PRD-2026-058 · Tour Feature · p.21
A twelve-truck country run, three doors east of FOH.
For Brooks & Mavericks · Southern Pavement Tour, the 22 May 2026 night at Bridgestone Arena: a 12-truck country run, 800 A house tie at the load-dock disconnect, four Motion Labs PD-24 sub-distros, a DCA-150 paralleled backup on the Demonbreun Street side, and an ETCP-card rigging electrician on the deck for the 36 chain motors. Cable manifest, cue log, and credit card follow.
The tour is twelve trucks deep into a fifty-six-show summer; Nashville is the third-to-last date before a two-week dark window in June. The lighting designer has built a 36-motor truss array and a six-pod follow-spot package. The audio package is L-Acoustics K2 over a center-cluster K1 on a delayed time-of-flight rig. Bridgestone’s house service is a 1,200 A switchgear room on the load-dock side; the tour requested 800 A on a single Cam-Lok tap with a documented load calc.
Advance & walk-through
The advance came in twelve weeks out. The lighting designer sent us a full Vectorworks plot with hang positions, fixture inventory, and circuit-numbering down to the dimmer-rack pickup. Marcus walked Bridgestone with Bridgestone’s house electrician (Bart Sandlin, IBEW 429 hand) and the AHJ (Metro Codes inspector Maria Castile) on 28 April, four weeks before the show. We reviewed the load-dock service, the tap pickup, the cable path to the FOH platform, the audio-iso path, and the chain-motor distro location. Walk-through took ninety minutes; the AHJ signed off on the single-line provisionally and asked for the dated Megger log at tie-in.
One change came out of the walk-through. The designer wanted a follow-spot circuit on a Bridgestone gallery position that had been removed in a 2022 renovation; the position no longer exists. We reassigned the follow-spot to an alternative pickup on the lower bowl and updated the lighting plot with the LD over a 12-minute video call. The change was distributed in the call sheet before load-in.
Tie-in, Megger, phase-rotate
22 May 04:00 CDT, two trucks of cable arrived. We staged at the load-dock between two trade-vendor semis and rigged into the switchgear room at 06:30 CDT. Bart Sandlin had the panel open at our arrival; we land at the 1,200 A bus through a 800 A factory-set Cam-Lok adapter. Three phases plus neutral plus ground, color-coded and torqued to the panel manufacturer’s value (Square-D PowerLink, 250 in-lb on the lug bolts).
Megger reading at 06:55 CDT: 6,200 megohms feeder-to-ground, 6,400 megohms feeder-to-feeder. Phase rotation read ABC at the head-end after a brief check at 07:02. Tie-in closed at 07:14 CDT, three minutes ahead of schedule. We then ran the same Megger + rotation cycle at each of the four PD-24 sub-distros, all of which had been pre-tested in the bay the previous day. Total time from arrival to all-systems-energized: 1 hour 14 minutes.
Cable manifest
Cable manifest for PRD-2026-058 ran 28 individual labeled cables. Headers below; full manifest in the bound issue at the bay.
| Label | Gauge | Length | From | To | Megger (MΩ) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BSP-058-FX-A1 | 4/0 Type W | 100 ft | Bridgestone SW-3 | PD-48 head-end | 6,200 |
| BSP-058-FX-A2 | 4/0 Type W | 100 ft | Bridgestone SW-3 | PD-48 head-end | 6,400 |
| BSP-058-FX-A3 | 4/0 Type W | 100 ft | Bridgestone SW-3 | PD-48 head-end | 5,900 |
| BSP-058-FX-N | 4/0 Type W | 100 ft | Bridgestone SW-3 | PD-48 head-end | 6,100 |
| BSP-058-FX-G | 4/0 Type W | 100 ft | Bridgestone SW-3 | PD-48 head-end | 6,300 |
| BSP-058-LX-1 | #2 Type W (set) | 50 ft | PD-48 head-end | PD-24 lighting | 5,600 |
| BSP-058-LX-2 | #2 Type W (set) | 50 ft | PD-48 head-end | PD-24 audio | 5,400 |
| BSP-058-LX-3 | #2 Type W (set) | 50 ft | PD-48 head-end | PD-24 video | 5,800 |
| BSP-058-LX-4 | #2 Type W (set) | 50 ft | PD-48 head-end | PD-24 rigging-motor | 5,500 |
| BSP-058-MOT-01..36 | Socapex 19-pin (×6) | 30 ft ea | PD-24 rigging-motor | CM Lodestar bank | 4,800–5,200 |
Show cue log
Lighting designer’s show file ran 142 cues. We tracked the 11 power-relevant cues that triggered switching events on the audio iso bus or the chain-motor controller:
| Cue | Time | Position | Event | Verified by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CUE 0.5 | T-30 | Backstage | House to show power | Driskill (SR2) |
| CUE 1 | 19:08 CDT | FOH | Doors close → opener | Hatton (FOH) |
| CUE 22 | 19:42 CDT | USL | Motor bank trim 1 → 2 | Okonkwo-St.Clair (USL) |
| CUE 47 | 20:14 CDT | FOH | Audio iso bus check | Singh-Hartley (FOH) |
| CUE 71 | 20:48 CDT | USL | Motor bank trim 2 → 3 | Okonkwo-St.Clair (USL) |
| CUE 89 | 21:10 CDT | SR2 | Encore prep · backup gen warm | Driskill (SR2) |
| CUE 110 | 21:36 CDT | FOH | Encore-out · house up | Hatton (FOH) |
| CUE 142 | 21:43 CDT | USL | Show power → house | Driskill (SR2) |
What went sideways
Two minor things. At T-90 we got a momentary GFCI trip on a backstage Edison strip in the catering area, attributable to a coffee urn drawing on a 20 A circuit also feeding a hotbox. Cleared by replacing the inline GFCI module with a 30 A unit and balancing the catering load across two circuits. Drew Schenker (caterer) was apologetic, sent us a tray of biscuits at strike.
At CUE 71 (motor trim 2 → 3), one motor was 0.3 inches off trim per the LD’s eye. We dropped trim and ran the motor through a controller diagnostic; brake was clean, encoder was clean, root cause was a Socapex pin we’d strained too hard on the previous trim. Replaced the Socapex feed in 8 minutes, re-Meggered the cable, trim was good. We swapped the affected cable out of the rotation back at the bay; it’s sitting in the quarantine rack as of this writing.
Load-out, cable hung to dry
Load-out cleared at 03:14 CDT on 23 May, four minutes behind the schedule we’d called at FOH. Cables struck and rolled on cable winders; the head-end distro broken-down and rolled to the load dock by 02:50. The DCA-150 backup generator (which we ran for 38 minutes during opener but never carried load) cycled to cool-down at 22:30 and was off the lot by 01:00.
Back at the bay 24 May 04:30 CDT, cable hung on the wall to dry, distros into the rack, paperwork into the binder. Volume 7 of the daily-log book got the green stamp and the date. The show closed with a clean Megger, a clean GFCI cycle, and no recordable incidents.
Credit card
- Production Brooks & Mavericks · Southern Pavement Tour
- Venue Bridgestone Arena · 501 Broadway, Nashville, TN
- Power vendor Briley Stage Power Co. · PRD-2026-058
- Lead electrician M. Okonkwo-St.Clair (ETCP EE-22148, RA-08661)
- Crew R. Driskill (FOH dispatch); E. Singh-Hartley (audio iso); H. Polites (rigging electrician); T. Mahari (cable runner)
- Rigging vendor C.P. Rigging · ETCP-certified
- AHJ Metro Codes & Building Safety · Insp. Maria Castile
- House electrician Bart Sandlin · IBEW 429
- Documentary photography M. Okonkwo-St.Clair
References & further reading
- Bridgestone Arena — venue spec sheet
- NFPA 70 — NEC 520.53, 520.44, 250.30
- C.P. Rigging — Nashville rigging vendor
- IBEW Local 429 — Bridgestone house electrician’s local
- Columbus McKinnon — CM Lodestar chain motors
- Motion Labs — PD-48 head-end & PD-24 sub-distro
- Multiquip DCA-150 — paralleled backup spec
- ETCP card-holder lookup
- Metro Codes & Building Safety
- Megger MIT420/2 — insulation tester used in field