Nashville is arguably the center of the live concert touring universe, and the season for live concert touring kicks off in high gear this month. While country artists log more miles than any genre when it comes to live shows, Nashville has also increasingly been the launching pad for more rock and pop tours.
Artists including Grammy award winners Taylor Swift and Kings of Leon are based here. (And don't get me started on how Nashville can serve as a refuge for over-40 rockers who find New York and L.A. less comfortable as they get older, but the audiences don't.)
A Unique Hub
Any discussion of Nashville as a touring technology center has to start with Soundcheck, which president Ben Jumper has built into a unique hub. While the company's core business remains rehearsal studios, backline rental and equipment storage, Jumper leases space to manufacturers including console companies Allen & Heath, Meyer Sound, Avid and DiGiCo. Each of these companies sponsor and equip one of the rehearsal studios, as well as MI manufacturers Gretsch Guitars, Peavey and Fender. The offices service artist relations as well as product demos.
Other tenants include sales and service providers like retailer Tour Supply, video and projection company Moo TV, lighting company UpLight Technologies, tour staffing service Crew One Productions and staging company American Staging (which Jumper co-founded and co-owns). This is all housed in a 47,000-square-foot new second facility that opened in February 2009. It adds five new rehearsal studios, located next door to the original Soundcheck building.
"This is the only place in the world that has this many options," says Ryan Smith, Shure's regional manager of artist relations, who mans the microphone maker's sole satellite office there. "And the synergy that develops between companies here is amazing. We go to each other for input and advice."
More Expansion Underway
As much as Jumper has expanded his operations in the six years since he purchased the company from founders Bob Thompson and Eagles' guitarist Glenn Frey, this next year will be even more ambitious. Soundcheck opened an Austin location in April, and last October he closed on the purchase of CenterStaging, a facility in Burbank that he bought out of bankruptcy. (CenterStaging co-founders Johnny Caswell and Jan Parent remain with the company.) These acquisitions add 30,000 and 15,500 square feet, respectively, to the 168,000 cumulative square feet in Nashville, for a total of 27 rehearsal rooms, 248 rental lockers, and one feature-film-capable sound stage (part of the CenterStaging acquisition), comprising the largest rehearsal/production facility company in North America, possibly the world. To top it off, Jumper has announced the purchase of real estate adjacent to the Nashville Soundcheck buildings where he will break ground on a planned-for 160-by-120, 70-foot-high space intended as a soundstage for film and TV or a full-production rehearsal studio. The new stage is expected to be ready in 2012.
Jumper is expanding his overhead as well as his square footage – the Austin and Burbank acquisitions more than quadruple his work force to nearly 80 employees. Overly-aggressive expansion has been a fatal strategy for many in the music business, but he's been adroit at leveraging the value of his growing empire to rein in costs. For instance, besides being a net-income landlord to pro audio companies, his rehearsal rooms are equipped with gear on extended loan from the manufacturers whose quid pro quo is intimate mindshare among his rehearsal clients. And Jumper's happy to encourage them to try new products as they come in. "We'll tell them, ‘Hey, we just got this in. Check it out. Tell us what you think,'" he says.
Crossover Artists
The company's expansion comes at a good moment for country music and for Nashville: artists including Brad Paisley, Toby Keith, Keith Urban and Kenny Chesney alone had the genre's tour grosses at nearly $180 million in 2009, according to Pollstar. But those numbers are being pumped up even more by teen crossover artist Taylor Swift ($25 million) and Rascal Flatts ($42-plus million), as well as Nashville native rockers The Kings of Leon, who snared a 2009 concert take of nearly $29 million.
Soundcheck's fortunes could be boosted also by the fact that it has less competition that when it started. The Nashville Network closed its doors in 1998 and the production stage space it used was eventually reallocated for offices. Gaylord's downtown Bridgestone Arena (formerly the Sommet Center) has a large, dedicated rehearsal space below the main arena level that has been used for full concert rehearsals. However, it can't be used when the facility is hosting concerts, which limits its availability, and it does not have the film sound stage capabilities that CenterStaging now offers and Soundcheck Nashville will soon have, as well.
The kind of gravity that Jumper is building is attracting artists beyond Nashville's city limits. In addition to locals like The Kings of Leon, non-country artists who have rehearsed and/or rented touring gear from Soundcheck include Paramour, My Morning Jacket, John Fogarty, Neil Young and, most recently, Robert Plant and Allison Krause.
Televised Productions
Soundcheck's clients are not limited to touring artists. The company provides the backlines for the CMA Awards show, CMA Fan Fair and the CMT Music Awards. Buying what is now referred to as Soundcheck CenterStaging brings backline work for the Grammy, Emmy, Tonys and ACM awards shows with it, as well as The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, which seems to have magically reappeared just as Jumper was getting into the West Coast market.
Nonetheless, Jumper acknowledges that price pressures remain in the market – he's only raised his prices once in six years. However, he adds, "We didn't have to raise prices; endorsement deals with [manufacturers] have helped control our costs." (That strategy, however, is used only in Nashville; Meyer Sound gear is being purchased for the Austin and Burbank locations.) Rents for manufacturers and service providers who lease space at Soundcheck have gone up somewhat, reflecting higher utility rates, he says. But that doesn't seem to have deterred new tenants, like intercom company BearCom, which took space there earlier this year.
"We've raised the bar for what rehearsal studios should be," says Jumper, noting that a Land of a Thousand Hills coffee outlet has opened in the Nashville facility. "That's the business model – make people want to be here for any number of reasons. The guys who founded this place created a diamond in the rough. I got to cut it and polish it."
