Rock glitz from Lititz, the town that puts the WOW in concert tours

T

HE GIZMO:

Greetings from Rock 'n' Roll Paradise.

Reading has its discount shopping outlets, Hershey its Chocolate World attraction. But for dedicated fans of pop music and high-tech stage production, the places you'd really want to visit (if only you could) would be the factories buzzing in another little Lancaster County town.

Welcome to Lititz (pop. 15,000-plus), the concert production capital of the world.

Yeah, for real.

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR: First stop has to be at the huge, loud and highly active enterprise called Tait Towers, the fantasy factory where many of the biggest, wildest stages and show effects are built for touring acts that include the Rolling Stones, Madonna, U2, Tina Turner, Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen.

On a recent visit to the operation, company president James "Winky" Fairorth let this special guest ride up and down on one of the five synchronized elevators the Spice Girls used to make a big entrance on their recent tour. (The experience gave me new respect for the dames; I felt woozy, and I wasn't even wearing 5-inch heels.)

Also at Tait, lucky me got to play roadie, wheeling around sections of Bruce Spring-steen's stage, surprisingly easy thanks to Tait design innovations (more on that later). And I scampered on the thrust balcony of a strikingly modern, three-story-high, stainless-steel set that Cher is gracing for her long-run engagement at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which opened last night.

I also got to gawk at a Tait-executed backdrop that appears in the new Rolling Stones concert film and at nifty gags they've built, such as the water cannon Ozzy Osbourne used a couple tours back to blast his fans with water and paper.

Next tour stop, across the street, was Atomic Design, a "stage design and scenic softgoods" company that creates stuff like the curtains that drape the Cher stage, a backdrop for Panic! at the Disco or the wall of artfully shaped white panels the Eagles project images on during their show.

The high point here was ducking into a casbah-themed tent Atomic decorated for the Police to hang out in backstage during their outdoor shows this summer.

At the third and final stop - all of a block away - we got to worship at the mother of all concert sound production companies, Clair Brothers Audio Enterprises, which is (or soon will be) pumping up the volume for the touring likes of Oz Fest, Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z, Mariah Carey, Fall Out Boy, Motley Crue and so many more.

"We're into the peak concert touring season now. So we've probably got 50 to 60 shows out every night. I frankly can't keep track," said Barry Clair, one of two second-generation Clairs - the other is Barry's cousin, Troy - now steering the operations.

One recent gig Barry Clair did mention: Clair Brothers powered up the pope at Yankee Stadium.

And most every night, their permanent installation Audio Systems division is strutting its stuff with that beloved Clair Brothers sound at the "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Saturday Night Live" TV studios, at concert venues such as Philly's World Cafe Live and Washington, D.C.'s, Kennedy Center, and at many a sound-conscious house of worship, hotel and restaurant.

At Clair Brothers, lucky me got to put my hands on the latest and greatest in computerized sound mixing boards imported from Europe.

"Nobody's asked for them yet, but we've always got to stay one step ahead of the curve," said a Clair engineer testing one of the boards.

I also got to weigh the comparative merits of two new speaker designs built in-house (one was brighter, the other a little smoother) and blasting Sting's music at deafening levels.

And I got to admire a piece of Clair Brothers history: a speaker cabinet they built for Elvis Presley that was one of the first that could be suspended over a stage. Before that, boxy concert speakers were always plopped on the stage, saving time and money but sacrificing sonic clarity.

TOWN HISTORY: Barry Clair's dad, Roy, and uncle, Gene Clair, started putting Lititz on the concert-production map in the mid-1960s, when both were attending local colleges.

The sound freaks' dad had bought them a fancy speaker and amplifier rig to play around with that the bros put to work during a Franklin & Marshall College concert starring Dionne Warwick, when the system rented for the show proved defective.

The college was so pleased that it gave the guys a contract to do sound for all its shows. When Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons played the school, Valli was so knocked out by the sound he invited the brothers to join him on the road, and their rep began to spread. (Barry still refers to Valli as "Uncle Frankie.")

It wasn't long before they were working other tours, too, with bands as various as the Beach Boys, James Brown, Elton John and the Rolling Stones. They custom-crafted much of the gear, building on Roy's background in industrial arts and and Gene's electronics wizardry to create equipment that could withstand the rigors of the road and make even a football stadium sound like a concert hall.

TAIT ON THE RISE: Some acts deploying Clair Brothers chose to rehearse in and around Lititz so they could fine-tune the production and gear.

In 1972, the English prog-rock band Yes visited for a spell, and the Clairs struck up a close friendship with Michael Tait, then the band's lighting designer.

"He liked Lititz so much he got a place here," recalled Barry Clair.

As Tait's work expanded, he opened a shop in town. His first claim to fame was a mechanized, expanding light tower that packed tight but could be cranked up tall - hence the origins of the company's name. Things really started clicking after Tait designed a motorized, rotating stage enabling Yes to perform in the round - getting closer to fans and packing more bodies into an arena.

Representatives for Kenny Rogers and Barry Manilow soon came calling. Tait Towers' staging business was off and running.

ANOTHER FRIENDSHIP: Atomic Design came on the scene in 1993, again because of a personal relationship.

Its proprietor, London-based production designer Tom McPhillips, was friends with Michael Tait, who encouraged him to relocate to Lititz. "The two companies are engaged in the same business, but we really cooperate, rather than compete," said my Atomic tour guide, Tim Stengel.

THE BIG GET BIGGER: While the recording business keeps shrinking, due to rampant file sharing among young music fans, the concert business is expanding, good news for the Lititz production companies - which collectively employ about 500 people locally - and the town economy. (Clair Brothers' touring division, Clair Brothers-Showco, also has branches elsewhere in the United States, in Switzerland and Japan.)

It certainly helps that the super-colossal nature of today's concert extravaganzas - boasting great sound, multi-level sets with hydraulically moving parts and those extra-fancy video displays - can't adequately be compressed into a digital file or YouTube video.

Plus, ever more acts are hitting the road.

"To survive, to keep selling [older-skewing] CDs, the record companies need to have all their baby boomer acts on tour," noted Tait president Fairorth.

"Of course the younger acts like John Mayer and Michael Buble have to be out there, too, to build a following. And now we're seeing the arena business expanding with a lot of corporate productions," such as "Walking with Dinosaurs," the "American Idols" tour and Cirque du Soleil, a formerly all-Canadian operation that has engaged Tait for four projects.

Oh, and Tait's just signed to take the Radio City Christmas Spectacular national - complete with the Rockettes.

FANTASY FACTORY: Tait prides itself on "turning an idea on a cocktail napkin" into a finished stage production that's finer than the artist conceived, and in amazingly quick order. It took 'em just three weeks from conception to finished product to build the 40-foot-square, elevating stage that Beyonce and her dancers are floating on across Europe.

"We've got two patents pending for aspects of the motorized suspension system on that one," noted Tait vice president and chief designer Adam Davis.

Another project they're hot to chat about is the current Bon Jovi tour.

The band asked for a "scoreboard-style" video wall that could be split apart into "a few pieces," said Davis. The grander solution they got from Tate was a 16,000-pound, 4,000-part system using four Venetian blind-style video screen assemblages moving around the stage on a horseshoe-shaped track.

These one-of-a-kind, two-sided screens compress down to 10 feet then open to 30 feet high, with computer-adjusted imaging to keep proportions correct for spectacular visual effects.

Since Michael Tait build his first tower, the company has been obsessed with making stage gear lighter, easier to pack and easier to build, without sacrificing rigidity. "If you can move a show to Europe on two planes instead of three, you'll save $60,000 in airfare each way," said Fairorth.

Goaded by Springsteen's people, "after they spent a bloody fortune touring the world," Tait came up with a lightweight, modular staging system (now available for rental) that can be built several stories tall - or as small as the act and venue requires.

Other innovations developed in-house: powerful magnets that hold flooring sections together; and custom-machined, tapered fittings and quick-release clamps (adapted from those used in Lititz's traditional farm machinery parts industry) that replace parts secured with bolts and wing nuts.

These improvements let a stage crew assemble and break down a show in far less time than otherwise would be required.

JOIN THE CREW: While Tait Towers, Clair Brothers and Atomic Design don't normally open their shops to visitors, there's one way you can get in - work for them. While the latter two recently expanded their staffs, Tait is hiring.

Tait currently employs 10 outside contractors in the Lititz area that build various widgets, plus 100 employees in-house. Yet the company needs more talent, from designers to computer programmers, welders, machinists, fabricators and inventory clerks. (Founder Michael Tait, by the way, is currently touring the world but remains involved with the company.)

If you don't mind small-town living and the smell of cow manure wafting in from the adjoining pastures, you might feel at home. And you never know who'll be dropping in - Bruce, Billy, Bette, Barry or Bon Jovi - to see how their show's coming together. *

Send e-mail to takiffj@ phillynews.com.