Nashville and the phrase professional songwriting are practically synonymous. The city’s importance to contemporary and traditional American country music is undeniable and self-evident. But in recent years, Nashville has experienced an influx of recording artists of all stripes, positioning the capital of the Volunteer State as an emerging force in the live-event industry.
LabeLive, located just south of the Music Mecca, in Franklin, TN, seems to embody the energetic vibe of Nashville.
Run by Josh Berry, CEO Dustan Barker and COO Shaun Bennett, LabeLive is a tour design and production company with 13 full-time employees, occupying a 12,000-square foot warehouse, and (as of this writing) renting space due to rapid expansion. Because the volume of LabeLive’s commitments has grown exponentially since its inception in 2013, the company has been placed in the unenviable (or is it enviable?) position of having to turn down opportunities just to concentrate on the considerable amount of work they already have.
Extra special attention has been given to interpersonal relationships inside and outside the shop. Creative problem solving and expert business advice is doled out by executive coach Andy Christiansen, who’s worked with the owners of Chick-fil-A, Coca-Cola, and the U.S. military. It perhaps goes without saying that a portion of LabeLive’s business is in the rental vein, but acknowledging this fact doesn’t do justice to just how progressive the company really is. For LabeLive, it’s not business as usual — it’s business unusual.
“I don’t even have a desk in my office,” says Josh Berry. “I have a giant couch and some chairs that are comfortable, because it’s a creative space. We have a full-on coffee bar with espresso machines, and it’s a place where people want to talk and hang out. When artists come to a meeting here at the office, we want them to feel comfortable and excited. The hope is that artists tell their friends about their experience.” Word of mouth seems to have traveled fast. LabeLive’s roster is impressive: Christian hip-hop artist Lecrae, Matthew West, Newsboys (who you may remember from the 2014 movie God’s Not Dead), The Bible tour (based on the popular Mark Burnett History channel mini-series), “A Night with A&E’s Duck Dynasty” and many others.
“LabeLive takes more of a collaborative approach throughout the design and production processes,” says John Dunn, rental & production market manager at Elation Lighting, a company that has on occasion partnered with LabeLive. “Often there’s no filter in between the artist and LabeLive.” They describe themselves as a “brand management” company, Berry says, which was established to elevate artists’ platforms and mold aspects of their live productions. “We don’t want to step on the toes of managers, but step alongside them and focus on the live side of the brand,” adds Shaun Bennett.
Case in point: When Christian pop artist Francesca Battistelli released the studio album, If We’re Honest, in 2014, LabeLive assisted the singer in tweaking her public appearance. “We said to her, ‘If you’re going to perform new music, let’s present a whole new look. What do you think about cutting your hair and coming out in a dress [for the tour]?’” says Berry. Prior to LabeLive entering the picture, the thinking was that the design of Battistelli’s live show left plenty of room for improvement. Eventually LabeLive convinced her to allow her tour production — and wardrobe — to evolve. “It’s working,” says Berry. “It’s pretty cool.”
Live Branding
The roots of LabeLive stretch back to Berry’s Sixdegrees Management and Bennett’s Big Thrill Productions. Both Berry and Bennett had dreamed of a day when they could forge a trailblazing path through the industry. “My company owned equipment and [Berry’s] company was mainly doing sales,” says Bennett. “As we started to do business together we said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we just merged?’”
Soon the concept of shaping artists’ careers had emerged as a realistic and attainable business goal. The new company, LabeLive, would be, in Berry’s words, “almost like a live version of a record label,” he says. “Record labels support artists in their recording careers and we provide support for their live endeavors. Think how much time an artist spends in a studio with producers. There’s a relationship there. Yet, in the Digital Age, many artists are making most of their money from their live show. Why aren’t they investing the same kind of time in their tours? When we challenge the artist with that question, a light bulb goes off and they say, ‘You’re right.’”
Different Approach
The company continued to expand the parameters inherent in the concept of “branding” when it produced “A Night with A&E’s Duck Dynasty” at a 7,000-seat high school gymnasium in Columbus, IN, in the summer of 2014. The evening featured a live band as well as Duck Commander CEO Willie, Vietnam vet Uncle Si and pastor Alan Robertson, along with Willie’s wife, Korie.
“The Robertson’s don’t live a fancy lifestyle,” says Bennett. “They like to be out in the woods. The show is about family, transparency. As we were creating the event we thought, ‘What if we brought the woods to the show?’” LabeLive placed the Robertsons in their natural habitat by partnering with local companies, such as Bradbury’s Waterin’ Hole and The Yard Barbours landscapers, to create the proper environment, one dense with trees, shrubs, rocks, a rusty pickup truck, and stuffed critters. The show’s big visual draw was a duck pond boasting live fish and a wooden dock. (In actuality, “the dock” was really traditional staging elements outfitted with wooden planks, which were painted prior to being transported to Indiana.) In all, 80 volunteers helped LabeLive pull off the show. “The Robertsons came to us after the event, freaking out, saying, ‘We want to take this on tour…’” says Berry.
At press time, talks were underway for a 2015 Duck Dynasty tour. Berry is already envisioning certain tweaks and upgrades for the production. “If we were going to take this on tour we would have outtakes of video clips not shown on the TV show,” says Berry. “That would give people in attendance a different experience from one they could watch on TV.”
Once More, With Feeling
That LabeLive’s production designs are becoming increasingly personal with each passing tour should be no surprise. Berry had helped to develop the production design for the chart-topping Christian artist Matthew West’s video rich 2010-11 The Story of Your Life tour, which highlighted personal struggles fans detailed in letters they’d sent the artist. Effectively and essentially, West “turned the mic around” to give fans a voice and offer a form of catharsis. Approximately three years later, LabeLive advanced a similar confessional concept for one of the company’s premiere acts — Grammy-winning Christian hip-hop artist Lecrae. In fact, the tour to support Lecrae’s 2014 album, Anomaly, practically embodies LabeLive’s raison d’être.
Lecrae has said that his whole life he’s been “in an environment where I didn’t quite belong.” It’s not difficult to see his point. As a young African-American man, who says he has the power to simultaneously create hip-hop and still praise Jesus, he remains “transcultural” (i.e. an anomaly). Lecrae’s been forthcoming about the, shall we say, viability of some of his life choices. “When developing the stage show, we asked: ‘How do we emotionally and visually connect people to an experience they have rarely had in a live environment?” asks Berry.
Answer: digging deep and sharing aspects of Lecrae’s life via a creative mixture of music video and Hollywood-style movie. Indeed. The cinematic video content for the show, the majority of which was created by Kyle Lollis of Lot 35 Productions, packs a wallop while also delivering a universal message — a Christian message of salvation and redemption — to concertgoers.
“It’s all about the feeling,” says Berry. “That’s what separates a good movie from a bad one.” Presenting the show’s emotional rollercoaster-ride required no less than the proper medium and necessary technology. Rather than present a single, massive wall of video imagery, LabeLive instead uses five set carts, securing 242 7mm Square V blow-through LED video tiles, arranged at different angles on the stage, recalling the appearance of a folding partition or privacy screen. Ironically, this “privacy screen,” which measures 53 feet by 16 feet high, offers the audience a window into some of the most intimate details of Lecrae’s personal life.
“The screen formation transforms the way we see the video,” Bennett says. “It isn’t 3-D, but the video tiles add dimension and depth to video content, which is cool. When I went to the Dallas show, in that atmosphere, it felt like I was watching a movie.”
Eight GoPro Hero 3+ cameras are placed around the stage at various times in the show, capturing Lecrae, his two-piece support band (a DJ and a drummer), and the audience in action. “The goal is not to have cameras strictly for I-Mag,” says Bennett. “One night they might have a camera on mobile stick and have Lecrae dragging that camera along with him while he’s doing a song, getting a fan involved.”
The tour’s lighting director, Cory Fournier, controls the video aspect of the time-coded show from his grandMA2 console. Audio tracks are run in Ableton software, which, via SMPTE, triggers the Resolume Arena media server. The server then delivers content to the LED wall. “My cues trigger lasers, lights, and also the video server, firing different content for different songs,” says Fournier. Since video is such an integral aspect of the show, it was crucial to ensure that lighting compliments, not competes, with the visuals on screen.
“To be honest, it was frustrating for a few days as far as how I could add the proper lighting to this show,” says Fournier. “I thought the best approach was to add to what the video was doing. Sometimes there’s a lot of movement with the lights and strobes, but mainly it’s following the color palette of the video or trying to capture the emotion of the room. In a song like ‘Fear’, for instance, there’s a lot of UV color and green beams with sharp gobos, because it feels like there’s a spiritual battle happening. The song really encapsulates Lecrae’s transition: he’s realizing that there’s a greater purpose for his life.”
Elation’s John Dunn says that LabeLive needed to cut through the high-output video touring package and that the lighting company was able to provide the right fixtures at the right price point. For the Lecrae tour, Elation Platinum Beam 5R Extremes are positioned in the gaps of the set carts as well and on the mid-stage truss and two truss towers on either edge of the stage for side fill. Elation’s new Platinum Wash 16R PROs share real estate with the 5Rs on the truss towers.
“Our biggest contribution was finding fixtures that didn’t take away from the artist being the center of the visual focus while also helping to make him stand out,” says Elation’s Dunn. “For the Lecrae tour … [LabeLive] needed wash fixtures and beam fixtures, so the dual-purpose Platinum Wash 16Rs were the ones that [created] that look for them. Obviously, LabeLive likes to be collaborative on this side of the process, as well. They collaborate with us much as they do with the artists.” Fournier adds, “We took out a brand-new fixture, the Elation 16R wash, which has a new feature they refer to as a ‘Beam Shaper.’ It can take these big, fat linear beams and twirls them around, creating a rotating effect. Add in the Atomic strobes and lasers, and it’s a big, punchy set.”
The other weapon in Cory’s arsenal is Elation’s Cuepix Blinder WW2. These two-light blinders were positioned along the mid-stage truss and behind the blow-through video tiles. “The two-light blinders look exactly like actual halogen blinders,” Fournier says. “I know people get scared about LED blinders because they think it won’t look natural. That’s not the case with the Elation Cuepix. Having small profile fixtures like the 16R, the 5R and WW2 allows us to fit the fixtures in the stage without taking up a lot of real estate and drawing a ton of power. That comes in handy when you play the kinds of theaters that don’t have 600 amps to draw from.”
A True Anomaly
LabeLive’s openness to using new technological gadgets and their willingness to push the creative envelope has served the company well over the last couple of years. “The goal has always been to bring artists’ visions to life,” says Bennett. “Sometimes that takes certain lights; sometimes it takes video and a sound system. One of the keys to the company is, ‘How do we help artists grow their career?’” Fournier adds, “LabeLive also genuinely cares and wants to invest in the guys who are out there in the trenches every night. They are, excuse the term, an anomaly.”
“At the end of the day you ask why you do what you do,” says Berry. “The answer is, ‘So we can enjoy a happy life.’ That’s why we’re in the music business. We are using art to give people a better life and a better experience.”
Lecrae’s Anomaly Tour
Crew
Lighting Designers: Justin Jones, Cory Fournier
Lighting Director/Crew Chief: Cory Fournier
Lighting Tech: Kyle Fournier
Production Manager: Justin Jones
Creative Director: John Boyd
Video Designer: Kyle Lollis
CAD Designer: Matt Brewer
LED Tech: Tyler Seilhamer
Lasers: Theatrical Media Services (TMS)
Gear
Lighting:
1 grandMA2 OnPC Command Wing
1 grandMA2 OnPC Fader Wing
12 Elation Platinum Wash 16R PROs
12 Elation Platinum Beam 5R Extremes
12 Elation Cuepix Blinder WW2
12 Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes (208v)
Video:
242 Square V 7MM LED tiles
1 MacBook Pro Resolume Server Build
3 Square V processors
1 15” MacBook Pro
1 LED laptop
8 GoPro Hero 3+
2 Blackmagic DVI Extenders
1 Matrox TripleHead2Go
1 Magma ExpressBox
1 Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock
Special Effects:
4 6.5-watt X-Lasers
1 Laser controller computer
1 MDG Atmosphere hazer
