Gardner is an in-demand live audio engineer who,
over the past 13 years, has toured with the likes
of Alexisonfire, City and Colour, Matthew Good,
and Sam Roberts Band, to name a select few. His
most recent regular client, though, is Arkells. Six
years ago, he started with the band as their FOH
engineer, tour manager, and production manager
– roles he has kept as the group’s stock has soared
from packing music clubs to hockey arenas across
the country.
Considering their history together, Gard-
ner has a pretty good hold on Arkells’ catalogue
and how their approach to live performance has
evolved with each new album and tour cycle. Still,
he says that having a few days of full-production
rehearsals in Brampton, ON, leading up to the
opening date was a big help in boosting every-
one’s confidence and priming them to come out
swinging for the first show in Edmonton.
“Having a few days in Brampton really helped
as it allowed the tour crew to get really familiar with
the gear we were using and the flow of the day
that we would need once the shows started,” shares
Gardner. “It also allowed us to make some changes
to our lighting package, with PRG being so close by.”
The key to getting everybody running at full
steam, though, was the band being able to work-
shop and then solidify their set list. “That meant we
could all walk into the arena with a set number of
songs programmed for audio and lighting, as with
five records, it can be a bit of a battle to get the
song list down to a manageable number for a tour
like this.”
d&b audiotechnik
J Series & V Series
PA system for Arkells’
Rally Cry Tour
Of course, there’s flexibility built into their
workflows to handle a few surprises from night to
night. Arkells are the genuine article – a big factor
in driving their success over the years – and are
known to dig up some deeper cuts or kick into
some of their much-loved Motown covers when
the mood strikes.
What’s more, for the Rally Cry Tour, the band
actually launched a “song request line” – a toll-
free number that fans could call to record a song
request for a specific stop on the tour. Notably,
Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas called in to
request “Blueprint,” one of the band’s earliest cuts,
which they performed for the Toronto date.
The d&b system they first flew in Brampton and
then carried across the country was built around the
company’s large-format J Series and more compact V
Series three-way line array enclosures.
The main left and right hangs were each
comprised of 12 J8s, with an 80-degree horizontal
dispersion, over four J12s, with their wider 120-de-
gree dispersion. For outfills, they had hangs of
12 V8s per side, though as Halliwell notes, for the
sold-out Toronto date, they increased the main and
outfill counts to 20 J Series and 16 V Series boxes
per side, respectively.
Handling the low end were 12 B2 subwoofers
in an arc delay configuration while eight Q7 point-
source boxes were deployed as front fills.
“I really enjoy working with d&b systems
because they’re very well engineered as a total
package that includes everything from the rigging
hardware, the speakers, and amps to the design
and control software,” offers Halliwell. “I first used
a d&b J Series rig on tour with Leonard Cohen in
Europe for a few festivals a number of years ago
and thought it sounded great. I’ve been using their
J and V systems regularly since 2015.”
Halliwell has been working as a freelance sys-
tem tech, engineer, and mixer for roughly 25 years,
and in addition to Cohen, has joined artists includ-
ing Prince, Anne Murray, Michael Bublé, The Tragi-
cally Hip, and many others on the road throughout
his career. He’s been the senior systems engineer
with PRG Toronto (formerly VER) since 2015.
Halliwell says he was excited to join the tour
as, in addition to being an Arkells fan, he had a
chance to mix the band in their early days of play-
ing around Southern Ontario and enjoyed their
collaborations.
A huge selling point of the d&b solution for
Gardner is the uniform voicing across the differ-
ent-sized J, V, and Y Series products, which offers a
consistent experience throughout the entire venue
from night to night. “The coverage from the top of
the arena all the way to the front row is fantastic,”
he shares. “They’ve developed a really cool Array-
Processing system [within the ArrayCalc software]
so that every seat sounds the same and you also
don’t get weird filtering as you walk between the
main PA and outfills. It truly is seamless audio.”
Picking up on Gardner’s point about d&b’s
digital tools, Halliwell says: “This tour was all in are-
nas, so we didn’t have to change the system much
from gig to gig, except to adjust the hang angles
and trim height to suit each venue using the Ar-
PROFESSIONAL SOUND 27