Stage Sound engineers live recording

Stage Sound was recently invited to assist with a new DVD for the Auckland based Blues Band Riverhead Slide at Centerstage Orewa. This took the form of a live concert with an invited audience.

Since the completion of this project in November 2009 the distribution of this DVD has been picked up by Roger Marbeck owner of the Marbecks CD stores. Roger described the finished product as being the best NZ made DVD he has seen so far.

The band are hoping for a much better sales result than would have been possible had they attempted to market it on their own.

This was a substantial underrating involving a lot of personnel and equipment and was done in conjunction with On Stage Productions and NJS Lighting.

For our part we did the house audio and made a digital 
24 track live recording to be used for a live CD.

The concert itself went very smoothly with the band performing to a packed house with no major technical hitches marring the performance. We received a number of very flattering comments about the sound afterwards which is always encouraging when involved in such a challenging project.

Jonathan Cambel who owns The Likely Story recording studio was responsible for the multi track recording and our own engineer Bob Camel (no relative) was the house engineer.

We began the load in the previous afternoon and only just managed to start on time at 8 pm after one of the adapts failed after being unpacked brand new. This meant a break neck drive by Jonathan from Orewa to mission Bay and back arriving just in time to complete the patch up and start recording with no time to spare! We were very fortunate that everything worked at start time and nothing went wrong during the live show itself. Thank goodness for small mercies!

Although working to a tight budget NJS managed to install a light show that provided a wonderful subdued and Bluesy atmosphere that everyone was appreciated by all.

The band played around 30 numbers, about half of them originals with Gail Ludlow as the main lead vocalist and Steve Wigglesworth featuring his colourful slide guitar solos that are the bands trademark and main identifying sound. Peter Ludlow belted out in impressive style and Richard Hall is the bands very creative keyboard player.

The second lead guitar player Nigel Major is also a dominant force on stage with plenty of movement and an exciting style that shows considerable experience and confidence.

As a whole the band are very entertaining and play some great classic Blues music, most of it very easy to listen to and the audience were treated to a most enjoyable evening. It is often quite difficult to identify the original music from the covers such is the quality of their own compositions.

We all had a really good time working with Riverhead Slide and are looking forward to our next engagement with this exciting band!