Nashville’s historic Cannery Row is a small enclave of 19th century warehouses exemplifying the food processing industry that helped shape Nashville more than a century ago. Today, it is a hub of the Nashville entertainment scene is located downtown nearby famed Music Row.
Cannery Row’s Mercy Lounge and Cannery Ballroom were recently updated with new line arrays and subwoofers from RCF.
The multi-club entertainment mecca showcases Nashville singer-songwriters, the best in up-and-coming buzz bands and at the same time offers a large enough facility for national acts.
Built in 1883, the Cannery housed a country music theater in the late 70s and evolved into one of Nashville’s primary music venues in the 80s and early 90s.
Taking over operations, owner Todd Olhouser was looking to upgrade the technology looking to maintain the quality of sound and satisfy performer needs. Having created a vibe that caters to the customers, the Mercy is also a favorite spot for A-level touring acts coming through town. With that he turned to the major touring company expertise of Thunder Audio to provide the solution.
After evaluating the rooms and the diversity of entertainment, Thunder turned to RCF.
“We felt RCF would be an outstanding choice,” says Thunder’s Nashville touring rep Colin Cargile. He admits it wasn’t easy, with the odd shaped room design and low ceilings.
For the 500 capacity Mercy Lounge, the decision was to use the RCF Theater and Touring Series with four RCF TTP5-A point source arrays to keep the throw narrow and still cover the depth of the room, coupled with four TTS36-A double 18-inch subwoofers.
An additional four TT52-A low-profile dual 5-inch two-way cabinets were used for front fills on the lip of the stage.
The Cannery Ballroom is the larger of the two facilities with a capacity of 1,000 with more of a rock club feel. The open ballroom concept requiring high energy, yet with low ceilings and an awkward L-shape design made this room more difficult.
Here, Cargile chose the RCF HDL20-A system, an active dual 10-inch two-way line array cabinet that gave him the sound he was looking for with plenty of low frequency energy.
Six HDL20-A per side coupled with six SUB8006-AS dual 18-inch active subwoofers. It then also required a delay line of four HDL10-A dual 8-inch active line array cabinets positioned to fill the rear corner of the room.
