Conquering Monitoring Challenges on Counting Crows Tour with Jerry Harvey IEMs

	(l-r) Counting Crows' Adam Duritz and engineer Shawn London

Counting Crows is touring globally in support of the album Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! Longtime Jerry Harvey Audio (JH Audio) users, the band and sound engineer Shawn London have made good use of the JH Audio Pearl/Ruby2 Active IEM System and Layla IEMs for increasingly complex monitoring needs.

Previous Counting Crows monitor engineer worked directly with JH Audio founder and president Jerry Harvey to craft an effective solution to the band members' increasingly specific monitoring needs. Keyboardist Charlie Gillingham, bassist Millard Powers, guitarist Dave Bryson, and drummer Jim Bogios use the Pearl/Ruby2 System, while singer Adam Duritz and guitarist Dan Vickrey utilize JH Audio Layla IEMs. The Pearl/Ruby2 was chosen for its ability to provide precise, customizable control of gain, phase, time, and EQ settings per band member, allowing London to hone the mixes for each musician. "The stage setup is mainly real instruments aside from the piano, but we utilize a digital footprint to control everything," he explains. "The issue that Kory, and by extension myself, were looking to address was complex timing and phase issues that we found couldn't be solved with older all-analog or standard digital setups."

"The level of precision simply wasn't there with the existing equipment," he adds. "Once we realized what Pearl was capable of, it became clear that we'd be able to tackle all this while also providing an enhanced level of clarity and separation.

"We began integrating Pearl into our signal chain by early 2023, and the difference in controllability and audio quality was immediately evident."

The baseline Pearl curves were modified to suit each band member. "Jerry's curves serve as an excellent baseline and sound exceptional on their own, which is a great place to start," London says. "For the band members using the Ruby2/Pearl system, we can use its active crossover to adjust the time between components digitally, which allows us to get the time within .01mS. The excellent dynamic range of Ruby2 is a real advantage when you are mixing a band whose identity revolves around real instruments. It helps to preserve the organic nature of the live mix while still providing them with precise information to ensure everything sounds right."

London runs his monitoring rig for The Complete Sweets! Tour from a DiGiCo Quantum 338 Console with a set of wireless transmitters and receivers specifically modified to work with Pearl. For singer Duritz's vocal chain, a special rack includes a Neve 1073 Mic Pre, BSS DPR 901 Dynamic EQ, Tube Tech SMC 2B Multiband Comp, UA 1176 with a Neve 5059 Satellite matrix mixer. This equipment is only used for his IEM mix and is routed specifically to his JH Audio Layla IEMs. "There is a studio vocal sound that Adam has developed and become very comfortable with in terms of his own performances," London explains. "We're able to route that sound directly into his IEMs while giving his bandmates and FOH a 'clean' mix that is more suitable for those purposes."

"The JH Laylas preserve the clarity and character of that very well, which enables him to perform at his best without any compromises. Ultimately, there haven't been any complaints, so that's a good sign that it's working exactly as intended."

With a run of European dates, two nights at the Hollywood Bowl and an appearance at the Bourbon & Beyond Festival forthcoming, Counting Crows show no sign of slowing down. Although London notes he's gotten little feedback on his monitor work, he notes that this is a reassuring sign that everything is running exactly as it should be. "The band members are calm, focused people who usually only speak up if something sounds wrong," he states. "Things have been awfully quiet lately, so that's generally a sign that things are going very well, which I can say has been true across the board for the entire tour.

"On the crew end of things, we're incredibly happy with how smooth the monitor mixing has been going, and JH Audio's support is a big part of that. The ability to truly dial in each band member with Pearl has been a total gamechanger for us."