New York, NY (December 12, 2023)—Like many bands, My Morning Jacket came out of the pandemic ready to roll, releasing a well-received self-titled album in 2021 that served notice the group was truly back after a few years where leader Jim James explored side projects and other members backed acts like Roger Waters live. These days, however, MMJ is on the move.
“This year has been the most touring we’ve done probably since 2015,” said Ryan Pickett, the band’s longtime FOH engineer. “It’s been legs of four-week headlining tours. We’re on the fourth leg now—I crammed in five weeks with Ray LaMontagne and went direct into this, so it’s nine weeks straight for me!”
Once again, the band is carrying gear from Nashville’s Spectrum Sound, including a sizable d&b audiotechnik P.A. “We’ve been carrying KSL and SL-Subs ever since they came out,” said Pickett. “We were already doing Array Processing and the D80s, and that to me is the big difference: AP and the amps. Some people don’t like it, but I can’t live without it.”
Sending mixes to that P.A. is a complex FOH package centered around an Avid S6L console loaded with 200 snapshots cultivated over the years. The desk is joined by a curated selection of outboard gear, down to a Meris Mercury7 reverb pedal that Pickett calls “my mini-Bricasti. I can throw it my bag and go from the Ray gig to the Jacket gig since both acts are really about long hall reverb.
“I line drive out of my console into the Rupert Neve Designs Master Buss Processor, and that feeds into a Crane Song Hedd 192 because I can go analog-in then AES-out into the Lake LM 44s for system management. For the drum group, I’ve got a Rupert Neve 5254 dual diode bridge compressor and use the native EQ on the console if I need a boost beyond that. We use a Warm Audio WA-2A compressor on Jim’s acoustic guitar group as he goes from light finger-picking to ham-fisted rock. With the bass group, I use a Warm Audio WA76 and again, native group EQ for finessing. The guitar group, there’s the BAE 10DC; it really speaks to me with guitars—I feel like I’m hitting iron instead of a square wave.
“There’s a Rupert Neve 5045 Primary Source Enhancer on the stage right and left vocals, which gives me feedback control when the P.A. is in close proximity. Jim’s vocal channel is a group—I parallel his vocal because he sings a lot of falsetto, so when I lose air or SPL from him, I bring up that parallel to add more gain. Analog-wise, it hits one of the AudioScape 76As and then the okesound Soothe plug-in in the console. I also use Soothe on my bass group, too, because our bass player tends to slap his pickup when he’s excited and you get this 2k clack. I don’t want to lop that out in the EQ and then have no intelligibility when he’s playing with dynamics on the next song, so I have it set on the group to catch those clacks; it works better than any deesser could. I also have Crane Song Phoenix II, which I use on many buses and individual channels for character and tone-shaping; between those two plug-ins running natively on the desk and my hardware, I really feel happy with my workflow.”
Mixing The Mavericks’ Road-Ready Revelry
Up on stage, the band hears mixes from monitor engineer Ryan Doordan via JH Audio and Sensaphonics in-ear monitors and d&b M4 wedges. This year saw MMJ transition to sE Electronics V7 microphones for all vocals and James’ wireless capsule. Most of the stage is covered with sE mics, including VR2 ribbon mics used as overheads, but there are exceptions, including some AKG 440s and Lauten Audio’s new Snare Mic, which Pickett beta-tested all year on drummer Patrick Hallahan. “It’s a large-diaphragm condenser with a huge soundstage,” he reports.
My Morning Jacket is closing out the year with a new holiday album, and a few live dates are already on the books for 2024, placing Pickett behind the FOH desk once again. “I just hit my 20th year with them, which was kind of scary and rewarding at the same time,” he laughed. “I didn’t foresee or ask for this; it’s just one of those things where you wake up one day and go, ‘Wow—20 years!’”
