Q: Do you use the recording capabilities of VENUE at all?
Kevin: We record every night. I have a full HD system out front as a backup, but generally we take everything in for the monitor side mainly because the monitors have different counts and clicks and talkbacks. It keeps me from taking in every single input because with all those different mikes talking back and forth, there are around 80 inputs.
Q: After you’ve recorded that material, do you ever use it for promotional work?
KE: Yes, definitely. For example, if they just want Kelly to sing on a TV track, we actually record the band at a sound check and use that. We’ll do a mix on it without Kelly, put a click track in, and then travel with just an eight-channel unit.
Then we give the TV people playback. You can provide a recording without the huge cost of going into the studio and re-recording or remixing or any of that. And we can do it all from the road.
Q: How do you approach mixing from a creative standpoint and how does VENUE support that?
KE: I try to get the best sound for each instrument. You know if you have a good-sounding console and access to any effect and compression or EQ, you can pretty much do what you want. VENUE has also been great for doing virtual sound checks in rehearsals, especially when you’re first learning a band or learning the songs.
Once the band members are gone, you can sit with some of the monitors and just play back ideas and try different echoes and compression and really get a sense of what a plug-in will do. That’s really helpful because a lot of times when you’re doing rehearsals, the band comes in and they’ll run through a song a couple of times, but you can’t really spend a lot of time experimenting, saying, “Hey, will you do that again? I want to hear this part.”
Q: What plug-ins do you typically use?
KE: Some of the Bomb Factory plug-ins and Smack! are my favorites and are used by most of the guys I know. As for third-party plug-ins, I like the TC reverbs, the VSS3 and the DVR-2s. I’ve used the McDSP M4000, which is a multi-band compressor. The other cool one I use a lot is Amp Farm. I’ve been using it on one of Kelly’s vocal effects, and I generally use it on bass guitar to simulate some extra amp noise.
Q: Do you go back and look at what plug-ins were used on different records or what analog gear was used on records and then try and recreate it?
KE: It depends. If there’s a certain effect we want, we do. With Kelly’s new single, “Already Gone,” we actually took the exact plug-ins from the record. Those came straight from the studio’s Pro Tools files. So that’s really helpful.
It also depends on the artist. Some artists will show up at rehearsal and say, “This is what I want, and this is what I use in the studio.” That’s what they want to hear in their in-ear monitoring or whatever. It’s a great option to have.
Q: You’ve been on the road in North America for a while. Where do you go next?
KE: We start in Dublin in February and then do a month in Europe and go to South Africa from there. After a few weeks off, we go to Australia and New Zealand, and then do two weeks of Far East dates in seven different countries. May 8 is the last show.