The Crew That Makes Old Dominion Go

There’s an interesting paradox in this business.

v.litchey — LAST TRAIN: Kevin Lichty, Old Dominion’s lighting director and set designer, goes over production details with the team at Clarksville, Tennessee’s F&M Bank Arena. Courtesy Old Dominion

Every tour is different— each presents unique challenges, unique production, unique routing, all as dissimilar as the artists at the center of the orbit.

And yet, every tour is the same.

Whether it’s a solo act on a tight loop of 50-cap clubs or a globe-spanning odyssey of the world’s largest stadiums, all tours are logistics projects: moving stuff and people from one place to another. It’s just a matter of scale. A single spotlight and one dude behind a soundboard is production, even if it pales in comparison to a huge stage show with Jerry Bruckheimer levels of pyrotechnics and full battleship broadsides of lasers.

And whether it’s the lonesome crooner in his van with just a six-string, some hope and a box of one-color screen print T-shirts or a tour with a Cecil B. DeMille cast of thousands and a merch truck that rivals Santa’s workshop, people and things and gear have to move, have to be set up and have to do enough to convince a showgoer her ticket price was worth it, if it’s $5 or $5,000.

When it’s all said and done, Old Dominion’s “No Bad Vibes Tour” will have completed two legs, the first running from Evansville, Indiana, to Lake Tahoe over 162 days. The second kicks off Sept. 7 in Grand Rapids and goes 99 more days before it concludes Dec. 15 at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. In total, it will clear roughly 30,500 road miles, enough for one trip around the earth at the equator, plus another 5,000 or so miles for giggles. And that’s not including a pair of January shows in Hawaii. Coincidentally, 30,500 is also the average number of miles driven by a typical American family. Of course, your typical American family isn’t putting on a two-hour show every other night.

No, Old Dominion isn’t anything like your typical American family, but OD’s “No Bad Vibes Tour” is just like every other tour and completely unlike any other tour.

Behind this tour and all the others are truckers and bus drivers and roadies and techs and lighting techs and stage designers and sound engineers and the battalion of backstage and off-stage and on-the-road experts and geniuses that artists and their teams trust to keep things moving as frictionlessly as possible — and, once the show hits the next town, to make the extravaganza meet the performers’ expectations and exceed the audience’s.

Here are the vendors and techs and drivers and haulers that’ll keep the bad vibes at bay and the good vibes flowing on Old Dominion’s run.

Sound: Spectrum Sound Inc.

Andrew Sullivan

Rentals Manager

[email protected]

Lighting: Solotech

Harry Forster

Email: [email protected]

LED Lighting: EdgeLight

Scott Moore

Email: [email protected]

Video: Screenworks