The brainchild of The Foo Fighter’s inimitable front man, Dave Grohl, CalJam, featuring The Foo Fighters, Liam Gallagher, Royal Blood and Queens of the Stone Age, took place in front of a crowd of over 50,000 in Glen Helen, a spectacular outdoor arena in the California Hills.
The one-day festival saw Britannia Row deploy an L-Acoustic K1 system shipped from London, with K2 delays in the field, all supervised by Brit Row’s sales director, Lez Dwight. “I just made sure of the logistical planning,’ said Dwight modestly, “It was our guys in the field that made it so successful.’
Nevertheless, logic states it is no easy task managing a West Coast festival from a base across the ocean, so how and why? According to Lez Dwight, “We had shipped the equipment for the current Foo Fighter’s US tour so had the basic infrastructure in place, and our recent acquisition by Clair Global gave us the support in the US to take this project on with the confidence that we could do it well. We’d collaborated earlier in the year on Ariana’s massive One Love concert in Manchester so had established the logistics. We also had help from our friends at US Audio who provided excellent additional crew and equipment.’
“I thought they were great,’ said Liam Gallagher’s front of house engineer, Shan Hira. “I’d not met Lez before. He did not disappoint. It was a full-on festival situation, and the crew were spot on. Their PA techician was Adam Smith, who I knew from an earlier show we did with the Foo Fighters. He’s very good – from both ends of the multi, this was a good experience.’
Hira expanded on some of the detail on the day: “I did walk the field, we got twenty minutes in the morning and to be honest I didn’t do much, just a little bit of EQ specifically for me. Adam is a really good PA technician, as they all were on the day, both US and UK personnel working for Britrow. The Foo’s gig we did earlier in the year with Adam was a festival in South Korea. What I heard there, and that was a K1 system as well, was one of the best sounding PA’s I’ve ever heard in the open air: Bryan Worthen the Foo’s FoH said the same thing. So, when I came here and saw Adam again it was already someone I knew I could trust. I have absolute respect for the way he sets things up; if he says, “this is what’s what and sounds good here’ you know exactly what you will be working with.’
