Manning FOH for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Raise the Roof Tour of Europe and the US, Mark Kennedy he specified a Solid State Logic Live L550. He first worked on an SSL Live with UK Faithless in 2015 and, when he began working with Plant in 2018, an L550 was already in the package, having been specified by his predecessor.
The band, features five musicians in addition to Plant and Krauss. ‘I don’t like to overcomplicate things with too many effects or too many compressors,’ Kennedy says. His
go-to processing is on the SSL Live console’s channel strip. ‘I find that the onboard compressor on the channel strip is more than adequate. Then I use selected effects, on the double bass or the vocals or what have you.
‘Effects-wise, it’s pretty simple: just instrument reverb and vocal reverb. I’ve found that the new reverbs on the console are really great. They sound fantastic, especially on the vocals. I only have one external effect, an old TC Electronic D2 delay, which we use on Robert’s voice for the big sustained vocal thing that he does.’
He says that the clarity of the SSL Live was especially noticeable during Plant and Krauss’ run of summer festival dates in Europe, where sound pressure levels are often regulated. At one festival, someone checking compliance was surprised to find that Kennedy’s mix was below the permitted maximum SPL.
Paul Owen, President of DCR Nashville and account manager for Plant, with whom Owen has worked in various production roles for many years, provided the control package for the two US legs of the Raise the Roof Tour.
‘Robert Plant transitioned to SSL Live a few years back,’ Owen says. ‘I was fortunate enough to be supplying audio, from a former company, on the first Robert Plant and Alison Krauss tour in 2008. When this tour came to light, knowing how well it was going to be received, DCR Nashville stepped up and purchased our first SSL 550. The outcome was spectacular, from the artists’ performances to Mark Kennedy’s mix.’
For the European leg, which included appearances at the Glastonbury Festival in the UK and Roskilde in Denmark, Clair Global’s Britannia Row Productions supplied a Live L550 console and control gear.
To manage his inputs, which numbered around 56 for this tour, he reports: ‘I use one layer for my inputs, then I use the banks for song-specific stuff. I have all the guitars for one song together, so whatever I need is at my fingers really quickly. I use Fader Tile one as a master, either VCAs or matrixes or utility or effects. Then I duplicate everything on Tile two and Tile three so that I can push the vocals up at the same time as I’m turning the guitar down, or whatever.’
On the output side, Kennedy uses his matrix to drive the house PA, typically configuring it for left, right, sub, fills and delays. Beyond the control surface, he continues, ‘I really like the fact that you’ve got parallel outputs on the SSL Stagebox. That has been so useful. You can give an output to broadcast and it sounds fantastic.
‘I love the Navigate Up button, which gets me straight to the gain, then I can flip from that to the trim, the phase and the pad,’ he continues. ‘I find that really, really useful.’ Since Plant and Krauss generally don’t soundcheck with the band, Kennedy must be on his toes as soon as the show kicks off. ‘On the first song I’m flat out, so it’s all about the speed. And the Live console is really fast to navigate once you get your head around it,’ he says.
‘I have Dan Currie with me, who is a fantastic systems engineer. He’s down the front and up the back and in the room on a Lake Processor on a wireless tablet, listening to what’s coming out of the speakers. Because the truth is that you can’t mix sound in these big arenas on your own. You need one person moving around – and I’m stuck behind the console.’
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