Lighting designers Eric Cathcart and Michael Grant have been busy lately piecing together three different bands — Cage The Elephant, The Arcs and Silversun Pickups. They’ve managed to work out the scheduling to alternate LD duties from one to the other… timing has been on their side. PLSN spoke with Cathcart and Grant about the Cage The Elephant tour.
Eric Cathcart: There was a lot of guessing in the beginning. Mike had gotten the call from management asking if we could put something together. I was in Europe with another tour. We would do a bit of brainstorming, and I would end up drawing concepts while in my bunk every night after shows. When we put our initial design together, we hadn’t had any communication with the band and we also hadn’t been given much guidance [from management], as far as what size venues we were looking at. I don’t think our initial design went over too well! Fortunately, the band members were fans of our previous work. When we finally started communicating with them, they gave us a few pointers on what they were looking for, and we were able to tweak our initial design to more of what they had in mind.
Michael Grant: Yes, We got a small sketch of what the band was looking for and then it was a matter of choosing the right fixtures, where to place them, and then just finally making it real.
Pods, with Tungsten
Eric Cathcart: We essentially created the overall album cycle design, and then scaled it back for the first leg. However, that being said, after touring the first leg, a few changes were made to the overall design based on things that worked well for us on the first outing.
We have Element KR-25’s behind the band in three rolling pods to facilitate a quick changeover on the four-band lineup of the first leg. We tried to get away from a large amount of tungsten fixtures in our initial go at it, but at the end of the day, the band’s music just lends itself to that warm glow. We had worked with Vipers and Auras in the past; they were always planned for the main fixtures. The Atomic 3000 LED strobes were on the shelf at PGP [Premier Global Production]. We knew that we wanted to use them, but had no idea just how much we would like them. Most of the rest of the fixtures came from a utility aspect, and what was available on the shelf. We are using X4 bars on the floor as footlights. I had used them on a previous tour. Mike wanted to use them as more of an effect light on this one, but we just couldn’t fit them in for anything other than footlights.
Bold Colors and Laser Looks
Michael Grant: Adding lasers was a lot of fun. Personally, it was my first experience with them, and being able to control, program and run the units from Image Engineering through the grandMA made it easy. Absolutely something I am going to start considering in future designs. The color palette was very much influenced by visual artist Kenneth Anger. Bold — but not necessarily primary — colors all the time. The rig gave us a lot of opportunity to play with levels. Running all those sky pans, KR-25s and Par cans at 100 percent is intense, but having them at 10 percent at the right time is way more impactful.
Crew chief Dave Garcia has been with this tour since the Spring Fling run and Nick Shields (LX tech) joined at the start of the second run. Both are insanely hardworking folks, and I would be happy to have them on any gig I am on. The CTE tour has been a real pleasure to work on.
Eric Cathcart: The vendors, the band, their management, and Charlie Fox, the tour manager, have been super supportive every step of the way. This tour was a major step for the band. I hope this is the beginning of a long relationship with the Cage The Elephant camp.
Cage The Elephant Tour 2016
Crew
- Lighting Designers/Directors: Eric Cathcart, Michael Grant
- Set Designer: Eric Cathcart
- Lighting Co: Premier Global Production (PGP)
- PGP Account Rep: James Vollhoffer
- Lighting Crew Chief: David Garcia
- Lighting Techs: Nick Shields, Nikki Brote
- Tour/Production Manager: Charlie Fox
- Stage Manager: Bryan Manley
- Lasers: Image Engineering
- Staging: Tait Towers
- Trucking: On Tour Logistics, Averitt Express
Gear
- 1 grandMA2 full size
- 1 grandMA2 light (backup)
- 46 Martin MAC Viper Air FX fixtures
- 32 Martin MAC Auras
- 22 Martin Atomic 3000 LED strobes
- 16 Clay Paky Sharpys
- 16 GLP Impression X4s
- 12 GLP Impression X4 Bar 10s
- 11 Chroma-Q Color Force 48s
- 16 Element KR-25s
- 25 2 Lite Moles
- 7 Sky Pans
- 40 Medium Par 64s
- 32 Very Narrow Par 64s
- 2 Smoke Factory hazers
- 1 DF-50 hazers
More Cage the Elephant 2016 tour phtotos by Steve Jennings:
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