The Black Crowes are back on the road this summer for the “Southern Hospitality Tour,” a 41-city run across the U.S. and Canada in support of ‘A Pound of Feathers’, the band’s 10th studio album. Delivering the tour’s sound is a Meyer Sound PANTHER line array provided by Bay Area-based rental house and integrator UltraSound. For UltraSound project coordinator Jason Mills, the challenge was to design a single system capable of serving diverse venue sizes from 3,000 to 30,000 seats. “The band is playing a smattering of arenas, and then mostly amphitheatres,” he says. “It’s easier for the guys on tour to scale back than it is to scale up.”
The Meyer Sound system centres around 18 PANTHER line array loudspeakers per side, with LYON line array loudspeakers in out-fill arrays of 16 per side covering extended side seating in larger venues. Six 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements per side fly above the stage, with 12 additional ground-stacked units, all configured in cardioid. Six LEOPARD line array loudspeakers handle front fill. Mills used UltraSound’s archive of Meyer Sound MAPP 3D files from previous tours at the same venues to inform the flexible design. Systems engineer David Williams manages day-to-day refinements on the road. “He can look at the venue in the morning before load-in, get on MAPP 3D right away, and adjust easily, with predictions day-to-day for that specific venue and any specific challenges that come up,” Mills says. Rigging logistics are also straightforward. “It’s easy to deploy, it’s easy to scale,” he adds. “The riggers have no problems with it.” Veteran front-of-house engineer and production manager Tim “Quake” Mark brought 48 years of experience to his first tour deployment with PANTHER. For Mark, PANTHER addressed both performance and the increasingly unforgiving economics of touring. “PANTHER intrigued me because of the weight savings and the capability of it,” he says. “With the size of the P.A. I have now, I save 20,000 pounds. That’s a huge help with fuel.”
When it comes to sound, Mark has clear goals. “I want to paint on the console, not on the P.A.,” he says. “PANTHER just sounds pretty, right out of the box. I don’t have to do as much to it as I have to do with other systems.” He says he is also impressed with PANTHER’s consistent coverage. “I can go up into that bleacher a hundred feet from me, and it’s still covering everything,” he says. “That’s the beauty of PANTHER.” To preserve a stereo image, Mark configures the LYON outfill arrays in an alternating left-right sequence. The cardioid 1100-LFC configuration gives the system the low-end impact the tour needs while helping keep sub energy under control onstage. “Instead of them facing straight on or straight downstage, we’ve gone to turning them out,” says Mills. “Even in the cardioid pattern, that controls the rejection a little bit more right into where Chris Robinson is standing. He doesn’t want to get bothered with the sub energy.”
“The name’s Quake,” Mark says. “I don’t look for a punch. I want to shake your pant legs. I drive the band with a bass player, all the time.” He says the PANTHER system supports a philosophy he’s shaped in decades behind the console. “My job as a front-of-house guy is not to create. Mine is to interpret and reinforce you in the room. After I do that, then I sit down and I can mix.” The “Southern Hospitality Tour” continues through August 20 at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA.
