Production Profile

Solotech Supports Céline Dion’s Return to the Road

With an enormously successful recording and live performance career spanning more than three decades, with legions of fans worldwide and some 200 million albums (in English and French) sold to date, pop singer Céline Dion is nothing less than a phenomenon.

The Korn/Rob Zombie Tour might just be the best-kept secret of the summer. “It’s selling really well,” says Zombie’s FOH engineer Mark Woodcock. “Besides the Guns N’ Roses tour, it’s the #1 rock act of the summer. The reviews have been great — both bands sound great, and the lighting and staging on both shows are spectacular. And it really is two different shows. At first, the way they look together might seem like a bizarre combination, but it totally works.”

Emotional Roadshow World Tour
Like many original bands, Twenty Øne Piløts (TØP) have a distinctive and unique musical style that defies pigeonholing them into any easily defined genre, but has oft been described as “schizophrenic pop.” But whatever you call it, this Columbus, OH-based duo of vocalist/keyboardist/bassist Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun offers a sound that has increasingly caught on, and now grown to include legions of fans in nearly every country worldwide.

Thunder Audio Makes Mighty Sounds on Co-Headlining Tour

Two major modern rock bands ignite on a blistering co-headlining tour. Twenty-four U.S. cities in just a month’s time, no additional support acts, both bands to play full headlining sets and alternate closing the show. Primarily playing major outdoor amphitheaters, Portland-based alt-rock veterans Modest Mouse and Long Island, NY emo-grunge band Brand New are artists whose styles demand both power and finesse.

Tom Petty’s Return to Smaller Venues Offers Challenges, Rewards

Embracing the bar band mentality of his 1970s band, Mudcrutch, Tom Petty brought his Heartbreakers’ audio team along for the Mudcrutch tour this summer. “Mutchcrutch, and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, are two different things,” monitor engineer Greg Looper explains. “Tom put it best: The Heartbreakers are like a Ferrari, a finely tuned machine built for speed and performance. Mudcrutch is like an old pickup truck, fun to cruise around in once in a while.”

Nashville’s July 4th Event is one of the Nation’s Largest and Loudest

Apologies to the wingding producers at Macy’s and in the nation’s capital, but Nashville is pretty sure they had the biggest, baddest July 4 fireworks display in the country. They certainly have the best sounding. Now it its 12^th year, “Let Freedom Sing” had the fireworks and the music to back up both assertions: more than 16 tons of explosives and 100 miles of ignition wire managed by a team of a dozen pyro technicians that took eight days to set up.

American prog rock band Dream Theater was founded in 1985 under the name “Majesty” by Berklee School of Music students — guitarist John Petrucci, bassist John Myung and drummer Mike Portnoy. The three added a keyboard player and vocalist and soon became a popular hard rock cover band playing throughout the Northeast.

It’s essentially a band of producers,” says FOH engineer Neal Jensen of The Arcs. “All five of them are really experienced beyond just being great musicians, and it’s a powerful formula. They are pulling a lot from old-school R&B and blues, taking a step back for the roots of it all, particularly Dan, who is really having fun playing the songs that got him interested in music in the first place.” In this case, Dan is Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, and while The Arcs is officially a “side project,” it’s certainly taking on a life of its own on its current tour. Besides a performance at Coachella, they are hitting the theaters and mid-sized venues performing songs of their first album, Yours, Dreamily, which has original songs from each of the band’s five members.

Long known for his vocals with Irish boy band Westlife, Shane Filan continued after the band’s breakup in 2012 with a successful solo career. The singer/songwriter’s first post-Westlife release was the 2013 You and Me CD on Capitol Records, and he followed up that album with his Right Here CD that debuted in late September of 2015.

Since 1983, guitarist Dave Mustaine and gang have continued to keep thrash metal relevant, and here they are again out in support of their latest album, Dystopia. Bradley Johnson of KRF Audio, based in Newport, WA, is once again at the DiGiCo D5 on FOH with Dave Rupsch again handling monitor duties on a DiGiCo SD8. As these engineers were fans of the band when they were teens, it is a great gig for both — professionally and personally. “They are playing new songs from their new album, which, incidentally, is quite good,” Johnson says. “Also there are two new players in the band — Kiko Loureiro on guitar and Chris Adler on drums. They are both scary good!”