Indianola, MS (September 19, 2016)—B.B. King may no longer be with us, but the blues legend lives on in both in the hearts of the millions who loved his music and in the annual festival bearing his name. This year marked the 35th anniversary edition of the B.B. King Homecoming Festival, and to ensure that every note was captured, Bill Alford, owner of Showtec Productions, provided a peck of DPA Microphones for the stage sound.
Alford used two d:facto 4018VL linear vocal microphones to capture the dynamic vocals of the lead singers. Some of the acts that used DPA at the festival included the B.B. King Museum All-Stars, Jake and the Pearl Street Jumpers, Steve Azar and the Kings Men, and Teeny Tucker.
“I was really surprised with how loud you could turn the microphones up without feedback,” says Alford. “Some performers do not have good microphone etiquette; they don’t know how to hold the mic and want to cover the bottom part of the head with their hand, or when they hit a high note they don’t back off the microphone,” continues Alford. “DPA has done a good job concerning these problems that other microphones continue to face. When using DPA, my front of house and monitor engineers don’t have to worry about the small things, and that is fantastic.”
Showtec Productions had other microphones on loan from DPA to test out on instruments at the B.B. King Homecoming Festival. The kit included a d:vote 4099D Instrument Microphone for Drums, d:dicate 2011C Twin Diaphragm Cardioid Microphones for the kick drums and as overheads, and a few d:vote 4099S Instrument Microphones for Saxophones.
“The instrument microphones are night and day compared to the ones we previously used on a regular basis,” explains Alford. “The sound is phenomenal. My front of house engineer couldn’t stop talking about them. When your FOH engineer is that excited about a product, you want to do whatever you can to try to keep those microphones around. The d:vote 4099Ds are just awesome. They give the drums a boost and make them sound like nothing you have ever heard.”
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