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Martin Audio Hangs With SoCo

One of several musical events sponsored by Southern Comfort across the country, the outdoor SoCo Music Experience festival in Madison, Wisc., featured full production and lighting from Technotrix, a production company out of Bourbonnais, Ill., that had already done staging and lighting for the SCMX event in Atlanta.

Company account manager Kevin Kiefer says, “Festival jobs aren’t that difficult for us because we do them all of the time. What’s different about these ‘corporate festivals’ is that we bring someone like Southern Comfort a system you’d use for a medium-sized rock music show, but the main focus becomes the branding and promotion of a particular corporate brand, something we do well.

“There are corporate production companies who have gear for doing speeches, but not a rock show,” Kiefer continues. “And there are festival guys who have the equipment for a rock show, but don’t know how to focus on the branding and corporate entity. Technotrix provides equipment for a lot of festivals, so we came up with this combination platter for companies like Nike, Netflix or Southern Comfort to put the corporate brand into the rock environment and make them look good.”

In this case, Kiefer and crew supplied a 45×45-foot concert roof system by Xtreme Structures for the lighting and audio. To ensure maximum coverage for an area roughly 200×250 feet, they used Martin Audio throughout: 12 W8LC enclosures hung left and right of the stage with 18 ground-stacked WSX subs, four WT2s for front-fill and LE12JB monitors onstage. In addition, the system comprised Yamaha PM5DRH FOH and monitor consoles and XTA processing. The lighting system featured Martin MAC700 profiles.

“Basically, we set up the sound and lighting the day before,” Kiefer says. “Load in and soundcheck started at 8 in the morning, and the gates opened about 4 in the afternoon. The only odd thing was getting through the soundchecks for all five bands. As it turned out, I was very happy with the sound and so was our client, Mowalla Productions, who told us that Southern Comfort was pleased, as well. In fact, they’ve asked us back to do another event in St. Louis. The person we were working with from Mowalla hadn’t used Martin Audio before, but he ended up being a fan. So we’ll probably do more of these shows next year, which is the best result we could have hoped for.”

For more information on the Martin Audio gear, visit www.martin-audio.com. For more information on Technotrix, visit www.technotrix.net. For additional SR news, visit The Briefing Room.

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