Garth Brooks' Friends In Low Places Bar & Honky-Tonk Dazzles

01/07/2024

NASHVILLE, Tennessee - July 2024 - As the only musical artist in history to have released nine RIAA Diamond-certified albums, Garth Brooks doesn't just hold rank in the pantheon of country greats, he's long been one of the world's most beloved musicians. So when Brooks and his wife, Trisha Yearwood, announced the grand opening of their four-floor, 55,000-square-foot Friends In Low Places Bar & Honky-Tonk live music venue in downtown Nashville's Neon Neighborhood of Lower Broadway, excitement ran high among the artist's broad fan base.

The new venue is outfitted with an L-Acoustics A Series concert sound system and a DiGiCo Quantum225 console at front of house, complete with a MADI-ready MQ-Rack stage box. The full system was designed and installed by Clair Global Integration (CGI), the permanent installation division of the star's longtime sound-reinforcement tour provider, Clair Global.

The loudspeaker system is perfectly scaled to the venue's dimensions, reflecting the long rectangular spaces characteristic of the area's turn-of-the-century urban spaces. Flanking the stage on the left long wall are one A15i Focus over two A15i Wide enclosures, and another hang of one A15i Focus over two A15i Wide, which provide coverage to either side and in front, towards both the main floor and balcony, carved out of what was once the second floor.

The design challenge here was to provide even and consistent coverage to both levels. To keep the volume reasonable but still impactful, 14 coaxial X8 loudspeakers are installed as balcony underfills, each powered by one of the 16 channels of an LA7.16i amplified controller, with the remaining two channels used to power X8 in the club's elevated VIP areas on the main floor. That way, we could tailor the sound to what was exactly needed in each zone of the area under the balcony, explains CGI Systems Designer Joe Anderson.

In addition, two KS21i subs are mounted behind the A15i hangs, along with four KS28 subs in custom-constructed, four-foot-deep cavities below the VIP areas, which give those areas significant LFE impact but without rattling the seats. The rooftop bar, known as The Oasis, has a left-right sound system comprising an A10i Focus over an A10i Wide and one KS21i sub on either side, all powered by an LA4X amplified controller. A nearby bar area is covered by eight X8 speakers with SB10i subs, also driven by an LA4X.

The challenge for the rooftop bar, where DJs perform late into the night, is to have impact without getting too loud, says Anderson. One of our mantras at Clair is it has to sound great, not just loud. That's accomplished largely by relying on the subs for impact, which allows the roof to keep the overall volume level lower. Our goal is to elevate the production-value level of the entire sound experience here, making it closer to what you'd expect from a concert rather than a club, he says. The A Series speakers deliver great sound, with a lot more punch than you'd expect from their size, right out of the box. I never have to fight to get it.

CGI Account Executive Dan Heins was intimately involved in creating the sonic vibe for Friends In Low Places. Lyrics and therefore speech intelligibility are important for Garth. Equally important is getting the right kind and amount of energy in the room so that you can still hold a conversation, he explains. With A Series, you can. Garth noticed that right away on opening night, when he played there.

Heins also points out how the compact A Series generates the energy we want without interfering with the sightlines of a room like this. It's a great place to see as well as hear music.

He says that same beneficial form factor applies to the DiGiCo Quantum225. It's a great-sounding console, but doing everything it does in a smaller amount of space is important, because every inch of real estate is a premium on Broadway. We had to shift the location of the console to accommodate that, but the desk has the kinds of features that make even a challenging mixing space easy to work with.

The venue's mix position is located at the back of the bar, near stage left. From here, freelance AV technicians like Nate Warren and Gianni Gambuzza, brought in by JAG Warner Productions, utilize the Quantum225 console to provide both the front-of-house and monitor mixes for four bands a day, each playing four-hour sets.

The performance of our DiGiCo desk is extremely impressive, says Gambuzza. We run it seven days a week in the honky-tonk venue from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. more than 16 hours a day and it never slows down on us! The sound of the console is very clean, especially when going through our L-Acoustics A Series system. I feel like I can push my mix to the limits while still maintaining tremendous clarity. And I don't really need to do a lot of work once I get all of my inputs in; all I have to do is push my faders up to where I want them and it sounds just like a mixed show before I even get into tweaking EQ and compression.

For Gambuzza, the Quantum console's Nodal Processing has been a particularly loved feature. On Lower Broadway, we have such quick changeovers that, in the past, there have been times at other venues when I couldn't give a band the best in-ear mix simply due to time and channel limitations, he recalls. Now, with Nodal Processing, I can really get musicians' mixes dialed in and provide every band member a personalized touch. I can give a drummer a different EQ curve on their snare, give a bass player compression on their vocal, and give a singer a boost in the high end, all in their own individual mixes while not affecting anyone else's, and without having to double up channels for monitors. It's truly amazing for when operating on time restraints. He's also

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