New York, NY (August 5, 2025)—The Lumineers are on the road, hitting ballparks, arenas and amphitheaters across the U.S. with their tried-and-true brand of folk music. Roaming in support of its most recent album, Automatic, the band has headed overseas for a European tour already and will be circling North America at least until October. Through it all, minding the mixes at front of house once again is the band’s longtime FOH engineer, Josh Osmond, overseeing an Avid Venue S6L-32D console that uses modern-day technology to recreate the group’s authentic folk sound. “On the surface, they’re a folk-rock band,” he says, “but the reality is far more intricate.”
Osmond’s prep for the tour began long before even rehearsals, as he stayed in touch with the group’s studio team during the recording of Automatic to get a better understanding of the sonic choices being made, allowing him to determine early on how those sounds could be recreated on stage, aligning the technical setup with the emotional tone of the record.
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With that knowledge in mind, Osmond turned to his S6L. With over 165 inputs routed through two Stage 64s and one Stage 32 on stage, plus another Stage 32 and Local 16 for outboard effects at front of house, the scale of the show demanded an upgrade to Avid’s new Venue | E6LX-256 Engine. In that, he uses detailed user layouts and more than 100 control events to automate everything from input changes to mic swaps. With over 165 inputs, his system includes custom fader banks per song and instant access to essential layers.
Given the desk’s Pro Tools integration, Osmond typically records each show, capturing up to 216 channels over a Cat cable using AVB-HD. “That part is just insane,” he says. His mix includes ambient mics, utility routing and a suite of analog outboard processors, but he notably doesn’t use a single plug-in on input channels: “All my inputs are using built-in compression, gates, or HEAT. Any plug-ins I use are either for effects or on group buses—and even then, they’re there mainly in case of analog outboard gear failure.”
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While The Lumineers are in many ways a folk band, the band’s shows have all the necessities of a big rock show—stage thrusts, multiple vocal mic positions, rolling drum kits and more. In any show, there’s up to 20 vocal mics and various instruments being moved or swapped throughout the set, keeping Osmond on his toes throughout. “They trust me pretty heavily to put together a mix that’s going to be the best sound we can put forth,” he says. “My relationship with them ends up being sort of like a producer role in the live setting,” he adds, noting that it’s all in service of one goal: “It’s a group effort…and they just want to put the best product out to the audience.”
