The Oak Ridge Boys are currently taking their unique country and gospel style on the road with the appropriately named The Boys Are Back 150-date North American tour in support of their latest recording release of the same name.
The original group dates all the way back to 1945, founded as the Oak Ridge Quartet, and has seen a lot of changes over its six-plus decades.
But the focus has always been richly textured vocals, with the current lineup consisting of lead singer Duane Allen, tenor Joe Bonsall, bass Richard Sterban and iconic baritone William Lee Golden.
Brantley Sound Associates (BSA) of Nashville is providing the concert systems and support for the tour, which is appearing in theaters and smaller arenas with capacities ranging up to 4,000.
A flexible sound design, particularly for the house, has been implemented by the team of Chris Demonbreun, Marko Hunt and Eric Vogel, who have formulated effective ways to adapt the system to meet the unique needs of the different venues the tour is visiting.
The flexible house system design starts with Adamson Systems Y10 compact line arrays that are either flown or stacked, depending upon the specific coverage requirements and physical configuration of each venue.
The compact 3-way Y10, measuring just 10-in (h) by 42-in (w) by 24-in (d) per enclosure, is outfitted with a slide-hinge rigging system providing six 1-degree increments that makes optimum positioning simple whether up in the air or on the deck.
“The rigging design allows us to do whatever is required and get the angles we need,” notes Demonbreun, who serves as system tech as well as monitor engineer.
Through The Ranges
When ground-stacked, coverage is usually achieved with arrays of just six Y10 modules per side, each joined by a single Adamson T21 (dual 21-in Kevlar drivers).
Flown, each array is joined by eight Adamson Spektrix ultra-compact 3-way line array modules and a single Spektrix W cabinet, with a 15-degree trapezoidal cabinet, to provide down fill.
Hunt, who is the long-time front-of-house engineer for the Oak Ridge Boys, determines the PA configuration for each venue, working out array structure as well as optimum angles.
He deploys the Adamson Shooter array modeling and configuration program for additional information when the arrays are flown.
