Nashville, TN (March 20, 2023)—Chris Young has by no means been one to take a seat nonetheless; since bursting onto the charts in 2006, the singer/songwriter has amassed a truckload of number-one Country singles and a fervid following that catches him each time he goes on tour. In January this 12 months, the Grand Ole Opry member dropped two new singles, “Looking For You” and “All Dogs Go To Heaven,” to tease his upcoming ninth album, and to underline their launch, he headed out on the highway for 4 exhibits as properly—a preamble to a giant 12 months forward that may embrace a string of spring dates, festivals over the summer season after which a full-on enviornment tour within the fall.
The concert events additionally served as a chance to shake issues up a bit bit. While the nation star and his band nonetheless knocked out the hits, in addition they road-tested a brand new setlist, the brand new songs—and a brand new home engineer, too, with Erik Rogers taking up the FOH combine place. While Rogers spent the previous couple of years mixing heavy acts like Godsmack, Avatar, Breaking Benjamin and Falling in Reverse, he welcomed the possibility to dive into nation once more: “I blended a rustic artist, Dustin Lynch, for fairly some time, and again in 2017, one of many acts we opened for was Chris Young. The tour supervisor, Bill Cracknell, remembered me; we had a cellphone name a number of weeks in the past and right here I’m.”
The quick Winter run of sold-out on line casino arenas gave everybody on and off-stage time to work collectively and guarantee the whole lot was on-target earlier than the larger treks later within the 12 months. “The band has been collectively for a very long time, but it surely’s a predominantly new crew,” Rogers defined. “Everybody is aware of what they’re doing, however now we now have to do it collectively and current it to a roomful of strangers each night time as if we’ve been doing it collectively for 20 years! We did every week of rehearsals in Nashville, had 4 exhibits to dial it in and we’re already a well-oiled machine.”
The exhibits weren’t a warm-up, nevertheless—they ran pink sizzling from the beginning, with each the artist and audiences leaning into it. “Even the brand new songs that had been simply launched, the viewers already is aware of each phrase,” Rogers marveled, “after which you’ve the massive hits the place not solely do they know each phrase, however they scream them! It’s cool to have an viewers that engaged.”
While some mixers may pound the amount to get the combination over the group, Rogers prefers to maintain the SPLs civil. “I let the followers get it out of their system,” he chuckled. “Our present stays proper round 100 dBA averaged over 90 minutes. Of course, there are louder and quieter spots, they usually contribute to that—I measured the viewers the opposite day at 106!”
Both the home and monitor positions are centered round Yamaha Rivage PM10 consoles, supplied by Young’s longtime audio firm of alternative, Sound Image Nashville. Rogers and John Weaver—Young’s monitor engineer since March, 2020—every get 56 inputs coming from the stage; whereas the 2 PM10s are impartial methods, they’re additionally networked along with one taking the opposite’s outputs, and all talkback and chat loops run by means of fiber solely.
Joining the Chris Young camp marks the primary time Rogers has labored with a Rivage desk, barring one night time filling in on a Bush tour 5 years in the past. “While there’s a studying curve, that’s the case with any console,” he identified. “My expertise thus far is that it sounds nice, operates properly, and when you wrap your head round the way you patch, assign DSP for plug-ins and issues like that, it’s identical to some other desk, besides that it sounds actually, actually good. I do know colleagues that take the Rivage out with Shinedown, Luke Bryan and Garth Brooks, they usually all swear by these desks; after utilizing it for 4 exhibits, I can see why.
“One factor I’ve discovered concerning the Yamaha is to belief the desk,” Rogers added. “I attempted to make use of some outboard plug-ins, they usually don’t sound nearly as good. To me, time-aligning the whole lot to exit of the console and again in wasn’t definitely worth the work to make it sound correct, as a result of the whole lot on the desk—the Rupert Neve Designs SILK processing, the Portico plug-ins and the opposite Yamaha options in there? You can’t beat ’em. They sound actually good, so I’m simply utilizing the desk.”
That mentioned, there have been a handful of Waves plug-ins used for combine buss processing, hosted externally on a Mac Studio operating Audioström Live Professor software program and Audinate’s Dante Virtual Soundcard. “The cool factor about Live Professor is that it could run any plug-in native with out a server,” he defined, “so you’ll be able to have Sonnox, Brainworx, Waves, all of those a number of producers’ plug-ins on the identical platform.”
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With the crew altering however the band staying the identical, the miking for the seven musicians onstage and their guitars’ ISO cupboards has remained the identical as properly. “Chris owns all of his mics, and it’s a smorgasbord—Beyerdynamic, Telefunken, Sennheiser; there’s a bit one thing off the buffet for everyone up there proper now,” mentioned Rogers. “I’ve began engaged on mic placement and doing a little fine-tuning, however I’m conserving in thoughts that these guys are very pleased with their in-ear mixes. Any adjustments should be achieved in live performance with John, our monitor engineer, as a result of issues that I would transfer for nuance at front-of-house might trigger drastic adjustments for in-ears and make life very tough for the folks onstage.”
In the previous, the band’s monitor mixes had been dealt with with a mixture of sidefills and JH Audio JH11 in-ear screens, however that’s altering for 2023, mentioned Weaver: “Chris Young is transferring from utilizing sidefills and just one in-ear monitor, to utilizing each in-ears all by means of the present, with no sidefills in sight. The Rivage PM10’s EQ and the Portico 5043 compressor with the dynamic EQ actually helped with getting the readability we would have liked of their in-ears to attain this large change.”
While the autumn tour will carry full manufacturing, the fast on line casino enviornment run picked up native stacks and racks, so audiences had been handled to line arrays from L-Acoustics, Meyer Sound, RCF and Electro-Voice. Regardless of the P.A., at each cease, followers heard Young and his band clean up his setlist staples whereas additionally including some new soon-to-be favorites, leading to concert events that stored issues feeling new but additionally acquainted. With that in thoughts, Rogers stored the mixes true to what was coming off the stage—not replicating the report, however not heading into the nice unknown both.
“In dialog with the artist and administration, they needed one thing that felt stay and uncooked,” mentioned Rogers, “however once you’re mixing an artist that’s bought dozens of plaques on their wall for large hits, you’ve bought to maintain the tonality of the track comparatively near the unique intent, so that each one these hits sound like what folks have been listening to for 17 years. When you’ve a fan base that loyal, you don’t wish to instantly change the whole lot. There are parts and melodies which can be essential, and we take note of these issues. But then there’s additionally the massive nearer, ‘Aw Naw,’ which begins off as a rustic track and finally ends up with a giant rock’n’roll jam for the tip of the night time. That’s nowhere on the report—that’s the sound of a band having a whole lot of enjoyable!”