Vocalist Brandon Boyd
Incubus’ radio smash hit in 2001, “Drive,” boosted the band into top seating on the Modern Rock charts. Currently touring under their newest album, A Crow Left of the Murder, the band (vocalist Brandon Boyd, guitarist Mike Einziger, drummer Jose Pasillas and bassist Ben Kenney) is criss-crossing through the nation’s arenas. Mix spoke with front-of-house engineer Greg Nelson at San Jose, Calif.’s, HP Pavilion in early August.
Front-of-house engineer Greg Nelson
The P.A., supplied by db Audio, comprises 14 Electro-Voice X-Lines (main hang) and 14 X-Arrays (side hang). “I’m flying 12 single-18 X-Line subs that db built and eight X-Line subs a side,” Nelson explains. “The front-fill is six single-12 [Electro-Voice] wedges. I split my ground subs up with four in the middle and six on each side of the stage. The low-end coverage is great. The array of flown subs is very tight and covers the upper seats while I use the ground subs for the floor and the lower seats.”
Nelson is mixing on a Midas XL4 using 35 inputs. “I also have six audience mics I send direct to Pro Tools [LE, mixed on a laptop] for recording. The band is recording all the shows and then picking a select few to be sold on the Internet for the band’s Make Yourself Foundation. They wanted the shows to have a rough, bootleg feel to them, so I don’t use too many plug-ins or get too analytical about the mix.
“Brandon is using a Shure Beta 58. Almost all the mics are Shure except one [Audio-Technica] AT-4050 on guitar. I have three PCM 80s for drums and percussion, two SPX-990s for weird effects and distortion, and TC Electronic’s D2 delay and an M5000 for vocals. For compressors, I’ve got two dbx 160SLs and four Smart Research C2s.”
