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, Brooklyn Bowl Nashville’s time has finally arrived By: Dan Daley wasn’t the day the music died, but it was the night when it group’s London 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 New York 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 Broadway, 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, : o t o the Brooklyn Bowls kept their music on life support, using h p t 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. www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • May 2021 • 33 CLUBS 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. z t a a F e s s e J : m o t t o B d n a t h g i R p o T ; g n i r d l o G a k i r E : t f e L 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 : 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.