The Biz

Each of these vignettes about the Nashville touring industry that we've been doing this summer, starting with the May issue of FOH, offers an opportunity to look at another aspect of what is the most highly developed touring sound, lighting/video and staging infrastructure in the world.

Shortly after Dan Daley compiled and submitted the information for this column, the Nashville area was hit by what locals are calling a 100-year flood. Many of those who Dan interviewed for this column were directly or indirectly affected when water levels on the Cumberland River exceeded 50 feet – more than 12 feet above flood stage. For more details on the flooding and its aftermath, please CLICK HERE. -ed.

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.

The whiskey-swilling, pony-tailed image of the rock ‘n' roll road manager was never all that accurate, though it became a widely familiar trope thanks to films like This Is Spinal Tap and Roadie. But try to imagine Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the role instead of Meatloaf. That's one more outcome of the confluence of live music having become the core earnings engine for music and the ever-increasing use of Internet-based services, social and otherwise, to get out and stay out on tour.

Live sound courses have been added to the curricula at many major pro audio education facilities in the last several years. The one at the Curb College at Belmont University, in Nashville, seems to be taking it a step further, though. Clear As A Bell (CAAB) Audio is the name of the SR provider based at the school that's staffed and operated by a dozen students enrolled in Curb College's Audio Engineering Technology Advanced Sound Reinforcement course.

When Bill Sheppell flew home to Ohio in mid-June, he was looking for a little R&R before undertaking what was to have been the gig of the year, if not the decade, as FOH mixer for Michael Jackson’s 50-night This Is It stand at London’s O2 arena, likely to be followed up by a world tour with the same massive stage and troupe.

We knew that the revenue mode for the music industry was shifting to live performances more than a few years ago, back in 2002, when Princeton economics professor Alan Krueger established that 31 of the 35 top-grossing music artists that year made more money from concerts than from record sales, a trend that has continued through most of the decade.

—But Moving It is Getting More Complex

Fuel prices are down and everything’s looking rosy for getting gear on the road for the upcoming concert-touring season, right? Well, maybe not. Some of the handful of freight forwarding companies that specialize in packing, shipping and handling musical instruments and pro audio gear are reporting that a combination of more burdensome Federal regulations and a general malaise at still-floundering airlines that have cut routes, changed aircraft and in some cases transferred that chimp from the luggage ads to cargo handling is creating new headaches for getting tours where they need to go. 

It’s a cold, hard winter for the meetings and events business.  Things are just plain rough out there. According to a survey by the industry trade group Meeting Professionals International (MPI) and American Express that was released last month, seven percent of business meetings already scheduled for 2009 have been canceled, and that number may be an underestimate. We are hearing from our clients and vendors that cancellations often outnumber actual shows, and the recent economic indicators show no sign of relief.

A major tour is like a living organism. And like any organism, it will occasionally have accidents. So what happens when the tour stubs its toe, or worse, breaks an arm, just before showtime?

In business, the little things do make a difference.

As companies look toward the future, it is clear the market will become more and more challenging—and as it does, many companies will realize their success in the past was in spite of itself.