TENNESSEE ROCKS

It's hard to imagine, but in just a few short years, Manchester, Tennessee’s Bonnaroo event has grown from little more than a hippie love-in six years ago to one of America's most popular festivals. In fact, according to Billboard magazine, Bonnaroo is the top grossing North American festival, taking in $14.7 million and selling more than 80,000 tickets for all three days.

    Run over June 14-17 on a 700-acre farm, this year's line-up was fairly typical of Bonnaroo’s broad church — including everything from world music, electronica, hip-hop and jazz to bluegrass, country, folk, gospel, reggae, and alternative. Friday night headliners Tool satisfied the lust for something dark, loud and noxious, while Saturday saw an altogether more middle of the road agenda with the revitalised Police topping the bill.

    Returning to its roots, Bonnaroo signed off 2007 with a three-hour rendition of all that's great and good about skilled guitar country rock’n’blues in the form of Widespread Panic. There’s always something for everyone, and it seems everyone wants a bit of something.

    Chris Rabold who mixes FOH for Widespread Panic had a more than satisfactory experience. He said: "Eighth Day Sound already supply all my touring needs, and so coming to a festival serviced by them was always going to be a visit with old friends. Then to top things off they installed my favourite PA for the main stage — d&b audiotechnik's new J-Series."

    What made the J-Series work for an act as musically dense and complex as Widespread Panic? "We figured we've already got more miles using the J-Series than just about anyone in the States; we play five shows a week, three hours a show,” said Rabold.

    “At this point I'd hope I know as well as anyone what to expect from the system in any environment. I started using it almost as soon as it became available in the US. As a band, WP moved to using Eighth Day some time ago and that's when I first became aware of d&b products. Although back then we used another main system, I quickly found the variety of size, dispersion patterns, and power of the d&b range, all with that same musical sound, made the job of filling awkward gaps in different venues real easy. Every product put in front of me just blew me away.

    “Eventually we came to do a show at a casino — just a 2,500 audience but the Eighth Day guys put a little Q-Series rig up for me and just asked me to trust them. I was a little nervous, but after three songs I was just laughing because it sounded so good."

    For Tool, circumstances were little different, yet their touring situation was identical in that they also travel with Eighth Day and a J-Series. "The difference was that this was just a turn up, walk-on and play show," explained FOH engineer Al ‘Nobby’ Hopkinson.

    “Any band would be a little more nervous than usual. It was handy that Eighth Day did the PA; that reassured us all. I had a discussion with Colin Beveridge at d&b USA before we came regarding the deep, low-end ability of flown subs. I've enjoyed

experimenting with the J-SUBs myself while we've been touring — they do move some air. I just needed it proved to me that they could do the same in a flown situation, which he did."

    Eighth Day Sound rigged the main stage with two columns of J-Series per side to cover the extreme wide spread of the audience area. Flown J-SUBs were
augmented by B2s — "in infra mode," explained Eighth Day's Owen Orzack, "to extend the low end range, as opposed to just increasing the grunt."

    Monitors were M2s with C4/B2 side fills and drum  monitors C7-SUBs and M2s, and Q10s for front fills. Delay clusters were L-Acoustics dV-DOSC. Such a rig is not dissimilar to Tool's or Widespread Panic's touring experience with the J-Series in the arena environment, but how do those  lessons extend to such a large open-air site?

    "We've played Bonnaroo several times though never with this system before," answered Rabold. "It's always been one of the best shows we do. It’s a huge field, big and wide; the mix position is 150 feet from the stage. I was aiming for 104dB(A) at the desk and never had any doubt. What I liked about this show was there was always plenty of headroom and horsepower, yet no ear fatigue."

    Nobby concurred: "In fact the system wasn't a lot bigger than the one we have on tour. The only real  difference was, being such a long way back, that it took a bit of adjustment on my part. I mix on Midas XL4 which Eighth Day kindly shipped in for me; there’s a lot of extreme dynamics to master with a Tool show so I do compress most things on the group, but it sounded great. To be fair, this is one of the only systems that can handle the sheer dynamic variety."

    How was the system performance across the whole field? "Imaging was just astounding," said Rabold. "The thing with my band is there's a lot going on, a lot of energy and movement. In terms of the musicians, I need the ability to find room for all of them and with J-Series there's room to articulate the whole band in the mix. I don't use much system EQ — the ROPE system is just so easy to use and in fact I generally find the less system EQ the better. There is just so much detail already dialled in when you turn it on."

    Ease of use extended across the festival site. Eighth Day also serviced audio requirements for The Jazz, Press, Comedy and Cinema tents, all with d&b
systems and with just 12 technicians across the whole site. Rabold endorsed Eighth Day heavily: "They were just perfect, they do make my life easy."

    He added: "We brought our own Digidesign Venue with us and between that and d&b, the bar is set real high. I'm convinced somebody over there in Germany sold their soul to the Devil because this system is something great."
    
LIGHTING
Bandit also continued its successful partnership with the top-grossing festival. Production guru Hadden Hippsley again oversaw the show design with help from stage managers Mark Reinke and Joel Carmichael.

    Hippsley chose to use a highly customised rig to suit the event, which incorporated the Bonnaroo logo with three circles constructed out of circular truss hanging over centre stage. The rig was structured so that the middle circle would provide an intimate setting for smaller acts while the three-circle piece could cover the entire stage for larger bands.

    A substantial number of PAR cans were used for washes, as they are a good ‘one size fits all’ tool. The moving lights included five Martin MAC 500s, 18 MAC 600s and 20 MAC 2000 Profiles. ETC Source Fours finished off the equipment spec, which was all controlled by two Whole Hog IIs and Wings.

    The Bandit crew was chiefed by Eric ‘Eroc’ Shafferman and included technicians Greg Shipley, Jason Workman, Marcus Wade and programmer Chip Perry. Bandit general manager Steve Powell said: “An event of this magnitude would not be successful if it were not for the continued efforts of Hadden Hippsley, Anne Dennhardt and Leslie Radigan, as well as the entire Bonnaroo production crew.”

    The 2007 Bonnaroo line-up also included The White Stripes, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, The String Cheese Incident, The Roots, DJ Shadow, Franz Ferdinand, Fountains Of Wayne, Dierks Bentley, The Flaming Lips and many more.
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