The Great Blue Heron music festival

Hi,

In addition to studio recording I do live sound, mostly for The HorseFlies and the Sim Redmond Band. This weekend I worked at the Great Blue Heron music festival in Sherman, NY, near Jamestown in western NY. I was mixing front of house sound on the main stage for the entire weekend, which involved mixing every band that played on that stage except 3, who brought their own engineer. The sound system was provided by the wonderful Calf Audio located here in Ithaca. Their sound systems and crew are a pure pleasure to work with, and both people and gear make my job pretty easy.

Festival sound is different than doing sound in night clubs. First of all, music festivals are usually outside, so you rarely need to deal with a bad sounding room. You also have far less time to setup and soundcheck, so you have to hustle and get a good mix going as you line check. I often start with a kick/snare/hihat groove with the drummer, then invite bass and rhythm instruments as I balance the mix. often, by the time the band is ready to start their set, I already have a pretty good mix up and so they they sound good right out of the gate.

Here are the bands I mixed:
THE HORSE FLIES
SIM REDMOND BAND
BIG LEG EMMA
BOY WITH A FISH
JIM DONOVAN
KELLEY AND THE COWBOYS
THE CHICKEN CHOKERS (reunion)
BARTON LIUZZO & WARD
JOHN AND MARY & THE VALKYRIES
SHOOT THE MOON
CROW GREENSPUN
BRUCE PETERSON BLUES PROJECT
STEEL PAN ALLEY

That's a lot of bands!!

Now I sleep as much as possible and get ready to do it all again at the Grassroots Festival!