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Elevation Studios will offer creative playground for mega tours





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Kick drums thunder across the nation as restless artists prepare to resurface in front of millions of fans. And in the eye of the storm, a Nashvillian is erecting a massive $100 million facility that will harness the exploding energy from a booming mega-tour industry.

As it stands, Pennsylvania’s Rock Lititz is the sole place in North America engineered and built specifically to conceptualize, practice and workshop massive and modern concert tours from the ground up.

But that could soon change in a local way.

Enter Eric Elwell, the passionate longtime Nashville tour management and audio engineering veteran-turned-business owner, and his ambitious plan for Elevation Studios at Fairview.

For Elwell, the founder and CEO of Elevation Studios, the $100 million, 27-acre venture is a necessary labor of love in an evolving industry.

“There’s something about a live show that cannot be captured in a recording. There is really some interesting neuroscience research going on around that. Is it the physical transfer of sweat and pheromones?” posed Elwell hypothetically. “There’s something deep buried in our DNA as human beings around this tribal culture thing that live music brings out in us.”

If all goes according to plan, Fairview will soon become host to a staging ground for some of the biggest and most modern mega concert tours the world has to offer.Rendering courtesy of Elevation Studios

If all goes according to plan, Fairview will soon become host to a staging ground for some of the biggest and most modern mega concert tours the world has to offer.Rendering courtesy of Elevation Studios

How the industry got here

While love of live music has been flowing through our veins throughout human history, in recent years, the corporate infrastructure lifting it up as profitable has reached record heights.

According to Rolling Stone, there are already twice as many shows booked in 2022 as there were in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

That growth began as the music economy moved away from being built on physical sales after the advent of revenue-snatching music-sharing services and the corresponding rebirth of single-buying culture in the 2000s.

“Suddenly it was like the 1950s and ‘60s,” Elwell said. “Now it’s a dollar a song and the entire economy of recording collapsed by 90%.”

If all goes according to plan, Fairview will soon become host to a staging ground for some of the biggest and most modern mega concert tours the world has to offer.Rendering courtesy of Elevation Studios

If all goes according to plan, Fairview will soon become host to a staging ground for some of the biggest and most modern mega concert tours the world has to offer.Rendering courtesy of Elevation Studios

The reaction by record companies and their artists looking to maintain their lifestyles was to play live, and to play live a lot.

“Instead of touring a couple months a year, it became eight, nine, 10 months a year,” Elwell said. “The live industry has just exploded in the last 15 years.”

More shows inherently birthed more competition among those looking to sell a few thousand tickets on a given night.

“If you can’t sing, what do you do? You add lights,” Elwell said with a laugh. “You’ve got to have lots of distraction, pyro and running around, big video and better hats.”

In turn, increased competition brought new levels of spectacle and innovation to the table when preparing a run.

According to Elwell, Taylor Swift’s team utilizes 35 to 40 53-foot semis to transport her arena show from city to city, arena to arena.

And most A-list acts, he said, tap around 20 to 40 semis capable of hauling 80,000 pounds each.

For the people behind the scenes, that equates to hauling about 3.2 million pounds of gear, which needs to be set up at an arena from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., with $2 million to $5 million worth of ticket buyers waiting anxiously.

If all goes according to plan, Fairview will soon become host to a staging ground for some of the biggest and most modern mega concert tours the world has to offer.Rendering courtesy of Elevation Studios

If all goes according to plan, Fairview will soon become host to a staging ground for some of the biggest and most modern mega concert tours the world has to offer.Rendering courtesy of Elevation Studios

“The circus got bigger. What people are craving these days is an immersive experience,” Elwell said. “Now we’ve got Pink flying to the 300 section on a wire. We’ve got Gene Simmons from Kiss riding a 50-foot fire-breathing dragon. The circus has become the show.”

And infrastructure has not yet caught up with demand. Arenas still offer the only spaces where those pulling the strings of shows intended for that large of a space can practice, test and create.

According to Elwell, most arenas in the U.S. are booked by revenue-generating events an average of 26 days a month, leaving what he perceived as an obvious need for artists.

“With the increasing complexity, we’re doing more and more and more. The days aren’t getting any longer. Now we’ve got to figure out how to do a lot more in a shorter time,” said Elwell, noting every mistake is magnified in the world of viral videos. “Redundancy, efficiency and scalability become the words of the day.”

Elevation Studios logo

Elevation Studios logo

Elevation Studios

That’s why in September, site work is set to begin at Elwell and his investors’ 27-acre private location west of Nashville off Interstate 40 at Exit 182 in Fairview.

Then, in late December or early January, construction is scheduled to begin on an eight-stage, state-of-the-art facility acoustically engineered by Steven Durr, complete with 40,000 square feet of accompanying enclosed managerial, amenity and meeting space and HD fiber technology.

“What the industry really needs is arenas without seats. That’s what we’re building,” Elwell said. “We’re building the physical structure of the arena.”

He expanded on the model, which is based on the largely standard hockey rink based U.S. arena size.

 

 

“If you just put up walls outside the hockey dashers and provided a roof structure that would suspend up to a million pounds so we can hang the equivalent of 120 F-150 trucks over your head, that’s what a touring group needs and that’s what we’re building,” Elwell said.

When it’s done, the site will host thousands of individuals working on various tours at any one time but will employ only 20 to 30 people directly. Meanwhile, a once lonely Flying J station nearby will service potential hordes of new equipment transporting trucks.

Veteran tour manager Alan K. Floyd offered his praise for the idea in an Elevation news release.

“In my 20 plus year history of touring with Beyoncé as well as other top entertainment clients, the execution of pre-tour rehearsals was one of the largest challenges we faced due to the limited availability of large-scale facilities,” Floyd said. “Elevation Studios will provide the scale and needed support, all in a private retreat-like setting. This is a long-overdue solution to the creative needs of hundreds of touring artists.”

Its location outside Nashville will put it within a day’s drive of the majority of the U.S. population, saving on what Elwell says is touring’s two biggest costs: transportation and personnel.

How Elwell got here

Working on a $100 million macro industry-level project is a long way to have come for a Kansas native who first fell in love with music as a young boy checking out a significantly smaller-scale spectacle than those he hopes to aid.

“I didn’t choose music; it chose me. I was the kid standing on the street corner; my earliest memories of watching music were watching a marching band go down the street as I’m standing on the curb,” Elwell said. “I was mesmerized by it. I went home and grabbed some coffee cans and my mom’s wooden spoons, and that was my first step to being a drummer.”

From there, it was pursuing a music education, working with small studios in Kansas, trying his hand at live engineering and getting into tour management with rock band Shooting Star before eventually moving to Nashville in 1990.

“I came to Nashville having sold my last set of drums for a Rider truck and three months’ rent,” said Elwell, noting he had nothing lined up but did have a few friends in the city.

“I was willing to do anything I had to do to survive to get my foot in the door. While the other guys were asleep in bed, I was delivering equipment.”

Elwell got off to a bit of a rough start.

“One of my first days on Music Row, I almost ran over Marty Stuart,” he said.

“He came out from between two parked cars and he stepped out into traffic. Of course I’ve buried my nose in the car and came to a screeching stop inches from him. He saw his life flash before his eyes.

“He’s apologizing through the windshield, and I’m just like ‘(Expletive), I almost killed Marty Stuart. What a way to start my career in Nashville.’ “

But eventually Elwell parlayed his work ethic, experience and connections into a multifaceted career that saw him manage tours for Sara Evans and Jo Dee Messina and work as front of house engineer for Billy Currington, LeAnn Rimes, Sugarland and Joe Nichols, to name a few.

Eventually, he’d enter into the business side of the music industry as well.

Though he first conceptualized Elevation Studios in 2007, Elwell opted to finally pursue the idea in 2018 after a stint as senior manager of business development at HARMAN International, which sells touring-based technology.

Even as a successful corporate type, the memory of the marching band in his head would not fade.

“I felt really removed from the creation of music,” Elwell said. “I wasn’t able to be a part of that, and it was a loss to me.”

With Elwell moving back toward his first passion in life in a bold business venture, it’s shaping up to have been one heck of a move.

“I’m already talking to the biggest acts in the world,” Elwell said with a good-natured laugh. “And I’m talking to them about doing extended stays in Fairview, Tennessee.”

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