Charlie Daniels recently celebrated fifty years—FIFTY YEARS—of making music with a new live concert DVD package titled, “Preachin’, Prayin’, Singin’ with Charlie Daniels & Friends: Live from Nashville” This year the Grammy award-winning performer outfitted his band with a complete Heil Sound microphone package. Virtually anything on stage that needs a mic gets a Heil. A total of 23 Heil mics, including PR 35s for all of the vocals, PR 40s for kick and bass guitar, PR 22s on snare and high hat, Handi-Mics on the Leslie and PR 30s on toms, overheads, and guitar are being utilized.
Bob Workman is Charlie Daniels FOH mixer and was one of the early proponents of switching the band over to Heil microphones. “Changing our entire mic package over to Bob Heil’s products was the easiest call I have ever made. I compared our then existing microphones to the Heils and the improvements were stunning. The Heil mics offer incredible rejection of off-axis sound. When I push the fader up on Charlie’s vocal I don’t get wedge bleed, or his guitar rig blazing behind him or the drum kit affecting things. The result is a clean, more accurate mix regardless of the room, console or rig.”
The Charlie Daniels Band includes Taz DiGregorio (keyboards), Charlie Hayward (bass), Bruce Brown (lead guitar), Chris Wormer (guitar), and Pat McDonald (drums). With upwards of 100 shows scheduled for 2009, including an appearance at the Stagecoach Festival in Indio CA, getting Charlie to slow down long enough to comment on his new PR 35 microphone isn’t easy. Once cornered he remains typically succinct, “Best mic I’ve ever used.”
