The tour is currently playing European arenas and festivals, with US and Canada theatres to follow. Front of House engineer Dave Dixon and monitor engineer Kerry Lewis are both mixing on DiGiCo SD7s.
"As well as Mark on guitar and lead vocals, the band features drums, bass guitar, two sets of keyboards, a second guitarist and two multi instrumentalists, who play a lot of different things including citterns, flutes, pipes and acoustic guitars," says Dave. "Mark and the second guitarist also play an array of electric and acoustic instruments, so there are around 90 inputs in total."
Due to the complexity of the instrumentation, each song is programmed on the SD7s as a snapshot, but at FoH Dave rides the faders throughout. "There are so many instrument changes you wouldn't have time to set the board up between songs," he says. "God bless snapshots, it would be very hard without them.
"With the different types of acoustic instruments it is a challenge to get them sounding natural at volume. I have to use microphones as not all have pickups. I'm not using much processing or outboard, but the EQ and dynamics on the SD7 really helps."
A DiGiCo SD11 is used by Tom Calcaterra, guitar tech for Knopfler's second guitarist of 20 years, Richard Bennett, to mix the guitars.
(Jim Evans)
