New York, NY (February 28, 2023)—Marking the silver anniversary of its now-revered sophomore album The Lonesome Crowded West, indie legends Modest Mouse recently hit the road to revisit the collection, playing it in whole every night along with additional fan faves and rarities. Along for the ride was FOH Engineer Peter Thompson, on-hand to mix a very different band than the one he first worked with…a few months ago.
“Modest Mouse was a seven-piece during my first run with them last summer,” said Thompson. “This Lonesome Crowded West tour was a four-piece and all guitar amps, no digital profilers or anything, so the whole setup was very analog.”
Well, not all of it. While the pared-back band reflected a back-to-basics approach compared to their recent tours, its concert live sound was likewise simple, but it was also digital as Thompson enlisted a Soundcraft Vi7000 digital mixing console with a Vi Stagebox and Realtime Rack Core for the trek.
Thompson saw the choice of desk as a no-brainer, given the circumstances: “The only challenge was battling the ambiance of the stage, getting the guitars to project and still have room for vocals. I’ve been using Vi consoles for a long time, since 2007 or so, and I’ve used them with Steely Dan and Bob Seger and several other old-school acts using amps and monitors, so I took it to the front-of-house for this tour because it’s my go-to desk.”
Tour Profile: Modest Mouse Can’t Stop
Equipped with up to 128 inputs, 32 mono/stereo busses and enhanced 96 kHz 40-bit floating point digital audio processing, the Vi7000 was designed to provide a straightforward live mixing experience. “The Vi7000 addressed how I like to work,” explained Thompson. “I’ve done several different kinds of things with the Vi setup and it is so easy, simple and fast. The biggest plus is that it’s very quick to navigate—like when I need to do quick panning and whatnot for certain songs, I program the pan knob to be right there in front of the faders. The ergonomics of the desk is really nice—and it’s not that I don’t use other desks as well, but I still keep coming back to the Vi.”
In addition to the Vi7000, the Soundcraft Vi Stagebox provided Thompson with an extra 64 mic/line inputs and 32 analog line outputs for more flexibility and routing options. Thompson also utilized a Soundcraft Realtime Rack Core for access to effects and plug-ins by Universal Audio, which the band occasionally required even with their scaled-down setup.
“The Realtime Rack is basically integrated into the Vi system, which is great,” added Thompson. “I used it for the Lexicon reverb and some simple compression on the vocals, but I didn’t use a heck of a lot of it in this particular run. I used the Realtime Rack a lot with the regular Modest Mouse tour, though, because Isaac would have distortion effects and things like that that aren’t built into the Vi. But for the most part, all the parameters like comps, gates and EQ work to the point where I often don’t need additional plugins. Everything I need is already built into the desk.”
