When not on the road, sound engineer Matt Welty works at Sound Image in Nashville having, not surprisingly, grown up in a music family.
“My grandfather, my father, owned three music stores and they’re musicians, so I was required to be a musician,” he said. “I played in bands when I was a teenager and then I went to a wonderful liberal arts school in Chicago, Columbia College, and learned from an incredible mentor by the name of Jack Alexander. He taught me a lot of the foundations of audio, and then I cut my teeth in all the clubs and theatres of Chicago mixing front of house and monitors and being an audio tech.”
Now Matt is 52 years old and has vast experience working bands as a monitor tech, house engineer and monitor engineer. He started working for Chris Isaak late last year on a seven-week run in the States.
“You know, I did my homework. I studied the recordings which is something I would do for any band. And then I got on the FOH rig at Sound Image, and I went through and played tracks, and practised mixing the set. The Production Manager gave me a set list as an example of what they might play on tour, and I mixed the tracks. I was pretty comfortable FOH mix-wise before we even did the first show because I studied so much.”
When Matt joined the Chris Isaak camp, Chris told him to mix it the way he felt it needed to be mixed.
“He gave me that liberty and he just said to keep my fans in mind, because they’re the ones that will decide if you’re doing a good job or not,” he added. “It is 50s rock so there’s not a lot of kick drum, there’s not a lot of bass guitar. It’s a band mix with Chris’s vocal always on top with a nice Hall reverb and, you know boost some solos here and there, and that’s about it.”
Chris Isaak’s voice is iconic and, fortunately for Matt, he projects so Matt says that he doesn’t need to do much except turn the fader up.
“He has a very strong vocal,” he commented. “So, a little compression, a little bit of reverb, and that’s it. He does all the work. It’s quite amazing to listen to his voice when he’s singing. It’s wonderful because so many other singers don’t project.”
The Australian tour was a mix of theatres and Day on the Green festivals with audio and crew supplied by JPJ Audio. The PA system was an L-Acoustics, a blend of K2 and K1 with KARAs for front fills.
“I don’t have a preference when it comes to the PA system,” remarked Matt. “Who’s going to complain about L-Acoustics, d&b, Meyer or Adamson? They all have their pros and cons to them. I think if I was given a choice I would probably go with an L-Acoustics rig as it is pretty forgiving with anyone’s mix.”
Also at FOH was JPJ’s audio tech Joel Larrson who Matt says has done a wonderful job adding that he’s an amazing young guy who’s going to go very far.
Throughout his career, Matt has become used to console-hopping consequently, he doesn’t have a preference for these either.
“DiGiCo is wonderful, Avid S6Ls are great and you can’t go wrong with the Yamaha, they’re built like tanks,” he said. “I think if I was given a choice, which I’m often not, I would probably go with the DiGiCo 338. Currently, I inherited a Yamaha CL5, which is getting a bit old at this point, but it fits their budget, and that’s the way it goes with most bands out there that aren’t playing arenas.
“You get these top-selling guys, they’ve got to have this, they’ve got to have that, but as you said, basically if you’ve got one of three or four PAs, one of three or four consoles, and you’re good at your job, you should be able to mix it well.
“You’re getting a bunch of inputs and you have a bunch of outputs, and you twiddle knobs and you process things in between, but the make of PA or the console shouldn’t matter. Whether it’s front of house or monitors, you can either mix or you can’t. Most confident people can.”
Matt uses a delay for Chris in one of the songs as well as some plate reverbs for drums, but again it being 50s-type rock, there’s not a lot of effects needed for this music. If he could make a choice, he would mix this show on a Midas XL4 analogue console with a bunch of UA outboard gear.
Microphones are mostly Shure with a Beta 58 on Chris’s vocal and most of the instruments on Shure mics, with some Sennheiser 904s on the drum toms. Everybody is on in-ears, and Kenny, the drummer, has one drum sub that he uses.
Matt says that JPJ Audio has been great and because he’s a bit older, he remembers Jands before JPJ.
“They’re wonderful,” he said. “They have a lot of young techs, but they’re all smart people that know how to do their job. We love Luis Herd because he’s nice and mellow. You know, they’ve made it easy for us. They do most of the work, which is wonderful. Not that I mind jumping in and teching my own gear. I certainly do that all the time as well. But it’s just nice when your snake has already been run and they’re willing to help you set up or tear down.”
