American country music artist Kenny Chesney has
completed his fifteenth concert tour, and his third with NEXO STM modular line
array systems, supplied by Morris from Nashville, TN. This year’s ‘Spread The Love’
tour started back in April, and has included 14 stadium dates, supported by
Miranda Lambert. The final two nights in Boston’s Gillette Stadium entertained
more than 120,000 people.
Selling
out 50+ dates on last year’s ‘Big Revival’ tour, and grossing more than 100
million dollars in ticket sales, put Chesney among the Billboard Top Five
touring artists of 2015. The country legend’s last three tours have confirmed
the standing of NEXO’s STM Series in the hierarchy of large-format PA systems,
capable of handling the biggest venues in the USA and flexible enough to scale
up and down through different sizes of venue.
Outlining
his artistic objectives for 2016’s ‘Spread the Love’, Kenny Chesney commented,
“the sound is building on last year’s incredible system… I want as little
between me and the fans as possible, and I think we’ve managed to achieve that
in a really good way.”
Although
Tim Holder was a fresh face at the front-of-house console, the PA system of
320+ NEXO cabinets was essentially the same as last year, adding just a small
number of STM ‘omni’ cabinets to handle extra delay towers for the largest
stadia. Working with Holder were system engineer Chris ‘Sully’ Sullivan,
patch master Rich Rossey, and techs Justin Meeks, Phil Spina, Carl Schmidt,
Annie Hallquist and Tanner Frees. Chesney’s own monitor engineer was
Phill “Sidephill” Robinson and the band monitor engineer was Bryan “Opie”
Baxley. The man in charge of it all was production manager Ed Wannebo.
For main
PA, Morris designed and supplied the STM modular line array, deploying 22 sets
of M46 main and B112 bass cabinets plus 3x M28 downfills per side of the
stage. Aux hangs used 18 sets of main and bass per side, plus the 3
downfills in each array. NEXO’s newest STM cabinets, the compact M28,
were used for the 270 hangs and delay towers – 60 in total.
“This was
one of the few changes to the 2015 system,” explains Morris’ senior audio
engineer John Mills. “Wherever possible, we deployed a third tower to handle
extra delay, so we added more M28 cabinets to the inventory. With such a great
output for a small box, they save not only on weight but also budget. And in
the main arrays, with 15 degrees of splay and a few less dB in output than the
M46, the M28 is the perfect companion for the down fill option.”
For
subbass, the system used 48x STM S118 single 18” subs flown behind the main
arrays, bolstered by 32 of NEXO’s RS18 sub cabinets on the ground, running in
cardioid mode. All the subs were running at 60Hz, a change from the
crossover point of 85Hz used the previous year.
Completing
the NEXO box count, 12x PS10-R2 compact cabinets provided front fill.
All NEXO
cabinets and amplifiers were supplied to Morris by Yamaha Commercial Audio
Systems, with NEXO field engineers visiting the tour to offer back up support
to the Morris team. During the course of three national tours with Kenny
Chesney, Morris technicians have provided invaluable input for the development
of NEXO’s STM suite of products, resulting in numerous enhancements to the
system which are being rolled out to international concert system users.
“Kenny
Chesney is the highest-profile touring performer to embrace the STM Series,”
comments NEXO sales director Denis Baudier, “and the professionalism of his
team and the expertise of Morris engineers have proved to the touring industry
that NEXO sound reinforcement can operate at the very top level. The
modular design of the STM gives the tour’s system engineers a lot of room to
manoeuvre, but winning the approval of a hands-on knowledgeable artist like
Chesney is the best endorsement for the sonic performance of the system.”
