One of 12 at this year’s New Orleans Jazz Fest, the Sheraton New Orleans Fais Do-Do stage is dedicated primarily to Louisiana music with a mixture of local and national headliners performing zydeco, Cajun, blues and rock music.
The acts are presented back to back with very quick set changes.
Adding to the challenge were the adverse tropical conditions with torrential rain and a heat index swing from 70º to 105º posed a formidable threat.
Said Chris Brown, owner of production company Sound Chek Music, “you could actually see standing water on stage at times when the rain was blowing in.”
“Our exposure was such that, at one point on this 36 to 40 foot deep stage, we had water hitting the drum riser 32 feet back,” said Brown.
“We were mixing monitors on stage under tarpaulins, but the show must go on, so, we’re up and running, and once the gear is covered and in place, there’s no reason why the show doesn’t happen.”
Brown was confident using APB-DynaSonics Spectra Ti consoles for FOH and Monitors. This is the second year Chris and crew have relied on APB, largely be-cause of their flexibility, familiarity of layout for guest engineers, and ability to withstand inclement weather conditions.
“On this kind of job,” said Brown, “the board constantly gets reinvented because we had six to seven acts a day with no sound checks and 15 to 25 minute set changes between acts.”
“Anybody who’s done this type of show knows it can be more difficult getting the previous act off than getting the next one on, especially if they had a great set and everybody’s loving them.
“So you have to redial, reinvent, and tweak things up quickly cause you’ll go from an acoustic singer songwriter to a heavy Zydeco act––where the SPL on stage can reach 122 dB.”
“Musically, the color they go for is a big rolling bass, and lots of kick. The volume creeps up quickly with the vocals and the Cajun accordion that’s in the middle of all this.”
