Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/830490
38 S P R I N G 2 0 1 7 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y VCA assignments depended on the needs of each act. I did have to do some manual reassigning in the middle of some of the acts because of the limitation with the number of VCAs I had in front of me. Each act had its own snapshot. Even though the principals had their own dedicated faders, the rest of the cast did not. Therefore, each act had the principals plus whichever additional cast members were in that act. The script was 384 pages long. At times, the pace of the dialogue was so quick and complicated I did not have time to turn the pages, so I memo- rized those places in the script. I also memorized the entire first act just so I would be completely focused. 384 pages! Did you have an assistant helping you with cue- ing? No, I didn't have someone helping with cueing because it would add to the reaction time—which could result in my up-cutting a line. It must have taken a number of rehearsals to get things right. How many did you do? We had a week of rehearsals, then we did four full-dress rehearsals. One without an audience, one with friends and fam- ily, one with a hired audience, and then we did a final full-dress rehearsal the day before with a full audience. How are you dealing with levels on the show? While I'll check LKFS along the way, once I'm in the moment, I feel confident that I'm where I need to be. Actually, I still like to mix to VU meters. We had to rent them for Grease because the truck didn't have any. I ended up taping them to the top of the center speaker right in front of me. What do you do when you're not working on a show? I am either prepping for my next show or riding my horse. What are you up to next? I mix the music for Dancing with the Stars, so I'm on that for a couple more weeks and then I go to Washington, D.C., for the National Memorial Day Concert for PBS and then back to D.C. for the Fourth of July National Concert, also on PBS. I will then do the weekly live Big Brother broadcasts. The MTV VMAs are also coming up at the end of August. BIFF DAWES: MUSIC MIXER You're LinkedIn profile shows Wally Heider's as your first audio job. What led you to the field of audio? I was a radio-film-TV major in college. I started part time at Wally Heider Recording, Hollywood in 1972 while I was still in school. Since there were facilities for both at Wally's, was your initial focus studio sessions, remote sessions, or both? If you worked at Heider's, you worked in the studio and on the mobile units. That's where I started mixing. Do you recall the first job where you were the main engineer? The first album was Richard Pryor's Is It Something I Said? Eventually, I would engineer and produce two of Richard's live albums for Warners. I think I finally considered myself an engineer when Wally asked me to sit next to him and record a live Woody Herman album at the 1979 Monterey Jazz Festival—even though I had already recorded some pretty big studio and live albums by then. Your next move was to Westwood One in 1982, where you'd stay until this decade. Given your experience with Wally's mobile unit, did they come after you? Yes, Westwood One and Norm Pattiz came after some of us who had worked at Heider's to build and staff Westwood One's first mobile unit. Myself, Jim Seiter, Dave Farragher, Doug Field, and Mike Carver. The original trailer caught fire and burned by the side of the road in El Paso, Texas, en route to a show. We rebuilt a similar one in 1998 and the trailer is still used for a couple NFL shows every year for Westwood One Sports. What were some of your job duties while with Westwood One? To record and mix all the live concerts for the radio network's concert series. Westwood One's concert shows became widely syndicated. We were recording concerts of many top acts from the '80s on. Everyone from Stevie Ray Vaughn to The Who, Fleetwood Mac, Nirvana, Aerosmith, Pat Benatar, etc. We also did music mixing for award shows and cable concert specials. When working on a show with a variety of musical acts, such as the ACM Awards, what is your typical timeline as you get ready for the night of broadcast? Preproduction of listening to songs and instrumentation usu- ally finalize a few weeks before. Rehearsals a few days leading up to a full-dress rehearsal right before broadcast. I was talking to Mark King and he recalled that the first time you two worked together was on an ACM Awards show when the demands on the music side became too much to manage—given that he was addressing the other produc- tion elements. Do you remember the first time you worked together? I think it was 1999 for the ACMs. I don't know how Mark had done all the mixing prior to that. The show had become very big, a full house band and numerous self-contained acts. Plus he was mixing production. Lots of connections!