LD at Large

It seems that every product you buy nowadays comes with a disclaimer. A little piece of paper shoved inside the box along with whatever product you purchased. This paper will list all the things that the product should not be used for or things it actually won’t do. It’s my theory that these pieces of paper are there to protect the manufacturer from liability for just about anything that could go wrong. No matter what, the last thing anybody hawking gear wishes to do is refund your cash. So if the item breaks, functions incorrectly, or causes any damage to anything or person in its vicinity, they want you to know, in advance, that it’s entirely your fault.

Last fall, I heard from my friend Missy. She manages the Chicago-based rockers “Rise Against.”  They had been on tour last year and were looking to revamp their look and wanted some ideas. Their production guru is Jon Dunleavy, a man I had gigged with before. I reached out to him to inquire what they were looking for. They had a few requirements they wished to base a design around. First and foremost, they were a punk band. They didn’t need a lot of hoopla. Just a few backdrops and some rock ‘n’ roll lighting. They had some set carts that they would carry around the world this year, and they wanted a lighting package that could attach to the carts. They also wanted some “light boxes” that could spell out the letters, “R-I-S-E.”

My wife was concerned that our three-year-old wants to spend all his time with the iPad. Then I mentioned that someone told me the first word spoken by his 18-month-old daughter most mornings is “iPad.” I don’t know right from wrong when it comes to kids and mobile devices. But I do know that if we are playing with a toy and I get an important business call, I can hand my child the iPad and he will stop whining immediately.

I just spent a month doing benefit gigs all over the country. A musician decided to devote some time and talent to raising money for various charities in a dozen towns, and he asked me to light him. The majority of the gigs were in theaters and clubs that had some in-house lighting of their own. In order to raise more money for the needy, I decided to try and do these shows with almost no additional lighting, despite the fact that the artist was used to sold out arenas with big rigs.

I’m feeling pretty humbled this holiday season. Apparently I have a lot of friends in this wacky business of ours. And they thought enough of my work to cast a vote my way for a Parnelli Award this year. I cannot give enough thanks to all of you who helped me win this award for best lit concert tour of the year (Kid Rock’s Born Free tour). But I could never have gotten where I was, nor created a show that looked this good, without the help of a lot of people. Nor could I have gotten where I am without a lot of breaks from others. And I believe in paying it back.

Say you had a bazillion dollars and it was your birthday. And you decided to have a party for, say, 1,000 of your buddies. What exactly would you do? I’d be that guy who hires Van Halen to play at my barbecue. I don’t count on it.  However, I recently got to witness what happens when someone who could throw that type of a shindig actually does.

What’s your favorite color? This is a question I ask my 3-year-old occasionally. He answers with  “green” most times. Then he asks me back the same question. “That would be Lee 119,” comes the reply.  That’s because I’ve had the various numbers of gel colors brainwashed into my head. All good lighting guys memorize these numbers over time, and if you don’t know what Lee 119 means, you may be new to lighting.

A spotlight does just what its name says it will do. Light a spot in a crowd to draw attention to it. A light shone on one person in a crowd will make them stand out, but so will a “key” light on stage. The difference is that a spotlight uses an operator to follow the performer around as he struts about on stage, keeping him illuminated as the intended focal point of the audience. The history of the spotlight can be traced back to 1550, when an Italian named Sebastiano Serlio used a brightly-polished barber’s basin (reflector) placed behind a torch to reflect the light through a bottle (lens) on the other side of the flame.

I got a call from a production manager friend last month. His band was looking to go in a new direction, and he was searching for a new production designer. He asked if I would like to submit a design for their world tour that starts next year. “Sure,” I say. “Gimme a few days with a thinking cap on.”

I’m starting to feel like the Lincoln Lawyer. The guy that works out of the back of his town car. Except that, on show days, I set up shop in the back of a tour bus. Or a hotel room if I’m lucky. Summer is my busiest time of year. While I am out running one tour, I am busy working on others. There are several steps to the process before I actually run the first show of a tour. First, I must submit an idea I have along with artistic renderings to get the gig. Then I must finish drawing the CAD drawings to get them to the lighting/set/video vendors. Follow that with some pre-programming of lighting cues on a visualizer, and then make it to the actual rehearsals.

I’ve worked shows in clubs all around the world. Most of them have an in-house lighting system. With that comes at least one tech who knows how his system operates. Or we would like to think he does. Clubs usually do not possess a lot of state-of-the-art fixtures, nor fixtures with all of their parameters functioning correctly. Half of the time I will have a console I know little about. So I am dependent on my local lighting guy. And it’s uncanny how little some of these professionals know about their own gear.

I just got back from taking a cruise. I didn’t go for a relaxing vacation, mind you, I went to work. There’s a new trend now where bands are chartering these ships and creating a musical ride for a few days. This particular ride consisted of 2,500 diehard fans who boarded the vessel for four days of alcohol infused, music blaring, full-on debauchery. That is for the people who paid. For those of us who get paid to control the theatrical lighting on one of these floating tubs, it’s quite an exercise in futility. I believe the majority of these ships start out with some pretty sweet light rigs. Somewhere along the way they seem to go to hell in a bucket.