Question: How did you get your start in the business?
Kevin Elson: I played in bands in junior high and high school, and then started doing sessions. I did my first sessions, playing keyboards with Lynyrd Skynryd, when I was 16 in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. I had been playing in a band that was the beginning of 38 Special.
The singer, Donnie Van Zant, had a brother, Ronnie, who sang with a band called One Percent, and that band became Lynyrd Skynrd. We all played the same clubs and we became close friends. During my first time in a recording studio (with Lynyrd Skynryd), I got hooked on the engineering side. So when I got out of high school, I pursued that work.
Q: How long have you been working on tours?
KE: I started working with Lynyrd Skynyrd as a club band in 1973 and kind of learned with them as they grew doing their first record deal, working with them in the studio and then doing their live sound. After that, I moved out to the Bay area and started working with Journey full-time doing their live shows and studio work for many years.
Through the years, I’ve also done tours with Van Morrison, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, Foreigner, Bush, and Jewel.
Q: How did you end up with the Kelly Clarkson tour?
KE: In 2007, I got a call to fill in for a friend of mine on her “My December” tour. What was going to be just two weeks turned into a month, which turned into seven months. I was called back in February when she started doing promotion for the new record.
Q: How long have you worked with Avid VENUE systems for live shows?
KE: I began using VENUE in 2006 on a Journey tour. I had seen a friend using one and became interested because I had mixed in the studio on Pro Tools systems. So I started calling my friends asking them questions about VENUE.
I got a system to try out in a Journey rehearsal. One of my friends (and former Digidesign employee), Dave Skaff, came out and walked me through it. The learning process was really quick.
Q: What was your first impression of VENUE, particularly coming from the studio world with such high expectations for quality?
KE: Before using VENUE, I had worked on some other digital products, but the pre-amps were real hard-sounding, and the way you had to work with it just didn’t gel with my mindset. Coming from an analog console world, everything was foreign to me.
When I first put a microphone into the VENUE system, I thought, “Oh, O.K. That sounds like a microphone.” The quality was great. And knowing the plug-ins, I could alter the sound. That was more to my liking because with the other digital decks I was working with at the time it was, “What you see is what you get.” You were stuck with that sound. I didn’t want to be cornered into that kind of world.
Q: Apart from the sound quality and availability of plug-ins for VENUE systems, what sets them apart from other digital consoles you’ve used?
KE: I would say ease of use. It’s maintenance free as far as I’m concerned. You know you can turn it on and it will work every day. When you are traveling on the road doing a lot of shows, the last thing you want to worry about is whether your gear is working. VENUE systems will sound the same and recall perfectly day after day.
Q: You are using VENUE for both front-of-house and monitors on Kelly Clarkson. Is that right?
KE: Yes, we’re using VENUE D-Show out front and two VENUE Profile systems on monitors. On monitors, the musical director and drummer are using PQ systems.