By Kevin M. Mitchell
ST. JOHN’S, NL, Canada — “Newfoundland the island is 100% king of the one-offs!” declares Production Manager/Site Coordinator Shawn Basha. “No 10-truck tours here because you can’t drive on the island. We have to be resourceful.”
And that’s exactly what the production team was for the five-day, two weekend festival in August that hosted more than 20 acts including first weekend headliners Nickelback and Pitbull, and second weekend headliner Shania Twain. Exactly how resourceful? Pitbull just showed up with his microphones. Everything else was supplied by the Canadian team, including a large Adamson P.A.
The Canadian company making it happen was Tour Tech East, headed by Peter Hendrickson. “We’ve been working with Tour Tech for a long time and use them for many festivals,” Basha says. “They have good people and good gear, and most importantly, they are a lot of fun to work with.”
Lots of P.A.
The System Engineer for the Churchill Park Music Festival is Ken Ryan, an independent contractor who regularly gets called in to help with Tour Tech shows. He’s been pushing sound for Canadian acts for over 20 years. “This is ‘just’ another big festival – lots of PA, lots of coverage, lots of advancing, lots of planning with the promoter and with Tour Tech,” he says. “The big challenge here is the wind. You need a lot of power to cut through when it gets windy, and it usually does.” On the other hand, the relative remoteness of St. John’s has benefits for him though – like wireless signals are not a problem. “It’s wide open here.”
Ryan puts the system together and planned the hangs. “We went with Adamson, with the main system consisting of 32 E 15s, with S10s for the under hangs, and 12 Adamson E12s for the outfield. The front fills are Adamson S10s plus 32 Adamson E219s for the subs.” Ryan is pleased with how it turned out. “The Adamsons have a lot of power and a lot of clarity. I have the added bonus that I know the system really well and have been working with the E Series since 2015.” He adds that in a festival, you have many different FOH engineers who all have a different way doing things “and if they want something a bit different, I can react really fast.” There were some L-Acoustics added for the delay components.
He also gets behind the board for some of the opening acts, and the festival console is an Avid VENUE S6L-24D. “It’s especially great for festivals, as you can jump on it and make quick changes as it’s easy to get around on.” Then once the main acts take over, he monitors it all with SMAART watching the reference coming from the console and the monitors making sure it’s all going smoothly. “I’m making sure we’re not running out of headroom anywhere, and if we start to, I work in conjunction with the band’s FOH engineer or their system tech to make the proper adjustments.”
Fluid Communications
Sean Correll, head of audio at Tour Tech East, is the “patch/stage audio guy.” “These days people come with their own inner rigs and it’s my job to get that all plugged in and lined up with what we have.” For a five-day festival with over 20 acts coming through it there are “myriad systems” to coordinate.
Otherwise for that variety there’s… well a lot of variety in terms of monitoring from various IEMs to wedges to “everything in-between.” The wedges are 12 Adamson M212s. The larger acts also usually have their own IEM rig which Correll patches in. “We also make available a lot of outboard gear, but what engineers are going for these days are Waves packages, which we supply.”
The other key component the Tour Tech team supplies? “Fluid communication.” Otherwise, “We’re from Halifax, so to be able to get out here to Newfoundland and make sure these people have a good show is just great.”
There were four or five bands per night, and 16,500 people who attended the sold-out event each night got the always-appreciated but never expected beautiful weather to go along with the great music well-delivered (locals not-so-jokingly say there are about 45 good days a year in the north Atlantic Coastal city of 130,000). Hurricane Ernesto threatened, and the team was prepared for that, but fortunately it didn’t hinder the festival in the least and it was an enormous success.
For more info, visit: www.tourtecheast.com
