Following the success of his last Shockin’ Y’all Tour, Toby Keith and his production team went to work making 2004’s Big Throwdown an even bigger event. Keith is country’s biggest draw, but fans that come to see him live get a rock n’ roll extravaganza, light on ballads, heavy on hits, and lots of spectacle. Toby’s band kicks butt, and everybody gets more than their money’s worth.

The singer’s sense of humor is not only reflected in his choice of material, but in the very performance space he performs in, designed by Seth Jackson to be a bar just a ‘little past its prime’. Because of Toby’s massive popularity (country music’s biggest live draw two years running, Country Music’s Entertainer of the Year, etc.) the tour often sells into 270 degrees, and a Who’s Who of vendors help supply the skills and equipment to pull off this truly memorable live show.

PRODUCTION
How do you top a Ford truck live on stage? Well, you have Toby using the fabled vehicle to pull the walls down! The sleight of hand that starts the show involves a video of Toby driving to band rehearsal at a local bar, but they can’t hear him inside, so frustrated, he hooks the truck hitch up to the saloon door, and as he pulls the structure down, the white scrim that has served as video projection surface falls to expose an identical video frame behind it, an Austrian drape reveal appears - and it’s showtime!

Leading the production charge for the Big Throwdown is veteran PM Sean Sargeant. Also onboard the production team is tour manager David Milam. Sean, who production managed the San Antonio Rodeo, also logged time as a promoter rep, giving him an enviable skill set to herd this production, his first as a touring PM. “It’s pretty much the same gig,” he says light-heartedly. “You’re putting things together ahead of time.”

This year, they’re out with seven trucks and five busses, and interestingly, they’ve brought this part of the business in-house, leasing their vehicles and operating TobyCo. Trucking. Lighting takes a truck and a half, there’s a merchandising truck; lighting, set and audio take the remainder of the road package. According to Sean, it’s a smooth yet involved load-in, and they’re out in 2.5 hours.

With a crew of 60+, good catering is one way to keep morale high on the road, thus Eat to the Beat was ‘brought to the table’. “They know all the snacks and things everybody prefers, and they really take care of us,” Sean adds.

The PM doesn’t typically engage much in pre-production issues. “I’d throw up a red flag if I saw something that wasn’t possible on the road. For me, it all comes down to making sure it will work.”

While the set list may change slightly every so often, Sean says it’s actually an intensely scripted show - down to the millisecond, in fact.

Rigging is supplied by Atlanta Rigging (www.atlantarigging.com), and T.J. Thompson has once again climbed his way to the top, and is handling head rigger duties.

Though this tour is selling fabulously, fans get more than their money’s worth, and it’s a production to look back proudly upon, pressure seems to be at a minimum, a character trait that makes many country tours a special family-oriented experience. “We don’t accept a lot of drama out here,” Sean points out. “Toby never yells at anyone, so we don’t either; we have a pretty good time out here.”

AUDIO
With an energy level more rock n’ roll than most country today, Toby and his pickers really know how to fill an arena with sound. And although the band often play sophisticated arrangements that require the utmost in sonic detail and precision, the mix often calls for some good old fashioned rock n’ roll horsepower; in this case, both are delivered by sound vendor Sound Image (www.sound-image.com) in the form of a mighty JBL VerTec line array system, a mighty efficient QSC amplification rig, and a few of the mightiest mixing machines ever made, i.e. Midas and DiGiCo consoles.

Just as impressive are the touring pros that bring this system to life each night. TP US spoke with FOH engineer Dirk Durham and monitor engineer Earl Neal about their careers, concepts, and the in’s and out’s of their Toby Keith touring rig.

46-year-old Dirk Durham has a colorful past in professional rodeo, by any standards making him quite a unique figure in the touring world. “I grew up outside Tulsa,” Dirk recalls, “and we always had a really good music scene around there. Music’s always been in my life, and I’ve only really had two jobs ... one was doing rodeo and one was this.”

Durham, who stayed on the circuit through his late twenties, says the two vocations do share some similarities - “they both involve lots of travel, the pay’s good, and it’s ninety minutes of work!”

A roper buddy of Dirk’s had a really good band in Oklahoma, and he’d often hang out with them after the rodeos. After a while Durham was pressed into service - first running cords, then monitors to mixing FOH. “I enjoyed it so much I kept on going,” says the engineer, who honed his skills during numerous house gigs at Tulsa City Limits and Stetson’s. “I was doing five or six nights a week – with four bands a night – and that got me up to speed real quick!”

Durham was hired by Toby Keith in 2000, right as the artist’s meteoric success was breaking. As the touring package has become increasingly dialed in over the last tours, Dirk says there wasn’t really a massive re-design for the 2004 tour.

“We picked up on the line arrays early on,” he adds, “and I know we were the first country act to fly subs – we’ve continued to experiment with that, and by changing points around on the VerTec a little bit and such, they’re getting me a little smoother every year.”

Another budget-related yet key ingredient is to ‘carry enough boxes’. “We carry 60 tops and 32 subs. Believe me, I can get out of any situation we get into with that!” he emphasizes. On an average day, up to 12 subs are flown with eight more on floor - four a side.

TP US and Durham agreed this particular rig was really sweet. “I’ve had a lot of years experience doing this,” he says, “but even with younger, less-experienced engineers, the VerTec is so forgiving, you can get up to speed real quick, and before long you’ll be grinning and grooving with the rest of us.”

Similar respect is given to the Midas XL4 FOH console. “I’m very happy mixing on an XL4 – there’s nothing like the preamps and the eq section.” Inputs on the Midas are up to 56 with 12 stereo channels.

System engineer Michael Beck creates Dirk’s working PA room environment. “Michael aligns the subs and tunes the rig for me - and very seldom do I ever have to correct anything he’s done. He uses SMAART a little bit, but mostly by ear; he did all that FOH work for Alabama in the 1990s. I’ve got a lot of faith in that man, and he does me right.”

According to monitor engineer Earl Neal, the typical hang per side is 15 4889’s for the main array, and 12 4889’s for the 45-degree off the corner boxes – to allow the system to completely cover 210, and for large arenas, like the Staples Center where tickets can be sold up to 270 degrees, they’ll fly six more VerTec per side as rear fills. The main array is left / right stereo, while the aux arrays are mono. The VerTec is powered by QSC – 6.0’s on mains and 9.0’s on the subs. “I’m hitting around 105 db,” Dirk adds, “and those amps aren’t even close to breaking a sweat.”

For Toby’s 12-ft. stagefront thrust, a stereo pair of Sound Image nearfields (‘it’s a 12” and a 2”’) offer a large comfort zone.

TP US asked Dirk to give up a few of his effects combination secrets. “Toby is on a TC Electronics M5000,” he says, “and all my backing vocals are on an Eventide harmonizer - about 3 cents down, and an Eventide Eclipse on a wide hall.”

To create distinct real estate for Keith’s lead vocals, Kirk uses light Drawmer compression on the backing vocalists and assigns them to a VCA, runs it to a compressed subgroup up on top, and pans them wide. “I have them on a special buss that I can grab, and it really spreads them out nicely – and leaves Toby a lot of room up the middle.”

Another separation in the mix involves steel guitar and keyboards. “Steel and keys tend to want to mask each other in the lower ranges, so I try to separate them. I might go wide on my keys and 9 o’ clock on my steel. The main lead guitar is straight up right behind Toby – when I’m making room, I always do the pocket.”

Earl Neal joined the touring entourage in April of 2003, following monitor board work and production management for Patty Loveless. Neal has the unique arm-extending scenario of using dual monitor consoles, a DiGiCo D5 for he band, and a Midas for the boss.

Earl explains, “The horn section had just started the year before, and they were having to share a monitor mix due to lack of available outputs. When I came on line, Toby was also planning to add three background singers, so I approached Sean about the possibility of moving into a digital console, because there wasn’t an analog desk on the market - at the time - that would handle all the outputs we needed. We had 14 people on stage last year – that’s 28 outputs before you even consider effects or any kind of sub-bussing, etc., and that’s when we got into the DiGiCo console.

“Halfway through that tour,” Earl continues, “Toby asked me if there was anything we could do differently, because he just wasn’t getting the warmth and the overall tonal quality that he was used to, so we ended up bringing out an XL3 as a sidecar. We’ve only got one background singer this year, but we’re still too large to fit on a Heritage 3000 – we’d have to go to a heritage 4K or a PM5K to get what we need. The band really likes the D5, and Toby is of the opinion that there’s no reason to switch if they’re happy, so it looks like we’ll be using two consoles for a while.”

Four mics are used to feed crowd noise to the in-ear monitors; Shure 57’s for the center pair, and a beyer shotgun on each corner. Shure microphones dominate the entire package, with SM57 and SM98 models on the snare, Beta 56’s on toms, KSM32’s as overheads, a 57’s on the ride and hi-hat. Kick drum is mic’d with both Beta 52 and a Beta 91; “Dirk uses the 91 and I predominantly use the 52, but I blend them for the drummer and for Toby; everybody else prefers the meat of the kick – so I give them the 52. I run compression on kick and snares, but there’s no gating at all in monitor world – I have the DiGiCo’s internal dynamics for the band, and there’s a BSS 501 that I use with Toby.

Bass is direct out of a Genz Benz amp and mic’d cabinet. Guitars are done with the tried and true SM57. “Dirk and I tried a bunch of different microphones - and we both felt that if we can put a 57 on it and get what we’re looking for - why waste our time looking at anything else?”

Horns are given a Shure wireless / Beta 98HC package, steel guitar is two cabinets mic’d with 57s, the main acoustic is processed through a TC Electronic chorus pedal out into two Countryman DI’s, and Toby plugs straight into his Shure UA series wireless. Toby sings through a SM58 capsule / wireless, while the other vocalists use Shure SM86s - except for the drummer, who prefers a Beta 56.

The band receives their effects via the D5’s internal engine; Toby’s monitor effects come from a pair of Yamaha SPX 2000 units. “I would have SPX 990s, but they were out of them in the shop, so I got the 2Ks and found my 990 patches in them,” Earl says.
One is strictly for Toby’s vocal, and the second for enriching the instruments in his mix. Finally, a pair of dbx 160’s is used on Toby’s vocal and on sub-mixing the band – “I’m running that through another 160 and then laying his vocal and acoustic on top.”

Earl, who sets up the wireless system daily, says wirelesses are Shure PSM600 and PSM700 models, and “everybody on the stage is using Shure E5’s with custom earpieces”. Rounding out the stage gear are five Sound Image theatre subs – a double-18” folded horn design - placed under the stage. The engineer, who has has a degree in aviation technology, worked in the aviation industry for a year and a half while in college before realizing he was ‘sick of math and science’ and started mixing some local bands, before moving to Nashville and getting his foot in the door. To cut it in the long run as a monitor engineer, Earl says you have to be a people person. “You deal with so many different personalities on a daily basis – and artists don’t necessarily look at things from a technical point-of-view, so having an easy-going personality is helpful. They know what they want, and they’re not going to relax until they get what they’re looking for. It’s your job to give them just that.” In closing, Earl gives some timeless advice: “Protect your hearing – more than anything. I tell these guys, if there’s ever a night where you walk off stage and your ears are ringing – tell me, because there’s something wrong!”

STAGING
On this tour, lighting designer Seth Jackson worked as overall production designer, creating the set and total visual package of Toby’s bar. Seth brought in Elizabeth O’Keefe of Technical Productions as collaborator on the project; O’Keefe produced the artwork for the faux neon lights that adorn the space, and worked with Jackson on set dressings and other treatments. B&R Scenery and Heartland Scenic served as the scenic vendors for the Big Throwdown tour.

According to Seth, “B&R Scenery, because they are ‘kings of all things aluminum’, built the structure of the set - the riser decks and frames, set carts and such. Heartland Scenic is a theatrical scene shop, and we needed their expertise in order to make the bar set and the rustic feel work. All the scenic treatments and paintwork came from Heartland; they also built the neon signs which came I-Light out of Chicago.

“It started out pretty simple,” he continues. “I sent a few different concepts to management, and one was the bar theme. Once we decided that was the way to go, the question became ‘what kind of bar?’ We knew we’d go for a bit of a southwestern feel, and with the urinal, the signs, and the rack of bottles, we also knew the set would have some humor to it! It became a seedy, taverny kind of bar, not a refined jazz club.”

Jackson says the staging construction is relatively straightforward. The carpenters handle the basic riser configuration, then all the facings on the riser, they split the neon signage duties with the lighting crew, and finally the show curtains - a three-sided digitally printed kabuki that hangs for the opening act, and the opening video curtain that exists for the opening Ford movie.

TP US also spoke with O’Keefe about the integration of Technical Productions’ skills on this no-holds-barred concert experience.

Elizabeth, whose background is in production and graphic design for the video production / post-production market, says Jackson approached her with the challenge of “I need to design a big, fat set”.

She produced the graphics and they worked to create the degraded bar environment. “It’s sort of a neighborhood trashed bar look,” O’Keefe explains, “that obviously has some new world spice added to it with neon. We wanted the vibe of a place that’s been overlooked for the last twenty years. We’ve all spent too much time in them, which is why it was so easy to design a set that looked like that!”

The faux neon LED was created in a vector-based program. “Through the gradiation process, I was able to fake the neon-esqe attributes that light could have – and through a layering process in Photoshop – to make it really come to life. It went from line art and vector-based drawings to Photoshop to high end production stills. Best of all, it was cost-effective for the crew to purchase and implement.”

“Initially when Seth said Toby wants to do a bar scene,” Elizabeth says, “and he mentioned the word ‘urinals’ ... well that sort of thing sparked a creative juice for things like bricks falling off drum risers and such. And Seth brought in chicken wire!”

O’Keefe says the backdrop itself, which largely obscured in the show unless all the lights are dark is “sort of a positive and negative play on dilapidated wood - and pieces of wood - that fall off into the background. That’s the final depth layer, which takes you back into the negative space of brick and wood. It’s a truly multi-level description of what might be evident in the bar.”

In closing, Elizabeth observes, “Rock and country tours aren’t much different than any other design; you do have to be concerned about getting it up and down, and how well it travels, but ultimately it’s all about a creative vision – for a corporate meeting or an artist.
“On a tour, you get a million people screaming at you, and you get to see your work big as life, so in that respect, it was some of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. It was larger than life!”

VIDEO
Though the concert does include several dedicated archived video segments (most notable being the over-the-top Ford® intro), this is largely an i-mag show, with the big screen front and center with live concert footage. The Barco D7 center cluster, cameras, etc. as well as crew are being provided by the most excellent Imag Video (www.imagvideo.com).

Touring Video Director is ‘Paris’, the LED screen technician is Colin Johnston, video engineer is Randy Ice, and the three live cameras are run by Dave Gowey, Don Moore and Lee Garland.

Johnston says the large video wall is designed as an integral part of the presentation, “so everyone could have a good seat” at Toby’s show. The Barco D7 main element spans 14’ x 27’; two Barco 9300’s rear project onto side screens. Paris mixes the live cams on a Raw Synergy II switcher, and has been known to pull off a triple-camera montage upon request. B-roll footage is pulled from DoReMi hard drive and Beta.

According to Colin, the production used lipstick cameras on the last tour, but went back to the ‘all-live’ feel this year with three Hitachi’s handling all the work; one’s at FOH and sports a longer lens, while the other two cameramen are an integral part of the action, “running around the stage all the time”.

The technician adds that the marriage of lighting and video was more equal and successful on this run. “Obviously, the engineer balances the video to the lighting, but their overall effect was much more even this year.”

Unlike so many tours where the lines between the disciplines start to blur, this outing is a straight-forward live show from front to end, with no fancy coloration, manipulation, or bastardization of the video imagery. In retrospect, perhaps that’s what makes it so powerful. Colin modestly calls this a ‘straight-up rock show, nothing fancy’. In the warmer weather summer affords, the tour played some sheds, allowing video to send an external feed to the house - ‘to the grass’, as they say.

PYRO
The extreme pyro of the Big Throwdown Tour is provided by special effects wizards StrictlyFX (www.strictlyfx.com) and was designed by Reid Nofsinger. Reid says that while pyrotechnics have been a part of Toby’s show since he first demo’ed the effect to the singer in Milwaukee a few tours back, this show has one-upped everything they’ve done before. “This year we went crazy,” he affirms. “I’ve been doing his design work and shows for three years, and this year Toby said ‘I want it to be the biggest pyro show I’ve ever done’.

“Over the last few years it’s been a nice big opening and a nice big closer, and that’s been about it. Last time we had two flame cannons – two of our Venom units – and this year we had four Venoms, and we blew up another 50 pieces of product on his neon sign, along with two concussions – so we basically tripled the opening.”

Nofsinger says they added effects for ‘Whiskey Girl’ - “We put our Rattlers in there – which are moving pyrotechnics, and this hasn’t been done before. The Rattlers hold a gerb, but it can move in 180-degree rotation. “You can start or stop it anywhere – or it can move during the flame,” he enthuses. They also added effects for ‘Good To Go With Mexico’. “We’re doing pyro in five songs now,” he adds.

With many musicians on stage, a lot of their gear is placed behind them. “We’re utilizing the hand rails on the upper deck, and we also had boards downstage left and right – everything is spread out, so when we do a cue, it’s not just a little thing happening in the corner. We can actually fire from 20 different positions onstage – and most of them are behind the musicians. There are even points where the horn section has to move forward so we can fire the cue!”

Reid typically designs the pyro, trains the crew to run it, supervises the design and build of the equipment; then he heads off to the next show, which in this case was Jay Z.’s tour. Aaron Siltman and Wade Padgett currently handle the pyro firing and set-up duties.

LIGHTING
The beefier lighting scheme for Keith’s Throwdown shows is being supplied by Bandit Lites (www.banditlites.com) and came through lighting designer Seth Jackson’s collaboration with Toby’s touring lighting director, Eddie ‘Bones’ Connell. Bandit’s Mike Golden handled the account from the company’s Nashville office; lighting crew chief is Brad Rogers.

Seth included many of the tools they’ve used before, including Cyberlights and MACs, along with some Syncrolite 3K’s for their punchy signature looks. According to Gene Brian of Bandit, “This was one of those gigs that was well-designed before it was even put out to bid. Seth Jackson has gotten really adept at engaging the proper trades to produce the product he expects. He looks to the lighting vendor to provide the lights and truss. If he needs some widget that supports a custom gizmo that happens to be on the lighting truss, he will find a capable widget manufacturer rather that instruct the lighting vendor to cobble something together that will work.”

There’s a good reason for the higher lumens of 2004’s tour. On this outing, Seth and Bones worked to ensure that their lighting would mesh perfectly - yet not be subservient to other production entities in any way. “We kind of lost the battle with our LED wall last year, as we were facing a tighter budget, and limited ourselves on gear – and this time that wasn’t going to happen. Practically everything instrument is a MAC 2K, a MAC 2K wash or a Syncrolite ... we amped it up a lot, and lighting holds it own now - it’s in a small area, but there’s some heavy wattage!”

“The great thing about working with Bones,” Seth continues, “is that he and I have such completely different backgrounds, when we get into programming mode, he’s always pushing that envelope - bigger, faster, brighter - and it just works. We get bigger and crazier and bolder each time!”

For this tour, Seth went very heavy with the wash lighting - something he normally doesn’t employ - but nevertheless feeding the rock n’ roll cueing and style of the show.

Their Syncrolites are spread out at different heights through the upstage. “The 3K’s just blast through everything, and several of them are behind the signage, so you can see the really shafts as they blast through the neon sign.”

Jackson adds while he typically went for the whites and the blues in the Syncro’s, Bones was ‘crazy about the red’. “Between the two of us, we made our way up and down the scroll,” he laughs. The rig is light on conventionals, mainly molefeys that frame the outside of the rig for the audience lighting. High End Systems Cyberlights add yet another layer of beamage, and feature Bones’ custom gobos (‘the ones with the biggest breakup patterns’).

“They’re his lights,” Seth explains, “and we kept them in the rig because they’re perfect for the one or two times a night you need to get there quickly – you just need that mirror occasionally.”

“Cyberlights have saved us so many times,” Bones adds. “Usually I’ll light the set with the Cyberlights, and then we’ll have a couple cues that I have to get out to the audience really fast. It’s because of their speed that we keep them in the show.”

TP US asked the designer about how he employed the meat and potatoes of his lighting, especially the Martin Mac 2K Profile and Wash fixtures. “The Profiles are all about beams in the airs – doing graphics, laying in the eye candy, the activity and motion. The Cybers are positioned more downstage, and we use them to texture the set throughout the night – they’re catching the beer bottles, the stone work, the toilets and other set elements – and they’re perfect for setting those in context with everything else. And the MAC 2K wash lights are everywhere – doing key lighting for the band, back lighting for the band, stage washes – it’s the workhorse of the whole rig. The Syncrolites and the arsenal of MAC 600s are all the way upstage; the 600s are basically used as ACL fans – so Bones has

things to bump and flash - and the Syncrolites cut through everything.
“We place very few instruments on the floor – with two opening acts, it got to be annoying. This year I put a dozen MAC 500s here and there throughout the set to give a little more texture.”

Bones calls the four house spots (two are on Toby, the other pair pick up solos); a Bandit-engineered Cyberlight Cyberspot truss spot is also used by Bones for DMX-controlled spotlight nirvana such as rotating gobos on Toby’s ballads.

TP US asked Bones, who has illuminated Toby’s tours for the last nine years, about how he utilizes the latest horsepower under the hood on Toby’s tour. “On the floor, we’ve got 14 MAC 500s spread out, and six MAC 300s as well. The 500s are doing our basic floor looks, and they fill up the stage really well – we also have two behind a door ... we can shoot gobos through the window ... good for camera shots!”

The main support structure includes three trusses and one square box grid. “We’ve got upstage truss that carries mostly 2K Profiles and Wash fixtures,” he adds. “The middle section holds two Syncrolites, two Cyberlights and six MAC 500s. I’m digging what we have right now, but I wouldn’t mind getting into some Vari*Lites next year.”

Bones runs the show on a Whole Hog II and a Wing. He still owns the Avolites Pearl 2000 they used “in the day of PAR cans and ten Cybers.” The lighting director’s Hog Wing controls different colors for the Cyberspot, molefeys both in a group and partitioned stage left to right, and a few chase macros.

The Hog’s eight faders hold what Bones calls his drum lights. “I’m one of those old school rock guys that cues off the drums – even though I catch flack from it! I’ve also made MAC 600s and 300s perform ACL type looks.

Atmospherics also play an important role in the show lighting, and Bones gets to indulge his love to fog with a pair of F-100’s and three JEM hazers.

In closing, he credits Bandit’s crew chief Brad Rogers for his assistance in the tour’s success. “Brad came on last year about half-way through the tour, and he’s got it down. You’ve got to get the respect of the guys, and show them you know what you’re doing – which he does. As long as we get along with video, sound, and everybody else, and keep it all on track – it’s rock solid. It’s like a nice little family - we’re all brothers of the road out here.”

Dirk Durham	Earl Neal	Sean Sargeant	Seth Jackson

 

TJ Thompson