Twenty One Pilots puts on the kind of live show you have to see to believe. Singer
Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun emerge from backstage in ski masks. They
crowdsurf on a platform while playing drums. Joseph crawls through the crowd
inside a giant red hamster ball. Dun does a backflip off of Joseph’s piano. Joseph
climbs the stage to nerve-wracking heights, singing all the while.
The difficult to define duo – with music falling somewhere between the genres of
alternative rock, electropop, hip hop, and indie – has captured worldwide attention
since its wildly successful 2015 release Blurryface. Inevitably, this has led to
playing bigger shows than the band has ever seen before.
Right now, Twenty One Pilots is in the midst of a massive 11-month tour dubbed the
“Emotional Roadshow World Tour.’ The band performs at venues ranging from
amphitheatres the size of Berkeley, California’s 8,500-capacity Greek Theatre to
Pennsylvania’s 30,000-capacity Hersheypark Stadium.
This poses some challenges for the audio crew. But with a 72-box Meyer Sound
LYON linear line array rig, VER Tour Sound has been able to provide flexible live
sound for the tour’s varying scale of venues.
Audio crew chief/system engineer Kenny Sellars of VER spoke a little about the
setup at the Greek Theatre shows in Berkeley. “We have 12 LYON per side on the
main hangs, and 12 LYON per side on the side hangs,’ he explained. However, the
system expands effortlessly to a full 72-box rig for the tour’s larger venues, where
their main hangs are 20-deep LYON and side hangs are 16-deep LYON.
Throughout the tour, Sellars has been constantly impressed with the Meyer Sound
system. “The scalability has been super solid for me. That’s what I planned on, but
the fact that it’s worked flawlessly and easily has been the key,’ he said.
Shane Bardiau, Twenty One Pilots’ FOH engineer, has also been very satisfied with
LYON’s versatility. Initially, the tour was considering using the larger dual 15-inch
Meyer LEO line arrays. But Sellars’ suggestion to Bardiau to use LYON to better
accommodate the varying size of venues on the tour appealed to him. “I was
sceptical at first because it is a smaller box,’ recalled Bardiau. “But wow, I was
blown away. And to be honest, this 12-inch (LYON) driver is perfect for our
music.’
Independent engineer Adam Stroop runs monitors on the Emotional Roadshow World
Tour. For the monitor setup, the band occasionally relies on side fills from LEOPARD
cabinets on each side of the stage. He likes having loudspeakers that are “very
controllable, very smooth. That’s really hard to beat.’
For Twenty One Pilots’ biggest shows, the crew will use up to six LEOPARD boxes
per side for greater horizontal coverage. “They’re very easy to set up and sound
excellent,’ said Stroop.
As Twenty One Pilots continues to traverse the globe, LYON and LEOPARD will
ensure its energetic music and powerful message roar at every venue, great and
small.