USA - To honour the legacy of the Allman Brothers Band, the musical supergroup known as The Brothers recently returned to New York City’s storied Madison Square Garden for a pair of shows in April.
Led by former ABB guitarist and Gov’t Mule founder Warren Haynes and featuring drummer Jaimoe, the last surviving original member of the Allman Brothers Band, the ensemble also included former ABB guitarist Derek Trucks (nephew of ABB drummer the late Butch Trucks), bassist Oteil Burbridge, and percussionist Marc Quiñones, plus Joe Russo, Reese Wynans, and Isaac Eady, as well as special guest Chuck Leavell on piano.
It was an emotional reunion. The Brothers last played MSG in March 2020 to celebrate 50 years since the founding of the Allman Brothers Band.
Fortunately, some very 21st century technology was on hand for the two shows, in the form of three DiGiCo Quantum consoles, as well as a DiGiCo SD12-96 desk, all provided by Southold, New York-based SK Systems (with an L-Acoustics sound system supplied by PRG).
At front of house were both a Quantum338 and a Quantum225; the broadcast mix had another Quantum338; and monitors used an SD12-96. So on those nights at MSG, The Brothers relied on another set of siblings – DiGiCo Quantum, all of which were connected on an Optocore network along with an SD-Rack and SD-Nano Rack.
The workflow began with front of house. Engineer Brian Speiser, who also regularly mixes FOH and acts as PM for Tedeschi Trucks Band, was at the Quantum338 for the main house mix. In addition, systems engineer Chris Bedry, who also performs that role for TTB, manned a Quantum225 next to Speiser, taking stems from Speiser’s house mix and putting them together, over headphones, for a backup broadcast mix.
The primary broadcast mix was being handled by Bobby Tis – usually TTB’s monitor and studio engineer – on another Quantum338, with Chris Bailey mixing monitors on a DiGiCo SD12-96.
“Chris Bedry was multi-tracking the whole show, but also sending a backup stems mix from me to the broadcast people so that they had an emergency backup that was coming directly from us if something went wrong in the broadcast room,” explains Speiser, who started laying out this workflow months ahead of time, adding, “the Quantum225 was also submixing all of Marc Quiñones’ percussion channels and sending them back to me on the 338.”
This was only the second performance for The Brothers, the first being 2020’s ABB 50th Anniversary show. “I didn’t mix their 2020 show, so going into what’s essentially a throw-and-go at Madison Square Garden, I felt like it would be best if I had Chris specifically zero in on what Marc, the percussionist, was doing so that I can mostly focus on everything else that was happening on stage with two drummers, an organ player, a piano player, two guitar players, bass, and vocals. Marc had a lot of mics that sometimes needed to be live, but sometimes didn’t, and two different vocal mics for his two positions.”
What could have potentially complicated matters was the fact that Speiser had never piloted a Quantum console before this. “I have always been on SD consoles, so I went to a local vendor in Cleveland where I live now who happened to have a Quantum and a Waves server in the shop,” he recalls. “And they were nice enough to let me come over there one day and build my session, and I spent one afternoon just going through it.”
Broadcast mixer Bobby Tis is also a longtime DiGiCo user – he tours with TTB on a Quantum338 – and felt at home in what he described as a “DiGiCo universe” at the Garden. “It was pretty cool to really network four consoles together and be sharing lines and making it all work together,” he says of the MSG shows.
A new Fourier Audio transform.engine that Tis used with his console at Madison Square Garden also helped make the broadcast mix a better experience. “I had messed around with other scenarios of running plugins with the DiGiCo, but not with the actual Fourier Audio transform.engine before, and I’ve got to say I was super impressed with how very easy it was to use,” he says. “There’s always a bit of nerves when you’re using something new like that on a show, but I put it through its paces and found it to be a really solid device and I had a lot of fun playing with it.”
