NORTHRIDGE, California – Music Inc. of Louisiana is a music
store in Gonzales, Louisiana that offers a complete selection of instruments,
gear and services, from guitars, amps and PA systems to music lessons and more.
Music Inc. owner Brandt Bourque (who purchased Music Inc. in January 2012) has
had strong ties to the community going back to the store’s founding in 1969 and
has seen first-hand the hardships caused by the weather and environmental disasters
the Gulf Coast region has experienced. To better serve those in need, several
leadership groups recently built a custom mobile kitchen, in which Music Inc.
installed a pair of HARMAN’s JBL EON510 powered speakers to function as the
vehicle’s mobile PA system.
“Some of the people on the project come from organizations that have
helped feed victims and workers in the aftermath of the oil spills along the
Gulf, after Hurricane Gustav and after the recent tornadoes in Alabama,” said Scott
Duplechein, head of the Leadership Ascension Response Kitchen project. “While
spending a lot of time at the ground zero points of these disaster areas the
teams were faced with many challenges. Working out of the backs of trucks and
cargo trailers, we found that simply preparing and serving hot meals to relief
workers and victims was extremely difficult. The issues we faced led to the
idea of creating a mobile disaster relief kitchen.”
The coalition pooled its resources and raised the funding to create a
custom kitchen on wheels. “The kitchen is built on a 28-foot-long gooseneck
trailer and is equipped with a griddle, stove, two deep fryers, a full-size
refrigerator and a freezer,” Bourque noted. “It is set up to run on gas or
generator power. We also decided to outfit the trailer with a pair of JBL
EON510 powered PA speakers.”
The trailer was first used in the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac in
flooded areas of south Louisiana’s St. John parish. “In addition to providing
hot meals, the addition of the EON510 speakers allowed the trailer to serve as
a central source of information and to provide important announcements,”
Bourque said.
“We chose the JBL EON510 because it met some very specific
requirements,” Bourque continued. “We needed speakers that were durable,
portable and could be set up and operated easily. The speakers needed to be
able to be set up, torn down and stored quickly. Also, the speakers needed to
be able to handle the high humidity of south Louisiana and the molded shell of
the EON510 make them ideal for this environment. They also had to sound good,
with clear speech intelligibility over a wide area.”
“The trailer has two side cargo doors that give access to the storage
above the gooseneck portion of the trailer. These doorways provide a clean and
secure place to put the speakers when the trailer is stationary. We can also
easily move the speakers to another location if the situation requires a
portable public address system—the EON510’s built-in microphone and line level
inputs and amplifier make this really easy. We also have a permanently mounted
mixer and CD/iPod player inside the trailer that we can use to send audio to
the speakers. The system sounds great and has been working perfectly.”
“Our area in Louisiana has a rich tradition of food and music,” said
Bourque. “Some of our volunteers are world-champion chefs that have won the
Jambalaya World Championships held in Gonzales. For everyone involved in the
mobile disaster relief kitchen, providing a great meal and playing some great
music can really brighten someone’s day and give them hope if they’ve been hit
by a natural disaster.”
For more information on Music Inc.,
please visit www.musicinc.com
For more information on the
Leadership Ascension Response Kitchen project, please visit www.ascensionchamber.com/leadership.html
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