Sacramento, CA (September 12, 2022)—Around since 2005, post-hardcore act Dance Gavin Dance has sold more than 1 million records, many of them thanks to the band’s committed touring schedule, which has taken it to more than 30 countries over the years. Along for the ride on many of those jaunts has been FOH engineer Travis Wade, and for the band’s current itinerary, which includes the upcoming When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas next month and a UK tour next spring, Wade has been renting gear from Sacramento Production Services.
“For this tour, I went with an Allen & Heath dLive S7000 surface and a DM48 MixRack rented through Sacramento Production Services,” he said. For additional I/O at the front of house position, Wade uses a DX168 expander, which adds 16 dLive mic preamps and eight line outputs, and connects directly to a dedicated DX port on the back of his control surface.
dLives have been his desk of choice ever since he first had to use a dLive S5000 under extreme circumstances while mixing hardcore legends Suicidal Tendencies: “We were only expecting about 600 people—about 4,000 showed up.” The show was shut down after only four songs after the oversized crowd got unruly, but by then, Wade had discovered he dug the unfamiliar desk: “I ended up having my mind blown—it was super easy to get going and I didn’t find myself having to navigate through many pages to get to the parameters I needed.”
The band has used dLives even when not on tour, it turns out. In December, 2020, Dance Gavin Dance held a unique livestream performance from the historic Tower Bridge in Sacramento, which Wade mixed and captured through his dLive. “We had only 12 hours to load in, get the performances, and tear down before they had to re-open the bridge for traffic,” recalled Wade. “We didn’t have time for any errors.”
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For the upcoming overseas shows, Wade noted that he will be bringing along a C1500 dLive surface to maintain the same processing power in a more portable form factor: “It is under the weight limit for airlines, which means I can fly with it with no issue.”
