DAS Audio Helps High Wire Raise the Bar in Nashville
As any long-time Nashville resident will tell you, the city has undergone unprecedented change in recent years. While Music City has always been true to its name, the area around Lower Broadway has grown exponentially. Dozens of clubs, each with multiple stages, play host to thousands of bar hopping tourists, eager for a taste of the music and the mayhem.
As the city has grown, High Wire Productions has been a major force in raising the standard of downtown Nashville’s production sound. Founder Matt Jones has been at it for several decades. “I started High Wire when I was in college, doing mostly studio stuff. But when I started doing live sound, that’s when things really blew up.”
As Jones recounts, the scene on Lower Broadway wasn’t always what it is today. “When I started the company, pretty much every venue here had funky point source boxes that were 30 or 40 years old, held up by chains even older.”
It was a sobering scene, to be sure. “Some of the best musicians in the world were playing these stages, but it just wasn’t the production value it deserved. So, we started pushing for better sound, getting line arrays into the clubs, doing direct guitars, and generally raising the standard.”
It was just about a decade ago that things really took a turn. “Around 2016 the owners of a venue we were working with decided they wanted to team with an artist and create an artist-branded venue.” FGL House, in partnership with country artists Florida George Line, became one of downtown’s first celebrity clubs, and a proving ground for High Wire Productions and DAS Audio. “FGL House was our first chance to get a true line array in there. We put in the EVENT-208A’s and the EVENT-218A’s. It literally blew away anything else in town.”
On the heels of the FGL House project, High Wire made their mark with multiple venues on Lower Broadway. “The following year we did Jason Aldean’s and Luke Bryan’s, also using DAS Audio, of course. And it’s been nonstop ever since.” Indeed, High Wire has installed DAS Audio at Miranda Lambert’s, Lainey Wilson’s, Tequila Cowboys, the Sun Diner, and several other venues in the district and beyond. “With the whole new generation of night clubs in downtown Nashville, we needed a company and a product that could support the level of technical advances we wanted to achieve.”
Jones concludes, “There are millions and millions of tourists coming through these venues year after year, and they expect this to be a completely different experience than they can have in their hometown. DAS Audio has helped us to achieve the clarity, and the volume needed to create that experience.”