AMPLIFYING
THE RALLY CRY
ACROSS THE COUNTRY WITH ARKELLS
BY ANDREW KING
It’s official: Arkells are an arena band.
The scrappy-but-sweet Canadian rock outfit
turned quite a few heads with the release of Rally
Cry, their fifth studio album and most sonically
ambitious of their career. A lot of that attention
stemmed from the fact that the record contains
its share of overtly political statements, though
the band had another statement to make with
their subsequent tour dates: that they belong at
the top of the heap of Canadian rock bands vying
to headline A-market arenas and major music
festivals in their home and native land.
That’s not to say they haven’t had their
26 PROFESSIONAL SOUND
share of (hockey) barn burners over the last few
years, headlining venues like London, ON’s Bud-
weiser Gardens and Halifax’s Scotiabank Centre.
They even brought out 24,000 fans to Tim Hor-
ton’s Field in their hometown of Hamilton, ON,
last summer – the city’s largest outdoor concert
since Pink Floyd made a stop back in 1975.
But the Rally Cry Tour, which kicked off
Jan. 31 st in Edmonton and carried the band east
through most of February, concluding Feb. 19 th in
Montreal, was almost entirely comprised of arena
dates, including NHL facilities like Edmonton’s
Rogers Place, Winnipeg’s Bell MTS Centre, and of
course, the massive penultimate show at Scotia-
bank Arena in Toronto.
The band carried a production package
supplied by PRG Toronto for the run, built around
an expansive d&b audiotechnik PA and Avid Ven-
ue S6L-32D consoles at both mix positions.
Professional Sound recently caught up with
FOH engineer and production and tour manager
Dave Gardner and PRG systems tech Jon Halli-
well to discuss their experiences on the band’s
largest-scale trek to date.