A few weeks back, we had the chance to travel up to French Canada to enjoy the beautiful island vistas that make up one of my new favorite North American cities, Montréal, for the three-day metal extravaganza festival Heavy Montréal. We chronicled some of our adventures in the first episode of our new series, Beer Gods, and our sister site Metal Injection also ran a full report on the festival.
Most of the reporting on these shows tends to revolve around the rock stars, the parties, the fans, and the location itself. So we thought we’d go behind the scenes and speak to some of the working engineers, without whom the festival simply doesn’t run. We caught up with Heavy Montréal’s systems technician and chief engineer, Frederic Cantin from Solotech, the lighting and sound company responsible for building up and running the Heavy Montréal stage, as well as indie rock and EDM festivals Osheaga and Îlsonique.
Fred took us through the sound booth to the backstage, into the forest, and more, to discuss the logistics and challenges of running live sound for a massive, multi-stage festival for a variety of bands, including Slipknot, Lamb of God, Gojira, Faith No More, Revocation, and many more. Check out our mini-doc on the engineers below:
