BOSTON – Following the success of the Boston band’s hometown St. Patrick’s Day streaming performance, Streaming Outta Fenway marked the first-ever music event without a live audience, to be held at a major U.S. venue. It also marked the first music performers ever played on the infield at Boston’s legendary baseball park.
The event was held on May 29th and featured a “Double Play”, with their longtime friend Bruce Springsteen helping out remotely for a couple songs. Towards the end of the show vocalist Ken Casey asked the viewing audience, “Is New Jersey in the house?” and there was Springsteen on the Diamond Vision screen, ready for his first plugged-in, full-band performance since the country was locked down. The two joined together to cover DKMs’ “Rose Tattoo” as well as Bruce’s “American Land.” The event was viewed over nine million times worldwide, while raising money for charity.
The event was sponsored by Pega (Pegasystems), a local software company that recently inked a deal with the band to support both of their live stream events. Streaming Outta Fenway raised over $700,000 and counting for charities such as The Boston Resiliency Fund, Feeding America®, and Habitat for Humanity, Greater Boston. Pega aided the charity event by donating a generous $51,000 as well as matching another $100,000 donated by fans.
The concert was hailed as a success by viewers from all over the world who tuned into the stream concurrently on the Dropkick Murphys’ Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Twitch pages, as well as live on SiriusXM’s E Street Radio channel. The event also streamed via RedSox.com, MLB.com, NESN.com, USO, Vulture and more.
The show kicked off with an introduction from longtime Red Sox radio announcer Joe Castiglione while Fenway Park organist Josh Kantor accompanied him. The band themselves — Al Barr (co-lead vocals), Tim Brennan (guitars, accordion, mellotron, whistles, vocals), Ken Casey (co-lead vocals), Jeff DaRosa (banjo, bouzouki, mandolin, harmonica, acoustic guitars, vocals), Matt Kelly (drums, percussion, vocals), James Lynch (guitar, vocals), Kevin Rheault (touring bassist), Lee Forshner (touring bagpipe player) — lined up in social distance manner while taking position on the usual infield player’s spots. The exception being the drums were set up behind second base and the two vocalists roamed the grass by the pitcher’s mound.
Brought in to direct the video for the event was Josh Adams, out of Mindpool Live, a Milwaukee video production company. Adams had directed two of the band’s previous concert films and was a natural to slide into this slot. PLSN caught up with him for some words on this event and how he got involved.
“I got a call from the band’s manager, Jeff Castelaz, with an idea about the band doing something different at Fenway. I had shot a couple full length features with them over the years, including a two night stand they did at Fenway with a proper stage and audience years ago. Jeff also happens to hail from Milwaukee, though he resides in LA now.
They had an idea to do this live stream from Fenway, but they didn’t really know how. We batted around several ideas, such as bringing in a stage, but we wanted something more clever. With the amount of band members, it turned out perfectly that we could just spread them out as baseball infield positions, well if you consider the center fielder is playing at the edge of second base. We were able to line the infield with some stage monitors for audio and the two singers kept to either side of the pitcher’s mound. What really made it great was just using the field lights. The camera shots capturing the musicians resembles what the fans might see while watching a ball game.”
Adams and the Mindpool staff worked hand in hand with the folks at Fenway, including the use of four of their cameras. For placement Josh stationed one wireless camera on a tripod, behind home plate. During breaks in the action (for calls for donations, separate videos etc.) that cameraman relocated to behind second base. Cameras were positioned in each dugout to get cross shots of the players and side shots of the vocalists. A 4th camera was placed in the “high home” position, the standard baseball slot located behind home base.
“Our Vectorworks guy Jamieson Filip worked up a few renderings to depict what we could do. Working with the Fenway folks required a few zoom meetings and some decisions to be made concerning camera angles and lensing. It was deemed that I would use their switcher to cut cameras for the live feed, and of course use their giant LED wall for the portion Bruce played with them. We had a maximum of 35 people allowed in the stadium for the event. That included the band, their backline crew, the Mindpool crew, four stagehands and the staff from Fenway.”
Adams brought a minimum amount of kit from his own shop. This included a video facia that went around the drum riser as well as half a dozen PTZ robocams. “I had grabbed the cameras we normally use on the Foo Fighters tour and brought them along. This allowed me to have a POV shot of each band member.”
In addition, two drones (along with their pilots) were brought in to capture additional angled shots. Adams expands on this, “We used one to circle the infield while flying low. The other one went up as high as 450’, that was our flight clearance level. It handles the periphery shots. This came out great when the band launched into the old hit by Boston’s own Standells’ “Dirty Water.” The drone captured imagery of the Charles River as well as downtown Boston, before flying back into Fenway. It was an awesome shot.”
Josh and his team are working on something else special for July, but an NDA prevents them disclosing what that will be, but PLSN plans to cover that as well. Til then he notes, “This whole concept was great and turned out well, raising money for great causes. We would love to see other artists taking over their local ballparks in a similar way. It’s a great way to help the world and have fun playing music. There’s a lot of folks sitting at home that are starved for entertainment and a lot of charities that could use some help.”
Band and Crew, (not all were on site, but equally fundamental to this production)
Dropkick Murphys
- Al Barr
- Tim Brennan
- Ken Casey
- Jeff DaRosa
- James Lynch
- Matt Kelly
- Lee Forshner
- Kevin Rheault
Executive Producers
- Ken Casey
- Jeff Castelaz
- Josh Adams
Producers
- Chris Phillips
- Sean Dore
- Amy Decker
- Director: Josh Adams
- Ballpark Announcer- Joe Castiglione
- Organist – Josh Kantor
- Steaming Outta Fenway
- Poster and LED Wall Graphics – Jason Lowery
Dropkick Murphys Crew
- Tour Manager: Evan Tolonen
- Production Manager: Greg “Grizz” Middleton
- FOH Engineer: Pete Robertson
- Stage Manager/Monitor Engineer: Jon Marcantonio
- Guitar Tech: Jay Cannava
- Guitar Tech: Dave Stauble
- UltraSound Tech: Connor Riley
- Pro Tools Operator: Greg Allen
- UltraSound: Scott Tkachuk
- Stagehand: Luke Buckbee
- Stagehand: Shawn Flores
- Stagehand: Mike Kadomiya
- Stagehand: Ethan Chase
Dropkick Murphys Merch
- Kings Road Merch: Karl Hensel
- Acme Print Company: Shawn Flores
Cast Management
- Jeff Castelaz
- Amy Decker
- Sean Dore
- Chris Phillips
- Benton Oliver
- Amanda Harrison
Bruce Springsteen
- Manager: Jon Landau
- Manager: Barbara Carr
- Audio Engineer: Rob Lebret
- Director: Thom Zimny
Pega
- Michael Brenner
- Tom Libretto
- Alex Nicholson
- Lisa Pintchman
- Don Schuerman
- Alan Trefler
- Associate Producer: Sandi Anderson Adams
- Co-Producer: Darren Cole
- Producer: Ryan Lemire-Gonzalez
- Technical Producer: Jamieson Filip
MINDPOOL LIVE
- Engineer In Charge: Dan Albert
- Robo Op / Engineer: Megan Brandenburger
- Fenway Drone Operator: Jovan Tanasijevic
- Fenway Drone Operator: Juan Navarro
- Fenway Drone Operator: Jacob Ballin
- City Drone Operator: Schuyler Ortega
- Technical Logistics Manager: Jeff “Slim” Richard
- Video Editor: Darren Cole
- Video Editor: Alexandria Fernandes
- Graphics Operator: Chet Miller
- Publicist: Marci Pelzer
FOR FENWAY PARK
- Fenway House Producer: John Carter
- Technical Director: Steve Roman
- Engineer: Jason Notermann
- Shader: Tami Nguyen
- House Audio / E2 Operator: Mike Testa
- LED / Encoding Tech Engineer: Luke Fraser
- Crossfire Operator: Stacey Lamboni
- Camera Operator: Pete Zamachaj
- Camera Operator: CJ Dudek
For more information, visit Mindpool Live: www.mindpoollive.com
A Behind the scenes video can be viewed Here
Or watch the show Here
