MORGANTOWN, NC – Blue Ridge Sound (BRS) handled sound production for this year's five-day Red White & Bluegrass festival, which drew some 35,000 to Catawba Meadows Park to hear The Boxcars, Mountain Heart with Tony Rice, Dale Ann Bradley, Dailey & Vincent, The Seldom Scene, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and Del McCoury, among others.
To cover the main audience area, which could hold up to 10,000 people, BRS used a 16-box EAW KF730 line array with four EAW SB1000s and a Yamaha M7CL console. BRS chose QSC HPR122is for monitors for their tone and ease of routing in conjunction with the Yamaha LS9-32 monitor console. As John Holder of BRS noted, "I can quickly change from one mix to multiple mixes in a couple of minutes.
"With bluegrass groups, lots of times you don't know what they want for wedges until just prior to them taking the stage," Holder added. "That keeps you on your toes, considering all of the live mikes on stage, and that some of the groups want screaming loud monitors and/or mixing in-ears along with it. It can get pretty tricky at times.
"This year I was blown away when Tony Rice, one of my bluegrass idols, came up to me after his performance and told me it was the best mix he had ever had," Holder said.
Gary Leonhardt, director of the Parks and Recreation Department for the city of Morgantown, N.C., also had good things to say about BRC's support. "The sound was just perfect this year. Lots of artists told me it was great or the best they had ever had."
Along with Holder, the live sound engineers in the crew included Myron Surber and Jeff Bently. Jeff Coffey served as recording engineer. John Tyner was the stage manager, and Tony Bova and Brandon Rollyston served as logistics and systems engineers.
The gear list follows:
FOH Console: Yamaha M7CL-48 vs3
Monitor Console: Yamaha LS9-32
FOH Rig: EAW KF730 (16), EAW SB1000 (4)
Processing: EAW UX8800
Power Amps: QSC
Monitors: QSC HPR122i
Microphones: Shure (vocal), Earthworks (instruments)
For more information, please visit www.redwhiteandbluegrassfestival.com and www.blueridgesound.com.
