Elevation Studios has announced plans for a $100-million tour production campus in Nashville, Tennessee to serve the growing demand for large-scale rehearsal spaces and production facilities.
With multiple large-scale soundstages and an inspiring, green campus, Elevation’s proximity to Nashville and its legions of skilled music professionals will support the rebirth of live events and the evolution of live streaming.
The endeavor’s ambition reflects the scale of the opportunities coming with the next wave of live performance growth. The industry is poised for a boom generated by pent-up demand.
Already this year, Live Nation has reportedly booked twice as many shows for 2022 than happened in 2019, according to Rolling Stone.
The campus also aims to capture the growing livestream market, a medium that’s gone from niche to selling hundreds of thousands of tickets in a few months.
Eric Elwell (the driving force behind Elevation Studios) and his team have witnessed all of live music’s ups and downs and have nearly a century of combined touring and production experience, between them working with major artists including Kanye West, One Republic, Guns n' Roses, Backstreet Boys, Prince, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Sugarland, Sara Bareilles, Vince Gill, and Amy Grant, as well as work on Bonnaroo Fest, Austin City Limits Fest, and the CMA Awards.
They have started, built, and sold companies in digital music and the live industry.
Elwell his team know firsthand the wonders that come together when a crew and talent get the space to perfect the production. With millions at stake for each night’s performance, preparation, testing, and redundancy protocols for the complex sound, lighting, and video systems are essential.
Major touring productions require meticulous logistics and planning for equipment, and 50 to 150 touring crew members. Engineering documents and safety procedures are required to suspend hundreds of thousands of pounds of equipment over the audience’s heads.
The stakes, both financial and safety-wise – are enormous – and rehearsing in full-scale facilities are essential to safe, reliable systems that need to work flawlessly after being transported hundreds of miles overnight in 20 to 40 semi-trucks each night.