Always full of surprises and the unexpected, the 21st Annual Parnelli Awards held on Friday April 14 started out with a big one: Outgoing NAMM CEO/President Joe Lamond was initiated in the Parnelli Hall of Fame.
“I would like to thank someone very special to us at the Parnelli Awards,” said PLSN and FOH founder and Parnelli Executive Producer Terry Lowe in his opening remarks. “In fact, we wouldn’t be here tonight without his leadership and commitment to the event production industry at the NAMM Show. I’m speaking of NAMM’s outgoing President, Mr. Joe Lamond.”
For Lamond, who had been waiting backstage to serve as one of the Parnelli Award presenters, it was a total surprise. Aside from Lamond, there has been only one other person inducted into the Parnelli Hall of Fame: Mo Morrison, who was presented with the award in 2013. At the time, Parnelli Awards co-founder Patrick Stansfield credited Morrison for having virtually invented and perfected the whole genre of huge rock specials for the camera,” including TV specials for Cher, Marc Anthony, Madonna, Janet Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Britney Spears, Usher and more.
Terry Lowe, who co-founded the Parnellis with Stansfield one year after Lamond was taking the reins at NAMM, brought the April 2023 gala’s crowd up to speed by sharing some of the history of the Parnelli Awards being part of NAMM, which started with the ceremony’s relocation from Las Vegas to Anaheim in January 2018. “We can both agree it has been an excellent place for the Parnelli Awards to be held at. I want to thank you personally for your vision and for making it happen,” Lowe said.
Humbled by the surprise announcement and eager to deflect the spotlight, Lamond then quickly proceeded with what he had thought to be his primary mission for the evening–to present the first of the evening’s three awards honoring career achievement, the Parnelli Audio Innovator Award, to his longtime friend Marty Garcia.
Garcia, a pioneer of in-ear monitors, founded Future Sonics in 1991 after tinkering with IEM prototypes for many years. Both Garcia and Lamond happened to be on the road crew for Utopia, the prog-rock band founded by Todd Rundgren, for its 1985 tour, when it became one of the first acts to hit the road with an in-ear monitor solution–Garcia’s Ear Monitors and Ears branded earphones. Since then, IEMs have been widely credited for keeping stage noise levels in check while also guarding against hearing loss and vocal cord damage for touring musicians.
“Like so many others here, it is amazing to have been and still be among musicians and touring people. And it’s amazing that we survived and got away with so much with no cell phones,” Garcia said in receiving his honor. “In the earlier days, advancing shows for me was via banks of pay phones. I had plenty of ‘out of order’ signs to keep those phones free for return calls.”
Vans Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman, who is now a professor at USC, then took the Parnelli stage. As in previous years where Lyman has served as a presenter or host for the evening, he urged Parnelli winners to keep their acceptance speeches short. This became a contest of sorts, with most limiting their time spent at the microphone with just a few sentences sharing credit for the honors, and one recipient uttering just a single word of gratitude: “Thanks!”
Two winners took moments to dedicate their awards to colleagues who had recently passed, including Sound Image’s Jesse Adamson, who paid tribute to Mikey Adams, and Strictly FX, awarded the Parnelli for Pyro/Special Effects Company of the Year, noted the recent passing of colleague Ron Smith.
The shortest acceptance speeches, of course, were from the group of honorees who couldn’t attend the Parnellis in person because of the overlap in timing between the mid-April NAMM show and the start of touring and festival season. One of the absent Parnelli winners managing to send in a video clip on short notice was, appropriately enough, Sam Pattinson of London-based Treatment Studio, which won the inaugural Parnelli award for Media Content Creator of the Year.
Along with Allen Branton, Peter Morse and Kevin Lyman (credited by fellow presenter Chris Weathers from Live Nation as “the greatest mentor of all time” through all his years of work on the Vans Warped Tours), other presenters included Audio Engineer Willa Snow, Lighting Designer Anne Militello.
Last year’s Parnelli Visionary honoree, Peter Morse, took the stage to make a big announcement: that the Parnelli Board of Advisors would be the renaming of Parnelli Award for Lighting Designer of the Year. It is now named in honor of Nook Schoenfeld, former designer and PLSN editor, who passed on Dec. 14, 2022.
Morse shared a touching video tribute to his longtime friend and shared a story from the road that highlight Schoenfeld’s street smarts and commitment to the welfare of the crew. Then crew chief for Morpheus Lights on a Lionel Richie tour where the piano leg had shattered after falling off the stage during load-in, the crew members were each offered a $100 bonus if they were able to get the concert started on time. Nook piped up. “How about $100 for just trying, and $100 more if we succeed?” A deal was struck, the concert took place, and the roadies got their due. Morse then presented the newly named, Nook Schoenfeld Lighting Designer of the Year award to Alec Takahashi for his work with Thomas Rhett.
Part of Schoenfeld’s lasting legacy is the Parnelli NextGen Award, which he had pushed for to bring attention to industry up-and-comers, not just at the awards ceremony but also with feature stories in the pages of PLSN and FOH magazines. And the gratitude expressed by winner Nina Agelvis lit up the room. “This means the world to me,” she said.
Veteran Lighting Designer LD Allen Branton, who presented Parnelli Visionary winner Keny Whitright with his reward, took the audience back with his memory snapshot description of a rainy Beach Boys concert at a venue called Pirate’s World in Dania Beach, FL that happed exactly 50 years prior, on April 14, 1973—his first tour. Branton was the lighting roadie on that tour, trekking across the country, gig to gig, with 20-foot bobtails, with Whitright along for the ride as the electrical engineer and “adult on duty” who could fix problems as they arose and keep the tour running smoothly.
While accepting the honor, Whitright, also noted the challenges of touring back then, with pay phones and cash standing in for the electronic communications and credit cards that we take for granted today. A constant tinkerer, inventor and avid fly fisher, Whitright also experimented with hoist automation and followspot tracking technologies. But it’s not just the big tech breakthroughs that matter, with Whitright praising the unsung genius who came up with the idea for the outward-curving hotel shower curtain rod.
The final presenter of the evening, Chris Lamb, who awarded the Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award to Roy Lamb. Though not related, Chris and Roy Lamb have much in common. They both excel in production and tour management, and they would both prefer to have the spotlight of adulation on anyone but themselves. Both are also now winners of a Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award. Chris, who won his award in 2015, took the unusual step of taking his cowboy hat off in honor of his friend from across the pond, giving kudos for his long career as a touring trucking pioneer and long-time Tour/Production manager for numerous acts.
“He thought outside the box before there was a box,” said Chris, noting the key role he played in establishing the viability of rock tours in South America with a pioneering trek for Queen, then helping to make the first stadium show in Tel Aviv happen, staging shows for the Rolling Stones before 1.5 million fans in Rio de Janeiro, and supporting other massive tours for Fleetwood Mac, Madonna, the Eagles, Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin and The Who, among others. A tribute video followed, with call out congratulation videos from Robert Plant, Pete Townshend, and Roger Daltrey.
Terry Lowe then returned to the stage for the show’s finale, reminding everyone that we’re doing this again in a few short months, as the Parnelli Awards and NAMM convention return to their traditional winter schedule in January 2024.
Here is the list of the 21st Parnelli Award Winners:
- Lifetime Achievement Award: Roy Lamb
- Visionary Award: Keny Whitright
- Audio Innovator: Marty Garcia
- Lighting Company of the Year: Bandit Lites
- Hometown Hero Lighting Company of the Year: Brown Note Productions
- Nook Schoenfeld Lighting Designer of the Year: Alec Takahashi
- Lighting Director of the Year: Celine Royer
- Production Designer of the Year: Travis Shirley
- Sound Company of the Year: Sound Image
- Hometown Hero Sound Company of the Year: Music Matters Productions
- FOH Mixer of the Year: Jon Lemon
- Monitor Mixer of the Year: François Paré
- Audio System Tech of the Year: Rachael Moser
- Video Production Company of the Year: Solotech
- Video Director of the Year: Colleen Wittenberg
- Media Content Creator of the Year: Treatment Studio
- Staging Company of the Year: All Access
- Rigging Company of the Year: ARS / Atlanta Rigging Systems
- Set Construction Company of the Year: TAIT
- Pyro/Special Effects Company of the Year: Strictly FX
- The Patrick Stansfield Production Manager of the Year: Nicole Massey
- The Patrick Stansfield Tour Manager of the Year: Mark Oglesby
- Coach Company of the Year: Hemphill Brothers
- Trucking Company of the Year: Upstaging
- Freight Forwarding Company of the Year: Rock-it Global
- NextGen Award: Nina Agelvis
- Indispensable Technology – Lighting: Robe – BMFL FollowSpot
- Indispensable Technology – Audio: Allen & Heath – Avantis Console, V1.2
- Indispensable Technology – Video: ROE Visual – Vanish V8T LED Panel
- Indispensable Technology – Staging & Effects: Tyler Truss – GT Truss
