SW19 production arm handles Mark Knopfler tour

Having recently launched a new live production arm to its business, SW19 is now handling the logistics of Mark Knopfler’s current tour.

Following his recent move to SW19, production manager Kevin Hopgood has been working closely with both Knopfler and his manager Paul Crockford, making the decision to take on the current tour something of a logical step.

“Most people on the tour, including Paul’s team of Lauren Sass and Bree Ishikawa have been working with Mark for many years; they’re great people to work with and Mark has such a good work ethic,” said Hopgood. “We’re doing 71 shows over four months during this tour, which started in mid April and will finish at the end of July, with around five or six shows a week, most of which are back to backs. We do a residency at the RAH for six days, which normally falls in the middle of the run.”

Despite the current economic constraints affecting the touring industry, Hopgood claims that Knopfler and his crew have stuck to their original ethos. “Mark’s tours are about doing things properly, rather than the money, which is refreshing,” he explained. “He makes touring decisions quite early, so there’s plenty of lead time, which is also a big help, and we had sold out a lot of shows early on. We’ve been doing some big capacity venues across Europe and people really get value for money – it’s a two hour show, which includes Dire Straits numbers as well as Mark’s own material too.”

The current tour has seen some changes of supplier, with Entec, whom Hopgood has had an association for many years, handling lighting for the first time, although lighting designer Simon Tutchener and the lighting crew have remained the same for a number of tours. Meanwhile, Lars Brogaard’s Major Tom continues to supply audio requirements.

“We like to work with smaller companies,” said Hopgood. “Marks’ relationship with people is very strong and very important to the tour, plus we feel we work better with smaller companies.

“The most important thing on the tour is audio. It has to sound right above everything else. It looks great too – we’ve kept that very simple and haven’t included any video. Lars has just bought the Meyer Leo system and we think we’re the first arena tour in Europe to go out with it. Dave Dixon at FOH, and Sven Waldheim, the system tech, were keen to work with the Leo, having listened to a lot of different systems. We’ve changed the bass cabinet and the configuration, taking it from a two to a three-box system, which seems to work better for Mark’s type of music, which has an acoustic folk vibe to it in some of the more recent material.

“We’ve also changed consoles from DiGiCo D5s to SD7s, which is working out well. We have 96 inputs, with nine players on stage; Mark rarely does the same set list twice, so sometimes there are instrumentation changes – and there are a lot of instruments, as the guys in the band play lots of different things, which means we have a whole truck full of backline, including a lot of guitars. Mark tends to change guitars for most tracks and sometimes within tracks, so we have about 50 guitars in total, including collectables like a 1958 Les Paul and the National from the Brothers in Arms album cover. Because these instruments are vintage, you can’t mess around with their insides, which means there are lots of buzzes bought about by local power conditions & building quirks and that brings its own challenges.”

To cope with this, the tour has five backline crew: a drum tech, a keyboard tech and three guitar techs.

“We have to take a lot of care when we’re touring, as some of the guitars are worth huge amounts of money. In fact, they have their own security guard who goes on stage after the soundcheck while the crew take a break.”