GRAMMY® Award-winning Contemporary Christian music artist Chris Tomlin—whose
recently released 11th studio album, Never Lose Sight, debuted at No. 1 on the
Billboard Christian Albums Chart—is currently leading a powerful multi-artist
national tour known as Worship Night In America this spring.
Kicking off on April 4 at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, the tour brings
together a diverse array of music styles for nearly two dozen concerts staged
across the US through mid May. Artists Big Daddy Weave, Phil Wickham and Zach
Williams join Tomlin performing everything from high-energy worship songs to
intimate acoustic ballads, and as he has for several years now, Tomlin is relying on
an L-Acoustics K1/Kara combination to get every note and lyric across clearly.
The PA system, provided by Indianapolis-based Mid-America Sound, consists of 28
K1 and 12 Kara enclosures split evenly between stereo hangs, with the Kara acting
as downfill speakers. Thirty-six more Karas are split 18 per side as the flown
sidefills, while six more Kara boxes are placed in four strategic locations as front
fills. Sixteen SB28 subwoofers arrayed in 4×4 cardioid configurations amply handle
low end.
The main system is driven by 14 LA12X amplified controllers—the first time Tomlin
has taken these out on the road—while 16 LA8 power the Kara down, front and side
fills, as well as the subwoofers. The tour also uses four DiGiCo SD Series consoles
and two Dolby Lake processors, which are accessible through an insert point on the
DiGiCo SD10 console used by Tomlin’s front-of-house mixer, Kyle McMahon.
McMahon, who began mixing FOH for Tomlin this year after having previously
worked with the artist as his monitor engineer, says that the L-Acoustics K1/Kara
combination has worked well for Tomlin’s multi-artist tours for over five years.
Nick Turner, the system technician on Worship Night In America, says he’s noticed
the volume levels going from 92 dB(A) to 102 dB(A) during the course of a single
show. He notes another reason the K1/Kara combination has worked so well for
Tomlin now and in the past: in certain smaller venues on the tours, the spaces
allow them to use the Kara boxes as the main PA system, with 12 to 18 Kara
hanging per side. And he likes the fact that the entire system can be packed into
three semi trucks, keeping the tour economically sound.
McMahon, who has been a fan of L-Acoustics since he first worked on a V-DOSC
system a decade ago, says the K1 and Kara are easy to specify for a wide range of
shows. “They just sound great on vocals, and they play well together in a system,’
he says. “That’s why we developed this configuration over the last few tours with
Chris, in an attempt to keep things as consistent as possible from tour to tour, and
show to show.’
For a list of Worship Night In America’s upcoming tour stops, visit www.christomlin.com. Mid-America
Sound can likewise be found online at www.midamericasound.com.
