North Carolina-based JHE Production Group recently deployed JBL Professional VERTEC line arrays to serve as a big part of the live-event technology provided for the 15th annual Food Lion Speed Street, a three-day festival in Charlotte staged in late May (2009).
Food Lion Speed Street is a free event celebrating the NASCAR season, offering live entertainment, fan access to NASCAR’s brightest stars, and vendor displays from sponsors including Food Lion, Coca-Cola, Miller Lite and Chevrolet. Featuring performers like Bell Biv DeVoe, Clint Black, Gavin DeGraw, Jason Aldean, Lifehouse and Rodney Atkins, this year’s Food Lion Speed Street drew an estimated 400,000 people over three days.
For the 14th consecutive year, JHE Production Group produced the event, and with support from DSS, Inc. of Lenexa, Kansas, supplied the audio system for all three stages at Food Lion Speed Street.
According to Mike Mehesan, Production Coordinator for JHE Production Group, the festival has grown tremendously in the past 15 years.
“I remember back when the event involved a single, small stage and now it spreads all across downtown Charlotte with three separate performance areas,” Mehesan said. “The crowds extended for several blocks. The headline acts, stages and crowds just keep getting bigger.”
The three stages at Food Lion Speed Street included two main stages (the Coca-Cola Stage and the Miller Lite Stage, respectively) and a third, smaller stage (the Food Lion Stage), which was used primarily for presentations and product demonstrations.
The two largest main stages each featured identical audio system configurations: two main line arrays in a left-right arrangement, each containing nine VERTEC VT4888 midsize line array elements and six VT4880 full-size arrayable subwoofers, with a smaller array of four VT4888 loudspeakers on each side for out fill applications.
The system at the smaller Food Lion Stage featured JBL VRX932LA compact constant curvature arrays and VRX918S subwoofers.
With JHE Production Group’s strong presence in the NASCAR industry, providing audio support for pre and post-race entertainment, the company continues to rely more and more on JBL loudspeakers.
“We’ve been using JBL VRX line arrays for all our in-house projects and pre-race stages. And we specify VERTEC line arrays for almost every large event we do. I’ve used a lot of different line arrays, but the way the VERTEC speakers sound and their ease of rigging makes them one of my favorite speakers,” Mehesan said.
“We’ve been getting a lot of collaborative support from DSS, Inc. and together we have been able to put together huge shows at NASCAR events and get the stages on and off the track in a matter of minutes.”
