Nah, I don't have neither the permission, the agility, the rigging background, nor the equipment needed to hang my mics from the overhead.
"First do no harm." I'm going to have to give priority to the performers and the audience and not block their sightlines. Two mics stacked vertically on a light stand in Mid-Side configuration, with dead rats on them aren't terribly obtrusive, but if weather threatens and I have to strap on an umbrella, then that would be uncool IMO. Our broadcast is a side show, the main act is the artist/audience relationship. So I'll keep the setup low at stage lip.
In the low end, this event doesn't have giant subs on the ground below stage lip like the 4 Peaks Music festival we broadcast in June. These smaller events use smallish sound systems and the subs are part of the PA stack that flanks the stage. So with the 500Hz first-order low-cut filters that I built into the Mid mic phantom power supply (thanks for suggestion GB) should be okay. It says here.
Floor bound-induced comb filtering should be at a minimum and pushed up higher in the bandwidth with the mics down low like that. There's nothing I can do if any of the instruments sound weird or shoot "over the head" of the mics when they are down there, but I will be supplementing the sound with the direct feed from the board.
It's all "make it up as you go" with these festivals. No telling from year to year how the stages will be set up, how much latency the sound boards will have, whether the sound guy has ears or not (some of them are brilliant and coax a great sound from the stage, others seem to have been deafened for years and need to have their attention drawn to feedback, or inaudible instruments, or muddy sound). We have little to no control over any of it. It's my job to overcome problems and make it all work.
That said, when you get down to it, it's about the music and there's even greater variability with the acts. The next festival, Bend Roots Revival, at end of September (date, time, live stream details in my earlier post about using a shotgun mic as the Mid mid in a M-S setup) is all local bands, some good enough to get paid to perform, some absolutely rank beginners, and some you'd like to pay to stop performing -- thankfully no Scream Metal! -- and they are all part of our community. Bend is a hotbed of musical talent with lots of venues and opportunities for young musicians to get started in their careers. I view it as sort of a musical incubator.
I totally love the suggestion that I hang "ON THE AIR" signs on the mic stands (plural: two stages, one stand per stage). Something like
http://tinyurl.com/yau7jl44 should work. (Are tiny urls okay here? it points to a $7 plastic sign on Amazon).
Thanks for all the help, guys.