“I got into this business by accident.”
It’s a common refrain of live event professionals, and certainly the case for Richard “Nook” Schoenfeld. He pursued writing and English Literature in college but was pulled into the concert touring world, starting at the bottom, and rising to design lights for Kid Rock, John Legend, Beastie Boys, Eagles, and many others. Simultaneously, he became a prolific writer and editor. Who could imagine that he would meld those two passions into one with great success? Not even him.
The Writer Pushes Cases
Schoenfeld’s father had a career in the Coast Guard, and Nook was born in Hawaii, growing up bouncing between California and New York, with most of his high school spent in the Big Apple. He didn’t think much of it at the time, but as a teenager he got his first taste of what would be an impressive career: “My girlfriend at the time got me a job as a stagehand for a one-off Jefferson Starship show at the Commack Arena on Long Island,” he says. He graduated high school a year early and spent that year in Colorado being a ski bum. After his fun in the snow, he returned to New York and attended SUNY New Paltz.
His college ambition was to become a sportswriter and one day write about his beloved Yankees. Meanwhile, though, he sauntered up to the Student Union bulletin board and saw an opening for a concert stagehand. He marched into the school’s job office, stated his “experience” in such a manner that may have given the impression that he had worked concerts more than a single night, and got the job. Foreshadowing what was to come, while working those college concerts backstage, he doubled down and wrote show reviews for the college paper.
Increasingly doing audio work, he now aspired to be a recording engineer, so Schoenfeld went to the College for Recording Arts in San Francisco. The now-defunct school was then part of University of San Francisco, so it enabled him to finish with an English Literature major and a minor in audio arts. At night he mixed sound for bands at a local club. After that, he went back to New York where he did “a lot of grunt work on scaffolding” for Michael Ahern, a legend in the concert touring business (Rolling Stones, David Bowie, U2). He was working a Who show with Ahern and Bob See of See Factor when Ahern said, “You’re always looking for good people, right Bob?” See hired Schoenfeld.
See had a small audio department and when that work was in short supply, Schoenfeld started doing whatever else was needed. Also in the shop was future legendary production manager Mikie Weiss (Neil Diamond), who mentored the kid that See always called “College Boy” in the basics of lighting. “Bob was tough—he could be mean and worked people to the bone,” Nook recalls. “I was making $5 an hour, working 18-hour days, with no overtime. But I learned a lot about electricity.”
Life in the Fast Lane
Looking for greener pastures, in 1986 he cold-called Showlites in Los Angeles who promptly told him to “get your ass out here.” He hopped in his car and drove across the country. But as he was entering the vast sprawl of L.A. at 5 in the morning, his gut told him that he wouldn’t like living there. He instinctively hung a right instead and drove up the coast. Schoenfeld landed at Morpheus Lights in San Jose, met with shop manager Dan English, and was hired on the spot as a shop foreman. It was a serious pay raise and more importantly, he was at the right place at the right time to bear witness to the dawn of moving lights.
The early days of moving lights were fraught with problems. An early client out with Morpheus movers was, coincidently, the band for whom he had first pushed cases: Jefferson Starship. The lights were having issues, their Lighting Designer, Skip Johnson, was threatening to cancel the contract and go with the competitor, Vari-Lite. English sent Schoenfeld out and the problems were quickly fixed. Johnson then got on the horn to English and said that if Schoenfeld could stay out on the tour, he’ll stay with Morpheus. And just like that, Schoenfeld was a Lighting Chief on his first tour with all moving lights. Next, he was sent out with Lionel Richie’s Dancing on the Ceiling tour in 1986-87, which had 100 moving lights. That tour also had future Parnelli Lifetime Honoree and production manager Chris Lamb, and LD Peter Morse, forging a relationship that has lasted with Schoenfeld throughout his career.
In those days, the lighting designer/director would run the conventional lights and a lighting operator would run the movers. Schoenfeld learned his craft working with people such as Morse and Michael Keller, who were specific about what happened with what color when. “I learned how to design working for those guys,” he says. As the 1990s rounded the bend, he was getting more calls to design. His first “soup to nuts” designing and directing gig came in 1994 and it would solidify his career: For two years he worked the Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over tour.
PLSN is Calling
Now a designer, Schoenfeld still never gave up writing. During his time with See Factor, he had been sent out with British new wave band Ultravox with Lighting Designer Steve Moles, who would soon get off the road to write for industry magazines. Intrigued, Schoenfeld kept in touch with him and eventually got a tip that a magazine needed a writer. While staying on the road, he wrote a bimonthly column for the shortlived Light and Stage Concepts. His prose caught the eye of Terry Lowe, publisher of PLSN, so in 2006, when Richard Cadena was taking over as editor, Lowe suggested that Cadena give this Nook guy a call. Lowe was willing to pay him double for a monthly column. “It was cool because the monthly stipend enabled me to buy a new Ford Explorer,” Schoenfeld says with a smile.
In a business that is often shaped by happenstance, Schoenfeld has been judicious in his gig choices, and not always going with the “obvious” one. In 1998, he got two calls in one week. One was for the legendary Tina Turner at the height of her fame. This would have involved monster arenas, a lot of work in Europe, and a lot of pay. “The other one was for 311, which I had never even heard of.” He picked up their music and noticed that “they aren’t normal—they would mess with time signatures, bust into bridges unexpectedly, have multiple choruses, and unusual instrumental breaks.” Even though the 311 gig paid half of what Turner’s did, Schoenfeld took it. “It was a beautiful show; lighting and designing for them was really fun. And it got me hooked into the Southern California/Orange County scene, which led to work with Sugar Ray, No Doubt, and others.” Pushing him into the next phase of his career, Schoenfeld soon was designing up to eight shows a year and then handing off the show directing duties to someone else.
Then in 2014 his phone rang, and it was Lowe, who said, “I think you should move up in the world.” He offered Nook the PLSN editor’s chair, a role he accepted and excelled at wonderfully.
He’s now retired from both the road and the magazine, but not done writing, as he has several projects queued up including a novel and a screenplay. He recently published his book of road stories, The Old Man’s Musings—45 years of gigs.
Throughout it all, he credits his wife, Mary Lou, as being a stabilizing force. This business is known to be tough on marriages, and his first one didn’t survive; but Mary Lou was a corporate event producer when they met. Today she is a Vice President of Media Loft, the largest event management firm in Minneapolis-St. Paul. “Marrying someone in the business is the way to go,” he says. “We would just check with each other before taking a gig to make sure at least one of us was home with [son] Lenny.” The comings and goings could be comical: Once they had lunch together at the airport as one was coming home and the other going out. But as he reflects back, he’s clear about one thing: College was the key to his success. “I can’t speak highly enough about a secondary education. When it was time to stop sleeping on a shelf on a tour bus, I had a way out.”