“If you don’t love it, don’t do it cause (some days) you have to.” - one small piece of advice from someone who really should know. Derek Van Ord, monitor engineer for Ben Harper, has spent the last five years affixed to a life on the road.

Derek and Ben outdoors

The “no home, living out of a storage unit life” hasn’t always been the way for Derek. He got the usual start in audio working clubs and loading trucks at production warehouses. But before dreams of becoming a touring audio engineer filled his mind, Derek studied radio in college with aspirations of one day producing documentaries for NPR (National Public Radio).

It wasn’t until his senior year project (ironically enough documenting the lives of documentary producers) that Derek abandoned that dream. After learning of the extremely risky careers of producers (eight to ten years of work before being commissioned to produce documentaries), he left upstate New York and moved across the country to San Francisco.

A healthy tour-of-duty at local clubs marked Derek’s first experiences with audio in California. “Slim’s Club”, “End Up”, and “Club Terminator” were among the list of venues giving Derek his early Front-of-House and technical experiences. Derek recounted one of the more memorable evenings at “End Up”, a club in San Francisco. What was supposed to be a rock and roll gig turned into a rave with theatrics which included mock human sacrifices. “I had a two foot diameter flaming ball fly on my console”, remarks Derek.

Working around Central California eventually led Derek to JK Sound Services, a sound reinforcement company located in the Bay Area. After a brief interview, he was immediately hired to begin with the basic warehouse duties that most engineers trying to break into the industry have experienced. Prepping gear and loading trucks taught him the ins and outs of professional mobile audio. It didn’t take Derek long to crawl his way up the ladder and eventually become chief systems engineer for JK. Looking back at his stay with JK, Derek says, “We started with a crappy PA that we used for a couple of bands and ended up with a 40 box EAW system.” Through raves, street fairs, concerts, and club gigs, he learned many facets of live audio which would help him down the road and throughout his career.

While at JK, in the summer of 1994, Derek received a call to join the production team for the band “Luscious Jackson” as their monitor engineer. It was Derek’s acceptance of the gig that eventually led him to Ben Harper where he still resides as monitor engineer. That was five years and hundreds of shows ago. Ben keeps Derek busy as they do between 100 and 200 shows a year both nationally and internationally. He has toured Australia, New Zealand, France, Japan, and the UK with Ben to thousands of fans wherever they have gone.

“Ben is very picky and we have his mixes very precise” Derek utilizes a Midas Heritage 3000 console for Ben’s demanding monitor mixes. Only four performers take the stage during a Ben Harper performance however each one has different demands that keep Derek on his toes. To top that off, the show is marked with over 1000 cues that make any daydreaming or wandering virtually impossible. Thirty-nine channels, many of which are redundant for individual EQ purposes, take up the desk. Approximately twenty compressors and a variety of outboard gear processes the signals he mixes.