For thousands of music fans in Chicago and millions at home watching the live stream on Hulu, this past weekend marked the long-awaited return of Lollapalooza. The four-day festival in Grant Park hosted an estimated 100,000 people a day between Thursday and Sunday, and fielded dozens of acts, from Meghan Thee Stallion, Post Malone and Tyler, The Creator to Journey, Limp Bizkit and Foo Fighters, while EDM made its presence known with Marshmello, Illenium and Steve Aoki. We’ll have complete coverage in the September issue of Mix, but in the meantime, here’s a glimpse of what we saw:
Young The Giant, tearing it up. This crowd missed live music!
Young the Giant FOH mixer James Shaw at the Avid Venue Profile desk.
Greg Downs, mixing Backseat Lovers, brought true rock and roll to Grant Park from a compact Midas board.
The 24-box L-Acoustics K1/K2 stage right hang on the main T-Mobile stage, provided by LD Systems.
The L-Acoustics subwoofer line across the front of the main stage, in eight zones of four boxes each. Six of the zones were in 3-1 cardioid.
Here’s Chris Shepard of American Mobile mixing Backseat Lovers for streaming on Hulu. They were rocking!
In the American Mobile Studio truck, which provided streaming audio for Hulu from the T-Mobile stage. Standing: Mike White, A2 stage; and seated, from left, Jonathan Lackey, A2 stage, and Chris Shepard, engineer in charge.
Monophonics on the Lake Shore stage. Rock and roll returns!
We enjoyed Modest Mouse on the main stage. Note the first set of L-Acoustics delays in the foreground.
There were a dozen L-Acoustics K1/K2 per side on the Lake Shore stage, provided by Technotrix, with The Front Bottoms performing.
As you can see from the Tito’s Stage, Shure Axient Digital was in use onstage. Shure wireless was everywhere at Lollapalooza, which makes sense, as it is a Chicago company that goes back nearly 100 years.
Brittany Howard rocked out on guitar at the Tito’s Stage. That Gospel Blues Rock made for a stunning festival show with a positive message. What a performer!
The second row of delay towers on the T-Mobile stage, with six L-Acoustics K2s per side. Mix found the transition between zones, with 60,000 fans in the audience, to be seamless, and never noticed a dip.
Kevin Caslow, senior A1 for Springboard Festival Audio, at the Calrec Alpha console—the final ‘mastering’ and level check for all the main stages in the NEP truck before heading out to VIVX for transmission to Hulu.
Foo Fighters killed it as the closer!
Lousy photo from FOH, but as you can see, the Foos became the Dee Gees for a while and kicked into ‘You Should Be Dancing.’ Adding to the vibe, Taylor Hawkins had a picture of Barry Gibb on the face of his kick drum.
Dave Grohl and his daughter Violet performed a song by one of their favorite bands, ‘Nausea’ by X! As a crazy coincidence, Foo Fighters was on the cover of Mix’s July issue…and John Doe of X is on our August cover!
FOH for Band of Horses on the Lake Shore stage, 20 minutes before Foo Fighters took the stage to close Lollapalooza. Thank you LD Systems, Technotrix, L-Acoustics, DiGiCo, American Mobile and Springboard Productions for an awesome audio re-entry to festival sound!
