Nothin’ But the Blues

Text: Mike Wilcox
Photos: Ken Howard © Blue Man Productions, Inc.

Behind the scenes of the Blue Man Group

PULLING A GOOD SOUND

MW: This thing has got to be a nightmare to mic up, surely?

VV: Well, what happens is the instrument’s sound comes out in clusters at the front. So we have – for lack of a better term – ‘mounted overheads’, to try to capture all of this sound evenly. But because the instrument breaks apart to be moved on and off stage, the microphones can work themselves slightly out of position, and you know when that’s happened because one note will suddenly take off. Then there’s the issue of paint, which also manages to make its way inside every nook and cranny of the PVCs.

SS: Random objects from the show also fall inside the PVCs too, such as lighters [laughs].

MW: So is there some secret factory somewhere churning these instruments out?

VV: No. What’s interesting is that with every successive show we’ve opened, the PVCs get slightly modified. So every show has its own little nuances.

Some of the guys here in Vegas that have performed in other shows elsewhere have said they’ve noticed one or two different sounding notes when playing other PVCs, which was maybe the result of one blue man liking it better at the time, and then of course, everybody just got used to it.

MW:  I realise they’re all made from PVC, but do the instruments have their own names?

SS: We really just call them the PVCs.

MW: So how do you distinguish between them?

SS: That’s a good segue into a discussion about one of our favourite instruments we call the Drumbone, which of course is made from PVC. However, this has moving parts. It’s the ultimate in simplistic instruments, but it’s also the ultimate in collective instruments as it takes three people to play it. So it’s like putting together a band around just one instrument!

VV: There’s a small condenser mic permanently mounted inside as well as an XLR fitting.

MW: So like a trombone the different notes are produced by sliding the PVCs in and out to crucial lengths for pitch purposes?

VV: Yeah, it’s just like a trombone; you have to hit the right notes.

SS: But if you look closely, you can see we have little cheat marks on the side to help us!

VV: And every once in a while, based on what happens, we have to sit down with a tuner and make sure everything is still okay, although the guys usually play by ear anyway.

MW: What formal music training do you have, Scott? Were you a drummer before you joined the group?

SS: Not really. I’m an actor basically and I had some rhythm, and then learned to drum for the show. I was living in LA, and they had me in drum lessons for a year and a half before I even got hired. I don’t know what notes I’m playing on that thing, really. I know which colours to play, which is the same for most of the guys here, because that’s how we all learned, but I certainly didn’t learn the ropes by learning to read the notes.

VV: But there’s an artistic nature to that too, which comes from a thing called Synesthesia. There is scientific research that shows where some of the colour aspects of music come into play. That’s one of the reasons why they went with the colour thing, because they wanted to remove themselves from traditional theoretical conception. So none of the music in the show is written out. We hire a guy; then we teach them. It’s all aural.

ON-STAGE CHEMISTRY

MW: While the show is obviously tightly choreographed, are the performers allowed to put much of themselves into the ‘blue man’ roles?

VV: It’s not only encouraged, it’s absolutely vital.

MW: What about the energy and chemistry then between all three blue men, Scott. Can it work on some nights and not others?

SS: Absolutely, I mean that’s one of the good and bad things about it. Here in Vegas we have seven blue men in total, and last night I was in with Mark and Nick, and the night before I was in with different guys again. I played a different blue man role both nights, so it’s great for us because it’s like a different show each night. And different people are responsible for setting different aspects of the show.

VV: The same thing applies in the band. There are four drum rigs, and we all switch around. So last night I played the kit that’s responsible for setting things for the whole band – it’s kind of the band leader – and this musician also acts as a kind of interface between the band and the blue men. So regardless of who’s playing this role on any given night, he’s watching for their cues and calling the shots in the band on how they shift along with the performance. But then tonight, I’ll be behind one of the other rigs and someone else will be playing the main kit. So just like any band, if you play with a different drummer, the show tracks differently, and because everybody has a slightly different take on the music within the set parameters, it keeps things feeling really fresh.

SS: So, for instance, when a new blue man guy starts, sometimes it takes awhile to find that chemistry or to be able to connect with them… again, just like any band. And then after you do a lot of shows together, things eventually feel comfortable. But then sometimes that can go too far, and things get stale. When that happens you need to spice it up. I mean, let’s face it, if the same three guys did every show for two years – each guy playing the same role over and over – I’d know exactly what was going to happen right now. You wouldn’t be able to sustain that for long.

MIXING & FREQUENCIES

MW: When the show first came to Vegas, you were at another big hotel, the Luxor. Has much changed in the musical line-up since then, Vince?

VV: One of the really interesting things about this gig here in Vegas relates back to an incident that occurred during the tracking of one of the albums I did with the Blue Man Group. We were in the studio trying to record five drummers – which is not something you’d normally attempt, right? We were trying to cram all these drums into this little box, and as you might appreciate, it just wasn’t working. But then one of our drum techs, Carl Plaster, came to the rescue. He stopped the session, came into the booth, and madly ran around tuning things. I went into the control room and listened to the previous take while this was happening and then listened to the sound he’d created after he’d lined up all the overtones of the snares and everything was in tune. And the mix just magically came together.

So we ended up doing a fair amount of that here, experimenting with how the drums get tuned, because of how much space it can take up or leave in the mix with everything else.

MW: What sort of frequency range do all the percussive instruments sit at?

VV: The PVCs are all kinda low midrange instruments. So you’ve got four drum sets, and these low midrange PVCs all vying for the same frequency range. So it’s been great over the time, we’ve been here, to be able to experiment to see what makes things peak out. We’ve experimented with pitching everything specifically, pitching drums to chords, then just dumping them out. I mean we’ve gone through every conceivable tuning option. And what a great thing for me to be able to just walk out in front of this massive PA and go: “Alright play it. Right, now try that differently. Now try it this way, with this tuning.” I mean, you just don’t normally get time to do that, so it’s really cool.

MW: I can imagine that with so much percussion, the front-of-house engineer has his work cut out for him.

VV: FOH is actually not the hard job; it’s doing the monitors that really tests the engineers. Everyone in the band switches instruments every night you see, and everyone needs a different monitor mix each time. And it’s not just the same five guys with the same five monitor mixes each night either. You have to factor in the different combinations of line-ups and what position each person’s playing in each night as well. I mean, there’s no monitor board that really cuts it, so we’ve had to make it work with a second Yamaha PM1D.

SS: It’s the same with the blue men out front. If I’m in the central blue man role, I want to make my mix have more kit it in than I do when I’m playing on the left because you don’t necessarily need as much kit playing that role. So each blue man position needs a different monitor mix too. It’s complex… complex enough that we need two PM1Ds: one for monitors and one for FOH.

BLUE MEN GO MOBILE

MW: What was the thinking behind introducing the Backpack PVCs that the blue men actually wear and walk around in?

VV: As the show evolved, we thought: ‘how can we get the guys to move around more?’ So originally these consisted of just flexible hose, but we realised after a while that keeping them in tune was unbelievably hard. Because it was flexible hose, it didn’t stay in the same shape. Plus, having the guys moving around with the tubing miked up was a monitoring and sound nightmare. So somebody eventually suggested we trigger them. And initially we were like: ‘no triggering, no triggering’. But after a bunch of experimentation we eventually decided to try it, and it’s worked out brilliantly. Each small pad has a homemade trigger inside that sends out pulses to an Alesis DM5, with our own custom sample library all coming out of Kontakt… I mean where are you going to buy a library of PVCs right? [laughs]. Each sample has five or six velocity ranges, and within those ranges there are six or seven samples. Then inside these there’s a little pitch bend to give it a real feel.

MW: What are they like to play and get around in on stage, Scott?

SS: It takes a little getting used to, because you always have to know where the cabling is so you don’t get tripped up, but the crew is great at taking care of feeding the cables. It’s like wearing a heavy hiking backpack, and it’s really just a case of getting used to the weight. Also, for some reason the audience still wants to see the blue men clearly when we’re in the suits, so there are lights mounted in the instruments that shine right into our faces, so sometimes it’s like: ‘How am I supposed to see what’s going on? Where did everybody go?’ [laughs].

VV: These Backpack PVCs evolved when we first came to Vegas. In the New York show for example, where the stage is small, there’s nowhere for the blue men to move around, but because we have such a big stage area here, we thought. ‘Okay, let’s look at getting the guys moving around’.

NO TWO PVCs ARE ALIKE

MW: So which are the most challenging PVCs to play, Scott?

SS: Well actually playing the ‘centre’ blue man is always the most challenging, no matter which PVC, because musically it’s the most complex. For example, when I first started, since I wasn’t already a drummer, there was no way I could play the centre parts until I’d been doing the other parts in the shows for a while.

MW: Is there much technique required to get a decent sound out of the other acoustic PVCs?

VV: Oh yeah, surprisingly the guys have to work really hard to get a good sound out of them. It’s just like hitting any drum; if you hit it differently then you’re going to get a different sound.

BECOMING A BLUE MAN

MW: How long was it before you had every instrument down, Scott?

SS: Well since I had no prior drumming experience, and like I said, they had me in drum lessons once a week for a year and a half while I just went about my normal life. Then I went to New York for a final call back and a three-day workshop. From there, a couple of us were hired into training, which consisted of about two months full time in New York. And even then you’re still not in the show. I trained with two other guys: one got sent home after four weeks, and the other after five weeks, so then there was just me! You actually get put in the New York show after about six weeks, but even then you’re still not really hired yet. At the end of these two months you get shipped off to work in one of the shows. Even though I’ve been doing the show for over three years now, it’s like you never stop learning and getting better.

MW: So would an experienced drummer with really great chops stand a better chance of getting in?

VV: Well sure, a drummer would pick up the music aspect more easily I guess, but the acting side of it is a whole other thing. There’s this subtle acting thing that goes on between these guys, because it’s not like, ‘hey, here’s a script to follow’.

SS: The two guys that got cut during my training were much better drummers than I was. So they didn’t get cut because of their drumming.

VV: We’ll take a guy like Scott that shows the right potential and we’ll teach him the drumming aspects. But it also works in reverse. Sometimes we’ll get a great drummer in, like this hardcore drum corp guy, Anthony Parrulli, who’d never done any acting before in his life. He went off and took acting classes for a while. So people come to the role from both ends. You’ve just got to find people that can rise in the middle and take on both artistic roles.

SS: I think the problem with a lot of drummers is, they come in thinking they have it in the bag, and what’s unfortunate is that there are also a lot of actors that see the show and think, ‘Well, I just don’t have the drumming chops so it’s probably never going to happen’. Whereas, if you’ve got rhythm, they can teach you a lot of it.

STRINGING UP

MW: The show has no sequencing, canned backing or even a keyboard in sight. What’s the musical line-up consist of in detail?

VV: We have a Zither set up to play almost like a lap-steel, which goes through a delay pedal and overdrive, plus wah and volume pedals. It’s sort of set up like a piano where you have three strings on each note. And it’s really hard to play [laughs], but we’ve come up with some really interesting and unique sounds with this instrument. For instance, there are a few songs where it genuinely sounds like a synth. The guy who plays it also plays a little bit of guitar in the show.

We also have a guitarist who plays a Vintage ’57 Jazz Master. We were using all vintage Orange Amplifiers originally, but found we just kept blowing through them, so eventually we had a guy in Texas pull one apart and rebuild it with modern components. So now it’s a blue man amplifier, but it still sounds just like an Orange.

And then there’s the Chapman Stick, which has 10 strings and is basically a bass and guitar that you’re supposed to tap, though we quickly decided we’d take a different approach; our bass player plays it with a sawing action. We were looking for something a little driving – although it only gets played on two songs. Emmett Chapman, who created the instrument, isn’t a big fan of what we do to it, because he likes the tapping, melodic aspect of it, and this really turns it into a rock instrument with a more aggressive sort of sound.

PRE-SHOW PREP

MW: Is it a messy job getting ready for each show? I mean there’s the small matter of all that blue paint!

VV: First thing we do is hang them up by their feet and dip them in the paint [laughs].

SS: Just the make-up takes about 45 minutes to get on, and the same amount to get off. A lot of the time is spent just waiting for things like glue to set for the bald cap. And it’s a grease paint, so you can’t just wipe it off with water at the end of the show.

VV: We also have a warm-up/rehearsal/jam before each show downstairs in our rehearsal space. This is where we decide whether we need to work on anything, like maybe slow something down or break it down, or even open it up as a jam. It’s also great for setting a vibe before each show.

SAILING INTO THE BLUE

Having masterminded the BMG empire from those early pioneering days in Manhattan, and with a string of successful productions dotted across the globe today, Blue Man Group’s founders Stanton, Wink and Goldman still show no signs of hanging up their latex caps.

Plans are in place to send a fresh, full size production out to sea aboard the Norwegian Cruise Line’s next ship. An IMAX 3D movie starring the BMG is also in the pipeline, which has enlisted the talents of veteran writer-producer, Charlotte Huggins, and award-winning film maker, David Russo.

If you’re yet to experience the Blue Man Group in the flesh, take it from me, there’s simply nothing else quite like them. If you’re unlikely to journey within earshot of a current production, at least see what all the excitement is about by checking out one of the two live concerts on DVD: The Complex Rock Tour Live or How To Be A Megastar Live.

For the latest on the Blue Man Group, check out www.blueman.com