Jan 1, 2005 12:00 PM, Photos and Text by Steve Jennings

Australia's Kasey Chambers keeps it in the family: On tour, her father, Bill, plays guitar/dobro; and her brother, Nash Chambers, is her producer/manager/front-of-house engineer. Nash Chambers first began mixing by doing the Dead Ringer Band, which comprised the entire Chambers family. “It gave me something else to do that I enjoyed while we were touring,” Nash Chambers told Mix when we caught up with Kasey Chambers on her current tour supporting Wayward Angel in early November at San Francisco's The Fillmore.

“For Kasey's vocal,” he continues, “I've been using a Neumann KMS 105, which is fantastic and good when she belts it out in a harsh area, like around 4 kHz. The mic feeds an Amek 9098 mic preamp/EQ and a BSS 9012, which I love. I always have a handful of SM57s — it's still my all-around favorite mic.” Nash Chambers uses the 57s on snare, toms and guitars, and opts for a Shure Beta 52 on kick.

Nash Chambers (brother, producer/FOH engineer)

“When going from gig to gig where you might have a different P.A. system every show, my starting point is tuning the P.A. to Kasey's mic, flattening out the graphics and going from there. I generally don't use reverb on Kasey's vocal unless it's a really dead room, but I generally mix her records relatively dry, as well. We tend to use a lot of reverb but in short amounts: for the snare on some songs and guitars a bit. For inserts, I use a couple of gates on the toms and sometimes the kick and then a good stereo compressor.

“I spend part of the night walking the room: I'm mixing for everybody in the room and not just the mix position — which can be located in some strange places at times.”

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