Interview Index -> Part 2
WD: So you start off planning it for the next year with the look of the truss, when do you get into the programming aspects.
 Fenton: The programming aspects, what we did this year for example. The band was doing some rehearsals out at the studio. I have a recording rack I set up a camera in there so each person is in an isolation booth and one on the drums. And I run tape and record a lot of it, not everything. So I’m watching monitors, what we did is we coincided at the same time we took one of the rooms at the studio set up one of our boards and had a visualizer program called WYSIWYG. And you can set it all up on a computer and start programming.
So we did that for about two weeks then we took a week off. That was in April. We did two weeks just at the studio, then we loaded into an arena on the May 7th or 8th and we were there for about three weeks.
WD: Which arena did you use?
Fenton: A place in Norfolk, Virginia called the Ted Constant Convocation Center. The Old Dominian University is there, it’s a new arena, its small hold about 9000 or something its not very big. But its plenty for setting a lighting rig up. We don’t even build a stage we just set the lighting rig up, we just lift it from the floor.
Then we just sit like we would at a concert, front of house. We put in long hours, we usually work an average day is twelve to fourteen hours is what we do a day on it, and do that for three weeks. And we just sit there and listen to live recordings and come up with ideas.
Aaron is the person I program with, he’s a great guy to work with.
WD: So you’re in the studio, you go to the rehearsals and then you work on it there?
Fenton: When we were at the studio, we never worked on any of the new stuff that they were messing with. We did that at the very end of programming. Everyone took time off and then we went in to program it, and then a week after we went back into programming they went back in and did some rehearsals while we were in Norfolk programming.
So I did have a CD sent down that did have some tracks on it. On those new songs its just so much fun to just go with it and kind of keep it very similar to what I’m doing to the songs each night. Ultimately, its going to be somewhat different because its just winging it.
WD: Hello Again was awesome last night--
Fenton: Oh ya, Hello Again is probably the one we’ve put the most work into this year. At the time it was the song that had taken the most form. We had some structure there to work with. At least we knew the first chorus, bridge that type of thing. And the other one’s at that point, the recordings I had I don’t think had—not everyone was playing on each take so it wasn’t real clear where it was going to go. We just have generic pages in the board that you just go to it, just go for it.
 WD: So do you feel like you do a lot of improvisation during the tour?
Fenton: Ya, I have the board set up in a way. I definitely have a structure for a lot of the songs, you know verse—chorus, that type of thing. But also the whole queue stack for a song takes up one button on my board. You know, and there are fifty-some other options that we usually just tend to fill up with extra moves and chases, color changes—you hit it and there’s a color bump. During the show I am using all that stuff a lot.
WD: I know you said you got a lot of the tunes they’re rehearsing. Do you have to listen to those new ones again because the songs are changing—that you’re finding they’re playing a different style.
Fenton: Ya, they’re definitely still developing these new songs now. I don’t—no I don’t listen to them again. I don’t listen to the show on the bus afterwards. I’m there every day for sound check and hope that if they’re going to do something and change it and make it different, they’ll run through a little bit of it at sound check. Which that definitely has happened.
But for the most part I can follow along with what they’re doing. And if I screw up, I just screw up again on purpose and keep doing it like I meant to.
WD: Do you get cues from the guys on stage when you’re doing it live?
Fenton: I use an in-ear monitor so I can hear the guys talking on stage. I don’t necessarily get cues from them. The only thing I’m listening for is Carter counting off the songs. That’s definitely a big help, lets me know when to kick in and that type of thing. The in-ear’s are a great thing. And I have a little monitor that sits in front of me that’s nothing but a camera on Carter as well.
WD: The Carter Cam:
Fenton: Because he’s just such a machine, he’s so great. It helps to look and see. If I can glance at it quick enough, because he’ll throw drum fills anywhere. And if I can look quick enough to see him start a tom roll or something, at least I can be right on. I’m not trying to look from sixty feet or a hundred feet or whatever and see when he’s going to do a quick drum fill. I can at least just glance at that and see if he’s gonna. And you know you can’t always on that either, its just a little crappy black and white camera.
Last night it actually went out. I don’t know what happened but it just started freaking out last night
WD: Sometimes Dave will lead the band out of a solo that was starting to get going or they have to repeat a phrase or get back on track in a song. How do you handle that when you’re doing the lighting for a song?
 Fenton: I think just the way all of them handle it. You know there’s no choice at the time you just have to go with it and make it work with what you have.
My attitude on it is: I care a whole lot about what I do, and at the same time I care a whole lot about what I do, and at the same time I also realize that its not heart surgery, you’re not saving someone’s life. You’re trying to enhance and give someone a better time. And just show them a good time and make them forget about whatever maybe they were worried about before they came in.
And that’s the point of being there is to really try to help people forget for a couple hours their problems, and have a good time. If you get bogged down--if you let yourself get worried about one mistake you made then it just turns into a train wreck.
Of course you don’t want to mess up, you want it to be perfect. But people make mistakes and it just happens to be that there are twenty-thousand people there. Its very shocking to yourself when you make a mistake it’s a big blunder. Your stomach drops pretty quickly, but you kind of just have to go with it.
If they start a jam and they go away a whole other different direction I just gotta move with it and go with them. And they are such a great band for doing that. They are just so much fun. I’m real lucky that I do what I do. Because I haven’t gotten sick of the music, I love it.
I think a lot of people who have been with the same band for that many years would probably get tired of it, and I just don’t because they do add new little things here and there all the time, you know there’s just a good energy about it.
 Continue to Part Three of The Fenton Williams Interview
|
