DiGiCo in the mix for Dermot Kennedy dates
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He also performed his own global live stream from London’s Natural History Museum. Now, he’s finally back on the road with two DiGiCo SD5 consoles supplied by SSE Audio and operated by FoH engineer Will Donbavand and monitor engineer Simon Peter Lawson.
“We were lucky enough to be back out in the US with rehearsals in Nashville from late July,” says Donbavand. “This was followed by a US tour and a performance at Lollapalooza,” Lawson adds. “It’s been a journey since then! It’s been challenging in its own way, digging deep to recover the skills, quick thinking and seamless execution that we took for granted before the pandemic. We found our stride again!”
Donbavand and Lawson have been working with Dermot since 2017. Things quickly escalated in early 2018 with both engineers taking up their current positions. “As soon as we could spec desks for Dermot, we took out a pair of SD11is and gain shared an SD Rack,” says Lawson. “We’ve not looked back since,” adds Donbavand. As the channel count grew, both engineers worked their way up the SD Range, opting for the SD12-96 for the most recent tours prior to this one. “For me it is a great console; lovely layout, compact, twin touch screens. It’s very versatile, perfect for a mid-size channel count show,” says Lawson.
The decision to move to DiGiCo’s SD5 came after the addition of backing vocalists for the new show design upped the number of input channels, onboard FX and faders required. “I finished the recent UK shows with 82 input channels, 14 auxs, two mono and 11 stereo groups, and 12 control groups,” explains Donbavand.
Lawson described their current SD Rack stage setup: “Our optical loop consists of the SD Rack fully loaded with 56 32-bit Stadius input cards, 48 analogue outputs and eight AES outputs. Four analogue output cards were assigned to the monitor desk and two, plus the AES card, were assigned to the FoH console.” To accommodate extra inputs for this show, the team also had a Mini Rack at the monitor position loaded with three analogue input cards and an AES I/O card.
After working on a new album over the winter period, Dermot Kennedy will be back on the road in 2022, supporting Shawn Mendes on a North American stadium tour next summer.
