Emma Mae Jacob

I recently returned from Nashville, TN, mixing front of house for rising country singer, Emma Mae Jacob , as part of the 39th Country Radio Seminar . Emma Mae performed her single, "Say A Prayer" for the opening ceremonies of CRS39 and burned down the house...... literally.

We had the luxury of a relaxed soundcheck the day before. Emma Mae was only peforming one song so it was critical that we nail it right out of the gates. The PA system was provided by Sound Image and was honored to have Earl Neal as my System Tech. Earl owns In-Ear Systems and develops Live Wires
which I'm really excited to try and possibly get The Decemberists on them as spare sets to their Sensaphonics 2X-S in-ear monitors. Earl provided me with a Digico D5 digital console which I prefer over the Yamaha PM5D-RH anyday of the week. The D5 is intuitive, quick and sounds incredible.... more than I can say for the PM5D. The D5 was such a pleasure to mix on sans one isssue: the recall functions did not save my mix completely, which forced me to scramble during the song, to say the least.

So, during the song I noticed a little smoke in the audience as Emma jumped off stage to work the crowd. I thought it was a feeble and attempt at producing haze or fog in the audience, shaking my head at the Spinal Tap moment. Earl ran over to the house-right stack to see what was going on..... it definitely was not a fog/haze machine. By this time the crowd and the band kicked it up a few notches bringing the climax to rock and roll proportions. Come to find out, as I ran backstage, that the sound system had caught on fire due to a DC overload and that the crew blasted it with fire extinguishers during the song! I couldn't believe it, I finally burned down a sound system. Check that one off the list. Sorry Earl.

It turned out to be a great piece of publicity for Emma Mae, making the evening news that night and the news that Emma had burned down the house spread around CRS39 like wildfire. I wish her the best of luck, she really is a pleasure to work with as well as everyone involved: Paula Kay, her band and her family. Keep an eye out for this rising star!