I love travelling, I love going on tour, but I hate packing. I think it boils down to my inability to make decisions, which is what packing is after all; deciding what you’ll need for maybe months at a time. You might leave home during a heatwave and not come back until the middle of winter, taking in all sorts of weather in between. How can anyone know what they’ll need through all that?
Rebecca Wilson is an industry veteran, working in live sound for over 25 years. Touring solely as a monitor engineer, except for a brief stint as FOH Engineer for Flemming and John (while out with Ben Folds), she has worked for Sound Image, at Humphrey’s by the Bay and toured with Nanci Griffith, Wilco, The Bangles, and more. Rebecca is based in New York, and after finishing a 15-month project for Tibet House US, the Cultural Center for the Dalai Lama in NYC has moved into the position of head audio engineer for the TED headquarters and TED World Theatre.
As a new monitor engineer, it can feel intimidating when the band turns up in front of you for the first time. Here’s a bunch of people who probably all know each other, who might be considerably older than you, and who all seem super-chilled and confident. And here’s you, about to play a major part in how they experience their gig, probably not knowing any of them and maybe feeling a little nervous.
As a full-time sound engineer, she is involved in making people feel the emotion in the music the way that she does, albeit a little differently. Whether it’s pushing up the fader for a particularly awesome guitar solo or dialing in the perfect vocal effect for a more intimate song, it’s hugely rewarding to watch people experience the music instead of just listening to it, and know that she has had a part to play in that.
By: Grace Royse
There’s a new face in the touring world, a west coast favorite now making her way across America. And the best part, I got to tour with her first!