Signed to Capitol Nashville in 2005, Eric Church has released five studio albums, received a wide range of CMA and Grammy Awards that join a staggering list of CMT, BCCMA, AMA, ACA, ACM, and Billboard honors, been compared to legends like George Strait and Merle Haggard, and is followed around North America by legions of fans who collectively refer to themselves as the Church Choir.

Currently on a North American 60-plus cities run, Church brings his music to the people in-the-round with what he’s aptly calling his Holdin’ My Own Tour. Launched in January at the Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, NE, the show is as outsized as Church himself, usually running over three hours each night with no support act. Fans listen to, sing along with, jump, and stomp to more than 40 songs spanning two full sets with an intermission in between.

Hailing from Paint Lick, KY, front of house engineer Billy Moore, a recipient of the CMA’s 2017 FOH Engineer of the Year award, is as countrified as anything else on this tour.

“This is big, the seats are good all the way around, and Eric runs loose all over the place,” Moore notes with his own brand of Southern inflection, which clips along with an uptempo cadence surpassing the traditional laid-back drawl you might usually find around these parts.

“In a sonic sense, what really works for him is not being 120 dB,” Moore continues. “His sound is good and thick with great clarity on the high-end and vocals lying smoothly over the top. I maintain a push-and-shove relationship with the audience, running at 105 [dB] normally with peaks of 108.

“If they get too loud Eric will just back off his mic and let them sing their butts off. It doesn’t make sense for me to get louder, as volume doesn’t necessarily add quality. At a certain volume I find the honey hole of the mix, and once I’m there I can just let things flow and have a good night without a lot of constant tweaking.”

Everything Heard

For Moore, constant or any other kind of tweaking takes place in an analog world orchestrated from a pair of Midas Heritage 3000 consoles. With Clair Global supplying a PA managed by systems engineer Jared Lawrie, Cohesion 12 cabinets reside 16-per-side in the main hangs, supported by i3 enclosures around the sides and out back. Subwoofers are both flown and located under the stage to extend the low-end.

Clair Cohesion boxes for the main hangs, supported by i3 enclosures at the sides and back.

Playing in-the-round from one end on this arena tour places Moore about 200 feet back from the stage in order to compensate for the crowd, a fact of life that gives him a longer commute to work each night and was responsible for an 8-second delay at around 50 Hz once that just hung like yesterday’s laundry after a song was over.

“Sometimes I think I need another hand, another arm, and another eye out there,” he says, “but we’ve done so many shows now this way that we are getting pretty consistent against all odds. The console directly in front of me is my ‘hot’ one, it has everything I need and use all the time. The second desk off to the side is stacked with several things I only use once during the show. There are 72 inputs coming back from the stage give or take, including talkbacks.

“Digital is fine, but with the number of inputs we have, I’d rather be on analog. O.K., I’m an old dog doing old tricks, but for me there is a sense of freedom you get with analog. There’s no touch screens and scrolling through pages. I can tend to two or three things at once and still be cognizant of everything that’s going on around me.”

While Moore is leaving it to the next generation to work out the details of digital, his collection of analog outboard gear remains ever-at-the-ready, all of it housed in a pair of Clair clamshells, the first of which is behind his main console and to the right. Like its hinged sibling, it’s stacked top-to-bottom with components that have become mainstays to those eschewing the world of dots, dashes, and digital downloads.

For starters there are reverbs including a Bricasti M7, which houses a pair of settings for vocals and drums. A Yamaha SPX990 is also at hand that Moore appreciates for its old dog ability to jump through multiple hoops all at once and make “two or three things happen real quick.”

Compression and gating elements reside in the second of the two clamshells, with API limiters being the choice for mandolin, banjo, and acoustic dobro. A dbx 900 was selected for drums, introducing both compression and gates; dbx 160 units squash signals and limit things on bass, and serve in the same capacity for kick and snare.

Manley ELOP stereo electro-optical limiters regularly see use across Church’s inputs, situated in their clamshell directly across from Tube-Tech Opto compressors called upon for guitars. Avalon limiters with oval-face displays add a different dimension on both electric and acoustic guitars played by Church.