The Mavericks have been thrilling fans since they began in 1989. Along the way, this popular country, rock, Latin, Tex-Mex band have earned a Grammy, two Country Music Association Awards and three Academy of Country Music Awards. We spoke with FOH engineer Allan Casillas and monitor engineer Wesley Kelly about their experience mixing The Mavericks.
FOH Engineer Allan Casillas
Allan Casillas started with The Mavericks in 2015 as monitor engineer, moving to production manager/FOH engineer a year later. Casillas had worked for a local production company, but his only other tour experience was on the Vans Warped Tour in 2014, which he says was a tough tour, yet he was very happy to be doing that gig.
In 2019, the band was looking into ways to save money in the long run. According to Casillas, “I proposed we buy our own audio control gear. This was my chance to design an audio package that fit our specific needs, which had to fit inside a 15-foot trailer along with backline for a nine-piece band and a lighting package. All this had to be under the trailer’s weight capacity and be flyable following international and domestic size and weight guidelines. This freed us from renting audio gear on fly dates.”
The band travels with Allen & Heath dLive C1500 consoles with DM0 racks at FOH and monitors. They carry their own wedges, amps, mics, wireless IEMs, digital stage boxes and cabling and rely on house P.A.’s everywhere they go. “I didn’t know about the existence of the dLive C1500 until 2019, when I was designing the control package. I was advancing a festival in the UK and mentioned in an email we were planning on bringing our own consoles. Someone replied, asking if we were going to fly with the A&H dLive C1500 to the festival. That changed everything,” Casillas recalls, adding, “After some research, I knew the dLive C1500s were exactly what we needed. Prior to this, I used Avid Venues, Midas Pro Series, DiGiCo SD Series, Yamaha CL Series and everything in-between. All great consoles, but the dLive takes the cake for me. Its sound is absurd — deep, wide, open, precise.”
Casillas likes that the console has plenty of onboard processing. “Every input channel has tube or dual valve emulations; low and high pass filters; parametric EQ; RMS/peak compressor or Vintage Emulation (LA-2A, 1176, SSL, etc.); gate or expander (Primary Source Expander); and two insert points for FX or dynamic EQ and multi-band compression. It has 21 different FX. Every output channel has a parametric EQ, compressor and a graphic EQ or NEQ (a 12-band parametric EQ). I use the NEQ for P.A. tweaking. We have the ability of 128 channels in and out at 96kHz/24-bit with a single Cat-5e cable.”
The dLive’s gigaACE audio network-based protocol offers patching control directly from the console’s software. “This lets us route any input or output on the system directly to any other input or output without going through an actual channel on the console. We have around 64 inputs from the stage that go directly to my console; then I route them directly to the monitor console,” Casillas explains. “At the same time, I record all these channels through a Waves Card at my board and when we do virtual sound check, I can send all recorded channels in my DAW directly from the Waves Card to the monitor console — all this with a single Cat-5e/Cat-6 cable. Another cool feature is the ability to control input gain on the Shure ULXD transmitters directly from the console and see battery and RF levels. And it’s all controlled by 12 faders and 19 user-defined keys on this very compact board.”
Secrets of the FOH Mix
Casillas does all processing in the box. “For vocals I use the Dyn8 (multi-band compressor and dynamic EQ) as a de-esser and to tame our vocalist’s 2.5 kHz bite. And it helps the snare pop out in the mix. I love the OptTronik (LA-2A emulator) on vocals, acoustic guitars and anything that needs smoothness. I use the Peak Limiter (1176 emulator) on multiple guitar amp groups to help glue the two different tones into one giant tone. I use the Opto (optical compressor) on bass; slow attack, med release, 4:1 ratio — you can thank me later! On the main bus, I use the Bus (SSL stereo compressor emulator) to add punch to the whole mix, and its fast attack/slow release is great to glue your mix as well.”
When it comes to live sound, Casillas uses the “I can’t hear the vocal” technique. “If people can’t hear the main vocal, they’ll let you know mid-show. The heart of a show is the rhythm section and a deep kick drum or bass that people can feel in their chest. Toms and timbales are accents and should be as loud or louder than the snare. The rest of the instruments fall perfectly around that base, using panning and low/high-pass filters. Put the vocal on top of that, and congratulations: You’re an audio engineer!”
The Reluctant System Engineer
“I want to make it clear I’m not a system engineer,” says Casillas. “The P.A. tuning I do is basic and straightforward. Since we don’t tour with a P.A., we don’t have the luxury of a system engineer, and I act as one. There’s no real standard of how venues tune their P.A. (and some don’t tune it at all), so I do it myself. After my console and Smaart software are set up, I run pink noise through each zone to make sure all speakers work. Then I place my measurement mic between the front fills and main P.A. and delay the FF to the mains. From the middle of the room, I take a snapshot of the L&R only and then run pink through subs only and try to match the phase by delaying the subs. Once everything is time-aligned, I match the frequency response of the P.A. to my reference by EQing with either the console’s NEQ or the venue’s speaker management system. After all that, I playback the last show recorded to make sure I’m at a good point to start line checking. During line check, I adjust the EQ if the room starts acting weird. Then I do a minimal ring-out of the P.A. just like you would do a wedge monitor. This lets me be dynamic with my P.A., especially with lower quality P.A.’s or bad-sounding room acoustics.”
Monitor Engineer Wesley Kelly
Monitor engineer Wesley Kelly began working with The Mavericks in July of 2021. He met Allan Casillas when the band headlined a 2017 Americana Music Festival event at Nashville’s Basement East club where Kelly occasionally worked. “The gig was brutal, but we had a very good rapport and kept in touch. In the following years, I did some sub work with the band. Then, when it was time to add a new crew member, I was called for the gig.”
The control package for the tour had been chosen and built by Casillas before Kelly began with The Mavericks. “The consoles at FOH and Monitors are Allen & Heath dLive C1500s driving DM0 mix racks. Stage inputs are routed to the FOH desk via four DX168 I/O boxes. We treat these like subsnakes,” Kelly notes. “Allan has a 4-port DX input card (for the I/O boxes), a gigaACE card, and a Dante card in his mix rack. We run Dante out of our wireless mics into Allan’s Dante card. I only have a single gigaACE card and receive all of my inputs from Allan’s gigaACE card, which eliminates the need for copper subsnakes or splits.”
Kelly feels the A&H desk itself is fantastic for this gig. “I run approximately 64 channels with 14 stage mixes and 16 effects on a very compact surface. The show requires a lot of communication, so I have a talkback channel for each of the five background vocals via Radial Engineering HotShots; a talkback for the drummer; talkbacks at FOH and tech positions; and two talkbacks for lead vocals — one on a mute group and one with an Optogate. Routing my talkback through the talkback matrix, I can communicate with anyone via IEM’s, wedges or squawk boxes.”
Kelly is not using any third-party plug-ins. The only signal processing comes from the console. “The Allen & Heath processing and outboard gear emulations sound great, so I have never felt the need to add anything else. I use the LA2A emulation on channels I’d like to warm up (accordion, acoustic guitar, lead vox) and the dbx 168 clone on channels I want to put the clamps on (snare, bass DI, etc.) — everything else is channel processing.”
The band has nine Sennheiser G3 and G4 IEM transmitters and an RF Venue CP Beam antenna, supplying IEM mixes to everyone except drummer Paul Deakin, who’s on a hardwired headphone amp, and lead singer Raul Malo, who prefers wedges,” says Kelly. The wireless mics are Shure ULXD outputting Dante. “I run a 4-channel and a 2-channel receiver with an RF Venue Diversity Fin for our accordion, sax and trumpet mics, our lead vocal and spare/guest vocal mics. I also operate a Staffords Stageprompter teleprompter from monitor world. Finally, I run six wedge mixes using Turbosound TFM122M wedges powered by Lab Gruppen IPX amps.”
Kelly is using a Shure KSM 137 on bongos, which doubles as a percussion mic when trumpet player/percussionist Lorenzo Molina is playing hand percussion. “The congas use Shure Beta 98s. The tenor sax uses two mics — an AMT LSW wireless mic clipped on the sax and an E-V RE20 on a footswitch that’s pitched down an octave (using a pitch effect on our consoles) to emulate a baritone sax.”
Drum mics include a Shure Beta 91 and Audix D6 for the kick, internally mounted using Kelly SHUs. A right-angle Shure SM57 and a KSM137 capture snare top and bottom. Hi-hat, overheads and percussion tree overhead are all KSM137s. Rack, floor, both timbales and a cowbell mic are Sennheiser 904s. Pintech RS-5 triggers on the kick, toms and timbales trigger the key-in for the noise gates at FOH. “We shamelessly borrowed this technique from (FOH engineer) Ken ‘Pooch’ Van Druten,” Kelly admits.
There are two iso-cabs (each with an internal Sennheiser 906) for the guitarist Eddie Perez. “The vocal mics are all Shure KSM8s including the wireless capsules. We love these. They’re very stable in wedges and P.A. while maintaining character in the top-end and controlled proximity effect. We carry Shure and Sennheiser transmitters and receivers for the band. All of the components of our control package are networked via a dedicated Wi-Fi network. I do my RF coordination and iPad control over Wi-Fi.”
Fun on the Road
“The Mavericks has been a fun and challenging gig,” beams Kelly. “Coming from a string of FOH gigs, then getting a monitor gig with nine band members was slightly daunting, but it’s been a great opportunity to acquire knowledge and technique in monitor world. Working with Allan has been a treat. We have totally different mixing styles and take every opportunity to learn from each other. The rig he put together is fantastic to work with, sounds awesome, and best of all, it’s fairly light and compact.”
Mavericks Tour 2023
CREW
- Sound Company: N/A; band’s own control setup drives house rigs
- FOH Engineer/Production Manager: Allan Casillas
- Monitor Engineer: Wesley Kelly
- Guitar/Stage Tech: Robie Willard
P.A. GEAR
- Main System: Venue-supplied
FOH GEAR
- FOH Console: Allen & Heath dLive C1500
- Plug-ins: All in-console
- MixRack: Allen & Heath DMO 160×64 FPGA expansion core
- Stage Boxes: (6) 16×8 Allen & Heath DX168
MON GEAR
- Mon Console: Allen & Heath dLive C1500
- MixRack: Allen & Heath DMO 160×64 FPGA expansion core
- Wedges: Turbosound TFM122M
- Amps: Lab Gruppen IPD-1200
- IEM Hardware: (6) Sennheiser G3 SR 300 IEM G3; (3) Sennheiser EW IEM G4 transmitters; RF Venue CP Beam antenna
- Wireless Mics: Shure ULXD with KSM8 capsules (vox); Applied Microphone Technology LSW (sax), P800BMW (trumpets); DJR Systems Accordion Mic (accordion)
- Hardwire Mics: Shure KSM8 (vox); Shure Beta 91 & Audio D6 (kick); Shure SM57 (snare), KSM137 (snare, overheads, percussion), Beta 98 (congas); Sennheiser e904 (toms, timbales), e906 (guitar amps, iso speaker); Audix D6 (bass amp); E-V RE-20 (baritone sax)
- D.I. Boxes: Radial JDI (acoustic guitar), Radial Stereo JDI (keys)
