We’re in the middle of music festival season, which after peaking in the summer months, will continue through the fall. Festivals have grown more popular, increased in size, offering more VIP amenities and garnering more fans. All the big acts from Ed Sheeran to Megan Thee Stallion to SZA have made sure they were on the top bill of one of them somewhere. Yes, a few annual ones have deflated and disappeared, but others have risen in their place.
The numbers are stunning. Music Festival Wizard, a website keeping track of these, notes nearly 150 are taking place during the summer months alone in the lower 48. Yet for those production houses who support these shows with audio, there are different thoughts to the market in general — including some concerns — and we checked in with some industry pros for an inside look into some 2024 festivals — large and small.
State of the Festival Biz
“As 2024 moves along, we’ve noticed a consistent pattern with many festivals being curated, packaged and positioned across the country with similar artists performing across them,” says Jay Baumgardner, marketing manager at Clearwing, the production house that supports the nation’s oldest and biggest festival, Milwaukee’s Summerfest. “This in turn allows the festivals to be more streamlined, efficient and profitable for promoters all while supporting acts are continuing to request sizable floor packages and ancillary rentals to supplement the festival-provided rigs. We’re also seeing a large influx of nationally recognized brands attaching festival-style shows to their traditionally non-music-oriented events. By incorporating these shows into their events, the brands are able to dip into new, highly targetable market segments.”
“In broad strokes, [the festival market] seems to be consolidating — particularly for high-end festivals,” says Chip Self of Logic Systems (logicsound.com), who traditionally stays busy working these in his St. Louis base and beyond. “Not sure that’s a good thing.”
Aaron Soriero, of Music Matters (musicmattersproductions.com) says that overall, the festival business seems to be strong. “It’s good on the Live Nation and C3 side of things,” he says. “I’ve heard some feedback that the smaller companies weren’t quite selling the ‘early bird’ tickets like they used to, and if you’re a smaller independent, you really need that kind of revenue to make your event succeed. I’ve seen some smaller events that were announced this year that then went away because of a lack of sales. But overall, it’s good – the ones we’ve worked on every year are still happening and growing and it’s always nice to see others start new ones.”
“In the wake of COVID, the industry is still settling,” says Stefan Axel Bouts, who handles project development/production management at Nomad Sound (nomadsound.net). “And while festivals have certainly returned, it doesn’t quite feel settled yet. Overall, we’re happy to see that it has bounced back, and people are still hungry for festivals. Certain kind of festivals are invaluable to the newer and budding artists, and it’s great to be able to support that growth.”
Kevin Lyman has worked dozens of festivals including Taste of Chaos, Country Throwdown, and Lollapalooza, plus ran Van’s Warped Tour for 24 years, and thus he has a particularly unique perspective. “I think the festival market has reached a point where we have to decide if festivals are important to our industry,” he says. “The expenses of these projects continue to rise and the public’s willingness to pay higher prices to offset this seems to be at an apex. I always believe that there will a place for festivals, though they may need to reinvent themselves and that is not necessarily a bad thing.”
Logic Systems: Essence Festival
Logic Systems was in New Orleans supporting the 30th Essence Festival July 4-8, and the R&B/Hip Hop music flowed. While it takes over the city spilling over into the convention center and area venues, Logic focuses on the main acts in Caesars Superdome with up to 90,000 people attending per show. They are doing up to six major artists each day, all of whom require a multi-hour setup an soundcheck. Four days of prep, three days of shows and a day to load out kept the Logic team busy. “The crew totals in the hundreds across all departments – it’s a massive undertaking,” says Logic’s owner/CEO Chip Self.
Logic got involved with Essence three years ago, and Self says they’ve worked closely with management and other departments to keep refining the process. “Solomon Group is the producer, and everyone there has been great and supportive. They genuinely understand how challenging the project is and do a great job letting the departments work autonomously.”
Logic is a PK Sound house, which Self says is well-suited to this project. “The Superdome is a hostile acoustic space. Having remote control of every angle of the PA from the ground allows us to refine coverage patterns. Variable control of horn flare angles allows us to achieve incredibly precise control of where the energy goes and doesn’t go. In an environment like that, it’s a game changer. We are constantly hearing about how people can’t believe the results we’re getting in that difficult space. I attribute that to careful planning and having that extra level of control.” Consoles are DiGiCo Quantum 338s with two dedicated SD racks per stage. “They are powerful and can handle the high channel counts with ease.”
System drive management happens with a Quantum 225 and several Outline Newtons, which he says are powerful and “a bit of a well-kept secret. Honestly, I don’t know why everyone isn’t using them. The flexibility and feature set are remarkable, particularly for the price.” Otherwise, Shure Axient and PSM1000 are in use for hundreds of channels of RF. Wireless Workbench in coordination with the units themselves creates a comprehensive and powerful package, he adds.
“The primary challenge of this festival is always the schedule,” he says. “We end up working around 20 hours per day on consecutive show and load-out days. Minimal sleep for lots of days in a row is tough on anyone — particularly my old body. After that, the big challenge is the sheer quantity of equipment combined with the size of the place. We average around 20,000 steps every day onsite.” It’s steps well-earned, as he adds, “Once the show starts, there’s a 60’ diameter turntable on stage to spin the next band onto the stage. While the front band is performing, we’re stripping the last band, and setting up the band after that. Even with these huge sets and complicated patching, changeovers are averaging just 10-15 minutes between bands. The organization and coordination required to pull that off cannot be overstated. It’s a massive team effort across all departments. The stage managers have one of the hardest jobs of all — managing the chaos that is the change-overs.”
But it’s all worth it on many levels, he says. “As always, seeing my team succeed and seeing people enjoy the show is the real reward. We are paid to be invisible. When people just enjoy the performance, without a second thought to all the effort that went into it — that’s when we know we got it right.”
Clearwing Productions: Milwaukee Summerfest
“It’s a rollercoaster of emotions,” Jeff Mayer, regional audio operations at Clearwing says of Summerfest. “It’s both extremely stressful and extremely rewarding.” It is one of the oldest (the first was in 1968), and, according to the Guinness World Records folks, the largest in the world with 800,000 people attending every year over 11 days. With nine stages plus the big (23,000-seat) American Family Insurance Amphitheater, there’s Hip Hop, EDM, rock, pop, country, jazz and more. It is put on by Milwaukee World Festivals, a nonprofit organization.
Clearwing has the herculean task of covering all those stages (plus other small ones, like the children’s stage, etc.) “We are an L-Acoustics and JBL house, and for the past several years, we’ve especially relied on our JBL inventory. Harman has been a great partner for us and has been especially supportive.”
For the amphitheater, which is part of the festival though treated as a separate venue with individual tickets required, many headliners bring their own rig. Those that contract with Clearwing get their L-Acoustics K1 (40) and K2 (16) with their KS28s (34) both flown and on the ground for that venue; plus ARCS II fills (14).
In terms of desks, it’s 100% DiGiCo. Spread throughout the grounds Q338s down to S21s are found and everything in-between. “We partner with [DiGiCo’s] Group One as well, and they too have been great supporting us, including supplying extra consoles when we run out of ours. So huge shout out to them and [vice president] Matt Larson and his team.” Both companies offer on-site support, which “is a huge benefit to us.” Local 18 operates everything, including those consoles.
Mayer says from the time the bands start playing until around six, around half of the engineers are supplied by them. “If you go from 6 p.m. on, it’s probably closer to 70% to 80% of the acts supplying their own engineers.” For the main ground’s stages, Clearwing supplies four audio techs for coverage plus a floater whose main duty is to handle all the supplemental orders for wireless microphones. “We have a couple of dozen racks of wireless gear that he manages, distributing them and collecting them every day.” Mic-wise, it’s a mix of Shure, Sennheiser, Radial, BSS, and Audix. The onsite production manager this year was Gary Brunclik.
For Mayer, not surprisingly, the biggest challenge is the sheer logistics of it all. “There are so many events happening on the grounds beyond the music acts including corporate events, and we support almost all of them. So it’s about being as efficient as possible with gear and labor.”
Asked what a personal highlight for him over all these years, he tells of parking a truck backstage for the REO Speedwagon concert this year at the BMO Pavilion, which is part of the festival’s general admission grounds. “I was backstage the whole time getting to watch them, and it was meaningful because they were here the first time I came to Summerfest as a kid so many years ago,” he says. “Seeing them back sent chills down my spine; then seeing them now from backstage, well… it reminded me why I do this.”
Music Matters Productions: Atlanta Jazz Festival
For the 47th time over Memorial Day weekend, Atlanta has hosted the country’s largest free jazz festival, with local hero André 3000 performing as the headliner. For the sixth year, Music Matters Productions was there to support the 16 acts who performed over three days on a Stageline SL320 mobile stage in Piedmont Park. The event features an artist market, a food and beverage market, and of course, a VIP experience.
“It’s gone through a few different iterations,” says Music Matters owner/production designer Aaron Soriero. For this event, organizers took Soriero’s advice and hired Aaron Levitt, a production manager “who we’ve worked with a lot over the years.”
More than 200,000 people attended the 2024 festival over its three days. “Being aware of the largeness of the audience this year, we added some delay speakers.” Supplementing the d&b audiotechnik line array were three towers of d&b delay towers. “The delays were the best option given the budget,” added audio department manager Tom Smith. That, plus sidefills amounted to 12 J8s; eight J12s; four Y10P; 12 J-Subs; 14 V8s; 12 V12s; and two V-Subs. Powering it all were 12 d&b D80s amps. The console was an Avid Venue S6L-24C.
Smith notes that — by design — there were less subs then might be at a typical music festival. Smith: “Jazz musicians don’t like to hear a lot of low-end, so the cardioid subs help a lot. It can be distracting if there is a lot of low-end that spills off the back of the box.” Some of the headliners brought their own engineers, but Music Matters supplied house engineers for any band that needed them and four of their audio personnel were on the ground for the event.
For Soriero, the challenge is in the balancing of the budget. “It’s a free event for the city, so there’s no sales revenue,” he says. “So [the system] has to be good, but not overly expensive. It has to fit their numbers. In the end, we just have to get clever!” For Smith, it would be ideal for an array with more throw and not needing all those delay towers. “But it’s kind of hard, putting anything bigger on the stage we have, and we do have to stay within budget. But more array processing and doing other adjustments helps.”
However, no compromises were noted by the fans or the production team. “We got rave reviews from Aaron [Levitt],” Smith says. “The extra speakers we added were a hit. In prior years, we’d sometimes get people walking up to the front of house saying they couldn’t hear well, and we would work with what we had. But the extra speakers really made it work this year. It was a big success.”
Nomad Sound: Levitation Festival
Formerly known as the Austin Psych Fest, the Levitation Festival happens in October, and the team from Nomad Sound is already getting ready for it. Since 2008, the festival has brought in over 3,000 fans of “psychedelic rock and beyond.” “It has morphed over the years,” reports Nomad’s Stefan Axel Bouts. “Currently it is a two main stage festival with up to seven partner venues. It’s great, because it’s a tribute to Austin’s role in psych rock history, a collection of music and visual art over four days and multiple venues allowing festivalgoers to cultivate their own experience.” The Reverberation Appreciation Society / Levitation are the clients who put it on.
Nomad first joined this festival in 2011 when it was at the former Seaholm Power Plant, the decommissioned steam power plant that formerly electrified downtown. The event moved around, eventually landing at Carson Creek Ranch, where it expanded to its largest format with four stages. “We enjoyed several successful years here, until in 2016 when the festival was canceled just hours ahead of a powerful storm that absolutely destroyed the grounds — thankfully, just after we were able to complete a record-speed production load-out!” After that, the entire lineup was quickly shifted to a number of concerts in venues around Austin, a format they followed for several years, until its return to a true “main stage” style festival at Far Out Lounge in 2022. “It’s been fascinating to watch this festival change and grow along with the city that it calls home, and a pleasure to be able to support the artists it brings to our stages, with unique sounds and eclectic hardware.”
Stefan explains that when it comes to gear, it’s about tailoring to an often-extensive list of rider requirements. “Since 2022, we have provided an L-Acoustics K2 system, with Kara fills and delays, and KS28 subs — all driven by LA-RAK II / LA12x amps. The wide acceptability of the L-Acoustics system makes it an obvious selection, but importantly, the control it allows us to maintain proper coverage while also confining it to a venue nestled tightly into a largely residential area is critical. We work closely with the venue, the festival organizers and the city of Austin to design a system that will satisfy all the needs.”
While there is some concern over the power of the system, Nomad can achieve everything the artists deserve while maintaining a tight boundary on the energy and volume. The console of choice is the Allen & Heath dLive, which Stefan praises the sonic quality as being “incredible; plus, it’s easy for a guest engineer to work with. Monitors are mixed on an Allen & Heath Avantis board, which also has an easy workflow, along with a compact format, which makes it a great choice for a packed and bustling deck that still requires a high-quality mix.”
They supply four Nomad personnel to make it happen. “Craig Lawrence and Evan Kaspar (FOH / SE) have been instrumental technicians in the operation and design of our systems. Scott Perrine and Marshal Rouse have been on monitors and patch for us multiple times in recent years.”
Stefan explains the challenge of the event is walking that line of a powerful system with a tight noise restriction, but all the more satisfying when they make it work. “Otherwise, it’s got challenges like many other festivals… hot and dusty until it’s pouring rain.” Bonus? He is a fan of the music and mentions getting to hear some incredible performances from the likes of The Black Angels, All Them Witches, Thee Oh Sees, The Flaming Lips, Tame Impala… “a lot of our favorite sets have happened at this festival. If you get a chance to make it out to this festival, I highly recommend it; aside from our audio, all the production is truly top-notch. Live oil-pan light projections across your stage and all the trees behind it are pretty incredible to watch.”
