Clair Brothers powers Garth Brooks in South Bend
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Dan Heins, FOH engineer for Garth since 1989, reports: “By four o’clock in the afternoon, just hours before the show, because of the bad weather conditions, we still didn’t know if the concert would go on. We ended up doing soundcheck with the PA on the ground. The wind finally let up, so we were able to raise the speakers. Sound reinforcement was through Brooks’ custom-designed Clair Brothers PA.
Part of the show’s magic was the star-shaped stage with a 360° rotating centre-stage on which Brooks and his band performed - a theatre-in-the-round concept where Garth moves freestyle around the periphery playing to each side of the stadium.
According to Heins, “The Clair Brothers PA consistently sounds great, year after year. And I can say the same thing same about Garth. He pushes himself to deliver his best every time he performs.”
The fundamental core of the stadium rig is the Clair Brothers i218 line array system that has been increased in size to cover stadiums in-the-round. The Notre Dame concert used a total of 96 i218 array cabinets and 48 i212 cabinets in the main array hangs, all eight hangs with identical equipment. The layout for the stadium effectively utilised two different array hang configurations depending on whether the array was facing the sideline or the end zone.
Josh Sadd, sound designer for the tour, comments: “The Notre Dame stadium, while obviously great for football, has a bright future for concerts. The rake of the seating is very amphitheatre-like which is acoustically very musical sounding - a great feature.”
(Jim Evans)
