Keith Urban: Award-winning designer lights award-winning artist

Lighting designer Chris Lisle started in the business in 1992 when he toured with the St. Louis-based rock band Novella. Along his way, he has picked up experience as a production assistant, stage manager, tour manager, production manager, assistant producer and producer. In 2003, he won the Bandit Lites “Rookie of the Year” award, and he recently picked up the “Rock” award from the same company. And now, he can add to his resumé lighting designer for one of country music’s hottest commodities, Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year for 2005, Keith Urban.

Urban is packing arenas on his Alive in ‘05 (and ’06) tour. We caught him just after he won Artist of the Year at the 2005 Radio Music Awards. The show was designed by Chris Lisle and lighting veteran Jonathan Smeeton. Lisle got the job when good fortune met opportunity. “When I was with LeAnn Rimes,” he said, “Keith opened up for her in Australia and I lit him there. The following spring, he was looking at adding an LD, and fortunately, I got the call.”

Making a Show
Smeeton and Lisle collaborated on the design for the tour—sort of. “The physical structure of this tour’s design was done by Jonathan Smeeton, who also designed the set. The first day of programming, Jonathan walks in and says, ‘Here is your toy box; make a show.’ So, I actually did all of the design on the cueing and such. I did a lot of the programming at Bandit’s shop, which has a separate building just for hanging the rig and programming. A lot was accomplished at rehearsals as well,” Lisle said.

Urban knows exactly what he wants from the lighting and he’s not shy about vocalizing his preferences. His biggest directive? “No pink!” Lisle said.

“After working with him for several years now, I already knew how he liked his show to be lit. We videotaped the first few shows and Keith would watch them on his bus at night, then he would give me input. He is very easy to work with, and I like the fact that he gives input and direction in his show.”

Connecting with the Audience
One of the highlights of the show is when he flies over the audience and onto the “B” stage. That was Urban’s idea, for a very specific reason. “It is very important to him that he connects with and be near the audience,” Lisle says. “We went to Branam for the fly gag and have been extremely happy with their product. The B Stage is simple and fun. He does three songs from there. I mainly light him with four Martin MAC 600s and four MAC 2000s and leave it at that, so even the spot ops get a quick break.”

The show relies heavily on automated lighting with some LEDs, strobes and a couple of handfuls of conventional lighting. All swag aside, the designers easily settled on the choice of automation. “Fortunately,” Lisle says, “Jonathan is also a big Martin fan, so the main lights used on the rig are Martin MAC 2000s. I have been very happy with their performance and durability. We also have the vertical towers with MAC 250s, which are great space fillers. Most of the front and side lights are the MAC 600s, and then to round it off I have MAC 2000 Wash fixtures on the floor. (Thanks for the jacket, Martin.)”

The LED Carnival
The LEDs are a big part of a certain effect Lisle was going for. “For the song ‘Better Life,’ Keith wanted a carnival atmosphere and feel. So we loaded a 15-foot diameter circle with 18 Color Kinetics LED tubes. During that song, we lower the circle in and make it look ‘happy.’ I absolutely loved the way that the tubes came out, and will definitely use them in future design work,” Lisle says.

The video content was created by Chris Hicky, a Keith Urban veteran of his last few videos. Moo TV provided the live video reinforcement, and, according to Lisle, “really did an incredible job.” The video director is Nick Keiser (Hilary Duff). There is, it seems, no lighting/video rivalry here. “They put out a great product and have some really great crew guys,” Lisle says.

Kudos
Lisle worked for many years as a freelancer, but he found a home at Bandit Lites a few years ago. “Bandit has been a mainstay in my career for many years now. The product they put out and the people that are involved are top notch. My Bandit rep is Mike Golden, and my project manager is Donny Lockridge. Both are always accessible, no matter what time of day or night, which is great. My road crew this year was crew chief Shawn Worlow —a two-year tour veteran—Brad Rogers, Josh Fenn, and Aaron Swetland. As any LD knows, the rig is only as good as the guys putting it up, and I was given some ‘A-level’ guys,” Lisle said.

For any production vet, working any tour can become stale, but not so for Lisle. “It has been a definite highlight of my career working with Keith. It has been a great experience to start with an artist doing fairs, festivals and clubs and then working into a show of this size. Most of us core crew guys have been with Keith for a while now, so we are actually like family. We bicker and fight, but still love
each other. It was a great experience working with Jonathan Smeeton as well. He is a very creative man, and I learned several things working with him.”