"I gotta tell you, this was just the textbook case for success in festival management," beams promoter Dan Liebhauser, who with his wife and business partner, Cher Liebhauser, have been putting Country USA on for 15 years. "We've been saying this was just a paint-by-number operation. Everything fit perfectly and went smoothly."
It could have gone quite a different way. The contracts of all the vendors were up last year, including those for the lighting and sound. "I was a bit nervous going to a new company, but PCS was absolutely flawless," Dan Liebhauser says, of Precise Corporate Staging (PCS). "They delivered everything they promised – I'm glad we negotiated a three-year contract with them! We're looking forward to working with them long term."
The festival ran for five days in June on campgrounds in Oshkosh, Wis. It featured Toby Keith, Blake Shelton, Darius Rucker, Jason Aldean and the Zac Brown Band headlining. But the music started coming from the main stage every day around 3 p.m., with five to seven bands daily.
This year, 162,384 fans walked through the turnstiles, and anyone watching that process could see their faces lighting up with smiles. The sound was so well executed it could be heard all the way in the back of the park, clear and sharp.
"This is a major outdoor country event where the promoters have gone out of their way to make it especially family friendly," explains Tom Bothof, production stage manager for a dozen of the festival years. "There's a carnival, plenty of food vendors, fun booths – it's a way for country music fans to bring the family and get the best entertainment Nashville has to offer."
Bothof was largely responsible for bringing PCS on. "PCS was a tremendous joy to work with," he says. "They were responsive, smart in their communications and well-prepared. By the time I got there, the power was laid and the lights and sound were tweaked, and that meant all I had to do was concentrate on my job."
He was pleased with the gear PCS brought along, too, specifically the L-Acoustics V-DOSC gear, which he calls "tremendous sounding boxes," and he commended master FOH Tom Giatron for a job well done. "Tom and the folks at PCS did a tremendous job of balancing the system and making it so there was no sound delay. I walked the grounds a couple of times and it just sounded really good."
PCS Goes Festival
"We're pleased because this was the largest festival we've done to date," PCS president David Stern says. Careful planning is always key to a successful PCS event, though in this instance, he had the Oshkosh weather to try to figure in. "It's a unique area," he says with a laugh. "It's between Green Bay and Milwaukee, and sometimes weather patterns split, but sometimes they merge and storms can just come out of nowhere" as they did a few times that week.
The PCS crew showed up the Saturday before the festival start date and loaded in. Stern brought four semis of gear plus seven of his crew. The days were long: 8 a.m. in, out at 1:30 a.m. But Stern enjoyed it. "It's fun to get out of the office."
Compliments abounded for the PCS crew, which Stern allows himself to take some pride in. "We could have hired local people, but it would have put me out of my comfort zone," he says. "The greedy option is to do that because it costs less money, but by bringing people I can count on to do the job, it makes the event go better, and is just more pleasant."
Stern's ability to pull off such a successful festival event is shrugged off by two simple words: planning and communication. "We talk to every band to see exactly what their needs are so we can plan for it. We then do a lot of advance work." Weeks before, they know exactly what will be going on for every minute of the event.
Personally, Stern knows his way around the concert-touring world. He toured with Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Scorpion and Meatloaf, among others, for a dozen years, so he feels right at home. Yet despite being in the business for 30 years, he hadn't explored festivals fully until this year. And while some production houses just "give them away," Stern says he's not interested in doing them just for the sake of doing them, and he won't compromise on gear or people. "The bigger, better festivals look at price versus value."
Stern is clear that while the promoter hires him, it's important to make sure the bands are taken care of, too. "All the bands talk, and if you're not delivering, if the equipment is sub par, if they aren't treated right, they tell each other about that [supplier]. It's like going to a restaurant – if you have a bad experience, you tell many people."
Stern is looking to do more festival work. "We have the equipment and the talent, so we're exploring it all further. We're diversifying, going into new markets we haven't really explored before," Stern adds. "We have a lot of great gear – 620 moving lights, for instance – and a great crew."
More to Come
The Liebhausers have been in the entertainment and event promotion business since 1967. They typically worked over 70 shows a year covering 16 states, but "we were beginning to think we were working a little too hard acting like young rockers," Dan laughs. Wanting to get off the road, they eyed northeastern Wisconsin, saw a niche, and he and Cher made it their home and launched Starshow Presents Inc. A few years after that, they launched the first Country USA festival.
Fifteen years later, the event has grown to an unqualified success.
Liebhauser has so much faith in Bothof he says he "would not even think of doing an outdoor show without him." Bothof has been his senior engineer with the festival for 12 years, in which time they have burned through three other production companies. It was Bothof, who has worked with PCS on other events, who first brought them to Liebhauser's attention.
Bothof of Big Event Productions is based in Minneapolis. He has the responsibility to connect with all the acts and coordinate load in times, confirm dates and times and support sound design. An anomaly, Bothof is actually as comfortable on stage as behind it. A working actor and musician for years, he toured in Broadway musicals and performed in many shows and events. "I really believe my experience as an entertainer on stage makes me more valuable behind it because when an artist says they need something, I understand why," Bothof says, then pauses, smiles, and adds: "I also understand why they don't need something they are requesting as well."
Flawless on what the team could control, the team did grapple with what Midwesterners call "weather." The sudden storms that emerged sent the crew into high gear, covering equipment. But it only delayed one of the acts by about 15 minutes one night. A few tough storms hit late at night, including load-out, but it was all handled with aplomb. Bothof says the only ones affected by the weather were stagehands. "Most of the bad weather happened after midnight," he says. "On the second day, rain shut us down for 45 minutes." But after the festival, at two in the morning on Sunday when they were breaking down, there was an especially terrible storm that dumped so much water on the stage that 4'x8' pieces of staging started floated away.
Everyone involved was highly complimentary of each other.
"PCS was great, and here's why: the common denominator was our FOH engineer, Tom Giatron," says Bothof. Giatron freelances for Stern and has been working with Bothof for eight years. "He and I have developed a comfortable working [relationship]. I never have to worry that the bands aren't being taken care of, and he touches base with all their engineers and lets them know exactly what they are going to get when they play here."
The Liebhausers are so buoyed by the success of this festival, their firm, Starshow Presents Inc., is launching a sister one on the same site next year: Rock USA. PCS will be supporting that one as well. "If something's not broke, don't fix it," Liebhauser says.
As for Country USA: "We're looking for another 15 years," Liebhauser laughs.
Country USA Music Festival,
Oshkosh, Wis.
CREW
Project Manager: David Stern
Lead Audio: Dan Myers
Master Electrician: Jim Meredith
Lighting Lead: Mike Silker
FOH Engineer: Tom Giatron
Monitor Engineer: Alex Mcloud
Deck Tech: John Tellis
GEAR
FOH:
Midas PRO 6, Yamaha PM5D RH, PM4000 (56 ch), DM1000 (w/ 2 MY8ADDA96 8 in 8 out I/O cards)
8 XTA 448 Processor
1 Custom Motion Lab power distro
Main PA:
54 L-Acoustics V-DOSC
16 L-Acoustics dV-SUB
16 L-Acoustics dV-DOSC
24 L-Acoustics SB218
21 L-Acoustics Amp Racks w/ LA48 amps
16 CM 1 ton motors
4 CM 2 ton motors
4 Motion Labs motor distros
2 Whirlwind 58 channel snake systems w/ the patch master
1 Whirlwind custom 42×8 snake
2 Whirlwind 18 ch. return snakes
Delay PA:
24 L-Acoustics V-DOSC
4 L-Acoustics 3-Way amp racks with LA 48 amps
Rigging:
8 L-Acoustics V-DOSC Bumper Bars
4 L-Acoustics Delta
2 L-Acoustics dV-Down
1 L-Acoustics dV Bar
2 L-Acoustics dV-SUB Bar
MON:
1 Yamaha PM5D-RH console
18 L-Acoustics HiQ wedges
8 L-Acoustics ARCs (side fill)
5 L-Acoustics SB118s
8 L-Acoustics Amp Racks w/ LA48 amps
8 Whirlwind 12 channel custom w/ W1 snakes
4 Motion Labs 200 amp custom power distro w/ custom Edison stringer boxes & Rac Pacs
