Story of the Year on Ableton Live, Touring Rigs & 25 Years as a Band

Adam Russell of Story of the Year breaks down the band’s Ableton Live touring setup, songwriting evolution, and what has kept them together for 25 years.

Adam Russell, co-founding bassist of post-hardcore icons Story of the Year, sits down with the Ableton Podcast to pull back the curtain on everything from their live touring rig to the collaborative writing process behind their seventh studio album, A.R.S.O.N. If you have ever wondered how a band built on raw energy translates that to a modern Ableton Live stage setup, this conversation delivers the goods.

What the episode covers

The conversation moves through a lot of ground. Adam walks through how Story of the Year structure their Ableton Live sets for touring, including MIDI routing, playback rigs, and the live troubleshooting decisions that keep a show running when things go sideways on stage. For producers and engineers who want a real-world look at how a working rock band uses Ableton Live as the backbone of a touring production, this is a genuinely detailed account from someone who lives it night after night.

Beyond the technical side, Adam talks candidly about how the band’s songwriting process has shifted over 25 years. The early days meant everyone in a room hashing out parts old school, sometimes playing acoustics over a pillow standing in for a drum kit. Today it looks quite different: guitarist Ryan Mackenna builds demos and sends full Dropbox folders of stems to producer Colin Brittain, who reassembles, programmes drums, and shapes the arrangements in Cubase before the band digs in together. Scratch vocals from vocalist Dan Marsala regularly end up on the final record, which says a lot about how the writing environment has evolved.

There is also a frank discussion about what it actually takes to keep a band intact for two and a half decades, why working with younger producers has been one of the smartest creative decisions they have made, and what Adam learned interviewing music industry figures for a documentary he and Ryan made around 2012 that turned out to be a remarkably accurate forecast of where streaming and direct artist-to-fan models were heading.

Key topics and timestamps

• Ableton Live touring rig: how the band structures sets, manages MIDI routing, and handles playback on the road
• Live troubleshooting: practical decisions that keep a show moving when technology pushes back
• Songwriting evolution: from five people in a room to stem-based remote collaboration with producer Colin Brittain
• Working with younger producers: why an outside perspective from someone who grew up as a fan of the band unlocks things the band cannot see themselves
• A.R.S.O.N. album: leaning back into heaviness, the Papa Roach collaboration, and what makes Dan Marsala’s voice one of the most durable in the genre
• 25 years together: the friendship-first approach that has held the lineup through every business and personal pressure a touring band faces
• The music industry documentary: what Adam and Ryan learned interviewing executives about streaming, Patreon, and the future of artist revenue back in 2012

Why it matters

This episode sits at a crossroads that does not come up often enough: a veteran rock band using Ableton Live not as a gimmick but as genuine production infrastructure, combined with an honest account of what long-term creative partnership actually looks like. Whether you are trying to understand how to scale a live electronic or hybrid setup for touring, or you are thinking about how collaboration and outside production perspectives can reinvigorate a project that has been running for years, Adam’s account is full of concrete, transferable insight.