Good Monster’s Tour - Jars of Clay

Friday, September 28, 2007

When Jars of Clay were setting up their recent Canadian tour, the choice for audio and lighting support in Western Canada was obvious, Dave Neher and his company, Nero Productions.
After all, Neher’s professional audio career started in Faith-based ministries and a significant portion of his business is with Christian acts, but ultimately he feels there is little difference between religious and secular acts once you get on the road.
“There’s no difference at the arena level,” Neher points out. “At the end of the day, everybody wants to have CD-quality sound in every seat and a light show that leaves the audience dazzled for days. Whether it’s a ministry-based event or a mainstream show, we all have the same toolboxes and toys to work with.

“The only difference is budgets,” he continues. “When you’re doing a rock show, you have to deal with a wider variety of venues and even if you raise the ticket prices substantially per seat, you’re still going to fill those seats. In a tighter-knit Christian community, they’ll expect to get in for less, so you have to do a lot better job of marketing and keeping everything financially viable.”

Jars of Clay, a popular four-member Christian rock band formed at Greenville College in Illinois consists of Dan Haseltine, Charlie Lowell, Stephen Mason and Matthew Oldmark. Their distinctive name comes from Corinthians 4:7, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” The verse is actually the namesake for their song “Four Seven” (a hidden track on their first CD), which paraphrases the verse.

With several Grammys to their credit, Jars released a more improvisational effort entitled Good Monsters” in 2006 hailed as “the most profound album the Christian music community has released in years” by CCM Magazine.

This year’s tour building on the success of the Monsters CD was essentially a concert of entertainment and positive reinforcement of Christian values with Nero providing logistics, trucking, staging, sound, power and lighting in Calgary, Edmonton, and Surrey. With three opening acts and the Jars’ dense, layered sound, there were more than enough challenges for Neher and his crew.
“To start with, our lives would have been so much easier if we were playing standard venues. But we played at the (U. of Calgary) McEwan Ballroom, a big concrete venue there, WECA hall in Edmonton and then the Chandos-Pattison Auditorium in Langley, which was an amazing space with amazing equipment. Every show was different.”

Their first tour with Martin Audio, Nero flew two hangs of five W8LM Mini Line Array with one W8LMD downfill speaker per side, powered by Martin 2.8 and 4.2 power amps. Other gear included Yamaha PM5Ds, Lake Contour Mesa, and XTA processing.

The lighting system consisted of a Grand MA, two Highend Systems DLP-2 units, 12 Mac 250s, 4 racks of ACL all on ETC Dimming and NPG Custom Distros/Power Management Systems, used at most venues.

Neher was first introduced to the sound of Martin Audio at a sound check for Great Scott by Delicate Productions in the Saddle Dome and his reaction was immediate and unequivocal, “I’d been in there many times,” he recalls, “ but I’d never heard spoken word clarity and sound like this in my life. The sound was pristine.

“Plus I like how it all links together. How the hardware is intact with the box and it all makes sense, unlike other brands. I love the size of the W8LM because we’re a corporate company and the clarity, punch and throw out of that little box is just phenomenal.

The band was a six-piece with loops, layering and tons of synths, so it wasn’t easy to reproduce. They’re big into the Moog and Memory Moog. There was really amazing low-end substance coming through those subs from time to time, like down to 30 Hz!”

Much as the acoustic profiles for the different venues changed dramatically from city to city, the crowds ranged from 1200 up to 4500 with a younger audience than might be expected.
“This was Jar of Clay’s Good Monsters tour and the album sales actually helped fill the seats, Neher points out. “In fact, I was quite surprised because they were going clear across the country--twice! And the crowds were pretty young, like in Surrey and Edmonton, they were in their 20s, while in Calgary they were in their mid thirties. And there were also a lot of Christian band members and musicians in the audience.

Summarizing how his company fits into the scheme of things in Western Canada, Dave explains, “Even though we used to be completely faith-based in terms of our clientele, at this point the work we do is probably 40% Christian and 60% secular.

“And of that, 99.9% of our secular work is Corporate. We do a lot of corporate events with bands and other kinds entertainment, but still manage to do four to five concerts a week. But the concept of touring a few months at a time is rare, particularly with Christian bands.

“Many of these acts are coming on buses with trailers from the U.S. and we can’t touch the pricing when they’re coming into Canada loaded up and they’re just adding shows. But when a band like Jars asks you to work with them over several shows and everyone is such a pleasure to work with, it reminds you of what why you got into the business in the first place.”

- As Published in Technologies For Worship - July/August 2007 - Canada

Permalink — Posted by David Neher on Sep. 28 at 1:00 PM