Describing his five years as FOH engineer for ZZ Top, Joe Keiser calls it “The never-
ending tour – they work harder than any other band I know.’ The group’s 2016
season began in March, playing arenas and large theatres across North America.
Dubbed the Hell Raisers tour, the group decided to travel light, renting a sound
system at each venue, exposing Keiser to a wide variety of products. One that
stood out for both its sound quality and ease of use was the Electro-Voice X2 line-
array loudspeaker system supplied by NLFX Professional for the tour’s date at the
Sanford Centre in Bemidji, Minnesota. The X2 is the high-performance member of
the new Electro-Voice X-Line Advance family.

The Electro-Voice X2 system provided by NLFX Pro consisted of twin 12-box line
arrays of Electro-Voice X2/212-90 mains, augmented by a dozen Electro-Voice
concert sound subwoofers. Six Electro-Voice EVU-2082 ultra-compact loudspeakers
were spread across the stage lip as front fills.

For a veteran group like ZZ Top, there is no sound check. “When people ask how
the sound check went, I tell them they’ll get to hear it during the first song,’ Keiser
says with a chuckle. “We do a line check, listen to the room, and tune the system.
Then Jake Mann, the monitor engineer, stands at Billy Gibbons’ mic and talks softly
into it. Billy is a very soft singer, and I can tell right away whether I’m going to
have a comfortable night. With the X2 system, I didn’t struggle to get Billy’s voice
out front. It laid in the mix quite well, which made it very easy to keep it on top
without a ton of processing and equalization.’

One notable feature of the ZZ Top stage is that Gibbons does not wear in-ear
monitors and prefers hearing the main house mix. “I send my house mix back down
the snake to Jake, who feeds it to the stage monitor wedges if Billy needs it. But he
prefers to actually hear the room, so it’s important to have a natural sound. In
Bemidji, I remember going on stage to listen, speaking into Billy’s mic and saying,
“Hey, this sounds pretty sweet! It’s going to be a good night.’ So even though I’m
the front of house engineer, I’m actually mixing for Billy as well.’

This was not the first time Keiser and ZZ Top have encountered the X-Line Advance
from Electro-Voice in their travels. “Last summer, we played the Bluetone Festival
in Straubing, Germany,’ recalls Keiser. “It was at the bottom of a hill near the
Danube River, and the result was the same: a big, thick mix with very little
equalization or processing. That gig was just like the one we did in Bemidji – an
easy day for me, and a good day for the band and their fans. As it should be.’