DeLaughter accepted the very first Polyphonic Spree gig before he even had a band. Faced with a hard deadline to create and produce, he somehow pulled everything together in time. "I do things like that," he admits today nearly eight years and countless gigs of all sizes and scope later. "I definitely need things like this for my psyche to move forward. If that's what it took to make this band a reality...I mean, I didn't even have a band. It was all just an idea and wishful thinking. The difference is acting on it. It took that date to make things happen."
These days, front-of-house engineer Adam Fisher and monitor engineer Chris Preston are the ones given the task of riding herd over the horde onstage at Polyphonic Spree gigs. Dealing with a sea of faces, an assortment of voices, and a variety of instruments each night, the pair use Shure PSM in-ear personal monitor systems to help provide better control over what's heard in both the stage mixes and the house.
"The PSM systems are useful on a number of levels," monitor engineer Preston says. "If someone has an amp that's putting us into feedback situations, the in-ears provide a ready fix. When you have cello, violin, and viola players cranking things up to hear themselves over a percussion kit, it's also good to have in-ears in that situation, too."
(Jim Evans)
