![]() “ROCK LITITZ ISN’T NECESSARY,” says Fairorth. And Rock Lititz offers a new service - a place to work out all of the kinks, and the largest dedicated rehearsal facility in the world. ![]() The moving platform that slowly carried Justin Timberlake out past the front rows of the crowd on his last tour? The massive bank of video screens that surrounded Jon Bon Jovi in concert? The stage on which Janet Jackson suffered her Super Bowl nipple slip? Lititz’s informal family of firms made all of that and more. (Clair Solutions is designing the sound system for the Fillmore, the new live-music venue in Fishtown.)įor decades, companies in Lititz built big, impressive stuff. Now Fairorth and Gene Clair’s son, Troy, are charting a course into new territory. (Elton John dedicated a subsequent performance of “Candle in the Wind” to him.) Michael Tait is semi-retired. In fact, this project represents the new Lititz Rock-tocracy. The problem-solving DIY ethos of the music biz and the companies in Lititz inspired him, and he eventually became Tait’s right-hand man, partner, and now co-founder of Rock Lititz. I was broke.”) He soon discovered that rock-and-roll is a “cottage industry” in which small bands of creatives conjure up new designs to make artists look and sound their best. Michael Tait, an Australian who’d been a production manager for YES started a lighting company in 1978 shortly afterward, production designer Tom McPhillips arrived, and later founded Atomic Design.įairorth bum-rushed Michael Tait for a job without any great forethought. As time passed, a scene grew around them. They parlayed that present into a career, from parties at Franklin & Marshall College to gigs with Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and eventually the Rolling Stones and beyond. In the early ’60s, two Lititz-born brothers, Roy and Gene Clair, received a sound system from their father as a gift. ![]() Literally nothing!’”įairorth’s mother encouraged him to stay, and in time he learned of the local rock industry that flourished there. “I used to call my mother and say, ‘What am I doing here?’” he recalls. He slides into a seat at the window, fresh from a personal training session nearby, looking very much like a rock star himself - fit at 50, bedecked in black jeans, bulky black boots, and stacks of necklaces and bracelets.įairorth started attending Millersville University in the early ’80s, but as a Philly kid, born in Germantown, he was a little freaked out by the open country. I MEET ROCK LITITZ STUDIO co-owner James “Winky” Fairorth at Rouge, where the host greets him by name.
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