The Brown County Music Center is looking to upgrade its sound system to keep up with technical requests from the national acts it continues to book.
The venue’s management group met in a public meeting on Feb. 6 to vote on engaging with Spectrum Sound out of Nashville, Tennessee, to upgrade the venue’s current sound system. It was installed before the music center opened less than a year ago.
“It has come to the attention of the venue as well at the board that the sound system that is currently in the venue is inadequate to handle the technical riders that are demanded by the tours and the national touring acts that we have that come through here,” BCMC Executive Director Christian Webb said.
“The board and the venue are looking at an upgrade to that system to become technical rider-approved, which ultimately will save the venue labor costs and rental costs, which are obviously expenses that were never planned for.”
The management group needed to take a vote on engaging with Spectrum in further conversations about upgrading the sound system, “to make sure that we are the state-of-the-art (venue) that we have marketed ourselves to be within the community and within the venue,” Webb said.
An initial downpayment of $50,000 will be required to engage with Spectrum. The management group approved taking that money out of the venue’s operating fund.
“Some of this has been a learning curve along the way. We probably got entertainers we probably weren’t expecting along the way, so those riders were requesting things that we don’t have,” said management group Co-President Kevin Ault.
“When you start throwing in the video walls they are using and the lights that they are bringing with them, they have to be configured into our system. I can see that. Being backstage, I am amazed at some of the stuff they’ve requested.”
Management group member Diana Biddle said that when the vision for the venue began, the group did not expect to be booking national acts like Willie Nelson. “Our vision of when we started was replacing what we had (the Little Nashville Opry), and not only in four months have we replaced it, but we have just completely blown it out of water,” Biddle said.
The music center had sold 32,000 tickets last year in four months. When the idea of a music center was first presented, its budget was based on the Little Nashville Opry’s worst ticket selling year, which was 60,000 tickets.
“We never expected to have the likes of Willie Nelson here at all. It was one of those pie-in-the-sky wishes that we didn’t think would ever come true,” Biddle said.
The music center has been renting sound equipment from Ruoff Music Center in Noblesville. But Ruoff will soon have shows starting back up soon, and Webb said they need their equipment back at the end of March.
“We have a deadline, kind of a turnaround-type time, because as the expression goes, the show must go on,” Webb said.
“We have a lot of shows in March, April and May. We’re starting to fill up the summer. That’s why I asked for this kind of emergency meeting.”
The new sound system from Spectrum will also provide devices for those who are hearing impaired, making the venue more compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“Currently in the venue, if someone were to ask for that (hearing assistance), we do not have that to supply. That’s checking off another box besides decreasing labor and rental expenses,” Webb said of the sound system upgrade.
The venue had contracted with acoustic engineer Steven Durr to put in the current system.
Before the public meeting, the management group met in an executive session for discussion of strategy with respect to litigation which is either pending or threatened specifically in writing. Ault said the executive session was not related to any pending or threatened litigation against the music center itself.
The motion to proceed with the sound system upgrade was approved unanimously in the public meeting after the executive session. Management group members Mike Lafferty and Jim Schultz were not in attendance.
