With front man Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun clad in ski masks, Twenty One Pilots’ live show is easier to describe than their music is to label – alternative rock, electropop, hip hop and indie all apply but still fail to do the job. The job done by VER Tour Sound at the recent tour’s various venues, however, is.
The success of 2015’s Blurryface seen the US band hitting larger shows ever before on the 11-month Emotional Roadshow World Tour, taking in venues ranging from the 8,500-capacity Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California to Pennsylvania’s 30,000-capacity Hersheypark Stadium. This poses challenges for the audio crew, which are met with a 72-box Meyer Sound Lyon linear line array.
‘We have 12 Lyon boxes per side on the main hangs, and 12 Lyon per side on the side hangs,’ explains audio crew chief/system engineer Kenny Sellars of VER. However, the system expands to a full 72-box rig for the tour’s larger venues, where the main hangs are 20-deep Lyon and side hangs are 16-deep Lyon elements.
‘The scalability has been super solid for me,’ Sellars reports. ‘That’s what I planned on, but the fact that it’s worked flawlessly and easily has been the key.’
Twenty One Pilots’ FOH engineer Shane Bardiau has also welcomed Lyon’s versatility: ‘I was sceptical at first because it is a smaller box,’ he says. ‘But wow, I was blown away. And to be honest, this 12-inch (Lyon) driver is perfect for our music.’
For Twenty One Pilots’ largest shows, the crew will use up to six Leopard boxes per side for greater horizontal coverage. ‘They’re very easy to set up and sound excellent,’ Stroop says. For the monitor set-up, engineer Adam Stroop uses side fills from Leopard cabinets on each side of the stage. He regards the loudspeakers as ‘very controllable, very smooth’.
