#239 - Jeff Cranfill from SES & Concert Stuff Group

0:01 Hello and thanks for joining me today on Geese of Gear episode #239. Today's podcast is brought to you by AVL Media Group, your premier North American distribution partner. As an exclusive US distributor for Midas Pro consoles, Lab Group and amplifiers, Lake processors, Tanoi installation speakers, Clark Technique Signal processing, Turbo Sound Loud speakers and Aston microphones, they are committed to developing long term business relationships with their partners at every level by providing outstanding pre and post sale service and support.

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2:19 Well, hi again. And so, yeah, today's episode #239 and I'm looking forward to it. Like I'd say every week, I, I just love getting to do this. I love that I'm in a position to do this and that I get to be your host and bring these great guests to you each and every week, Twice a week now. And so, yeah, I really appreciate it. I appreciate you taking the time. I appreciate you giving a damn and listening to me every week and also supporting all of our amazing sponsors. You know, again, it's not cheap to do this. It's not easy to do this. Not that we're brain surgeons or, you know, changing the world or anything, but we do try to put forward the best podcast we possibly can in the best quality we can.

3:05 We've expanded to video. We've banded to all kinds of different things. So we do appreciate you supporting the sponsor that keeps them coming to us and keep them supporting this podcast for you. Speaking of sponsors, this week Elation won an award at Nabi think it was for the KL Psych. And you know, Elation really dove deep on on this market, on the TV and and broadcast and film market. The KL series stuff is really good stuff. It it's obviously, you know, hits a price point. And so it's really nice to see them get that kind of recognition. I know Eric Loader looked really happy about it. I've seen his pictures and stuff on social media.

3:48 So congratulations to our friends and sponsors at Elation. I'm very, very happy for you on that award and recognition. And I got to apologize again. I know we've been all over social media and stuff apologizing for this, but the Glenn Rogeman podcast, which actually I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. And we're still working really hard in the background to figure out a way to get you some of that content, if not all of it. But basically what happened is the recording platform that we use recorded it and then crashed and somehow in crashing at the end, it corrupted the information, the video and and audio. And so video and audio don't sync up.

4:30 There's parts of audio cut out, there's part of video cut out. It's just really a disaster. And I've had two or three different companies working to try and recover it for the past week. And we will be able to recover part of it, but probably not all of it and haven't even told Glenn yet. So if you're listening to Glenn, I'm sorry. You know, it really was a great talk and and it was during his vacation to he was in Portugal. And so, you know, I always hate breaking up people's vacations. Anyways to do this podcast to record it, but recording it and then losing it due to some technology failures is is even worse. So we do plan to get part of it up at least. So for that, there was especially a really great discussion on one of my favorite topics, which is AI, especially AI as it relates to our industry. And by the way, Speaking of AI, I heard the funniest thing today.

5:22 I was having a conversation with a technology company about AI and there's a new tech out related AI. Get this, it's called Aieo. Reminds me of a song we sang when we were kids, right? So more on AI in a couple minutes here. Actually, no, I'll keep going on AI right now. I'm going to try and update you each and every week with some new stuff that I'm figuring out or learning or hearing about. AII know that I dive more into it than most of you in the industry, and that's OK. I'm not saying everybody should be using AI right now. I do think everyone should aware everyone should not be afraid of it. You should probably find ways to embrace it into your daily grind and to make things easier for, you know, that it's coming. And, and like I keep saying, you either get on the bus or the bus will run you over.

6:10 And so it's, it's, you know, obviously sort of ever evolving thing as it relates to our industry. And I get it. I mean, I understand the the complications and the potential job losses and, and changes to people's income and livelihood. But, you know, we can't put the genie back in the bottle. As I keep saying, you know, one industry that I've been reading about a little bit is translators. You know, if you think about translators, that's probably an industry that's that's nearly over at this point because primarily because of AI. But yeah, I mean, probably really because of AI because, you know, until AI, you needed translators for all kinds of things, translating documents, translating live conferences or speeches. And so that is moving very quickly and becoming replaced very quickly.

7:07 But apparently complex and nuanced literary translation is is still predominantly human driven. And so when you talk about documents and things in our industry that are technology, you know, that is stuff that probably AI isn't going to quickly replace. But yeah, translation is is a big one that's getting hit. Couple of the things that I've seen recently. One is news that Microsoft, who has been going deep on AI up until now, continues to invest. They just invested at 1.5 billion into a company, an Emirati company called G42.

7:50 Not exactly sure what they did 'cause I didn't feel compelled to go down that rabbit hole, but feel free to check it out. Another interesting one is deep fake porn. I don't know if you guys have been hearing about this, that there was one with AOC last week where she's just losing her mind because there's some kind of a, a porn image going around or something of her head. And, and it's a pretty good deep fake from what I've heard. I haven't seen it, but there's full on porn videos with with, you know, that would really fool you into believing that that really is whoever they say it is in the video. And you, you always know that that porn is going to find their way into any new technology pretty quickly. You know, it's like that.

8:37 I think I've mentioned this before, but there I saw a meme about cell phones and it showed them starting out really, really big on one side. And then it was going down, dropping, dropping. And it showed like the timeline, the years. And then when it got to its smallest, it said, you know, streaming porn becomes a thing. And all of a sudden you see the phones getting larger again. But it's true, you know, porn when it comes to things like compression, you know, video compression and just delivery of video, higher resolution, better streaming bandwidths, better speed, Internet speed, a lot porn drives a lot of those things. It really does.

9:21 And porn pays for a lot of those things because they're they've got pretty deep pockets, these porn tech companies. So let's clean that up a little bit, but just a little bit. And now we're going to talk about Patrick Dearson. So Patrick Dearson and I recently had a conversation talking a little bit about AI and I just kind of gave him some information that he didn't know and told him here's how you could use it for some different things. And if you know Patrick, you know that that's gonna get him deeply into a rabbit hole. And so if you follow him on social media, you've probably already seen it. But if you don't, please go follow Patrick Dearson on social media because if you look at his Instagram posts that he's made of like his dogs carrying machine guns and, and all these weapon, I don't know what they're called, but belts and backpacks and stuff, riding sharks through the ocean and like a in attack mode. And it's this real apocalyptic looking thing And it, it's just awesome.

10:22 He's created like a whole bunch of these things that just look. And there's one where a bunch of Frenchies are are in a band, just really, really cool stuff that he's created. Completely useless, probably. Like, I don't know how you'll ever use it. He'll probably find a way to get it onto a T-shirt or something, or a company logo. But you know, and so he's discovered all of this through Vectorworks has an AI visualizer, I guess. And this is where he's creating a bunch of these images. But yeah, check that out. And if you haven't, if you haven't seen the Vectorworks AI stuff yet, you might want to get into that as well. So moving on, today's guest again, it is episode #239 and we're extremely happy to welcome back Jeff Cranfill, who's been on the show before.

11:15 He was on the podcast in April of sort of the pre pandemic year 2019. Unless you talk to some people. Some people, like even Glenn Rogeman last week said, Oh no, we knew all about COVID in 2019 and we were developing product, UV products, UVC products to get rid of the germs and stuff. So but yeah, he was on back in 2019, April 2019, episode 15. You can find that, of course, on Spotify, Apple Podcast, orgizesofgear.com, which is our website that is up now. It's nothing terribly special, but it does have every single one of our podcast episodes on there in audio only, and you can listen to or download those for free right from our website.

12:02 There's going to be more stuff on our website in the future. We're actually talking about some of those things this morning on In a Meeting. But yeah, so Jim's initial, a lot of these older podcasts, by the way, are audio only. We just started doing video in I think August or September of last year, 2023. So anything prior to that is going to be audio only. So to read Jim's bio, Jim founded Special Event Services in 1986 with, I'm sorry, Jeff, what am I calling him, Jim all of a sudden? So Jeff Cranfill founded Special Event Services back in 1986 with Jim Brammer in Brammer's Winston Salem Garage.

12:51 Special Events Services is an industry leader in audio, lighting, video design, staging, and live event production for businesses, religious organizations, and major recording artists. Jeff worked as a musician and technician for bands, recording studios and production companies across the USA before starting his own production company in his hometown of Winston Salem, NC. Since 1987. Jeff has provided scenic show and lighting design for special events services clients worldwide. Jeff has also toured with many of these clients as their lighting director for over the past 30 plus years. This also includes being the lighting designer and director on several music videos and television broadcast that SES provides production for.

13:40 Jeff is also the owner of Oak Valley Productions, which is a recording studio that he operates from his home in North Carolina. OVP provides audio and video recording services for music and spoken word along with musician services, producing, mixing and mastering. So I am really looking forward to catching up again with Jeff. Nice guy, smart guy. Really enjoyed our our last podcast and so yeah, let's get this going. Hi, Jeff. Hi. Little blip here this morning on our or this afternoon, I guess on our technology between us somehow we couldn't get audio to work, so there must be a couple of lighting guys.

14:22 Yeah, absolutely. We're, we're, we're showing our true colors right now, yes. There you go. Yeah, it's working good now though, so I can hear you and you sound good and and you look fabulous. Oh well, thank. It's the lighting. Represent the SES shirt on. I like it. I like it. We got the logo in the background here. How new is? This building, we moved in well during our, as some people call it COVID, we call it the unpaid vacation. Yeah, we the, so the building was being built and right around 20/19/20. And of course, we had only waited, you know, 20 some years for our dream building just to start getting phone calls that, hey, by the way, we're shutting down. We're not going to do anything.

15:16 And we got some great advice from our builders and, and some other folks who said, you know, don't stop, finish. And so we actually finished it with no. And the, I guess some of the, the positive notes of that are we, we didn't have to get out of our old building as well. We just sort of a truck at a time, move gear over there. And it gave us a chance to really work on how we were putting things inventory squared away. But we did it with an extremely small group of people that stuck in there with us. Yeah, I apologize. We got the tech working now. I hope so.

15:59 Yeah. You were just telling us about this building and how it was being built during COVID and you got some good advice to instead of stopping construction like I think so many people did because that was a scary time. I mean, so I was constructing a web platform at the same time because we were re platforming my company And you know, it wasn't what you paid for this building, but it was pushing, you know, 7 digits or whatever, right? Like it was, it was a real number. And and again, everyone was like, you should stop, just keep whatever cash you have. Stop, stop, stop. And I just said, no, you know, we got to push ahead like it's the only way to do it right now because you want to come out of COVID with something to sell. You know, you.

16:42 Don't want to? Come out of COVID in trouble so. Well, I think and the one of the big payouts for it is I don't think we anticipated how busy we would be coming out. And so we were so landlocked in our old building. We've been there for so long and just we couldn't move efficiently. So the good part was when everybody called it once and said load the trucks, let's go. Well, we were. We were able to manage that pretty well. That's pretty cool, yeah. And it had to be a fun time too, because you're loading trucks from the new docks in the new building. Oh yeah. With all that extra space for prepping stuff and. Yeah, I don't know exactly, but I think we're on version two or three of the the rearranging in the shop because, you know, we've got enough room now it's got you work, you work 1 workflow for a while and then you decide let's move all of these over here and you know, make more room for things and. You haven't already outgrown it.

17:42 Then absolutely we have, yeah. It was just this past weekend. We had a lot of festivals come out it it looked very empty and three days later you couldn't see the floor again. So yeah, it's. That is such a challenge for all of you guys. I mean, our industry, every time I go visit someone's shop, it seems to be the biggest challenge right now. And you can't just go get twice as big a building because you you don't know that this is going to keep going at the same rate, right? Well, it's, you know, and it's funny when we went out to see this one and it was just concrete and steel and we were, we were leaving and Jim turns to me and says, you think we're building too big of a building? I'm like, you know, maybe I mean the, the thought occurred to me and, and of course it's not even, you know, two years later and you're sitting there walking around going, where can we put this?

18:42 Well, especially having that thought while you're going through this whole COVID thing and we don't know, you know, who knew exactly when there was going to be a live event and what were the regulations going to be like? Were you going to have to do a year at 1000 people maximum and then another year at 5000 or whatever? And and by then half the artists are getting jobs at Amazon, you know, they can't sustain it, so. We were fortunate to be able to figure out a lot of things during that time and we did. We we helped with the drive in theater locally in town that was just a pop up two screen theater. We did the projectors and the FM transmitters and then they wanted to have live shows out there and we did them actually via FM transmitters to your car to only take it to what I think we probably hold the record on the biggest concert of that level. We did a couple of shows at Charlotte Speedway with The Avett Brothers and we they, we set up a stage underneath their big giant LED wall put put the stage on the track. So there was the band underneath it brought in a camera, you know, a video company to, to imag it all onto there and to stream it.

20:00 And all the audio was sent out via FM transmission and pretty much anywhere within about A. 203 hundred mile radius rented every pickup truck there was in North Carolina and South Carolina and these folks set up in the beds of their pickups with these amazing speaker systems and their chairs and tables and they sat and enjoyed The Avett Brothers via FM radio. How? How many people actually showed up at that one? I don't, I don't remember the number of cars. I don't know that how many people were in all of the cars, but I do know it was, it was, I want to say this somewhere over 1500 and 2000 cars.

20:43 So there's a lot of people. Yeah. They all parked in the infield of Charlotte Motor Speedway. That's cool. And and of course, there were several more thousand on the streaming. And so those those are little things we learned to do during COVID. Yeah. Well, you know, it was, I've said it before on on this podcast, but it was sort of a, it was something that was kind of depressing to me. Like when people were trying to do these drive in movie concert things and you would see like 20 cars and maybe 80 people or something. And, and they had like, sometimes they had these boxes marked out where you couldn't go outside your box, your, your little group could stay. And then there was other ones where you couldn't even leave your car.

21:26 And I'm thinking, you know, where are you going to the bathroom? You know, like what's going on here? And I don't know, like to me, I was just like, this ain't working, this isn't going to work. But I guess when you can scale it to the size of a Speedway, it's totally a different model at that point, right? Well, it was, and I think that what, what really was one of the great things about it was this just to see how inventive and how resilient the average person is that goes to a concert regardless, you know, of whatever the restrictions were, these folks made the most out of it. And I think the, I think that's the thing to take away from it is that here we, we are in this business of where it can't be big enough.

22:12 It can't be bright enough, it can't be loud enough. We can't have a big enough LED wall. And these folks were making it work. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things that was so much fun to watch with our industry was just, you know, we're a figure it out industry. And, you know, like one of the other ones that I thought was pretty cool. I can't remember exactly who it was. It might have been Christian Jackson. Somebody in Seattle did a an EDM concert out of the back of their shop. So they opened their roll up doors and all the lights were set up in all their their roll up doors and their docks and cars just all pulled up behind their warehouse and you know, it was really cool. I don't think they made any money, but I think they just had fun putting on a show.

22:58 We did that. We did a similar thing. We did a, a, a YouTube stream for not only an EDM set of shows, but we just locally, we here, we had a, we had emptied out our old building and it's a beautiful old tobacco warehouse with beautiful brick walls. And someone made a mention about, have you thought about anything we could do to help the local musicians? I'm like, I absolutely have. And we started this little YouTube series and we went in there and set up a few cameras and some gear and we videotaped these folks playing their songs and, and, you know, mostly originals that they did and posted on YouTube with contact information on how you could get in touch with these artists.

23:43 That's cool. And, and a lot of them actually got some revenue out of it or got some work out of, you know, later dates and things. So I I just another thing we could do. Yeah, I enjoyed some of those, like collaborations where the drummer was like in New York and the singer was in London and the whatever and you couldn't really do it live because of the latency, but but they would recorded and then put it out right, right after they recorded it or whatever. And I enjoyed a bunch of those, like some really cool sort of mega groups got put together that way where it was the drummer from this band and the singer from this band and they recorded, you know, a song together. And what's his name?

24:28 Tommy Shaw from Styx was doing songs like almost every day where he was just sitting in his living room with an acoustic guitar and his dog. And, you know, he would do a beautiful stick song or whatever and just do it live on YouTube or Facebook or something. And so some of those were kind of fun. You know, it was, it was, it was better than watching Netflix or whatever for a lot of people, I guess. But but yeah. Well, it's, I think it's just a part of us. We, we all have that, that need and we got to, we got to figure it out some way. We, we had for the longest time, we have a rehearsal space in the, in the new building.

25:08 So we've got the ability to have a rigging grid in there and put up a relatively large tour system. And we took one of our tours and we put the entire lighting rig and the video wall rig up, made it work. You had everything turned on or and basically anybody that just wanted to toy around with the console or play some videos or or whatever else we could think of, we just we just had to have gear out and turned on for. You, you know, I don't remember if you got involved or not, but when we did that red alert restart thing, the how happy people were companies were to work for free and go light up a building in red.

25:50 You know, it was just it was so exciting and so much fun to be a part of, but people were just so happy to put on their, you know, there's show blacks and and go out and program a console lighting up a building or a bridge or a whatever it was and it was just cool. You know, nobody was making any money, but it was just cool. It was fun and people were so happy to be doing something again that involves. Yeah, we, we sent out a few 100 fixtures throughout the city of Winston S We basically lit up the whole city of Winston South. Yeah, yeah. Red and it was great. Yeah, no, that was that was fun. Every year in September when those videos start coming back up in my feed, I'm like, yeah, God, that was interesting. I remember as we were doing it, I was like, you know what, this is costing me money.

26:38 And it's probably the most incredible thing I was ever a part of. Like, it's just incredible. It not just the the, the art of it all, but just the camaraderie and pulling it all together as quickly as we did and, and doing it. It was just really a cool moment for for me and and for the industry too. For us, it was great because it was amazing how many people want to be a part of it. Yeah. And people just kept calling me going, hey, if you need help, you know, setting up, doing whatever, that's so cool. I'm here. And so that was really great. That's so cool. Yeah. And I mean, we were getting calls left and right. Hey, we've got fixtures. If anybody needs anything, let us know, you know? And yeah, I mean, it was just, it was insanely cool. I'm getting goosebumps just talking about it again. So you've been in the industry, I think 45 years now, right? Yeah.

27:28 You've been doing this a while. I don't want to go through your life story because people can go back to, I think it's episode 15 where we had you on before. But you started as a as a musician much like I did, and except you call yourself a professional musician, although I got paid. Well, I got, I got paid. I wouldn't. Have called myself a professional musician though I I got paid you know but that's about as professional as it got you know getting money at the end of the night and so you and your you're still partner Jim started the company in in 86 is that. Correct. Yep. And you're still together now, which is incredible because partnerships, like marriages, don't generally last a lifetime. And so it's nice when they do, that's for sure. So I read a stat and I, I just wanted to find out if this is true because it just sounds insane. I read a stat that SES worked on 46 tours, 850 shows, entertaining more than seven and a quarter million people in 2019.

28:36 Yeah, I would say that's accurate. We were 2019 would have been yeah, 2019 would have been at that time the biggest year of SES knowing that we were going to roll into 2020 with the biggest ever. And yeah, but yeah, I mean, well, the the thing about, you know, SES you, you mentioned Jim, I think one of the things that has maintained us for this many years as we, we both, we both do what we're good at. Yeah. And it's not the same thing, so that's all so.

29:17 Perfect when that happens. Yeah, yeah. And and and it is true that kind of stay in your lane, but you know, do what you do and and and you and you know, and you trust there's someone else that's handling the other part that especially heavily credited to Jim about all of the other companies that you know, came came post SCS that are now coming under the new new heading of concert stuff group. Yeah, which I want to talk about that one. Too. Yeah, you know that when you start looking at how many people it is and how widespread we are. I did not know that stat, honestly, but I wouldn't be surprised about it. That's.

30:01 An incredible stat back back to the partnership thing. So I, I, you say, you know how like it's a great partnership because you know, your, your skill set or, or the things that you're really good at and where his start and you know, it's, it's peanut butter and and chocolate or whatever. I had a similar business partnership and the thing that went wrong in mind. It was amazing until that time, but what went wrong was the the partner and the partner's spouse became envious of of my half. And it was weird. It was like my half suddenly looked more appealing than the other half. And I said, you want to switch, you know, no, but you know, this isn't reasonable.

30:49 This isn't fair. And and I mean, it wasn't a 5050 partnership either. It was just like, suddenly they wanted, you know, their dinner plus my lunch and breakfast too, you know, And it was like, wait a SEC, this ain't going to work. So I think you're exactly right until, I don't know, until somebody either forgets to trust their partner that they've spent all these years with or. That's important, Yeah. It's it's paramount. Yeah. And and you know, the other part about that is too you, I hope at least everyone, especially younger people that are getting in this business get into it because they love it thinking you're going to get into it to get rich, being greedy obviously never got anybody anywhere. And that's something that we just we don't, we don't do with, we don't that's never come into contention. So if someone had something more than the other, well, it's, it's still the same family.

31:51 It's still the same. It's still it's it, it, it started in a garage. And who would have dreamed that what it became? I know I didn't. But you know, at the end of the day, I know I can be proud of my contributions to it. And my contributions to some things are less than others and or, and then others might be more than than others. And I just, I just think that's people doing what they're good at and, you know, and, and, and creatively communicating everything, you know, making sure that even if, even if this doesn't interest that person, we'll still go over the details of it, you know, And I, I think that's, that's everything. There's, there's just nothing about this business that I don't take an interest in.

32:43 I'm not, I'm not the kind of person that's just going to sit behind a lighting console and, and that's all I do. I every, every little thing. And, and that's why all of the different entities that have come out of it, you know, yeah, I've set up chairs, I've built a stage, I've built a roof. I've, I've done all that stuff. And I was and, and typically one of the first people to do it, you know, as, as those companies were being built, did I want to stay as an active part of that? Well, no, not really. So those have become other companies that are, you know, doing well on their own.

33:24 And there's a possibility maybe tomorrow I get a phone call and it's, hey, can you come look at this roof and help with something? OK, Well, absolutely I will. Yeah. So that's the other part about it is not drawing those lines. I'm not AI, don't think we've ever been any. And when I say we, I'm talking about not, not just jamming myself a lot of people, I don't think any of us have ever been that. That's not my job type, people. Yeah, no, that's. That's amazing and we wouldn't ever ask somebody to do something we wouldn't do ourselves. Yeah, Yeah. Did you guys did anything change coming out of COVID as far as like you learn something during COVID and then became a different company because of it or stuff like that? Like did you find different ways to to shape your business based on what you went through during COVID other than keeping, you know, 29 months of reserve capital available or whatever COVID done?

34:25 I, I think so. I think one of the biggest things, you know, that this coming out of it help was figure having the time to figure out how to structure certain things. I don't know that there's any kind of model management model that a business like this fits center. I think pretty much anybody that has a production company would say, well, management is done trial by fire. You know, it's OK, that doesn't work. We're moving on another plan. I think there was enough time to really go through that. The other part was to really analyze and look at everything we have, you know, gear, gear wise, it was said years and years ago that we'll never own anything that we have to apologize for and policy.

35:21 I like that one. And and so it also gave us the ability to think about what we have, how diverse, especially in lighting, where lighting had become the thing of you're reading people's writers and you're accommodating writers. And you get into this habit of this is my method over and over and over again. And the next thing you know, you own 32 of every kind of brand fixture there is made. And the next tour goes out and they use pieces and parts of it. And the next tour goes out and uses more pieces and parts. And then you're sitting around with oddball numbers of stuff going, I can't do anything with this stuff. Yeah, yeah. And and so, you know, thinking smarter about big picture views of that we we do.

36:09 So what's that you know, Jeff, like did, did you minimize the number of of products that you're carrying and just go deeper on them? We did. Yeah, we did. We, we, it's kind of an old school philosophy. You know, back in the day when I, and when I say back in the day, I'm talking to analog days, you kind of owned, whether it was audio or lighting, you owned the piece from the company that you like to have and whoever was coming to town to do a show or were needing your services. Well, they just used that, that it was brand X speaker cabinet today and whatever company they used tomorrow with brand Y.

36:52 And, and so at that, you know, I, I can remember back to those days and think we had these consoles, these speakers, these lights, these dimmers, that and you, you didn't hear someone say, Oh, I, I can't use that. And and so kind of, you know, try to adapt some of that philosophy of it to be able to say, you know, here's the, here's the brands that we carry, here's what we have of their, of their stock. Surely that's good enough for you to make something work out of it. And so far so good with that. Well, you know what I mean. It also it gives you a better relationship with your suppliers 'cause you have less suppliers who are are maximizing your dollars.

37:39 I guess in instead of having 30 of each moving light, you have 300 of 1 or 500 or whatever the number is. And, you know, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, that Huntley Christie did really well with Martin doing it that way too. And I mean, I know now he's a lot more diverse than just Martin, but he still goes heavy on Martin and he still gets a special deal that we all know he's paying less than everybody else for Martin's stuff. Sure, even though Martin will tell you he's not. And, and so I I agree with that. And it used to be like you said back in the day, you were a high end house or you were a Martin house or you were a claybacky house or Vera Lite, but you weren't all 17 of them. And and I.

38:22 Well, you couldn't be. Yeah, I, I, I think the other part too is I, I got asked this question at LDI this year. Someone said, what have you seen that was interesting? And I'm like, well, it's all interesting. I said the biggest thing is there's so much of it of it like each other. And I said and someone said, yeah, I've noticed that I'm like, well, don't it's, that's not a bad thing. I understand that these companies are making good products and they perform well. So this was a grand opportunity to kind of get that more allegiance back to being, I'm this kind of house, that kind of house because there's several manufacturers that make all the things that you might need for the, you know, the, the basic staples of, of putting stuff together a lot.

39:15 Of wash a beam like all of the different parts. Of the family or whatever in in earlier years it was just who's park in do you like? But you know, now I mean, I don't and I never thought of it. I never thought of moving lights that way that we would get into such AI guess, you know, formed type of model. But you know, there's manufacturers out there making good spot fixtures, good wash fixtures, good strobe fixtures. Well, they're kind of the three start to everything and and and so it's funny how I, you know, I can look at it now these decades later and go, well, we're just back to who's park and do we like the best?

40:00 Yeah, but it's. It's such. A big topic, it's a really, really important topic because we got so far away from that. And unfortunately or fortunately or whatever you want to call it, but today or recently and probably still today, I think lighting designers decide what lights are in your shop as much as as anyone does. Because they're. Like, hey, for this tour, I've got to have this fixture and you know, they'll, they'll convince you through prodding and and whatever to put that into your inventory or else you might lose that show or that tour or whatever. And you know, I understand that. I understand they want what they want and they need what they need. But at the same time, I don't know that that's really sustainable.

40:47 You know, like I just, I think it's a bad, I think it's a bad way to do it to have a dozen of everything in your stock and and not 200 of any one thing. You know, it's dangerous. Well, I think we, I think we fell victim to that. Not, not out of anyone doing anything wrong or or not. It was just the fact of business was rolling in. Things were getting bigger. Things were more and more and more and more. And so at one point it became easier just to sort of say yes to every writer that came across. And then we had time to sit down and talk to people and say, well, hey, if we had this instead of this, would you use it? And you find out, Yes, I would. And and I think I think part of that comes from I hope I'll probably get some people that don't like this one, but some some of my thinking about where we are saying that people make so many of the same things.

41:42 As far as manufacturers go, I think we've really quit. A lot of companies have quit making sort of their one trick pony type lights. And there was a really long time during moving light technology where every like you, what you said earlier about the the designer says I have to have this. Yeah, and I and I saw it more in that type stuff where it was the things that was oh, that's the IT does this gobo thing that no other fixture does and I have to have it for my shows. I know and. We're, we're all a bunch of, you know, product gear nerds, you know? So somebody. Comes into your shop and goes. But ours has 12 gobos, you know. And then? Suddenly you're like, oh, I only had 11 before, you know? Yeah.

42:27 But that's sort of what I mean it was, it was that where we were those we were buying the one trick ponies, that's what we were doing. And now not just one manufacturer, but several manufacturers, you go through and you look at their spot fixtures, their wash fixtures, etcetera and you go, well, these are good. They all. Are they're good? They're good lights. Can you design A show around it? Well, Are you a good designer? Yeah, you know what, Jeff? I'm not putting anybody down, but yeah, you could have a killer looking lighting rig made-up of American DJ fixtures today. You. Know based on what I saw this year.

43:07 That ain't putting down American DJ because they're like the little stepbrother of of Elation. But you could, you could absolutely have a killer rig and it would perform well and it would probably be damn reliable too. And, you know, that's just where we're at right now. The other. The problem is though, like, I think in a sense we've become a little bit boring, you know, the. Industry from a standpoint of. Supply the gear anyways. Is a. It's all good, but it's a little vanilla. It, it is. And I, I'm going to say not all the credit goes to this factor for, but for what I see with a lot of designs this day, I think the the driving force about that is the fact that video has taken over lighting's job and so many things.

44:06 Yeah, there's. I mean, I go out and I see some great tours and and great shows and great. And I, I think that how someone almost had to battle against the LED wall with lighting to, to make a stand and be and be purposeful and make a, make a, a difference. Yeah, again, that's, that's takes a level of creativity that you got to really think through different than just how many lights do I want. And I think that there's a lot of that being done. But you know, just it's, it's the big elephant in the room when you walk in and there's something that's 60 feet wide by 40 feet tall where they don't make lights that big. Yeah, well, and then there's also the brightness battle, you know, and it's getting to a point where, like, I can't even stand it front of house and look at the stage, you know, with got without getting fatigued, you know, 'cause it's just, it's like a really bright screen and a whole bunch of gazillion blooming lights and it's just getting so ridiculously bright every.

45:14 Few, A few years back I was teaching a class and someone asked me and said, well, what do you, what do you do first when you're talking to someone about a design and, and trying to figure out what it is they want? I was explaining to them in this course about being able to speak musician talk versus lighting talk versus tech talk, because the people bringing you their vision maybe don't have that much tech savvy knowledge. And so they're trying to draw this picture in the air to you that you're trying to decipher. And I said, oh, well, it's usually a good way to break the ice on it. Just ask them how big they want their LED wall. Yeah, because I said that's the one thing that's called. Around. Yeah, that's the one thing that they've considered is like, oh, I've got an incredible LED wall.

45:59 Yeah. Video used to be secondary, it used to be imag and and that was it you know, we it was a necessity. You put them out by the sound wings or whatever and and you just showed the band bigger for the guys in the cheap seats. But, you know, now it's just such an integral part of the show. And, and I don't, I don't, it's OK. I mean, I'm not knocking it. I don't, I, I think it's one of these things that you do have to really rethink how you're going to do your lighting design. And it may be that you don't put up as many. I see lighting rigs that are seem to be smaller now and I think, well, that's probably because a lot of the budget went to video and there's really great content and it looks great and the show looks great and the lighting's doing its job. But I'd hate to see us go to the sphere design where it's like all video and key lights.

46:56 It's white key. Lighting and video. That's it. Yeah, well, I don't know if we have any content creators. We've got to keep that going. But maybe a lot these days, I I don't know. But no, you're right. And some of the some of the more refreshing shows that I've seen lately are ones that don't have a video element or ones that use a video element sparingly. I mean, you know, I, I tell people all the time, if you use a, a good product, as far as LED walls go, if you turn it off, it's just black. So doesn't hurt anything to be back there. Yeah. So I, I, I do like that element of watching shows where I can see the designer was thinking, OK, we've worn them out for a few songs now, let's give them a break.

47:43 You know, turn the LED wall off and just have a rock'n'roll lighting show. Yeah, I like that. You know, and, and I'll get accused of, of being, you know, a, a traditionalist or a old fashioned or whatever when it comes to some of these things. But you know, for me, video is just another element. It shouldn't be something that just completely takes your eyes away from either the band or, or the rest of the show or whatever it is. It's just one of the elements of the show, right? And I try to remind people off and it's just the backdrop. Yeah, exactly. It's where the backdrop used to hang. Yeah, so it was. Just the backdrop, it's. Not anymore. Yeah, right now. So it's it's still back.

48:23 It's still all the way upstage typically. True, true. Yeah. So I, I wanna learn about this concert stuff thing 'cause I know you say nobody gets into our industry to make money, but here you are with the, you know, however many companies under that banner. So I don't know if you did like a lot of these. Like I saw there's a chair company which I want to understand the motivation behind that and, and a, a barrier company. And certainly I can understand the festival company, but I want to talk about that one as well. You've got tour buses, you've got trucking, you've got fabrication.

49:05 You know, I know I'm missing probably 10 things, but. Well, I well, first, you know, but I always tell her baby, it's not about making, it's about getting, you're not necessarily going to get filthy rich, but you make money. You know, it's a lot of it's birthed out of the early years of at the SES where at the beginning Jim's, Jim has a lot of contacts as far as concert promoters, people like that go. He was in concert promoted originally as as well and extremely knowledgeable about how that end of the business works. A lot of these things were were born out of that trucking, you know, SET special event transportation trucking came along originally as a way to service SES just because at some point you get so many trucks, you know, permits and licensing, all the things you have to do for that. That becomes a company because you're hiring all these people to run all these trucks and drivers and everything else. But as time went on, well, there was no, you know, it wasn't like a, a rule that it had to be SCS gear in ASET truck and, and trucking flourished because of that because, you know, very smart about putting the business

50:35 together with what you call real rock'n'roll drivers. You know, truck drivers that that understand how to get back there and help load the truck and make sure the gear is safe and it gets from point A to point B in one piece and things like that. The chairs, same thing. Prior to chairs, we received a call to do some ground cover. It was basically built some plywood roads for the steel wheels tour. And Jim had a great vision to go out and buy several 100 sheets of plywood. And here we go off to a stadium and we built plywood roads for forklift to drive on. And of course that that over the years then turned into a product that was called Incommat that you could roll out over the field and it could keep the grass a little alive longer. And of course then into what you see now, the plastic flooring, so that you know, that's a company called Fuel Protection Agency.

51:40 The same thing with the stages and the roofs. SES originally had nothing major mind you, just a typical standard old 4 post roof and stage. And it was back when we would go out and do some of these festivals, we would drive the trucks in and the same people built the stage, built the roof, then hung the hung the audio in the Bay and the lighting. Then we ran the festival as the engineers and then reversed all way. So we were everything and and you know, again, that that became something bigger just through, you know, Jim going out there and and working hard to get the business for for these these things with bigger roofs, bigger structures, and it's just continued to grow and grow and grow.

52:36 But that's a that's. A rental company, not not a manufacturer, right? Like you're not making. Stages. Yeah, well, that's part of the fab. The fabrication company builds all of these things. Oh, really? Yes, for for G2. So you're building, you're building your own stages, mobile stages too. No, not mobile stage. That's all stage line stuff. But there's obviously there's a need for mobile stages. So there's a, there's a mobile stage division of G2 as well. Yeah, that has the different sizes and varieties of stage line stages. Can they deliver faster than stage line? Well, I guess depending on where they're at. Oh, you mean as far as that?

53:20 Well, you know, everybody only owns so many. But there's there's, I don't know how many people have them throughout the United States. Yeah. No, I just, I know a couple people who who are waiting for stage line stages for quite some time now. Oh. OK, from. The manufacturer, right, Yeah. So I think like. Everything else they're. Just backed up a bit. But yeah, and all of these things, of course that rolls into needing, you know, alliances with the proper engineering companies and everyone else. And, and so it's it's, it's a lot of work and a lot of people. And so every, every one of these entities, you know, even though maybe the, the smallest, simplest version of it was originally done by SES or, or a part of SES, it's it, it, it all fortunately grew it just. Sounds very organic too, like it's not like you went out looking for a hole in the market and when we're going to create a business doing this, it was, it was that you were already using the stuff for the most part.

54:29 Well, I think that I think the key was is that first of all, not shying away from something. You know, nothing wrong with saying I'm an audio company or I'm a lighting company. I guess if someone wanted to ask how did we start? We one of the, we, we kind of owned a little bit of audio and maybe at some point more lights, but then we needed more audio than lights. So you see what I'm saying? We ping pong back and forth over the years about which one do you have more of? And then, of course, the same thing was when video projectors and that, yeah, then it's was getting into some video gear, you know, when, when you're sitting in the middle of North Carolina and that's what you're that's what you're doing for your livelihood.

55:21 But someone calls and says, hey, if you're willing to come set up, you know, 10,000 shares in a, you know, in a football stadium. Yeah. Well, you can set up the chairs. You don't just tell somebody, Oh, I just do audio. No, you can set up the chairs. That's at least I should say. And I were thinking that's that's what you do. But out of this, what you create is a one stop shop. And, and I think that's the biggest, the biggest thing to look for is that we, we get a lot of, a lot of the things I do anymore are basically large format 1 offs. And these can be, we've got one coming up just next year that will be in the why I call it, still call it the Super DOMA, but in New Orleans.

56:13 But we'll go in and we will build a stage and a roof and we will do all the audio, the lighting, all the video. Yeah, delay towers, any anything that needs to be done in that football stadium. That's the same exact thing that's going on right now coming up in in Buffalo in a few days with the Luke Combs tours where they'll be next. You know, that's we're there in that case, it's it's staging, audio and lighting and you know, it's, it's one phone call and and that's sort of where trucks and buses and you know, that buses came along in the same sense of, you know, let's help out these people, these artists with some buses.

57:10 And it worked. And so now it's OK, go get some more buses that we have A we, we have a lot of different, I guess everybody's got a lot of different irons in the fire at one time. But to me, the big payoff is when we all have the same ones. Yeah, in the same fire. And that's what you see on things like the Luke Combs Tour or what will be coming up this year on the Hootie and Blowfish Tour. Yeah, so. Do you that time? Do you promote these companies outside of SES clients? Like in other words, you know, could could Christy or four Wall or somebody come get buses or trucking or whatever from you. Yeah.

57:55 Yeah. Yeah, and and that happens. There's I, I don't keep up very well with everything. So some of these companies are doing, but I could like this past year SET the trucking division. They handled the Eagles tour and interesting I don't even know who all the vendors were on that, but they were all riding around in SET trucks. Yeah, Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, that's cool. And so are they all shared ownership like, like is it basically you and Jim in this top company in that? Top company. Owns 100% of all the other companies, or. No, it's, it's, it's owners within and it's divvied up and they say and there's a, we have a another division that's thinking of too that it's integration where that has also been a big part here in the last few years. You were talking about during the COVID time integration was? Yeah.

58:54 Busier than ever? Yeah. Carrying. The weight for everybody. Yeah, that's like solo tech. I think Solo Tech was telling me that there they were at 50% of their revenue and 100% of that came from integration. Yeah, yeah, it was, of course. Well, you know, these churches had time to figure things out and there was also a lot of them needed to get up to date to be able to stream and other things like that. So. Yeah, yeah. Very, very busy. But yes, there's, there's multiple people involved in all of these different, yeah, different companies. Yeah, I figured there might be. Yeah, yeah. And, and, and it's only, you know, and the whole idea is to keep, keep bringing more into the concert staff group, you know, umbrella as as far as, like I said, being more of a one stop shop.

59:48 And so you like you mentioned the festival stuff. You know, we for a long time SES did festivals and then we got more into touring and a little less into festivals and festivals take a little bit of different mindset about how you, how you package your gear, the crews that you get, everything. Especially now because there's so many people that carry gear for these festivals, it's a lot more work these days than it used to be where everybody walked up and played on the same drum kit. And so that takes kind of, and, and that's what the reason I was bringing that up. It's like an integration. Both take a kind of a different mindset than say your typical SES production would.

1:00:35 So the biggest thing about all of it is giving not just a few of us, but everyone within the company the tools to work with so that if someone comes to them and says, Hey, I have an event and you know, what do you need? And they say I need everything, you know, Oh, well, we have everything. Let's it's an easy, I can say that except for except for catering. And I don't think, I don't think we'll, we'll get into that. But if an artist does come and say just we just need buses or we just need trucks or whatever. Oh yeah, you'll still do that. Yeah. That's an interesting, interesting, interesting business. And and so the festival business does what? It's it's mainly based on being able to cover the festivals. In other words, we may pull from two or three different companies that we have, you know, alliances with to cover, you know, let's say it's a multi stage festival. And so we need to divvy up the love amongst a few different companies.

1:01:40 But but it gives us this outlet where everybody's crews can work together. We can we can flow really smooth. Like I said, festivals are really turning into major concerts these days. And, and it's just a lot more detailed work, a lot, a lot more crew that you have to think about where you put them, how you, how you get them from point A to point B It it's just a lot of lot more legwork 24/7 to make the festival run versus say, what we do in rehearsals. And then we get a, you know, once you're out of rehearsals and the tours on the road, it's just kind of, yeah, set it and forget it, you know, it's like a. Specialized like project management company. Exactly.

1:02:26 Exactly. And that's exactly what it is. You. Yeah. You have people that take on those those roles to, you know, put their arms around the big picture of it and then bring into the festival all of the different possible entities that we can offer. Yeah. So it's like an interest rate again. Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, it it because usually there's so many people involved and you know, there's not necessarily one group who's responsible for pulling it all together. So makes a lot of sense. I like it. So yeah, I think we covered all the companies in, I like the name. Who came up with the name concert stuff? Jim did he's, it's kind of funny how he did it. He we, we as much as the, those, those of us that are older, we, we love to mentor and teach the young ones 'cause they, they definitely don't have the benefit of the education. We, we got in the early years.

1:03:29 At the time he was, we had a person that was handling website things and stuff and they were having a little bit of a discussion, maybe a little heated about website names and things. And, and I think the young man was just wanting to show that he was very smart and talented and was expressing that well, it's just not as easy as you think. And Jim's like, sure, it is type in concert stuff group and he does and the name's available and he's like, yeah, get that name. And that was hilarious. So, you know, it was it was the IT was the old guy teaching the young guy that maybe sometimes it is just as easy as just, yeah, apply a little bit of common sense and let's let's get on with this one. Concert stuff group isn't really like a brand that you're. Going on and.

1:04:15 Promoting, you're promoting the individual companies, not not necessarily that overriding brand. To to me it's just where we keep everything yeah. And and that's that that way from certain promoters that would definitely grasp all of this quickly would be like I'm calling concert stuff group and they don't have to worry about getting into the details of which branch of it. It's just that that's who handles this because you guys. Figure that out, you guys. Figure out which branch of it needs to do. What? Yeah, yeah. And, and, and that's what that's what cause just like with the stages and roofs, there's all sizes and shapes and they all obviously have come with different cost and, and requirements.

1:05:00 And it's a lot better to help somebody put some, you know, an event together based on what what is available. Yeah, at at the time. And so that's where it comes in really handy to know that, OK, we need needed one big stage, but three little ones and stuff like that, you don't have everything right there at that. Building though, do. You. No, not, not yet. Some, some things are going to be moving in to other buildings that are being built. Yeah, most of the most of the staging is just down the road promise in north in Morrisville, NC or in Tennessee closer to Nashville.

1:05:43 The trucking is still in Winston Salem, which was our original home base. We're we're in the metropolis of Mocksville, NC now. I don't know where that. Is. Well, it's only about. My son's a racing driver and and he. He Well, there you go. Yeah, going. To the cart track there in Mooresville, GoPro, which I I think it's called something else now, but it used to be called GoPro and. That's all, all racing country right there. Yeah, yeah, it's fun place. Well, Mocksville is about 15, maybe 20 miles West of Winston Salem, directly on I-40. We're, we're not, We're maybe, maybe a mile from I-40. So as far as transportation goes, it's great. But it's a nice little town with great people. We love it.

1:06:36 Any of the artists that we have so far that have come and used our rehearsal space, they fell in love with just the, the cool small town vibe of everything. And, and so we're hoping to do much more with the with that, with rehearsal spaces and stuff as well so that we can, yeah, ultimately much like the rock Lititz model, which again, in a little, a little cornfield town, you know, with that makes chocolate. Or a slightly smaller scale version of that upstaging in Sycamore. You know, same. Thing. Yeah, yeah. Small cornfield town. Yeah, that's basically what we're going for in Mocksville. Yeah. And and you know again, it's kind of that one stop shop.

1:07:20 So at some point most of well, I know all the transportation which includes buses, they will, they will relocate to the same property where SES is now. We're going to have to expand the building to make room for more gear and and the same thing goes with our current rehearsal space. We'll have to expand into something bigger as well. So those are some future projects. So hopefully that that building behind us on the screen here is on a huge plot of land. There's a lot of land. Yeah, Good, good. Yeah. So you can build whatever you need to build. It's just money. Time and money.

1:08:01 Yeah. That's all it is. It's really you can fix it if you just throw enough at it. Yeah, Yeah. So you've just done something that I was a big fan of you. You hired Jason Alt and. Oh yeah, I. Really like Jason a lot. I, I, I have some relatively recent history with him that he could tell you. I probably won't talk about it here on on the air, but I really like the guy. Like he's just a super smart dude. He he loves making systems work properly. He's so nerdy when it comes to, you know, all the Gazintas like this one goes into this one and stuff.

1:08:42 I just, I, I love how the guy thinks. Like I just think he's a super smart guy. Yeah, for me, for me personally, it's been great. I don't. I never claimed to know everything. I'm still learning every day. I still read manuals, I still watch tutorials, try to learn new gear every day. But obviously I've handled a lot of gear over the year, much, much like Jason has. And so I always tell some of some of the folks when they're in the shop doing things, I'm like, you know, if you got questions on, on any of this stuff, I can probably tell you how the wrong way to do every bit of that.

1:09:24 And, and I mean that in the sense of let me just go ahead and stop you so, so that I can show you the right way to do things. And I love the fact that he comes from that same, that same type of mentality of, you know, let's do it. Let's, let's not worry about the 200 ways there are to do it. Let's just do it the right way that we all can live with it. It's very nice to always have people that think on that, what I call that common sense type type of, you know, thinking. Well, it's not. And I, you know, I attribute a lot of that to, to some of the younger folks on the fact that, like I said earlier, they just haven't had the experience. They, but there is no real history for them. I mean, even there's some great schools teaching great production stuff now, but they're not, they're not telling you where this stuff came from there. They, they don't, they don't have time to dig into the history like we do.

1:10:27 And, and so having, you know, having people like Jason that, that get that same big picture view, you know, I, someone can send me an equipment list or a needs list. And it doesn't take me long to dissect the whole thing and figure out here's all the parts and pieces. And that's what I love about what I see him doing is that it's, it's exactly that. It's like, oh, this, it's this event. And here's what we need to do. Now it is up to us, just like every single event. We always should, we always want to go by what the client is asking for. We definitely want to help service the needs, you know, and do everything we can possibly based on their wishes and wants. But also we have to interject a little bit of wisdom sometimes. And that and that's that's another great thing that I've watched Jason do so far as you know, to talk to people and say, yeah, that's good, that's good, that's good. But here, let's do this instead.

1:11:23 And I think, I think that's really important because it's the relationships that you build through that that and and that's, if there's any one thing about SES in general, it's going to be relationships. I mean, we've got multiple artists. When you name those great stats that you you named, there's a lot of those artists that are not just in the double digit years of relationships, but some, you know, approaching 30. That's wild. And I know for sure Hootie and the blowfish you. Guys have been doing since the beginning of time I. Think this, well, this will be this year is the 30th anniversary of summer camp with Trucks cracked review.

1:12:08 And of course we were there two years prior to that. So for us, yeah, it's 30 plus. But it's the same thing with, you know, Lynyrd Skynyrd who's still out there doing Joyce Meyer Ministries, Franklin Graham Ministries, you know, the list goes on and on of, of people that it's building those relationships and taking you back to Jason. That's exactly what I see his ability to do is help forge those relationships and, and you know, in new people that 'cause you know, sooner or less we, we need new people too. We need the ones that were, the ones I've only been around one or two years that we're working towards those 27 year relationships and the special. Talent that he has is a little bit different. Like I agree on the relationship thing, but I've just seen him, you know, sit and calmly watch, you know, three or four things roll in or whatever.

1:13:06 And you can see that he's thinking already about how am I going to piece these together? Like how does it all fit together? Because that's what's important to him. It's not how pretty they look. It's not what brand name is on them. It's not any of those things. It's how are these four things going to work together successfully and not 'cause the client a bunch of problems. Well, I understand the nuts and bolts of anything like that. I still think is, is a huge important part that we can't, we can't teach enough of it to, you know, younger people. I see how so many people these days I'm, I'm, I'm seeing people that are actually apprehensive about running a console, whether it be audio or lighting.

1:13:51 It's just like, well, I'm fine just flying the PA every day. And it's like, yeah, but don't you want to mix a band too? Don't you want to kind of dive into this? And I, and I get it because they never had to do it before they, they started in the industry once we were so segregated into our departments and our, and, and the breakdowns of our departments that they weren't the person that had to go do everything. And, and I think that, and that's part of that, like I said, that big picture view, you know, where it was, you know, Jason definitely has. You have to be able to look at something and go, well, here's all the things that are going to make this tick.

1:14:33 And whether or not your job is flying the PA or your job is running the console, you should both know how to do the other jobs too. Yeah. Because that's going to, that's how you're going to truly understand what the nuts and the bolts of this are. Yeah. It's, it's funny you say that because I, I grew up a musician, I know how to run a console. I could mix a band if I needed to and I knew how to do it and how to make the kick drum sound real good and how to make all the different and the effects rack and stuff. Put me on a digital console. Now I wouldn't know anything. I wouldn't even know how to turn it on, let alone make things happen. You know, all this Dante stuff and all the built in. I don't get it.

1:15:15 I just don't. Know well I have to stare at them a little bit, but what I still do when I see a new piece of gear roll in the shop, I definitely make a time where I can just go. I'm just going to need a little bit of time to just go through this thing and I do I still have to touch it. I got to push the buttons. I got to watch it work. I want to see. I want to see where things go from input to output. Yeah, same thing with lighting consoles. I don't claim to have a special need to just for one, one type of lighting. They all spit out DMX. So learn how to make them all do that. Yeah. What is it? You know, but is it is. It MA. You guys primarily use MA. Yeah, primarily MAS and and of course a lot of people jumping over to three, three software now and yeah, finally. Yeah, Well, yeah, a while, but but yeah, primarily that's, that's the number one console that anybody would use. But, but, you know, thinking through a system of I was with a couple of of folks of the week that I was helping put something together and I said, OK, now you just need to go over your checklist and they're like, well, where's my list? I said, well, it should be in your head. I said, let's just start with what do you need first? And, you know, and they didn't understand what I meant. Well, you need to say feeder.

1:16:38 And so. Yeah, yeah. Time power. So I walked through the ABC's with them and, and, and got them to where they they and then they went to the show. One of them sent me a text and said, you know, that really helped putting the list in my head. And, and, and again, I think that's the biggest thing about getting people like Jason and a few other folks that we have, you know, in, in the department head type roles of being able to really mentor and mold a lot of folks now a lot more than it than it had to be years ago. Yeah, well, the shows are so much bigger now. You know it. I was talking to somebody about.

1:17:19 This. Oh yeah. Yesterday or something, like you remember when we were selling moving lights and there were 40 on a show or big one or 24? Oh, it's David Miley. I had David Millie on the podcast and, and we were talking about that like he had, he started with, I don't know, 12 intellibeams or something. And next thing you knew he had 24 of them, you know, and that was that was good enough for pretty much any country artist, you know, 24 Intellibeams and a bunch of park hands now. I mean like, doesn't the average show have hundreds of moving lights these days? Oh yeah, it, it, you know, I, I don't really sit down with a lot of them and count up everything, but oh the definitely the numbers always range over 100 and, and these are shows that, you know, might be playing smaller markets. Yeah, it's incredible.

1:18:12 To some others. So yeah, it's but it's the same thing with the video gear we were talking about. I mean, I we've watched it over the over years, you know, there was a time when only the biggest of big shows have video. Yeah. And I'll watch, you know, things go out the door that are more video heavy than anything we're doing. We've, we've got clients that will take out video screens before they'll take out APA. You know it's funny. Because I, I completely remember, you know, the, the two like Barco rear projectors and two screens above the speakers or whatever. I mean, it was just like not that long ago, and now all of a sudden it's just become such a different thing so.

1:18:57 It's big. It's big league, yeah. Yeah, what what are you thinking on on like so live events obviously have changed a lot since not just since COVID. Like I think COVID definitely played a role in in how how much bigger they are now. I think you know, when when you start to take something away from people, I think it just created this this frenzy for I better go see this concert. It could be the last one. But the other thing that has happened is just the growth. And again, COVID helped drive this to the growth of these artists on social media and the fact that many of these artists now have 5610 million followers on social media. And I've referenced it a bunch of times before. But Rapino, the CEO of of Live Nation, says, you know, our job is easy.

1:19:50 All we have to do is sell tickets to 5% of their followers, you know, and that's a huge number of, of tickets. And so do you see it continuing to grow? Like he, he seems to think that we're still sort of at the infancy and it's going to keep growing. I find that a little bit hard to believe, especially when you know there's nowhere to rehearse right now and venues are both solid for the next 12 months and so. Well, I, I definitely agree with the growth and, and part of that is you can just go and look and see how you, you can go back and look. Pre COVID, how many tours were in stadiums, you know, and through in, in NFL and MLB stadiums throughout the United States or, or the world as far as you know, soccer stadiums, whatever, but not very many major stadium size shows. There weren't.

1:20:45 There just weren't. And now everyone. Is now now everybody. I mean, it's just expected. Artists are in stadiums now, which is unbelievable. And, and they're in those facilities because that many people are coming to the show. Yeah. Yeah. So it's true. Yeah, the. Appetite, yeah. So I mean, I, I, you know, they're not they're not in there just for the sake of saying they did it. That's they sold the tickets. So, yeah, if that's that 5% in that sense, well, that's great. Because if it's if it's only 5%, well next year when this tour rolls out again for another stadium tour, well, there's another 5% waiting to get tickets. And, and so, yeah, based on that theory, yeah, I absolutely think, you know, the growth.

1:21:35 The growth is there. I think you bring up a great point about rehearsal space production in general. And when I say production, I'm not just talking about gear. I'm mainly talking about people. Yeah. You know, it, it may become a challenge to do some things like that, but I also see a lot of these artists that are going into venues where multiple days are just a regular thing now. Yeah, if you would have. Told me 20. Five years ago that Metallica in 2024 would be playing two nights in stadiums. Exactly, Yeah.

1:22:18 On the two nights, two different set lists and stuff, I would have been like, hell no. We had Dan Brown on couple weeks ago on the podcast and we were talking about that. It's just mind blowing. The the size of these shows just keep getting bigger and bigger. It's crazy. It's. Wild, yeah. And I think I think some of the things that you, you know, you might see is a a lot not not just more stadium based events, but you know, if, if yes, if they can find, if we can find the people and we can find the production and get these tours out here. The other thing that we're we're already seeing, but I think we'll just see more and more of it. We had, I felt like as a culture, we had all become weekend warriors.

1:23:04 And I know tours had for sure, but people are selling out Monday and Tuesday nights now. You know, there's people are going to sold out arena shows on a Wednesday. So that's that's like it was when I first started that that was the norm back then. That's also back when you had artists that would tour and play five nights in a row or six nights in a row, which which most artists now that that would prove well, it feels like we're going. Back there right now, like it feels like well. Absolutely. That we're going to see more of these residencies and we're going to see.

1:23:44 And and that was the other part I was going to say the residencies are just going out the roof with great talent and obviously they're selling the tickets and making the revenue that they expect. So yeah, I think it's I think it's only going to grow. I think you you might see more and more because of this. That's why I was talking about earlier about the festival details is that festivals are just popping up out of nowhere. It seems like there's there's just festivals everywhere. And I think you'll see a lot more of really, really big, you know, high name festivals that just keep keep popping up around the country to help service this as well. But yeah, for for an artist to go out and say I'm going to play a Tuesday night or a Wednesday night sold out. I don't know that that was necessarily the case a few years back.

1:24:40 Yeah, no, I, I, I think you're right. I think you're completely right. Like, you know, one of them that I keep seeing popping up is the Billy Joel at, at Madison Square Gardens. You know, like how many dates has he done at Madison Square Gardens in the past couple years? Just wild, crazy nuts. The appetite is just unbelievable. I mean, you got to have people who are going to see him multiple times like this can't just be, you know, all individual visits, you know, these are people going to see him. Oh, let's go see him again. It's, it's, you know, it's April now. We last time we went was February. Let's go again. But I love it. I mean, it's, it's obviously fantastic for our industry.

1:25:20 It's just like if I, I was in your position, I just don't know what the hell I would do. Would I keep building bigger buildings expecting it to continue growing 25% year on year or or would I just I don't know what the heck I would do you know it's. It's, well, I think you, you definitely go with the flow, but you know, there's also a, there's, there comes a time when the bucket gets full and yeah, I, I mean, we have not hit that yet, but sure it's possible. And one of the things that that you keep it from being that way right now is, is the reality of some of us are getting older and that includes the artist as well.

1:26:09 And so some of those artists that we have these long term relationships with, well, they may not do as much anymore. They may cut back and or were she at retail? You know, but it's it's a thing of that's where you know, getting in right now with a lot of younger artists like we try to do on the ground level and work with them on the way up. I think that's, you know, keeping keeping a good stream of that coming in. I don't think you'll run out of big shows because some of these people go straight from playing the, you know, the opening to the opening to the opening slide on festivals and and just small bar music venues to the next night. They're in the football stadium.

1:27:01 Yeah, yeah, I know. It's totally true, totally true. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm seeing the exact same thing and it's, I don't know, like I said, it's fun. I, I'm happy I'm in the industry. I'm not, I wouldn't be happy if I was a consumer, you know, out there buying tickets right now. And like he seems, that's the other thing Rapinoe says is that the average ticket price in the market is still only something like $68 or something, which I don't know what tickets those are because I haven't seen any, but. Everything, well, it's a big market. Everything seems to be over 100 bucks though, pretty much right. Well, maybe the things that catch your attention right away, but it's, it's a big market.

1:27:43 And, and that's true. I, I, I just work closely with a music venue in, in Winston Salem that just is owned and operated by some friends of mine who I, I admire greatly. They have 1000 seat capacity and when they first opened a few years ago, well, having that once or twice a month capacity hit the numbers was or, or even get close to it. They're averaging that every week now. Jeez. Yeah. And I'm just like, hey, this, this is my little hometown. I'm I'm proud that, you know, we, we got something that that can do those kind of numbers. But that's that's the kind of thing where you're looking at those, those other ticket prices you're talking about. Yeah, of course.

1:28:34 Yeah. Yeah. But I. Mean, I think I was happy to know that the people came back as hard as they did. That's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. Well, 'cause there was a part of me that was worried that people would be like, I don't want to get around other people again, you know? Yeah, But no, I mean, they're more rabid than they were before. Like people just want more, more, more, whether it's EDM or country or anything, you know, Mötley Crüe in a stadium, you know, anything. They just have such a huge appetite for all of it. You know, I, I, I, I'm happy you said all that stuff because I, I agree with you completely. I, I think, you know, it is growing. It's exciting.

1:29:15 I just, you know, the pessimist in me always wonders, like at some point does it just go, you know, and grind to a slow down or whatever. But I, I don't see it like it the again, as long as the artist have 10 million followers on social media and keep growing, you know, I don't know, I think it's going to, it's going to stay pretty exciting. It's going to be interesting at some point. I guess the only, the only factor you bring up there is like there's only so many NFL stadiums. So yeah, there there might be some little bit of traffic, you know, gets bottlenecked. Awesome.

1:29:58 Well, the other. Problem is. Most of the stadiums that are out there today, and I'm not just talking about the US, but especially Europe, we're not built for concerts. And so they sound like crap. And, and so I think if obviously this is here to stay, I think we're going to see some new stadiums popping up to accommodate this, or at least some evolution to the stadiums that are out there because they don't sound very good like it. If you love a band, I don't think a stadium is a great place to see that band because not just because you're a distance from the stage and, and you know your your vision, because they'll figure that out by creating such a great show that it doesn't matter how far away you are.

1:30:40 But the the sound like to me the sound just isn't the same. Well, I think for a lot of people, I, I'd love to see the look on people's faces like at the Luke Combs shows when you know, some of these people are 300 plus feet away and, and the excitement is there because they're getting a great experience. They're taking it all in. I think that's, I think that's the thing that's important about these shows. And, and from a design aspect, you have to think about that, you know, when you're, when you're putting together a design, you got to think about.

1:31:24 I got people that might be 400 feet away. What are they, What, what's their expense? You know, I'm, I'm fortunately, I get to sit, yeah, I get to sit in front of house. I usually get a good seat no matter what. But but yeah, I think that's the other part is really, where are we going next? Who's what's going to be figured out next to to make this this stadium experience that great? Because you are right, some of them just don't sound good. But again, not saying that's OK, but as long as someone went and had a great experience, I've always been that way about shows in that sense of I don't want to hear. I don't I don't mind it if I hear it, but I don't like hearing someone just say, oh, the sound was great. All the lights were great.

1:32:14 I just wanted to leave and say that was great. Yeah, well, you and like in Europe, you, you read a lot of the reviews on a lot of the stadium shows and they'll say it was terrible, the sound, the band sounded horrible. And no, the stadium sounded horrible. The band was fine. You know, it's just you got this big concrete bowl that was made for soccer, not for, not for, you know, Metallica or Mötley Crüe or whatever. You know, the other thing like talking with Dan Brown from Metallica a couple weeks ago, he talked about because they do in the round in stadiums. And so that's another set of complications because where you hanging stuff, you're not hanging anything. So, you know, to build these huge structures or towers, like he can't just do the the clamshell thing for every single show, like you do it or whatever. So you got to you got to be innovative. And and so he's come up with some cool ways to do it with those big towers.

1:33:12 But yeah, so. But I think things like that aid to the experience of it. Just Garth Brooks shows were like that, yeah. Yeah, so Jim got a Parnelli award. That's. Pretty he did, yeah, yeah, Well deserved for sure. And it's, it's one of those things where I was speaking to some folks that night after, afterwards and they were, they were talking about it and they said, yeah, 'cause this is I guess we were joking about the fact you had to be 70 or over to, to get one. And they said, yeah, you still got some years to go, but you know, you, you'll probably get one. And I'm like, well, but I seriously doubt that will happen.

1:34:03 But I definitely take a lot of pride in knowing that the one he holds in his hands, I was there for about 99.9% of it all. That's true. And yeah, that's, that's good enough for me. Yeah. You know it's one of. Those things where you know, even like your business partner, your wife, your, your kids, sometimes it's every bit as rewarding and even more so watching them get a reward than it is getting one yourself. Around, yeah, absolutely. So. And, and I know, you know, the, the things of watching the testing and the playing around with things and trying this and trying that, just just the, the creative process in itself, which to me, that's, that's the part that I always tell everybody, I hope that no one ever loses about being in this industry is that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you're doing and what, what the job title is.

1:35:02 You got to be creative with it. You have to, you can't lose the sight of that and just say, well, this is the way I always do it. Or no, there's always going to be a time when you have to be creative. And you know, that's exactly what taking that technical mind of a person like Jim, the creative mind of a person, the experience, the education, and just the wanting to go for it all put together, that's exactly what you know, how these things happen. Yeah, well, yeah, you were there the whole time and. That's yeah. And we just never been people to say no.

1:35:43 Yeah, you know, to to something in that sense. Got a few times when we should have. Yeah. But yeah, it's it is someone who says, hey, I had an idea what about this? I'm like, yeah, let's figure it out, you know? I like that. Are you excited about anything outside the industry right now or? Any new AS? Far as you buy a Harley and you're traveling across the country. Or. Flying airplanes or jumping out of airplanes. I say every year when it comes about the time for another birthday, this is the year when I play more golf and this is the year when I play more music.

1:36:30 I'm not sure I'm at that year yet, but I will say that that I've got to play golf more times this year. That's cool so far than than I have in the in the past few now. I think the biggest thing that I look forward to honestly, is working with all the young people. I, I, you know, I would never be that you kids get off my lawn type old man as much as I, I just, I see the looks on some of them's faces and that you know, instantly when, when they look at you a certain way, you're like, OK, you, you need a little help and guidance. And I'm, I am so proud of some of the ones, some of the folks that that worked with years and years ago or, and have been there for a long time.

1:37:19 And I watch how far they've come. Yeah. And they'll just look at me and say, well, you taught me how to do it. And I'm like, you know, that's, that's probably the best thing I could take away. I, I lost my father just last year. And, and, and that was I, I think that was the biggest eye opening thing about it was I was meeting and people and they were calling me to just give their condolences and they would quote me quoting my dad. And I said, I guess I do that a lot. And I thought, but that's a good thing.

1:38:00 So, you know, so it was really very heartwarming when I was talking to one of them recently and he's like, you know, you, he says, you taught me everything I know. And I just appreciate that and I go, well, you know, my thing is I won't, I want everyone to learn. And I look forward to the day they're getting Parnellis for doing something that was better than what I did, you know, or, or, or you're getting the acknowledgement for being better than than what I've done. The biggest thing I tell all of them, though, I said, you got to keep at it because I'm still learning every day. So I'm still getting better than you every day a little bit, but most of them are whizzing past me really quick because I see the eagerness in certain ones that want to to really get out there and do it.

1:38:52 So I that that just gives me great joy. It really does just to well, and that's to know I can, you know, remember it's. So important because we're running out of old people in our industry. So, you know, like we're not all going to last forever. We need to bring up really great young people through the industry and, and you know, not for our own legacies, but to just keep things moving along right like. Oh, absolutely, I and, and that's why I touched on earlier about it's no one's fault exactly, but the fact that we don't have places where we can find enough time to educate from the history of the business up. And I didn't even realize how much of some of that I knew. I, I, I came out of this being I, I started as a musician. I started, I was a music major.

1:39:42 I just hung out with the design and production people 'cause they were cooler to hang out with. And the little things that I picked up along the way, just about theatrical lighting or, or just hanging out in a theater with them and watching them, you know, put bricks on a rail or, or tie knots on a piece of hemp and things that they did. I didn't realize what I've learned. Until years later when I'm starting to apply some of these things and I go, oh, I actually know how to do that. And, and so I, I think that's the key part is, you know, trying to find the time to give people this history of the industry so that they understand when they push that button on that console and the light pans and tilts and runs into this gobo. Well, guess what?

1:40:29 There was a lot of history prior to to that happening. Yeah. And and you. But at the end of the day, you're still just firing a break up through the haze. Well, do you? Ever. Well, we did that, you know. I know it's funny. Do you ever talk about like, well, back in the day, you know, when we had consoles that were not digital and we had lights that didn't move, you know? Yeah. Yeah, a lot. Oh yeah. I mean, I've shown the pin matrixes and things like that. Or how, you know, Oh yeah. The the, you know, the, the some of the, the museum pieces, I guess that we still, I still find from time to time and something I'll see someone looking at it and I'll just tell them. If you got a minute, let me just let me just walk you through this, you know?

1:41:13 What? It'd be really cool for every larger lighting company like yours to have a room somewhere in the building where you've got old technology set up, old consoles set up and you can run somebody through. OK, you know, this is how you did a show. This is how you connected everything together. This is how you programmed a desk or didn't program it. It was 2 scenes even, you know, and, and now we're going to go to the real stuff, you know, and. Well, I think it's very important to understand, like when you're making, I tell this to to people all the time when they talk about programming and they're making their color presets and they come to me and they go, can can you show me how you make your color presets? Because I like the ones you have. And I said I referenced gel colors and you know, they don't, they don't even know what a Swatch book is. Yeah.

1:42:06 Or a gel? What's a? Gel, yeah. Or a gel, Yeah. So. So I love those moments when I can sit and teach them well. This is just the way my brain puts this together versus the way you see an RGB fixture. It was just coming out of COVID. You, you talked about that, that older technology. I was on a conference call with Joe Bonamassa about designing his He, he was going to do a tour still in COVID a little bit, but he was bound and determined to go out. We've found places we could go. And he said, can you tell me? He says, I I really want it to be just a power trio, kind of a throwback to the band Cream and, you know, sort of that really colorful park can look.

1:42:50 He says, what what do they make nowadays that look like park cans? And I just said just park cans. They're the only thing that look like park cans. And and he said, do you have some? I went yes, we still have all of ours because I refuse to get rid of. Them. Oh, that's wild. And I put together a floor rig for him that we were going to just take out and use house rigs of the day. But it had real park cans in it. And I'd said, I want to go with you. So I designed it, I programmed it, I jumped on the bus and I went with them. That's fine. And we went and did these dates and Joe just said I love it. He said I love it when these things come on and the energy I feel from the heat. Well, now Fast forward three years, or probably going on 4 from that.

1:43:35 Every version of Joe's designs up to what's happening in Europe with him right now have real park hands in them. Oh. Really. I didn't know that. That yes, and, and, and we've made some, you know, some chat. But it was so funny taking some of the younger ones over to one of our storage facilities and digging out the hampers of lamps and explaining to them what a medium to a very narrow was and how you spin the bottle and where. Oh, I had so much fun just just because they they were well, they were looking at him like it did was just this odd thing from space, you know, they.

1:44:15 You could have used LED pars. Well, no, no, we we have some LED pars and they look great, don't get me wrong. Yeah, but they're they're not a real. Park parking. Yeah, yeah, I get it. So trust me, I get it. He's cool dude, too. I I love his music. I I've always been a big job on a massive fan. Yeah, ever since. He got big, but he he still appreciates my older school approach to music and and how I program a show. So you ever get. Yeah, we've been working together. Well, no, he does respect me enough to occasionally hand me his new, new acquisition and say, here, try it out. And I'm like, that's way more money than I need to be holding in my hands.

1:45:00 I'll just give it back. But but it's also the kind of thing where you just don't really pick up a guitar and start playing around Joe Bottom. Awesome. You know it's. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. It's like standing next to Tiger hitting a golf ball. Probably not going to do it. Yeah, yeah. Hey Tiger, watch me drive this 1220 down the center. Yeah. Yeah, that's hilarious. Well, Jeff, I appreciate you taking the time today. Thanks so much. It's been. Amazing catching. Up with you. I'm super happy for all of your success and this great new building and I'm gonna have to get up there and visit you guys and see this place cuz it looks amazing and. Yeah. Yeah, all right, my friend, Have a good one. Thanks. Thanks. Bye. See you.