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The Brothers return to Madison Square Garden with DiGiCo’s Quantum siblings

To honor the legacy of the Allman Brothers Band, godfathers of Southern Rock, the musical supergroup known as The Brothers recently returned to New York City’s storied Madison Square Garden for a pair of shows in April.

Led by former ABB guitarist and Gov’t Mule founder Warren Haynes and featuring drummer Jaimoe, the last surviving original member of the Allman Brothers Band, the ensemble also included former ABB guitarist Derek Trucks (nephew of ABB drummer, the late Butch Trucks), bassist Oteil Burbridge, and percussionist Marc Quiñones, plus Joe Russo, Reese Wynans, and Isaac Eady, as well as special guest Chuck Leavell on piano.

Three DiGiCo Quantum consoles, as well as a DiGiCo SD12-96 desk were on hand for the two shows, all provided by Southold, New York-based SK Systems, with an L-Acoustics sound system supplied by PRG. At front-of-house were both a Quantum338 and a Quantum225; the broadcast mix had another Quantum338; and monitors used an SD12-96. The DiGiCo Quantums were connected on an Optocore network along with an SD-Rack and SD-Nano Rack.

The workflow began with front-of-house. Engineer Brian Speiser, who also regularly mixes FOH and acts as PM for Tedeschi Trucks Band, was at the Quantum338 for the main house mix. In addition, systems engineer Chris Bedry, who also performs that role for TTB, manned a Quantum225 next to Speiser, taking stems from Speiser’s house mix and putting them together, over headphones, for a backup broadcast mix. The primary broadcast mix was being handled by Bobby Tis - usually TTB’s monitor and studio engineer - on another Quantum338, with Chris Bailey mixing monitors on a DiGiCo SD12-96.

“Chris Bedry was multi-tracking the whole show, but also sending a backup stems mix from me to the broadcast people so that they had an emergency backup that was coming directly from us if something went wrong in the broadcast room”, explains Speiser, who started laying out this workflow months ahead of time, adding, “the Quantum225 was also submixing all of Marc Quiñones’ percussion channels and sending them back to me on the 338.”

This was only the second performance for The Brothers, the first being 2020’s ABB 50th Anniversary show. “I didn’t mix their 2020 show, so going into what’s essentially a throw-and-go at Madison Square Garden, I felt like it would be best if I had Chris specifically zero in focus on what Marc, the percussionist, was doing so that I can mostly focus on everything else that was happening on stage with two drummers, an organ player, a piano player, two guitar players, bass, and vocals. Marc had a lot of mics that sometimes needed to be live, but sometimes didn’t, and two different vocal mics for his two positions.”

A new Fourier Audio Transform.Engine that Tis used with his console at Madison Square Garden also helped make the broadcast mix a better experience. “I had messed around with other scenarios of running plugins with the DiGiCo, but not with the actual Fourier Audio Transform.Engine before”, he says. “There’s always a bit of nerves when you’re using something new like that on a show, but I put it through its paces and found it to be a really solid device and I had a lot of fun playing with it.”

One application was applying the Oeksound Soothe2 dynamic resonance suppressor to the three pairs of stereo microphones in the arena, used as ambience mics. “I was mixing those into a group on the DiGiCo, and then across that group I was using the Soothe2 plugin aimed at the high midrange to look for resonance and take it out of the room ambience. And then I also am sending one of those pairs of audience mics out to a Bricasti M7 reverb. I’ve come to learn that putting the audience into a great space of its own and extending the room a bit helps the whole thing smear together. I also brought a lot of what I generally use in my studio right to the stage. That combination of the DiGiCo console and the Transform.Engine had me in my own sweet spot those nights.”

(Photos: DiGiCo)

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