CLUBS Copyright Lighting &Sound America May 2021 issue live link: http://plasa.me/lsamay21

An Almost Perfect Ga me I

32 • May 2021 • Lighting &Sound America Having faced tornados and COVID-19, Bowl Na shville’s time has finally arrived

By: Dan Daley

wasn’t the day the music died, but it was the night when it group’s audience in February). “Those were the seemed to. Just after midnight on March 3, a series of kind of things that kept us sane and let us keep some staff storms, with an EF-3 tornado at the core, plowed across on,” Keegan says. the north end of Nashville, killing 22 people. In all, more than 140 buildings were destroyed across a roughly 60- Technology choices mile swath of Middle Tennessee, trapping people in base - There’s no specific technology template for the AVL in ments, and burying them in rubble. The afflicted neighbor - Brooklyn Bowl’s locations, Keegan says, but consistency is hoods included some of the city’s newly hippest and his - a goal. “We have the coolest toys in this one because it’s torically poorest, the kinds of places where you often find the newest location, but we try to make sure all the equip - It music clubs. One of the best-known of the locals, the ment is up-to-date everywhere,” he says. “The goal is really Basement East, was nearly leveled (although its iconic “I to keep the concert experience consistent for guests and Believe in Nashville” mural wall and Meyer JM-1P PA sys - keep the Coney Island freak-show vibe intact. And, during tem both miraculously survived unscathed). By morning, COVID, to also to keep it safe for the audience and every - the inhabitants and workers of the Germantown and East one else, which has been challenging for indoor venues.” Nashville districts stared at the physical devastation. By Jon Dindas, CEO of G4D Productions, a concert and the end of the month, they saw another disaster arrive: a events design company in that has worked virus that would eventually kill over a half-million closely with Brooklyn Bowl cofounder Peter Shapiro since Americans, including nearly 1,000 in Nashville, shutting the original location opened in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg down virtually the entire live entertainment industry for district, says that the desire for consistency helps with over a year. issues such as maintenance and operations: “We’ll use the A few days after the tornado, Brooklyn Bowl, the Coney same systems, like d&b [audiotechnik], which we’ve put Island-themed bowling alley/rock venue/eatery, had been into the Brooklyn and Las Vegas rooms and in the Capitol poised to launch the latest in its string of outposts. A few Theater [in Port Chester, New York, which Shapiro pur - blocks north of the tourist-and-bachelorette-infested chased and renovated in 2012], which we love the sound honky-tonks on Lower , Brooklyn Bowl Nashville of, and the same installers, like Eighth Day Audio, to have seemed to arrive at the right time and the right place in a consistent experience for touring artists.” It’s a practice Music City. Through no fault of its own, it would turn out to be neither. “Looking back, maybe Friday the 13th wasn’t the most auspicious date to open on,” says Colin Keegan, Brooklyn Bowl Nashville’s talent buyer, wryly recalling the venue’s ironic original 2020 opening date. “We were fortunate that we didn’t have much damage from the tornado, even though it came pretty close, and we were able to quickly fix z

t what we needed to and still plan to open on the 13th. But a a F then everything had to close down because of COVID.” e s s e

J Like a handful of other music clubs around the country,

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o the Brooklyn Bowls kept their music on life support, using h p

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h the venues’ stages, AVL systems, and a home-brewed g i R

; livestreaming codec called Fans.Live for shows that g n i r d l enabled them to make lemonade from the lemons handed o G

a them by COVID. In Nashville, that included performances k i r E

: by artists such as Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Brittany o t o h

p Howard, and The Hold Steady (who also did a 3pm show

t f e

L from the venue that translated into a 9pm start for the Above and opposite: “The goal is really to keep the concert experience consistent for guests and keep the Coney Island freak-show vibe intact,” says Keegan.

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Onstage, as elsewhere in the venue, the sound system consists largely of d&b audiotechnik loudspeakers.

that is expected to extend to the Philadelphia Brooklyn room. It’s not just cut-and-paste. We’ll even experiment Bowl, anticipated to open sometime this year, and others with very custom ideas for each location.” In fact, when a in development. “We’d like to see a tour of Brooklyn Bowl Chicago venue was previously under consideration, a venues at some point. On the other hand, we’ll also lighting rig in the shape of the city’s NHL Blackhawks logo choose equipment based on what’s appropriate for each was talked about.

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p o T Like other Brooklyn Bowls, the Nashville venue has used its stage, AVL system, and a livestreaming codec called Fans.Live for livestreamed shows during the pandemic.

34 • May 2021 • Lighting &Sound America “It’s one of the best rigs in the Southeast for a 1,200-capacity venue,” Gatti says. Gear includes units from Robe, Chauvet Professional, and Elation Professional.

Carl Gatti, production manager at Brooklyn Bowl dining and bowling and music come together can be tricky, Nashville, says the audio, video, and lighting were con - and the shape of the building dictates most of what you ceived of and designed as a piece, extending to the archi - can do, design-wise, but the music always comes first. tecture and acoustical treatment. Charley Ryan—Shapiro’s Nothing trumps that.” business partner here and in the legendary Wetlands Preserve music venue in Manhattan in the 1990s—allegedly Big sound had the architectural design firm extend the Nashville The spacious 38' by 20' performance stage underscores the club’s second-tier balcony slightly to create a sound trap scale of the sprawling 60,000-sq.-ft. facility, and the balcony that attenuates the sound from the main-floor stage area overlooking it is still below the 19' clearance of the truss trim reaching the restaurant level. “He’s the only person who above the stage. It’s flanked by a d&b audiotechnik stereo could actually override the architect,” he says. PA system comprising eight Vi8 and Vi12 loudspeakers, Ryan modestly suggests that his powers may not hung four per side, plus four Vi SUB subwoofers flown two extend that far. But he does say that striking a good bal - per side, and one B22 subwoofer per side and ground- ance between music, bowling, and dining is the overarch - stacked under the stage. Four Y10 speakers act as front fills ing goal, and he describes his process for approaching it and two Yi10s as side fills. The entire system is powered by as plotting out those elements on graph paper and then lit - four d&b D80 amplifiers. Onstage, a dozen d&b M4 wedges erally cutting them into their parts and seeing different and a V-GSUB subwoofer are the main monitors, powered ways of putting them together. For instance, in the by a D20 amp, all supplemented by four V8 speakers and

r Nashville venue, everything revolved around the bowling four V-SUB subwoofers as monitor side fills, powered by a e i l l e

T lanes because the building is much longer than it is wide. D20 amplifier. The sound system uses two Lab.Gruppen e L

k “Compared to Brooklyn, which is 150' by 150' square, in processors as its core and connects to a Dante network via c i N

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o Nashville the bowling lanes determined the rest of the lay - a pair of d&b DS10 audio network bridges. Music from the t o h

P out, because their length is non-negotiable,” he says. “How stage and other sources is routed to areas such as an out -

www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • May 2021 • 35 CLUBS

The main circular truss is placed over the audience area with a massive Big Ass Fan in the center, bounded on either side by two sinuous wave-shaped trusses, all constructed out of a mix of 24' and 17' outside-diameter circle sections.

door terrace (which overlooks the stadium of the Triple-A stage. “There’s always going to be some spillover, but this baseball team The Nashville Sounds) via a distributed sound lets us limit that as much as possible,” he says. “On the system comprising Klipsch ceiling speakers, zoned and other hand, we had to add fill speakers on either side of managed by a Crestron automation system, and installed by the stage to cover areas the main hangs don’t reach. The local integrator Beacon Technologies. The same system is acoustics make a huge difference in how the system used to distribute video to various areas—including two reacts in the room, and what [acoustical consultant] Sam bars—allowing up to three HDMI inputs. [Berkow] did made my job a lot easier.” Slightly off center from the stage front is the front-of- In fact, the room’s architectural excursions, such as the house position, half of which has an Avid Venue S6L-24C- edges of the balcony and mezzanine, provide a level of 112 console (48 x 24 I/O); the other side is wired for a diffusion that, while structural, are nonetheless calculated guest console but is also a DJ position, keeping a into the space’s acoustical equation. That’s part of what turntable off the stage to allow more efficient set changes. Berkow, a principal of SIA Acoustics and another veteran “We reopened for three or four weeks, last June, when the of Bowl venues, brought to the table in Nashville. “The city relaxed the restrictions on restaurants and we had a idea was to use both the architectural and acoustical ele - DJ for music,” Gatti recalls. ments, such as the I-beams, which we damped with treat - Tom George, the sound system designer for Eighth Day ment, together to scatter sound,” he explains. He adds he

Sound (since acquired by Clair Global), which installed the also concentrated the acoustical focus on attenuating the r e i l l e

system, says the d&b V-Series boxes offer two horizontal low- to mid-low-frequency bands, from about 60Hz to T e L

dispersion patterns, which allow the line-array hangs to 500Hz, to keep the room from sounding boomy. “What k c i N

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keep the sound reasonably tight on the general-admission we’ve learned over the years is that there are two kinds of o t o h

area (the “GA floor,” in house parlance) in front of the amplified-music rooms—ones where the sound from the P

36 • May 2021 • Lighting &Sound America stage is significant and ones where it isn’t,” he says. neers coming in on tour, and this is the most basic way to “Madison Square Garden is an example of the second lay it out, making it easier for them,” he explains. kind—most people are too far away to hear the guitar amps or drums from the stage; they’ll only hear the PA. Pins and projectors Brooklyn Bowl is an example of the first.” While the PA’s The front-of-house position is roughly the boundary targeted directional dispersion helps keep lower frequen - between the music side of the Bowl and the, well, bowling cies away from the walls, Berkow says the rear wall behind side, but the 19 alleys are nothing like what Ralph the stage is often vulnerable to low-frequency buildup in Kramden and his Raccoon Lodge brothers might have environments like these. This was addressed by the appli - envisioned. As bowling lanes, they use the latest in ten-pin cation of six frequency-tuned 8' by 4' Real Acoustics plate technology: manufactured by QubicaAMF, the pulley- absorbers on the wall behind the stage curtain. This has based system uses nearly invisible strings attached to the the added benefit of encouraging musicians to keep their tops of the pins to reset them after each frame. Aside from stage volume down, which further helps solve the prob - its inherent techie coolness, Gatti notes that the system lem, and which also helps keep recordings and streamed significantly reduces the amount of clatter made by the shows sound cleaner. “The low-frequency sound energy pin-reset process, compared to older conventional sweep- really swamps microphones onstage, so we also lower the bar-based pin-spotting systems, which bodes well for HVAC noise reaching the stage,” says Berkow. “Every when ballads are being sung onstage. The alleys are also venue used to be just a performance venue, but the new on a 6", six-layer concrete slab floated on fiberglass pucks rules are that every venue now is also a potential broad - and separated by a honeycombed discontinuity layer to cast venue, thanks to streaming. So, the acoustics have to reduce both mechanical coupling vibration and airborne make it sound great for all of that.” noise, part of Berkow’s overall acoustical design. “We can George says the console was the house’s choice—he also turn off the lanes during the music performance, per had suggested the Avid S6L and a DiGiCo SD12—and artist request,” Gatti adds. reflects the staff’s preferences. (Nashville, which has But the entertainment extends to the lanes, as well. become ground zero for music touring of all genres, has a Above the two levels of lanes are 221.75" diagonal Da-Lite huge population of veteran live-sound mixers, many of projection screens covered from the rear by 13 Epson whom have been at home for the last year.) One decision Powerlite 2247U 4,200-lumen WUXGA 3LCD projectors. he made, though, was to put both the S6L desk at the These usually run eye-candy graphics coming from the Blackmagic Design ATEM Pro HD eight-channel SDI/HDMI live production switcher. That is, when they’re not taking input from the three Sony BRC-H800 PTZ cameras mount - ed LCR on a second-tier rail and aimed at the stage, and the three Marshall CV503 Mini HD “lipstick” key cams that are aimed at specific stage positions such as the drums and the keyboards. A seventh lipstick cam is focused on a stained-glass window that can be used to create a halo effect around an out-front performer, such as a lead singer. All cameras are managed using two Sony RM-IP10 con - trollers, located at the front of house. When performances are taking place, the screens above the lanes show IMAG video, which is also distributed to four 65" television moni - tors around the venue. Shows are also recorded, for archival purposes, using a Blackmagic Hyperdeck Studio 2 recorder in the venue’s rack room.

Virtual fans Since the pandemic arrived, the screens and switcher have taken on an added task: hosting viewers on Acoustical isolation keeps noise from the bowling lanes separate from the rest of the venue. Fans.Live, the digital platform owned by Shapiro, which

g has streamed over 250 live and archival shows since April n i r d l 2020, including Jason Isbell’s Reunions LP release concert o G a

k front of house and another for monitors on a split analog event last May, the first show of any type from Brooklyn i r E

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o signal path to the racks and stage, versus a gain- and mic- Bowl Nashville. Fans can buy tickets through the portal t o h

P sharing split. “There’s a pretty wide range of visiting engi - (which is integrated with Shopify for ticketing and merch

www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • May 2021 • 37 CLUBS

transactions) and project themselves through their person - al devices onto the screens using the Zoom codec as vir - tual fans to “attend” the livestreamed shows. A video pre - view screen allows the video mixer to choose particular home streams and assemble them into two “Zoom rooms” that populate the bowling lane screens. It truly may be the next best thing to being there—Gatti recalls a livestreamed Maren Morris concert in December at which virtual fans held up autographed merch for Morris to see onstage. There would be too much latency to allow The venue opened on March 13, 2020, but was soon sending for real-time back-and-forth banter between stage and vir - the above messages as it struggled through lockdown. Going tual audience, but he recommends to artists that they forward, its prospects seem bright. acknowledge if they see a particular item or homemade sign held up by a fan on-screen. “The fans just lose it when they see and hear the artist do that,” he says. “It’s fixtures, but it came in handy for this, too,” Gatti says. “It lets amazing—there were girls crying on-screen the rest of us reframe the room for things like this.” Maren’s show. The emotion comes through.” Lighting designer Christopher Ragan, who has done the designs for other Bowls and the Capitol Theatre, has a defi - All lit up nite starting point. “You always want [the truss] to look Lighting is a point of pride for the Nashville Brooklyn Bowl. beautiful even with the lights off,” he says. Here the main “It’s one of the best rigs in the Southeast for a 1,200-capaci - circular truss is placed over the audience area with a mas - ty venue,” Gatti says, matter of factly. And the complex rig is sive Big Ass Fan in the center, bounded on either side by filled with good stuff, including 30 Robe Viva CMY LED pro - two sinuous wave-shaped trusses, all constructed out of a files, 18 Robe LEDBeam 150s, a dozen Robe Spikies, 20 mix of 24' and 17' outside-diameter circle sections that form Chauvet Professional COLORado M Solos, six Chauvet the unusual shapes. “Peter [Shapiro] has such a back - Profesional Ovation E-910FCs, and six Elation Professional ground in film,” Ragan says. “You want to have a design Protron 3K color strobes. These are controlled from the that would let you do a video or film shoot, so you have a house grandMA3 light. Under the cloud of COVID, the club’s lot of studio-type fixtures up there and make it modular so lighting has been used almost as often for country artists to you can change the environment in a lot of different ways by shoot music videos as for actual performances. For instance, using different parts of the rig.” By comparison, the lighting Dierks Bentley’s ACM-nominated video “Gone” made use of rig above the stage are two 30' straight trusses intended to the motorized lighting truss, the circular part of which was be utilitarian and easy to program for traveling LDs. lowered to light Bentley as he performed on the dance floor Compared to the original Brooklyn Bowl in New York, in front of the stage, the club’s upper-story windows adding where in 2012 Ragan had to devise clever clamp solutions some natural illumination to the scene. “We put the truss on to attach then-very-new LED fixtures to the nearly 150- a hoist to make is easier for maintenance and to switch out year-old wooden beams in the former iron works building in Williamsburg, the Nashville venue’s height and space has allowed for a more artistic approach to the truss itself. As of March, Brooklyn Bowl Nashville had some late- May public shows optimistically scheduled on its home page. At the same time, the venue also inaugurated CTRL_MUSIC_, a 24-week run of live-streamed shows backed by Red Light Management, the world’s largest inde -

pendent music management company, and Twitch, giving r e i l l e the interactive livestreaming service its first foothold in the T e L

k c

country music market, leading off with shows by Brett i N

: t

Young, Lady A, Riley Green, and Elle King. Local COVID h g i R

restrictions had just been relaxed once again, this time bol - p o T

; stered by the vaccine rollout and with the hope for far better r e i l l e meteorological and viral environments. The chain’s concoc - T e L

k c

tion of a hipster sport and hip music had thrived for nearly a i N

: t decade before the pandemic pulled the plug. There’s no f e L

reason to think that the third time won’t be the charm in m o t t o

Nashville once the COVID lid is finally lifted. B The crew kept going by adhering to COVID protocols.

38 • May 2021 • Lighting &Sound America