Joe GallopEvent producers LarMac Live recently overcame numerous challenges to deliver an outdoor live music tour across 16 outdoor venues, on behalf of AEG Presents and Sony Music-backed promoter Senbla.
The tour saw 30 shows take place from 17 June – 26 July at venues including Castle Howard in York, Emirates Riverside Cricket Ground in Durham and Oxford’s Waddeson Manor.
Among LarMac’s most notable and challenging venue builds was at the Bath Royal Crescent for Michael Bublé’s two-night show in July. The team set up a stage in front of the sweeping crescent of 30 terraced houses to host the first large-scale live concert at the landmark since a Three Tenors show in 2003.
“We’re really proud of that one,” says LarMac Live tour producer Laura Hall. “Planning took place over a three-year period and tour event manager Claudia Langmead spent many hours working closely with the local residents and Bath and North East Somerset Council in order to deliver the two nights of concerts.”
Hall says the original plan in 2020 was to host 14 Bublé shows but this later led to the inclusion of AEG and Senbla promoted shows by Bryan Adams, Tears For Fears, Duran Duran, McFly, Simply Red, Diana Ross, Ball & Boe and The Chemical Brothers.
“This was quite a jump in what we had to deliver,” says Hall. “Instead of having one or two teams on the ground, which we could have alternated between venues, we had to bring in lots more personnel due to operating up to seven venues at any one time.”
With a largely female workforce, LarMac had a senior management team in place throughout the whole planning and advance phase, with separately recruited teams who delivered at each venue. Other than the cricket grounds, where existing infrastructure was used, every other venue was a greenfield site with the venue facilities built from scratch.
Despite challenges including prices rising 20-30% in some cases, Hall says the team managed to bring in suppliers as early as the end of 2021: “That was key for making this work because we had four lots of kits and crew out on tour over July, which is obviously a key month for everybody. It was paramount that we got things locked in early.”
- Site management – Site + Stage / SC Productions
- Health and safety – J-EMSS
- Security – SES Group
- Staging – Acorn, ESG
- Lighting – Christie Lites
- Video – Colour Sound Experiment
- Audio – Major Tom, Adlib, Capital Sound
- Power – Pearce Hire, Flying Hire
- Stage crew – Connection Crew, Showforce,
- Trucking – KB Event
- Catering – Flying Saucers