Country Music Event at Daytona Speedway Revs Up for the Long Haul
In this month’s issue of PLSN, we present a focus on two festivals, starting with the inaugural Country 500 event, which debuted over Memorial Day Weekend at Daytona International Speedway. We also cover the fourth annual BottleRock Napa Music Festival, which also took place May 27-29 on the opposite side of the country; that article can be found here.
Nowadays, when people hear the word “festival,” they may be inclined to think about the gigantic EDM raves such as Electric Daisy Carnival or other events where DJs play set lists as opposed to live bands playing their original music. But rest assured, the actual live music festival scene is hotter than ever, with well over 100 of them taking place in America this summer, let alone the rest of the world.
Live music played a key role at both the Country 500 and BottleRock festivals profiled in this issue, and both cover the live music festival experience from the perspective of a visiting LD — yours truly at Country 500, and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ lighting designer/director Scott Holthaus at BottleRock.
A Little History
No article on music festivals would be complete without mentioning the two guys who just may have originated the Music Festival scene as we know it, way back when your parents or perhaps grandparents were rocking out. Quint Davis and George Wein run an outfit called FPI, down in New Orleans, short for Festival Productions Incorporated. Wein may have originated the outdoor music festival era with The Newport Jazz Festival way back in 1954, a show that is still going strong today (taking place July 29-31 2016).
Davis has been in the game a little less time. He’s only been holding the renowned New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (Jazzfest) since it originated in 1970. Together, these two promoters started FPI in 1995. Since then, they have produced countless festivals, tours and events that have been attended by millions. Several years ago they dipped their hands into the Country festival market as well, with events such as the Bayou Country Fest, an enormous event that happens to take place the same Memorial Day Weekend as the inaugural Country 500 festival at the Daytona International Speedway.
An Iconic Venue
There’s something special about setting foot inside an iconic sporting institution to throw a big concert. One only needs to look around at this giant facility to silently hear the roaring noise from the engines over the crowd. The Daytona International Speedway hosts the opening day of NASCAR every year, and more than 250,000 folks flock to that event. (This year’s race took place Feb. 21.)
For the Country 500 kick-off over Memorial Day Weekend, an estimated 60,000 people were in attendance each day as the festival took over the infield and camping grounds of the race track. Staging company G2 erected a gigantic weather-protected main stage on one end of the infield. A smaller indoor stage was placed down the other end where folks could go to escape the sun and cool down under the water misters they installed. Headliners at the three-day event included Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum and Willie Nelson.
Another great feeling an LD gets is when they step foot on stage and right away they know they are surrounded by professionals who are ready to “get ‘er done.” This is the feeling I got as soon as I saw David Haskell from Morris with that big smile on his face. Back it up with the fact that I had Chris Trosper as my crew chief, the three Flynn Brothers on my lighting crew, Joe Allegro as the on-site programmer and James Poepping looking after the rigging, I knew I was in for a stellar day. I was there with Kid Rock and, for once, we got to be the opening act as Florida Georgia Line, hometown heroes down this part of the world, were headlining that evening. But it would still be dark when my act hit the stage, so I had my work cut out for me.
I arrive at the venue at midnight the evening before we play, about 90 minutes after Jason Aldean blew the crowd away with what I heard was a blistering light show. Programmer Joe Allegro is out front in a dark empty field putting some punt pages together as I walk out. I’ve known Joe since the 90’s, and the comfort factor I get when I see him on site is huge. He walks me through the light rig on stage that was designed by Matt Geasey, an in-house designer for Morris. Joe is toast from many hours of work, so we agree to meet in the morning in the air conditioned previz trailer on site.
The Rig
The lighting rig du jour is fairly massive and full of older moving lights. Not that I’m slamming VL3k spots and Mac 2K washes, but they are 15 years old. To my amazement — and lots of kudos to the Morris lighting division — they all work. I mean, every color, every bulb, every light is acting as if it just came out of a new cardboard box, so I can’t complain one bit. I’ve got a plethora of trusses running up and down stage loaded for bear with a ton of old fashioned Atomic strobes intermingled between the other fixtures. What’s not to love? The GT trusses are high and angled, barely hanging over a large rectangular LED wall upstage.
Off stage on each side, we have three curved trusses offset and underhanging in layers. The designer has added a bunch of Clay Paky B-Eyes for side wash, for LDs who like the eye candy blinky-blinky effects. The rig should suffice nicely for anyone, and it’s a great look, but I should mention that most touring LD’s dislike walking into festivals and seeing curved trusses. We will never see how well we did our focus until showtime, and it’s incredibly difficult to rough in a focus with curved truss in daylight.
I can’t recall ever playing a festival that did not include a front truss until now, but it was all good. Morris countered that with six ace spot ops, all with good lamps, at FOH. I was fine using side lights to wash the seven other members of the band on risers upstage. There were certainly more than enough hard edged lights for specials. It was fun punting on that big old rig.
It was certainly baking under that Florida sun on the stage during the day. I was fortunate that Geasey is a whiz on the grandMA visualizer and had it set up flawlessly for us. Joe knew all the fixture numbers, and it was just faster for him to program while I told him what I needed in each fader. It took us one hour to fill every fader and executor button with a cue, and my punt page was rocking. Morris had the foresight to put a grandMA2 Light console side stage for LD’s to focus. James the rigger happens to be an accomplished lighting director himself, so he twisted knobs while I called the focus. Help like this from the local lighting crew is rare, and the effort Morris made to make my life easy all day long was certainly appreciated.
Video
Although the LED walls were provided by a company known as Pyramid Audio Productions out of New Orleans, the actual audio for this event itself was provided by Morris, and Pyramid focused on just the video. We had a large landscape video wall behind the band in which I could play back our band’s custom content while more offstage screens showed I-Mag of the show.
Don Drucker, Pyramid’s production coordinator, states, “With audiences growing in size and events getting bigger, LED is a key component for all events now. Our decision to join the video field was an easy one; we already knew about production as well as the engineering of and support for these events. Offering a full large-scale video package has allowed Pyramid to expand in the field of video production. Lighting and LED has joined together to create a stimulating visual show at the Country 500, and both are often being controlled from the same source.”
Because of the amount of one-offs my band does, we have come up with a system where our DJ actually plays back the video files while rapping and working turntables. Pyramid rerouted cables for us and came up huge in their ability to overcome and adapt to our obstacles. Their onsite video director had some great chops cutting cameras as if he worked for the band, catching all the solos. Pyramid is the longest running gear vendor for FPI; they knew what it took to achieve the high level of production that the promoters wanted to see and kept up with Festival’s expectations.
Staging
The stage was a massive square, 60 feet per side, large enough to ensure that there was plenty of room for the constant set changes. The roof had to be 50 feet off the deck easily to accommodate the trim height in Geasey’s design. Fortunately, the weather was perfect, and we never needed protection from the elements. The set change to get Kid Rock off and Florida Georgia Line on took 30 minutes, benefitting from the fast movement of stage manager Tony Bader and his young crew. In between sets, many of the crowd walked over to the Bluebird Theater/B stage for a break. Morris provided the sound and lights for Willie Nelson and the others playing that venue as well.
I got to chatting with Haskell as the day progressed. He’s the hard working president of Morris and has been employed by them for 25 years. He informs me that the company actually has three systems all playing stadium shows that weekend, including Kenny Chesney and another country fest at LSU stadium in Baton Rouge.
I ask him about his success in supporting festivals of this size. His reply was simple: “I try and hire people smarter than myself. This is our fifth year working with FPI, and we learn a little something every year that makes things a little easier the next year. This show is billed as an inaugural event, and when I look out at this (pointing at the fan base swelling), I think we just may be doing this again next year.”
Country 500
Crew
- Production Manager: Reginald Toussaint
- Stage Manager: Tony Bader
- Backstage Coordinator: David Norman
- Lighting Crew Chief: Chris Trosper
- Programmer: Joe Allegro
- ME: Mike Flynn
- Head Moving Light Tech: Sean Flynn
- Dimmer Tech: Patrick Flynn
- Stage Design: Matt Geasey
- Staging: G2
- Rigger: James Poepping
- Video Truck: WYES Truck, New Orleans
- Lead Video Engineer: Jakub Karas
- Video Engineers: Scott Thompson, Ryan Iliski, David Latino
- Morris Rep: David Haskell
- Pyramid Production Coordinator: Don Drucker
Gear
Lighting Gear (from Morris):
Main Stage
- 2 grandMA2 full size consoles
- 1 grandMA2 Light
- 60 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots
- 32 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spot Luminaire Custom
- 28 Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K20s
- 56 Martin Atomic 3000 DMX Strobe (208V)
- 52 Martin MAC 2000 Wash XBs
- 30 Chauvet COLORado 1 Tri-Tour IP fixtures
- 1 Lycian M2 followspot
- 6 Lycian M2 long-throw spots
- 2 MDG Atmosphere (APS) hazers
- 2 Martin Jem ZR-44 Hi-Mass foggers
- 2 Haze Base Hazer Pro units
- GT Truss
- Columbus-McKinnon Lodestar hoists
B Stage
- 1 grandMA2 Light console
- 12 Chauvet COLORado 1 Tri-Tour IP fixtures
- 12 Philips Showline SL BAR 640s
- 18 Martin MAC Auras
- 18 Martin MAC 301 Wash fixtures
Video Gear (from Pyramid Audio Productions)
- 324 Absen X5 5.3mm LED panels for main upstage wall (39’5” x 21’4”)
- 256 Absen M15 15mm LED panels for two I-Mag walls (29’9” x 22’11”)
- 180 Absen A7 7mm LED panels for B Stage wall
- 1 Barco E2 screen event management setup
- 7 Absen LED processors
- 4 Nova Star MCTRL video processors
- 7 Barco Image Pro II video scalers/switchers
- 1 Gefen Pro 16 x 16 router
- 1 Blackmagic Designs Smart Videohub 20 x20 router
