Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if he were assisting an old man. John Wesley caught hold of his father's hand and Bobby I,ee followed. They went off toward the woods and just as they reached the dark edge, Bailey turned and supporting himself against a gray naked pine trunk, he shouted, "I'll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me!"
"Come back this instant!" his mother shrilled but they all disappeared into the woods.
"Bailey Boy!" the grandmother called in a tragic voice but she found she was looking at The Misfit squatting on the ground in front of her. "I just know you're a good man," she said desperately. "You're not a bit common!"
"Nome, I ain't a good man," The Misfit said after a second ah if he had considered her statement carefully, "but I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy said, 'it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!"' He put on his black hat and looked up suddenly and then away deep into the woods as if he were embarrassed again. "I'm sorry I don't have on a shirt before you ladies," he said, hunching his shoulders slightly. "We buried our clothes that we had on when we escaped and we're just making do until we can get better. We borrowed these from some folks we met," he explained.
"That's perfectly all right," the grandmother said. "Maybe Bailey has an extra shirt in his suitcase."
"I'll look and see terrectly," The Misfit said.
"Where are they taking him?" the children's mother screamed.
"Daddy was a card himself," The Misfit said. "You couldn't put anything over on him. He never got in trouble with the Authorities though. Just had the knack of handling them."
"You could be honest too if you'd only try," said the grandmother. "Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time."
The Misfit kept scratching in the ground with the butt of his gun as if he were thinking about it. "Yestm, somebody is always after you," he murmured.
The grandmother noticed how thin his shoulder blades were just behind his hat because she was standing up looking down on him. "Do you every pray?" she asked.
He shook his head. All she saw was the black hat wiggle between his shoulder blades. "Nome," he said.
There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. Then silence. The old lady's head jerked around. She could hear the wind move through the tree tops like a long satisfied insuck of breath. "Bailey Boy!" she called.
"I was a gospel singer for a while," The Misfit said. "I been most everything. Been in the arm service both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet," and he looked up at the children's mother and the little girl who were sitting close together, their faces white and their eyes glassy; "I even seen a woman flogged," he said.
"Pray, pray," the grandmother began, "pray, pray . . ."
I never was a bad boy that I remember of," The Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice, "but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive," and he looked up and held her attention to him by a steady stare.
"That's when you should have started to pray," she said. "What did you do to get sent to the penitentiary that first time?"
"Turn to the right, it was a wall," The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. "Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to remember what it was I done and I ain't recalled it to this day. Oncet in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never come."
"Maybe they put you in by mistake," the old lady said vaguely.
"Nome," he said. "It wasn't no mistake. They had the papers on me."
"You must have stolen something," she said.
The Misfit sneered slightly. "Nobody had nothing I wanted," he said. "It was a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it. He was buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can go there and see for yourself."
"If you would pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would help you."
"That's right," The Misfit said.
"Well then, why don't you pray?" she asked trembling with delight suddenly.
"I don't want no hep," he said. "I'm doing all right by myself."
Bobby Lee and Hiram came ambling back from the woods. Bobby Lee was dragging a yellow shirt with bright blue parrots in it.
"Thow me that shirt, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. The shirt came flying at him and landed on his shoulder and he put it on. The grandmother couldn't name what the shirt reminded her of. "No, lady," The Misfit said while he was buttoning it up, "I found out the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it."
The children's mother had begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn't get her breath. "Lady," he asked, "would you and that little girl like to step off yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your husband?"
"Yes, thank you," the mother said faintly. Her left arm dangled helplessly and she was holding the baby, who had gone to sleep, in the other. "Hep that lady up, Hiram," The Misfit said as she struggled to climb out of the ditch, "and Bobby Lee, you hold onto that little girl's hand."
"I don't want to hold hands with him," June Star said. "He reminds me of a pig."
The fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her by the arm and pulled her off into the woods after Hiram and her mother.
Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, "Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing.
"Yes'm, The Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus shown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course," he said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."
There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?"
"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!"
"Lady," The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."
There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, "Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!" as if her heart would break.
"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.
"Maybe He didn't raise the dead," the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her.
"I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," The Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children !" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.
Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.
Without his glasses, The Misfit's eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her off and thow her where you thown the others," he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg.
"She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.
"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
"Some fun!" Bobby Lee said.
"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life."
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