Six Regional Audio Providers Make it to the 2015 Parnelli Ballot
The readers of FRONT of HOUSE have voted, and we have six finalists in the Parnelli Awards Hometown Hero category for the hardworking death-defying audio companies that cater to five U.S. regions and Canada.
This award honors those heroes who are the fabric of their community — handling the corporate meetings with speakers on a stick, the up-and-coming bands, the annual jazz festival, and yes… Bar Mitzvahs.
All have something in common besides their dedication to their clients and hard work: They are all are eyeing being bigger and better, and next month, one of these will be awarded with the Hometown Hero Sound Company of the Year Award at the annual gala, set for Oct. 24 at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Voting for the 2015 Parnelli Awards closes Sept. 30, 2015. To link to the ballot, CLICK HERE.
Northeast
DBS Audio – Philadelphia, PA
Dave Brotman was inspired to dedicate his life to audio while seeing concerts in his hometown of Philly. “My older brothers and sisters were Grateful Dead fans and started taking me to shows when I was seven,” he says. “I remember sitting in front of that Meyer P.A. the Dead used. I sat in front of those rigs for so many years, I had to get into [the business].” In 1992, he started DBS. “We started with a tiny little Meyer System, and many years later we’ve grown into a mid-sized regional company that also handles national and even international clients,” Brotman says.
Today, the company has five full time staffers, with another 10 freelancers on standby. Their 7,000 square foot warehouse holds solely Meyer speakers. “I still have the original Meyer UP1c I purchased back in the 1990’s when they were already 10 years old, and they are still in inventory and go out a few times a year!” he laughs. But he’s added a few over the years, of course: “We currently have more than 300 Meyer boxes, and in February, we purchased the LYON System with the 1100-LFC subs. They also have M boards, from the older 3000s, 250s and 1000s to the newer PRO6s, PRO9s and PRO2.
DBS handles many events at the Arts United Center in Fort Wayne, and the company also does corporate retail work with projects including Abercrombie & Fitch’s flagship stores in New York, L.A. and London. They’ve also installed for Urban Outfitters main HQ (all with Meyer Systems). “We’re right in the middle of a couple of big hotel installations and a New York City Jazz Club.” DBS also mixed for the Dark Star Jubilee in Thornville, OH. Closer to home, they provide for the local shed, The Mann in Philadelphia. They’ve also covered some festivals, including the D.C. Jazz Festival and Wanderlust YOGA festival in Austin, TX.
“I’m hands-on,” Brotman says. “I still go out and do as much rigging and mixing as possible. The worst part of my day is sitting at the desk looking at the computer,” he laughs. As for his first win, “I’m excited. We’ve always cared a lot about good service and good products, and I have a good staff. And after 23 years in this business, I can honestly say I still love what I do.”
Southeast
Mid-Coast Sound – Nashville, TN
Mid-Coast Sound, based in the competitive market of Nashville, serves a variety of clients staging events at the Cannery Ballroom and Mercy Lounge complex; Western Kentucky University; the Dixie Carter Center; the International Bluegrass Museum in Owensboro, KY and their ROMP Festival, which is now in its 13th year; plus a variety of regional festivals and fairs.
“As a musician, studio engineer and producer in the 1980s, I was always asked by the artist I was working with to mix their live shows,” explains owner Bruce Bossert. “After dragging my studio rack to several live events with varying results, I decided that owning just one — something ‘small but mighty’ might be a good idea.” From there, he says, he thought there was room in the Nashville market for a “boutique” sound company that was “not large in size, but with a high quality inventory, bringing a studio mindset to live events.” The company was founded in 1987.
In the early 1990s, Roger Redmon from Louisville joined Mid-Coast, and his reputation for working in bluegrass brought significant regional work to the audio company. Over the years, they’ve come to serve that market and everything else, from Americana to EDM. “It’s not unusual for us to send additional subwoofer support out for a Bassnectar show on Friday and use those same speakers for an International Bluegrass Music Association Convention on Saturday,” Bossert says. “And we give everybody the same level of detail and service.”
While Mid-Coast never wanted the biggest inventory, what they have is substantial, as there are 100-plus Meyer boxes and a dozen or more digital desks from several manufacturers in their warehouse. “We do have a commitment to Meyer, as we try to support suppliers that build to the highest audio standard, not to a price point.” This year, Mid-Coast invested in the new Meyer Leopard Line Array System and the new M PRO-X. The control desks they carry are from M, Yamaha, AVID and Soundcraft. There’s also JBL, Motion Labs and Stagemaker gear in their toolbox.
As to who mixes on those systems, Bossert prefers to draw from Nashville’s vast talent pool of independent engineers. “This ensures that each artist and event gets the right technical, musical and personality fit to suit their specific needs, rather than a one-size-fits-all engineering staff.”
Midwest
Clearwing Productions – Milwaukee, WI
Clearwing is certainly no newcomer to the Parnelli Hometown Hero circle of finalists, having been here either in the audio or the lighting category at least three times before. They are perhaps best known for Milwaukee’s Summerfest, the music festival that goes on for 11 days with 11 permanent stages, featuring 800 bands and 1,000 performances from June 24-July 5. Earlier in June, Clearwing also supported the Spring Awakening Music Festival, a large EDM festival in Chicago’s Soldier’s Field. Other festivals include the Eaux Claires Festival, TomorrowWorld and Summer Set Music Fest. They’ve gone out on tour with Sublime with Rome, Australian Pink Floyd and the Steve Miller Band, among others.
When it comes to smaller regional companies, Clearwing Milwaukee is on the bigger end of the scale, with 12 full-time system techs and four full-time warehouse associates. Clearwing has added to its Milwaukee warehouse recently with 48 L-Acoustics K2 systems, and from DiGiCo, some SD10 and S21s. Otherwise they work with Yamaha PM5Ds, M7CLs, QL and CL series and the M PRO2. “Our other systems include L-Acoustics K1, KARA, KIVA, KUDO and V-DOSC,” says GM Bryan Brunclik. “We also use d&b’s M2 and M4 and Martin LE700 and LE2100 monitors.”
Brunclik adds they have a new install division. “We’ve recently completed installs at a number of theatrical and houses of worship venues,” he says. “Resale is still a large portion of our daily business. We also have a service department contributing to external repairs for our customer base.”
It all started when owner Gregg Brunclik was a drummer of a band before he moved behind the sound console. After spending some time on the road, he started the company in his hometown of Milwaukee. “I’m glad to have a lot of good people under the canopy,” he says. “The real key to success in this business is repeat business,” he adds, crediting Clearwing’s strengths in that regard to its talented staff.
Northwest
Spider Ranch Productions – South San Francisco, CA
It’s taken a lot of hard work from everyone to get here, and there have been hurdles to get over to grow so rapidly in an already saturated market,” says Spider Ranch Productions owner Alex Moran. “But we put our clients and their patrons first, and because of that, they voted for us and we won the Parnelli Hometown Hero Award [for Northwest Region]!” Moran has been at the live event biz since he was a 14-year-old kid. “I’m one of the guys who has been around long enough to remember that when you wanted a sound system, you built it,” he laughs.
Spider Ranch Productions was founded in 2007 and built on the smaller corporate gigs, nightclub work, videoconferences; and of course, those bar mitzvahs, which he proudly says is still a specialty. “We have a lot of E-V powered speakers on sticks, but then we also have a 16-box QSC WideLine Series.” Other goodies include a VUE Audiotechnik al-4 line array system and a McCauley MLA6s system. But this year he invested in an Outline GTO System that includes 30 mains, two GTO-DFs and 16 GTO Sub Flyables. His console of choice is a DiGiCo, but he also has AVID Profiles and the Yamaha PM5D, “which every shop has to have. But the DiGiCo SD8, 9 and 11’s serve us well.”
He continues to handle audio duties for the SF Pride festival. All the stops were pulled out for the 13 stages and nearly 1.5 million people who heard what was happening through Spider Ranch-supplied audio gear. Spider Ranch also keeps plenty busy with other festivals, including the annual Oysterfest in Golden Gate Park. Today the company has 10 full-time employees.
“We’ve recently done a lot to support other companies,” he says. “We had our [Outline] GTO up in Spokane to support MZW Productions for a Heart concert. We were out at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival to support Outline and Pyramid audio on the Blues Stage, and last week we were in Monterey to support Bell Event Services with our VUE AL-4s at the Concorso Italiano. We don’t always need to be front in center as a company; in fact we find just supporting other audio providers broadens the amount of work we can accomplish and ultimately makes more customers happy in the end.”
Southwest
Onstage Systems – Dallas, TX
We are honored to once again being voted the Southwest Regional Sound Company of the year,” declares Hyacinth Belcher who, with her brother Chris, has run the company since they took over the family business in 2006.
Hyacinth and Chris Belcher grew up back stage as their parents, Charles and Vicki Belcher, ran sound for area acts. “They founded the company in 1978, and they were very much ‘the show must go on’ people, so from age five, we grew up with that mentality,” Hyacinth Belcher explains. “If we were sick, then we were sick back stage. The event came first.” They’ve been long-time appreciative partners of L-Acoustics and Yamaha. They have just received the L-Acoustics K2 to complement the K1 they’ve had. “We’ve also expanded our wedge system offerings with the L-Acoustic’s Hi Q 115XT,” she said. Also in the mix is a K1SB and a KARA. Onstage is using Sennheiser 2000 wireless mic systems and in-ear monitors and also the Shure PSM1000s.
For years they’ve been doing the Dallas Cowboy Thanksgiving show in addition to other events at that stadium. In June of 2014 they handled audio duties for George Strait at the Cowboys’ home stadium in Arlington. “We’ve recently completed audio installs at several big clubs in Texas,” she says. “And we’re picking up more festivals in the South, including the BUKU Music + Art Project in New Orleans, AeroFest, which supports injured veterans, and the Sloss Festival in Birmingham, AL. We also continue to stay heavily involved in the EDM Scene with festivals such as the Sunset in Tampa, Something Wonderful in Dallas, Sun City in El Paso, Lights All Night in Dallas and Something Wicked in Houston.” They’ve served the Something Wicked crowd for three years.
Today Onstage Systems has 25 full time employees and more than 100 others on call. “Diversification equals success, and having a crew that can do rock ‘n’ roll, corporate, churches and the symphony projects works for us. It also keeps us on our toes!” More than anything else, Hyacinth is excited about the company’s future, and her own. “My favorite part of the business is building relationships with clients and turning chaos into order. It’s all about the puzzle. I love it!”
Canada
Sound Art – Winnipeg, Manitoba
Twice before (2007 and 2012) Sound Art has been voted best sound company of Canada, and here they are again. The company is based in Calgary, with offices in Winnipeg and Toronto, and like many hometown heroes, it has humble beginnings. “I started out while I was in high school by recording demo’s for bands in their rehearsal halls,” says owner Dave Cousins. “I went from there to mixing rock bands in bars. And from there out onto the road.”
In 2001 Cousins opened their Toronto and Calgary offices making the latter his HQ, and that’s when they formally started a touring division going out with Bryan Adams, Sarah McLachlan, Dido and Avril Lavigne, among others. He knew he had “arrived” when he first big festival, Sunfest in 2010, a great outdoor rock festival that Sound Art continues to support. “The first big band at it was The Tragically Hip, and later on the festival featured Pearl Jam.” Recent big events they’ve provided audio for include Calgary Stampede, Monsters of Rock Calgary, Rock on the Range, Live 8 Canada, the Winnipeg Folk Festival and Countryfest.
Today, Sound Art’s warehouses in Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto total 28,000 square feet. They have 35 full-timers and 25 part-time employees. “We started out as an E-V house. We now supply all the major console lines — Avid, Yamaha, DiGiCo, Soundcraft,” says Cousins. “We have added the whole new range of Yamaha digital consoles, including the CL5s, QL5s and QL1s, and we are awaiting the arrival of our S6L as well as the new DiGiCo S21. He adds that they have switched over all their systems to digital drives using Lake LM-44s. And not only are they are still 100 percent Electro-Voice for speakers, but have just doubled their inventory of E-V X-Line. “In 2016, we are planning to add a new large-format loudspeaker system.”
He appreciates those who gave his company the nod as the north-of-the-border Hometown Hero finalist in 2015. “I am extremely proud of our staff, which would be the reason we were considered for this award,” he says, noting that many of those employed were with him from the very beginning. “We have a great bunch of guys and gals that our clients love to have on their gigs.”
