Larkin Poe is an American roots-rock band from Nashville, comprised of sisters Rebecca Lovell (lead vocals, electric and acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, violin, piano) and Megan Lovell (harmony vocals, lapsteel and drobo buitars) collaborating with bassist Tarka Layman and drummer Ben Satterlee. The sisters first started out in 2005 as a bluegrass Americana group called the Lovell Sisters and in 2010 regrouped as Larkin Poe.

I checked in with Brendon Harris, the band’s front of house engineer, in the midst of the recent Blood Harmony 2023 World Tour during a stop at The Fillmore in San Francisco. Harris grew up playing guitar, then picked up drums a few years later. From there, he started recording himself, doing covers in his bedroom and learning about basic mic techniques and the fundamentals of audio.

“I also played in a garage band and a church band which led to some interest in live audio,” he adds. “I remember watching videos of audio veteran Dave Rat (Rat Sound) when I was in high school and learning about his mindset when it comes to FOH audio. I moved to Nashville in 2013 and attended Belmont University where I received my degree in audio engineering technology in 2017.

“During my final year at Belmont, I was fortunate to intern with Vance Powell (record producer-engineer for Jack White, Chris Stapleton, Phish, Martina McBride, among others). That’s where I think most of my mixing techniques come from. I picked up gigs out of college at the Fontanel [Mansion, in Nashville], doing weekly community festival type of gigs.”

Out of that, he got the opportunity to work with singer-songwriter Jewel – his first touring gig – and also toured extensively with Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown. He’s been with Larkin Poe since July 2018, making the connection through Tyler Bryant (Rebecca’s husband), who was Harris’ roommate at the time. “While Tyler and I were living together we also recorded a couple of songs on Larkin Poe’s Peach record in our home,” he adds.

Traveling Light

The current tour is employing house PA systems, carrying a kit of a console and stageboxes, microphones, in-ear monitors, pedals and support gear. Harris, who’s working solo with help from techs at each venue, delivers his front of house mixes with a compact Allen & Heath dLive CTi1500 mix surface working with a single DM0 MixRack and three DX168 I/O expanders, and this package also accommodates stage monitoring.

He recalls his first time behind a dLive console in February of 2019 and says he was immediately hooked: “The workflow made sense, it had a ton of options for processing, and it sounded great as well. I went with the CTi1500 due to its ability to be 50 pounds in a road case. We do a lot of flying, so it’s nice to be able to take our gear with us and stay as consistent as possible anywhere in the world.

“On top of all of that, it’s a fraction of the cost of the other major console brands while having a majority of the features. I’ve stopped using Waves for channel processing completely because of everything that’s available in the box. Allen & Heath has also been great because it seems like they’re constantly taking feedback and adding new tools and features to the desk to make it even more powerful.”

He previously toured with a Midas M32 platform, and notes that while it was great, the band just outgrew it. “When I knew it was time to upgrade, I immediately knew I wanted a dLive system. Funny though, I would talk to other engineers while on tour with the M32 and say, ‘We’re thinking of upgrading soon.’ Pretty much everyone immediately responded with, “You should look into dLive.” It really has the best of the features from the other console brands – grid routing like an Avid, layout customization like a DiGiCo, etc. It just makes sense.”

The dLive system configuration he’s deployed provides 128 input channels, which he splits evenly between FOH and monitors. Then he uses the A&H Custom Control app to build a monitor mixer for the band that only has channel faders and pans for their individual mixes.

“The band loves it, and it was surprisingly easy to build out,” he says. “We’ve talked about bringing out a monitor engineer in the past, but the band really loves just being able to be in control without needing to wave someone down for changes. It also allows them to do some trial and error in their mixes without having to go back and forth with an engineer. I also have a user key on my desk that recalls the monitor channels on my surface easily if I need to get in and make any deeper adjustments.”

Strategy For Capture

Rebecca and Megan’s vocals are captured with Telefunken M80 dynamic microphones, while backing vocalist Tarka Layman employs a Telefunken M81, both supercardioid models that Harris says have great fidelity while still being tight and controlled enough to reject backline noise, in addition strong feedback rejection when the group plays smaller stages.

Rebecca’s guitar amp has a Telefunken M81-SH and Megan’s lap steel amp has a Telefunken M80-SH. “Similar to what I stated before, they have great response,” Harris says. “Having the two separate models on each amp also serves as a built-in EQ.” He notes they’ve had the Shure PSM900 in-ear personal monitoring system since January 2019, paired with JH Audio IEMs for the sisters.

Harris also assembled the microphone choices for the tour. For Ben Satterlee’s drum kit- a Shure Beta 91a for the drum kick in and a Shure Beta 52a for kick out, which he says are both “just classics and reliable.”
Another M80-SH is on snare top with a M81-SH for snare bottom. “The M80 series have the durability and tightness of dynamics (as well as ability to handle SPL) while also still feeling very detailed like condensers,” he states. “It works beautifully on snare.”

Toms are handled by Sennheiser e904 dynamics, with Telefunken M60 condensers on hi-hat and ride and sE T2 condensers for overheads, the latter of which he notes, “I’m a big fan of larger diaphragm condensers in a spaced pair for overheads. Especially when I know that there’s a possibility of multitracking and remixing for other purposes down the road. These sound great, and I don’t feel like I have to be super-precious with them because they’re at a great price point.”

Getting back to the mix, Harris says he employs plenty of the dLive’s DEEP processing and Dyn8 processing. Currently waiting the arrival of Waves card, he plans on using TRACT from Waves on his matrixes for main PA processing as well as for multitracking.

“When the sisters had new pedal boards built by Xact Tone Solutions in Nashville, I had them build a Cat-to-balanced analog breakout into the board,” he adds. “This allows each board to have one Cat cable run to it that carries a balanced signal from our Shure AD4D for guitar wireless, a DI signal from their Strymon Iridium, and their vocal mics without needing a downstage sub snake. On the other end, they go to Radial Catapult break-out boxes.”

Harris concludes he tries to approach live sound with the same techniques that he learned from studio work: “Funneling down from channels to subgroups to master and having the individual elements properly interact with each other is what I consider to be the fundamental of mixing for me.

“Doing live sound, it’s tough to not always have the ability to chase fidelity 100 percent, depending on the external elements of the day. Sometimes it really just comes down to making sure everything is heard. I feel lucky to work with a band as good as Larkin Poe. They make my job a million times easier by just being a group of bad-ass musicians.”