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John Bevere on the Awe of God Tour.
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Over two weekends this spring, John Bevere and Kim-Walker Smith hit eight cities across the central US for the Awe of God Tour, a promotional tour for Bevere’s newly released book, The Awe of God, as well as the work of his ministry Messenger International and their app Messenger X, a platform that delivers no-cost discipleship resources in 121 languages. Church Production took some time with the tour production director, Aaron Talley, to talk about the gear they used and challenges they encountered during their quick dash across the Midwest, Oklahoma and Texas.
Kim-Walker Smith on Awe of God Tour.
Aaron Talley is the owner of Front Porch Productions and is the longtime tour partner with Kim Walker-Smith after initially meeting her and working with her during their shared time in California. “I've worked for Kim off and on doing different things for most of a decade. And so that's how I got connected with this. She was on that tour and I got brought in. It's a lot less about just like crewing at this point, and more about which one of the family members we get to work with this week. Cause we've all been around each other for so long that it's, you know, it's a really good working relationship and we know each other's families and things like that,” Aaron said.
Aaron’s front of house setup was anchored by a pair of Digico SD12’s, one to run the main PA and another for monitors, but also creating redundancy should his main PA fail. Aaron said, “It's been SD12’s, one SD rack and then [Shure] Axient Wireless and PSM 1000’s.”
Anchoring the FOH
Aaron’s front of house setup was anchored by a pair of Digico SD12’s, one to run the main PA and another for monitors, but also creating redundancy should his main PA fail. Aaron said, “It's been SD12’s, one SD rack and then [Shure] Axient Wireless and PSM 1000’s.” He said he was a big fan of the SD12’s for their compactness and easy set up. They run a tight road set up with a couple of smaller trailers and the SD 12’s seemed like the right choice. “It gave us a lot of flexibility as far as routing, and then it was really just a time where we were upgrading our inventory and the next step in the process of upgrading things was to step up to a nicer console. And so, we walked in and got the twelves. Just the routing capabilities on the fiber things like that were kind of what we needed, because [we use] primarily bus trailers and so we just didn't have a lot of room for a lot of extra stuff. Um, especially with the way the U.S.D.O.T. and trucking regulations are now, things are much tighter on weight restrictions.”
The Digicos are his favorite part of their load out. “I really love the Digico platform.”
He chose the Hog 4 system to control High End Systems Lonestars and Mega Lite Circus Scoops. “It's just kind of kinda my natural go-to and uh, I have plenty of guys that are comfortable on Hog and so it’s kinda been a big deal. And then some of the rigs we've had the opportunity to use, some of the pixel mapping and things like that—Hog does really well.”
Challenges
Even the shortest tours come with challenges though, like having to make a last-minute venue change in Kansas City. “I would say definitely going into churches has its own set of challenges every time. You know, if you're gonna go load into House of Blues every night, you know exactly what you're getting every time. Churches are always built differently. A lot of those places, those guys have been there for years and in some instances they don't know outside of their world that they've operated in for those years. There's a lot of things that are just normal and natural sometimes to the way a certain church works but you walk in and you're like, ‘well this isn't normal at all…’ but that's their normal everyday life,” Aaron said.
He said the key to working with such varied venues and church volunteers was to stay cheery. “It's not that hard to be nice and be respectful of people. There's a lot of guys on the road that aren't that way, and people tell us that all the time. There’s a lot of times when we go into churches and they say, ‘Well this was gonna be our last show after the last few shows that came in. It was so terrible interacting with them, we were never gonna let anybody else back, but you guys have been different.’ So that's just a testament to the crew that you pick, the promoters you work with, and the bands that you work with.”
Working with John Bevere and his ministry was also a breeze. “He wanted to do this thing to push his book, and I haven't worked with him before and they were great to work with. It's always fun getting to meet new people and you know, I think he had a good time.”
Finally, he felt the tour impacted the cities that attended each night as John Bevere would invite people to stand and dedicate themselves to the Lord. “I think it's always interesting to walk into a body of believers because you're at a church, but there are lots of different churches represented at each of these events. And so, you really get to step into a community of believers in that area when you come to do an event like this. You know, some people come just because it's a special event in town. Some people come because they wanna see the band. Some people come because they wanna see the speaker. Some people come because they got drug there by their friends and they don't wanna be there. When you see people stand at the end of the night it's always a good feeling cuz you know that they're engaged with what’s going on and, you know, production really should be somewhat invisible because it's just a tool to convey what the people onstage are trying to do.”
