Zac Brown and his bandmates know that you don’t build a fanbase just by making an album. You earn it—one show at a time.
The two-time Grammy Award winners have spent years putting miles under their wheels, playing more than 200 dates annually to increasingly larger audiences of country music fans.
Veteran live engineer Eric Roderick mans the FOH position for the band, relying on their VENUE D-Show system to handle up to 96 inputs from the stage. “I’ve been using the [D-Show] for three years now, and I’m definitely a big fan,” says Roderick.
“When I first started working with digital consoles, most of them were pretty unwieldy—[you’d have to go through] page after page of menus to navigate for even the simplest tasks.
Once I tried VENUE, I knew—this is my desk. Everything’s where it should be, and the workflow makes perfect sense. It’s a beautiful thing.”
The VENUE system’s vast selection of onboard plug-in processing is a distinct advantage to most self-contained digital consoles, according to Roderick. “For some things I’ll use Avid plug-ins like Smack! or EQ III,” he says.
“I’m also a big fan of the McDSP MC2000 multiband compressor for Zac’s vocals, and the Fairchild limiters for some of the acoustic instruments. Either way, it’s great to be able to mix the whole show without having to carry a rack full of gear.”
Roderick also relies heavily on the Virtual Soundcheck feature. “I use it for a lot of different things,” he explains.
“If we’re at a date and I don’t have time to check out an arena, I can pull up our last [recorded] arena gig in Pro Tools and get a really quick feel for the room, with vocals and the band playing, even though they’re not there. It’s very useful. I’m planning on using it for rehearsals as well, to try out different mics and see what works.”
Of course, the VENUE system’s direct integration with Pro Tools|HD is a particularly important feature to the band.
“We track every show to Pro Tools, every night—even the opening acts,” he says. “We take 70 inputs from the stage, as well as audience mics and everything else. It’s simple [to do] with the VENUE system.”
