Blues-rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa has completed a tour of UK and Europe at the Greenwich Music Time festival, staged in the grounds of London’s historic Old Royal Naval College. Recorded for subsequent DVD release, the show’s sound lighting, rigging and crew were provided by Adlib.
Adlib Director Dave Jones was responsible for the audio in the UK, where a full sound rig was supplied, and Europe where the tour continued with a control package. Eric Roa was tour Production Manager and Mark Johnson as the main Adlib PA Tech. Johnson worked with FOH engineer Scott Ragsdale, monitor engineer Matt Naylor and systems engineer John Kaylor, and had previously worked for Adlib on Bonamassa’s 2014 Europe and UK festival tour.
The musical thread for this tour was ‘British Blues Explosion’ with the music of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page plus a selection of Bonamassa’s own hits, including ‘Sloe Gin’. The full PA system in the UK comprised (in its largest format) of arrays of eight L-Acoustics K2 boxes flown underneath four K1 elements per side, a design developed by Kaylor and fine-tuned to Bonamassa’s requirements. Side hangs of K2 boxes were added for venues like Preston Town Hall, which is very wide making out-hangs essential.
The design didn’t require any subs, allowing the combination of Bonamassa’s playing and Ragsdale’s mixing to exploit the low end of the K1 and K2 to the point at which they don’t need any additional sub reinforcement ‘They have honed this technique and it works brilliantly,’ Johnson says.
The tour also carried L-Acoustics ARCS speakers for in and out fill as needed and Kara for lip fills. Adlib supplied a DiGiCo SD10 mixing console for Ragsdale at FOH, where the mix is performed without plug-ins. Naylor specified a Midas H3000 console for monitors – Adlib keeps a couple in good working order for analogue requests like this. The company also supplied a standard mics package, and the band also brought their own.
d&b audiotechnic M2 wedges were the choice for stage monitors. Keyboard player Reese Wynans used one M2; bass player Michael Rhodes had a single M2 for fill; guitarist Russ Irwin on stage left who also sung vocals and played keyboards was on Sennheiser IEMs with custom Westone moulds; and drummer Anton Fig used a mix of Shure P6HW IEMs with Custom Futuresonics moulds and an Adlib dual 15 inch drum sub behind, for air movement.
‘They are an absolute pleasure to work with’ says Mark, ‘All consummate professionals who know exactly what they want and how to ask for it.’
In Europe, Johnson accompanied the control package for which the set-up was extremely well organised and geared for 30-minute changeovers in the case of their festival headliners which interspersed with own show headliners. ‘We’ve been lucky enough to work with Eric and his brilliant team for many years now, and it is honestly a pleasure,’ says Adlib Director and account handler, Dave Jones. ‘The live shows have grown over the years and Joe Bonamassa has proven to be one of the best guitarists and performers out there on the live scene.’
The Greenwich gig provided the setting for the DVD recording, with beautiful buildings and–rare for the UK –summer weather.
