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Production Profile
A Thundering Rainbow?
Rainbow Production Services and Thunder Audio Team
Up for Dane Cook’s Rough Around the Edges Tour
By BillEvans
When I got the call asking me to
go out and cover a tour by a
comedian named Dane Cook, I
had two reactions. The first was, “Who the
hell is Dane Cook.” And the second was, “It’s
one guy and a mic. How hard can it be?” I
was in for an education on both counts.
It’s All About the Coverage PP
I arrived onsite and hooked up with FOH
Engineer Bruce Andrews just as they were
getting ready to make noise. The show is
in-the-round, and they are playing — and
selling out — 14,000–15,000-seat arenas.
Andrews, who spends much of his time running
monitors for prog-rockers Queensryche,
says that even with just one mic, this
show is a lot harder.
“Arena’s are not built for music,” he
says. “They are built for sports, and getting
even a rock band to sound good can
be a challenge. When you are looking
at a comedian where every word has to
be clear in every seat, it is much harder.
Queensryche is easy compared to this. In
a rock show, if a part of a lyric is a little
indistinct or smeared, it is not a huge
big deal. Here, if you miss one word, that
could mean missing the punch line, and
the joke falls flat for part of the audience.
That is just not acceptable.”
So, how do you guarantee even coverage
for 15,000 of your closest friends in
rooms with reverb times meant to amp up
a sports crowd, not make a single voice totally
clear and distinct? With a system big
enough for most rock concerts, that’s how.
Solid Sound, Nutty Show —
Let’s Do This
PP
Michael Martell is the president of
New Hampshire-based Rainbow Production
Services and also acted as the production
director and designer for the tour. “It
was decided early that we would need to
build a system that answered to the uneven
shape of an arena, working in-the-round,”
he explains. “That being the case, I thought
of the system as needing to accommodate
multiple zones in the near, moderate and
far fields of the room.
Event: Dane Cook Rough Around the Edges Tour 2007
Dates: November & December 2007
Venue: 25-city North American tour
Crew:
Production Director: C. Michael Martell
Production Tour Manager: Stephen Shaw
Production Manager: Scott Tkachuk
Audio Designer: Ian Silvia
Lead Rigger: Patrick Ryan
FOH Audio Engineer: Bruce Andrews
Lighting Designer: Brian Clarke
Audio System Technicians: Scott Canady, Roz Jones, Eric Roupe
Lighting System Technician: Chad Hallman, Rich Jorn, Stephen
Pitzer, Bill Whitney
28
My audio designers and I really wanted
to create as many zones as reasonably possible,
given the time constraints of a daily
two-system tour. We decided to use two
columns of 16 Meyer Mica to cover the extreme
depth on the short ends of the room
and four columns of 12 Meyer Milo with
two Meyer Milo 120s at the base of each to
cover the corners of the room.
A series of Meyer UPJs around the lip of
the stage helped to fill in the gap between
the bottom of the array coverage and the
money seats close to the stage. We used six
Meyer MJF-212A monitors to cover Dane
on stage. The system really worked well
with some of the newer arenas that just
seem to climb forever along the center line
of the arena floor. The Micas covered that
area very well, while the Milos gave us the
push we needed to get to the back corners
of the room; the Milo 120s covered the floor
very well.”
OK, let’s take a step back. Did he say two
systems? He did. This was a whirlwind tour,
covering some 25 cities (almost all singlenight
stands) in the space of about six weeks.
Given the size and complexity of the system,
they needed two rigs so one could be in transit
to the next city while the other was in actual
use. Enter Detroit’s Thunder Audio.
The Logistics of Leapfrogging PP
Thunder knows a bit about leapfrogging
two systems, having done it on numerous
Metallica tours over the years. Thunder V.P.
Paul Owen is adamant that this kind of “two
companies, two systems, one tour” situation
was made a lot easier by the choice of gear.
“We have done duplicate stadium systems
all over the world, and the most consistent
results have been with the Meyer
rigs. The great thing is that no matter where
you get the box, you know that any two
will sound exactly the same. Spoken word
is always the hardest kind of performance
because it has to sound exactly the same
in every seat. When Rainbow called and
asked if we could provide a duplicate system,
we were confident that we could do it
and make it sound the same, regardless of
which rig was in which venue.”
FOH Engineer Bruce Andrews
Of course, working with two sound
companies is about a lot more than just
gear. There has to be a level of trust and respect
and a willingness to work as a team.
“You have to do what is right for the artist,”
says Owen. “As long as you keep that at the
forefront, and everyone plays fair in the
sandbox… I mean, there’s a lot of money
being spread around, and as long as everyone
plays nice and the pot is split fairly,
there are no problems.
“This is a great, amicable working situation,
and the relationship between the two companies
is good. Who knows, you may see the two
of us leapfrogging systems this summer.”
The routing for the tour was largely
completed before it was ever contracted. It
was clear that most of the dates were decided
based on flights using a private jet for
Dane. The original concept for the tour was
to hire a different vendor in each city; Rainbow
was asked to coordinate production
needs for the entire tour and cover all the
production for the Northeast dates from
its warehouse in New England. “We knew
right away that it had to be one system that
could conform to the differing seatscape of
all 25 arenas for the production to allow the
artist to do his thing,” says Martell.
After quickly assessing the routing and
determining that they could safely cover 16
of the 25 dates, Martell started calling other
Thunder Audio Crew: David Bernas, George Chapman, Steven Dumas,
Keith Jex
Crew Bus Driver: Carl Wall
Truck Drivers: Richard Baker, Paul Black, Russell Boyd, Terry Martin,
Audio Gear - Two Complete Systems:
Main Hangs: (48) Meyer Milo & (8) Meyer Milo 120 High-Power curvilinear
array Loudspeaker over (4) hangs
Short-field Hangs: (32) Meyer Mica Compact High-Power Curvilinear
Array Loudspeaker over (2) hangs
Subs: (4) Meyer 700HP Ultrahigh-Power Subwoofers
Stage Monitors: (6) Meyer MJF-212A High-Power Stage Monitors
Signal Processing: (2) Meyer Galileo Loudspeaker Management
System with (1) Meyer SIM3 Audio Analyzer
Control: (1) Yamaha PM5D-RH Console
JANUARY 2008 www.fohonline.com
Meyer production houses to cover the remaining
nine. “Paul Owen from Thunder
was one of the first to get back to me,” he
says. “I had initially contacted Paul to cover
the first date in Toronto and a later date in
Detroit from Thunder’s location in Michigan.
Paul was an amazing help in that he
was able to not only cover those dates and
several others, but he was able to pull together
a system that mirrored ours exactly
— right down to the last speaker box. After
getting through the first few dates, Paul
and I had a quick discussion, and he agreed
to help us out on the western portion of
the run. When all was said and done, Thunder
was able to cover us on eight of the
remaining nine tour dates with some fairly
extreme routing. This was a huge logistical
relief in that I didn’t have to work out multiple
contracts for services and work with a
new crew every day.”
“It’s All About the Artist” PP
Owen maintains this as the mantra for
any successful tour, and it is a concept that
Rainbow also reflects. “The biggest mistake
would have been to allow the gear to place a
single demand on Dane and control how he
performs,” says Owen. “The production package
had to disappear as soon as Dane entered
the arena floor each night, and I’m happy to
say that it did just that,” agrees Martell.
Dane Cook’s Rough Around the Edges tour at Wachovia
Spectrum in Philadelphia.