On May 20, 2013, a massive and powerful tornado stuck the town of Moore, OK, a suburb located about halfway between Norman and Oklahoma City. The twister was given the maximum EF-5 strength rating by the National Weather Service. Tragically, the aftermath of its two-mile-wide swath of fury left hundreds of injuries, some two dozen deaths (including seven children killed when a school collapsed) and entire neighborhoods flattened, with more than an estimated billion dollars in damage to homes and businesses.
Performers coming together to do fundraisers and benefits to help those in need is nothing new. But for local resident Toby Keith, working to create a benefit concert to help fund the United Way of Central Oklahoma’s Tornado Relief Fund was a personal project.
“I grew up in Moore, I live in Norman and I’ve got lots of family and friends who were directly affected,” he said. “I know these folks and they’re resilient, but we’re going to keep helping them any way we can. I’m proud to get together with some others from around here who are just as committed as I am to supporting these communities.”
It was a definitely a family (and extended family) affair, from the moment that Toby Keith’s daughter Krystal Keith took the stage to sing the national anthem to open the show. Then Toby and a number of friends, including Garth Brooks (who was born in Norman, OK), Willie Nelson, Trisha Yearwood, Ronnie Dunn, Sammy Hagar, John Anderson, Mel Tillis and Wade Hayes, put on a spectacular performance to the largest crowd ever assembled at the Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on the University of Oklahoma campus.
It wasn’t necessarily going to be easy, but with a little help from some other friends — among them Brown United staging
(www.brownunited.com), Sound Image (www.sound-image.com) and a couple corporate sponsors, the event became reality. The concept was to have a memorable fundraising event that would give back to the locals through affordable $25 tickets.
By scheduling it Saturday, July 6, the organizers also gave the area at least some time to rebound and begin the healing process after experiencing the effects of the May 20 disaster.
This Won’t Be Easy
“Ronnie Dunn, Toby Keith and Sammy Hagar got together and began talking about the possibility of doing a benefit concert for the tornado victims and then word got to Garth, and the next thing you know, we’re doing a stadium show,” says Sound Image’s Pete McDonough, who, besides being the audio crew chief for the event, is also the shop manager for the company’s Nashville operation. The public’s reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with more than 60,000 tickets selling out within two hours, drawing the largest-ever concert crowd to that venue.
There were a few issues to deal with. The stadium rarely hosts concerts, with only a couple rare mega-shows for The Rolling Stones and U2 in the past decade, so this wasn’t a case of “let’s just use what we used here last year.” Also, the timeframe to put all the logistics in place was extremely short.
Unfortunately, with no pre-production site survey and precious little experience with the venue, it wasn’t going to be easy. “We got a few layout drawings of the stadium, and that was it,” McDonough says. “Fortunately, one of our guys, Bill Chase, is really good with computers and went onto Google Earth, and he created stadium elevations from images he took off the web.”
From that, McDonough turned to JBL’s new Performance Manager software, which was a “huge benefit to us during this. We were able to get a lot of the work done well before the load-in, using stadium elevations and stuff like that. I can’t say enough good things about what they’ve done with Performance Manager. That allowed us to have a head start, so we could get in there Friday morning and ‘shoot the room.’ And it read out exactly as we had planned.”
Of course, the team had to use every possible advantage they could find to make it all happen. “We literally had 10 days notice between us finding about the gig and the show starting, says McDonough, who also did the system design.”
The audio crew wasn’t able to get into the stadium until the day before the show. “We didn’t have time to do much of anything except getting the rig into the air and put on the show,” McDonough adds. “We sound-checked Toby Keith all night long on that Friday night, because Toby’s band was backing Wade Hayes and John Anderson, who would each be performing a set with Toby’s band. We returned first thing Saturday morning [the day of the show], starting with more sound checks, and away we went. The doors opened at 1:30 and the first band went on at 3 pm.”
The System
The sound system came out of Sound Image’s Nashville operation, although part of Toby’s touring rig was used for the delays. The massive mains system was comprised of 72 JBL VerTec 7889’s with left/right hangs of 18 each with 18/side as aux fills. These were accompanied by 18 VerTec 4880 hanging subs/side and another 40 4880 subs used on the ground. Twelve proprietary Audio Composite Engineering (ACE) Wideline enclosures handled fill duties. The entire mains complement was powered via 70 Crown i-Tech 12000 HD amplifiers. Delays were comprised of 36 VerTec 4889’s in three hangs of 12 located behind the FOH position — also i-Tech 12000 HD powered.
“To put it in perspective, I brought in the same size rig with the same amount of gear that went to the CMA Festival, which took a month to prep,” notes McDonough. “We prepped this show in seven days. We were in here late every single night, but pulled it off smoothly.”
Spirit of Sharing
Among both bands and crews, there was a definite spirit of camaraderie and purpose. “Ronnie Dunn had his rig in there, Toby obviously had his rig in there, and we provided gear for Sammy Hagar, Garth Brooks and Mel Tillis,” says McDonough. “Everybody was really good about sharing the gear. We had an Avid Profile on stage and a Yamaha PM5D at front of house that was also shared. We took a dozen of our MA12 proprietary wedges and a dozen in-ear units and loaded up the PM5D with about anything a FOH engineer would need.”
Again, the goal of working towards a common purpose and the feeling about doing something good was the order of the day. “The attitude was ‘Okay, guys, we have no time and we have a show to do,’ so everybody put their egos aside, which was the way that this thing had to happen,” McDonough recalls. “Everybody was great to work with, particularly Garth, who’s one of the nicest guys, as was Toby and all the other artists. And all the crews got along fine. It did help that Ronnie and Toby were Sound Image clients, so about 98 percent of the gear was Sound Image. Willie Nelson did bring in a couple of Heritage 3000’s — no problem. Matt Bock was our RF coordinator on site and lead guy on stage, and everything ran smoothly. We started on time, all the set changes were on time and there were no complaints.”
A Few Hurdles
Besides a few minor issues like Oklahoma’s oppressive summer heat (for which several hundred concertgoers were treated during the show) there were a few other challenges to be met. “The logistics of getting things in and out of a stadium and figuring out where to put trucks, and the order of trucks, is always an issue. Fortunately, we had all the gear here in Nashville that we needed and some good guys to put the package together and get it tech’d out and ready to go quickly.”
But McDonough is quick to give a nod to the entire team. “I really have to give credit to Toby’s and Ronnie’s production staff. They really went above and beyond to make sure everything was taken care of, and everybody involved need to be credited, because there was not a single weak link anywhere. Ashley Swan, Toby Keith’s production manager, took over as the point man when this thing came together, and he was outstanding. I should also mention that the week before this happened, one of Toby’s crew buses caught fire. Everyone got off fine, but it burned to the ground, and Ashley lost his computer, his phone, his passport, driver’s license and all — and that was probably the biggest challenge for them.”
Music performances often occur in places not designed for them, as anyone who’s mixed in a hockey rink can attest. And the University of Oklahoma’s stadium may be great for football, but really isn’t designed for concerts. “There are no loading docks. There are ramps on stage right and stage left; we used the right ramp, as the left one housed the generators. So it was one truck at a time,” McDonough notes. “That can complicate things, but Ashley was on top of it and had the trucks coming in and out when they were supposed to. We never had a lull.”
A Success on Every Level
All the ticket sales went to the tornado relief fund. Verizon and Walmart offered to pay for production costs, and the various vendors — including Brown United, Bandit and Sound Image — all donated their gear, so the only expenses were paying the crew members.
“Brown United brought in a stage. We used Toby’s video wall, but other than that, it was a completely separate lighting rig. It was a huge stage, yet I could not believe how quickly Brown United got that stage in there. They came in on Monday and we were flying P.A. Friday morning. There’s a time-lapse YouTube video of the setup (http://youtu.be/ly0ZzFuJnUw) taken during that week from the stands. It’s very cool.”
But according to McDonough, cooperation — at all levels — was everything. “The whole thing wouldn’t have happened if everyone involved had not stepped up to the plate and hit a home run. The band guys, the lighting and video guys — everyone was on-pointe, and I couldn’t have had a better audio crew out there.”
ALL PERFORMANCE PHOTOS BY NATE BILLINGS/THE OKLAHOMAN © 2013
