DiGiCo at the double for Fall Out Boy
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“I don't think there's another manufacturer that makes something that would do what we need it to do in this situation. I'm sure we could work our way around it, but it wouldn't be as seamless and as easy.”
Rob Smuder is one of those comms sources, as he mixes the band’s monitors from a DiGiCo Quantum7 console, along with the stage manager and backline crew lines. “The main reason that I use the Q7 out here, honestly, is the matrixes,” says Smuder, who has worked with the band since 2018. “We have a ton of talkback mics that are routed all over the place; each backline person has two talkbacks, one to talk to the crew and one to talk to their band member; and all the radios go through the console.
“Meanwhile, the front-of-house has three talkbacks to go to various places. There’s a pretty robust network of us talking to each other during the show. It can get pretty chatty! But the Quantum7 matrix helps me route all of that stuff so much more reliably and effectively, and that lets me focus on the stage mixes.”
Fall Out Boy were the perennial punk-pop favourites of MTV and the Teen Choice Awards and after a hiatus from late 2009 to 2013 came back, driven by their tight package of two guitars, bass, and drums, and sense of humour of co-founder Pete Wentz. Their debut album, Take This to Your Grave (2003), became an underground success and helped the band gain a dedicated fanbase through heavy touring, later becoming an oft-cited influence on pop-punk music in the 2000s.
it’s that music that’s the true focus of what Olech and Smuder mix every night during Fall Out Boy’s current So Much For (2our) Dust tour, a 23-date US run spanning 28 February through 6 April, riding on the recent heels of the tour’s European and Asian legs.
Olech had used a DiGiCo SD5 desk for Fall Out Boy’s live sound since 2014, when he spent three days going over six different console options at the Lititz, Pennsylvania headquarters of Clair Global, which supplies the band’s Cohesion PA system. When the current tour was being planned last year, he chose to bump up to the updated Quantum5, along with a pair of SD-Racks with 32-bit mic pre’s that would connect across an Optocore network loop with the Quantum7 console at monitors.
“The sound, the workflow - everything just worked perfectly for me on the Q5 for what I needed,” he says.
