Rat Sound Powers Up L.A.’s Detour Festival.
In this business, there is no doubting the importance of relationships. Whether it’s a chance meeting that grows into a lasting business relationship, or the way you handle and troubleshoot the inevitable issues that occur due to the nature of the live event industry, relationships are built daily.
In the early ‘80s, Dave Rat, founder of Rat Sound, met a guy named Frank in a liquor store. Conversation grew, and through talking to him, Dave was introduced to Gary Tovar, founder of Los Angeles promoter Goldenvoice. At the time, Rat was one of three sound companies Goldenvoice used, but only for smaller shows. Originally, Goldenvoice hired Rat Sound because of the company’s PA and proprietary Rat Trap 5, which was harder for the kids frequenting the shows to climb than others.
Today, 26 years later, through built-up loyalty and consistency, a strong relationship exists. This is the reason why Goldenvoice — now a huge in-ternational promoter — called on Rat Sound for one of its latest events, the Los Angeles Detour Festival, a one-day, four-stage event with more than 30 bands and DJs.
A Match Made in Heaven
Normally, I work on the sales and marketing side of Rat Sound. However, for this weekend, I crossed over to the production side when I worked in Goldenvoice’s production office for LA Detour. Knowing most of their staff from working with them on the Coachella festival, this seemed like a match made in heaven. "Get there at 6 p.m. on that Friday," Production Manager Kevan Wilkins told me. “You'll work till midnight, then 7 a.m. on Saturday through to about 3 a.m. on Sunday."
At the time, it sounded like pretty reasonable call times for a four-stage, one-day festival. But it wasn’t until I got to the venue that I realized the enormous amount of organization an event of this nature entails from both a sound and a production angle. The streets of downtown. were only be-ing closed from 8 p.m. on Friday until 6 a.m. on Sunday.
Obviously, if I was planning on getting any sleep, I was delusional. It takes 10 days for the setup of five stages at Coachella and five days to take down. It was definitely going to be tight to close down a thriving city center, empty the streets, erect four stages plus VIP tents, vending booths and shuttle in over 30 bands and a potential 10,000 people, with less than four hours to set up sound and four hours to break down the entire festival.
A Downtown Transformation
This was the third year for the LA Detour festival, which is set along the backdrop of the skyscrapers of Los Angeles’ financial district. This year’s festival was headlined by the bands The Mars Volta and Gogol Bordello. Created by the infamous LA Weekly, the all-ages festival gave Angelenos a chance to experience a Live Music festival featuring international acts without stepping foot outside the city.
Preproduction had started months before with meetings with the L.A. Fire Department. One of the benefits of working with an established promoter is its history. Goldenvoice had done so much work over the years that a trust between the two parties had long been established. Many city meet-ings, maps, layouts and safety approvals later, the Friday before the festival finally came around. With the streets of downtown — nine blocks to be exact — closed down, we had 34 hours to set up, produce and load out a rock show. In the end, the downtown was re-opened, the streets were clean — it was as if nothing had happened the night before.
Friday at 5 p.m.
Even though the residents and workers in downtown were going about their business, production trailers were set up in the equivalent of about 50 parking spots in the parking lot outside City Hall. Deliveries had started with a mini-maintenance yard set up with items needed for stages, tarpau-lins, brooms, lights and three forklifts. Cat power had been made a temporary bone yard of about 15 car parking spaces to unload all their genera-tors. Miraculously, by 7 p.m., everything was in place and ready for the arrival of the first crew guys.
7 p.m.
Production Manager Kevan Wilkins walks the venue, marking the locations to put the generators, so that once the streets were closed not a moment was wasted. "Not only do I have the stages waiting by the streets, but also the fencing company ready to secure the venue with classic fencing,” he said. Stagehands were all clocked in and had gone through the necessary safety training — ready to start when the streets closed. I have to say these stagehands were pros. Crew Chief Bryan Bishop deserved an award. I don’t know where he found over 100 stagehands to do the rotational shifts, but he did. Not only were they all there at 7 p.m., but 98% were clocked in by 6.45 p.m. Everyone really wanted to be there, and every single one was experienced and valued their job.
8 p.m.
The streets were closed by Cal Trans, trucks started loading in, stages were built, lighting erected and a city within a city commenced construction.
3 a.m.
Four stage areas were set up and lights had been fixed both on the stages and for the grounds. Generators were working, four and a half miles of fencing was laid and the last stagehand was offsite.
Saturday – Show Day!
7 a.m.
Sound was, comparatively speaking, the last thing to arrive but the first thing to set up that day. With three of the four stages using the tried-and-tested Warped Tour “truck staging,” this heavily dictated the weight allowance of what speakers could be hung from the roof. In less than four hours, six L-ACOUSTICS V-DOSC were hung per side for each of the three main stages powered by LA48as and supplemented by Rat Sound's proprietary subwoofers. Monitor speakers were brought in, with both EAW MicroWedge 12s and L-ACOUSTICS 115XT HIQs covering monitor duties.
The dance area was the only unique venue, as it was located at the top of the magnificent steps of City Hall and used a generic set up of eight Rat subs and eight tops (in this case, Rat Trap 5s) as the standard DJ setup. Two of each were placed in the four corners of the square-arched entrance. For the sound crew, their main challenge was the timeframe. With a load-in of 7 a.m. and down beat at noon, what would normally be a 9 a.m. load-in and 3 p.m. sound check for a regular show was condensed into four hours.
It reminded me of the importance of having a team you can trust. Each member of the sound crew also had worked in various facets at Coachella for Rat. The months before Coachella, handfuls of resumes pass through my e-mail inbox of solicitations to work the festival to which I forward to Rat’s Jon Monson. As head of touring, he ultimately makes his choices based on people we have had previous positive working relationships with or who we know and trust from reliable sources, and this was true of today. Each crewmember had national and international touring experience and had the knowledge and experience to go above and beyond what was needed to get the job done fast and accurately.
12 p.m. — Doors Open, Bands Begin
I was given a couple of hours off to rest, but I thought I could power through. I was enjoying both the work and the social aspect of being at the fes-tival, and I didn’t want to miss a minute. I wandered over to find out Monson’s choices for gear. “Unlike a larger festival like Coachella where we have FOH risers fitting up to four choices of console, for this event, I was given the input lists and preferences for each band and then came up with a basic spec for each stage,” he told me. “Then each production manager came back with his or her particular preferences for the headliner or the bands and that was the console for the day at each position.“ It was interesting to see with only one band, The Mars Volta, bringing their own con-sole, the choices ranged from a Yamaha PM5D on the first stage for FOH and monitors to the faithful analog Midas Heritage 3000s on the second and the smaller digital Yamaha M7CLs on the third.
We were lucky that there were no sound restrictions in this industrial area, and although there were apartments a block away, residents seemed happy with the exchange of free tickets for their trouble. Goldenvoice had never had a complaint about sound, which is often one of the main chal-lenges in metropolitan areas.
9 p.m.
One of the last bands went on, including a “silent disco” on the third stage. In a nutshell, the silent disco is where DJs perform to a crowd, and in-stead of the sound going through the main PA, wireless “KOSS” headphones were given to every single member of the crowd to pick up the music. This was the first time I’ve ever seen the sound company become redundant at a rock show. Whoever thought up this idea of eliminating the sound system is genius; it worked like magic. As a “non-headphone-wearing” passerby, it was fascinating to see a crowd of partygoers jumping up and down in unison to apparent silence.
12 a.m.
Everyone in production was set to work, loading out sound, breaking down the staging and clearing the grounds. I was tired, regretting not having taken the nap midday, and ready to go home. But this part of the show is just as important as setup, as one person wasting time or not knowing what they are doing drastically affects another’s ability (including myself) to go home at a reasonable time of night.
3 a.m.
The last stagehand and I happily went home before schedule, confirming to me that anyone can buy a bunch of gear, but it’s the people who run it and their attitudes that can make or break an event.
Crew
Production Manager: Kevan Wilkins
Production: Victoria Szymela
FOH Engineers: Andy Turner, Owen “Doc” Thomas, Mike “Milk” Arnold
Monitor Engineers: Daniel Bonneau, Jared Woods, Johnny B
System Technicians: Manny Barajas, Tim Engwall, Sara Holt, Chris “Grandpa” Rymarz, Kyle Rogan, Jason Parsons
Crew Chief: Brian Bishop
Stage Managers: Arafa Keskin, Jason Brown, Westy, Ryan Kline
Gear
FOH
Consoles: Yamaha PM5D, Midas Heritage 3000 and Yamaha M7CL
Processing: XTA DP428, BSS FCS 960, BSS DPR 404, Drawmer DS201, TC DTwo, Yamaha SPX 990, Lexicon PCM80, DBX 160A
Speakers: L-ACOUSTICS V-DOSC, L-ACOUSTICS ARCs and Rat Dual 18” subs (DJ stage, Rat Trap 5s)
Amps: Lab.gruppen, L-ACOUSTICS LA48A, Crest 7001s
MON
Console: Yamaha PM5D, Midas Heritage 3000, Yamaha M7CL
Speakers: L-ACOUSTICS HiQs and EAW MicroWedge 12s.
Amps: Lab.gruppen, L-ACOUSTICS LA48A, Crest 7001, Crest 4801, Chevin Q6
Processing: XTA DP448 and DP226, BSS FCS 960
Mics: Shure (SM58s, 57s: Beta 98, 91, 58 and 57: KSM32, 137) Sennheiser (e609, e904) and Audix (OM6 and D6)
Snake Assemblies: Whirlwind
