NASHVILLE — Little Big Town is hitting the road again this year with the band’s biggest production so far. The 2014 tour rig, supplied by Bandit Lites, includes 28 of Bandit’s recently-acquired Ayrton MagicPanel 602 matrix-style LED fixtures, as specified by tour LD Chris Shrom.
More details from Bandit Lites (www.banditlites.com):
The MagicPanel 602 is comprised of a 6×6 matrix of 45-millimeter optics that emit 7.5 degree beams. Equipped with continuous unlimited pan and tilt rotation, it is able to display media thank to its Arkaos KlingNet protocol or to be controlled via DMX RDM protocol through its XLR connectors. The display is made up of 36 15 Watt LED RGBW modules fitted with high-output 7.5° 45-mm optics, the unit runs on a sophisticated and particularly quiet cooling system and offers an overall luminous flux in excess of 14,000 lumen for a consumption of 600W.
Lighting designer Chris Shrom is utilizing 28 MagicPanel 602 panels on Little Big Town’s summer tour in a four column, seven row set up that can be adjusted on gripple ladders for lower trim on shows where the weight needs to be reduced in small or medium venues.
“They’re absolutely a lot of fun,” said Shrom of the MagicPanel™602. “I started using different patterns on them for washes, and it translated really, really well. If you don’t like the square boxy look, you can turn off the corner LEDs and make it look round. You can spell out words, letters, numbers, or even run video across them. It is a really versatile light.”
Shrom uses the panels in their extended mode, and while that is 160 channels a piece, he is able to control each pixel independently, giving him plenty of versatility. He also has the panels pixel mapped on a hippo media server backstage, which is also driving the LED wall. Using the pixel mapping option, Shrom can simply tell the hippo to run the appropriate video for a song, and all the processing is taken off his desk.
Shrom controls the fixtures using twelve universes of Art-Net driven by the Jands Vista L5. “At 28 fixtures, having 36 LEDs a piece, the Vista sees just the magic panels as 1036 fixtures. It can get a little busy at times.”
Additional equipment includes VL 3000s, GRNLite PARs and GRNLite washes. Shrom placed VL3500s upstage for additional color and punch.
“I don’t think I had realized how well they would interact with our blow-through LED wall, which sits downstage of the washes,” Shrom said. “I love the look of having lighting in that usually absent space between the stage deck and the truss in the air, large amounts dead space frustrates me to a degree, and for this tour I was able to design a lighting rig that filled a lot of it.”
While last year’s tour revolved around a windblown look (hence the Tornado Tour) production for the current tour is a more streamlined, industrial look, with everything in matte black, including the band gear. Black carpet is on stage, black metal fascia made for the rises, black metal stairs and even the drum hardware was black powder-coated. Bandit accommodated the look by making the clamps for the MagicPanel 602 black as well.
“The black theme brings everything together, but is also accents all the lights we have around the stage,” explained Shrom. “Colors look more saturated, it makes the lights more defined, and most importantly, it really makes the artist stand out visually against all the black gear.”
“I would like to thank Jands Vista, Fred at AC lighting and most of all Bandit for giving me a hand on this one,” Shrom added. “I worked closely with Eddie Welsh at Jands Vista to get everything up and running; we kept testing the show to make sure that I was not overloading the processors too bad, and when I did need a boost in processing power from the T2, we upgraded to the L5 to get this one out the door successfully. It felt like quite the operation putting this whole thing together and I couldn’t have done it without Bandit being willing to get me the console I needed to pull it off.”
Little Big Town’s tour continues into the summer, where the Grammy-award winning group will be previewing music from their upcoming album Pain Killer, set to hit stores October 21.
“If you would like to see the MagicPanel 602 or the Jands Vista L5 in action, check out Little Big Town’s show this summer. I promise… you won’t be disappointed.”
For more tour photos and information, see www.ChrisShrom.com.
