Different paths have led Seth Jackson and Eddie “Bones” Connell to lighting one of the biggest tours in country music.
Over the last couple decades, country music has inched its way out of the realm of the folk Americana sound and into the arena of, well…arena. Where country stars once played enclosed theatres and large clubs, they have now taken over the stadiums that once played host exclusively to rock. High on the mountain of arena country stands Toby Keith, and, just like the arena rockers before him, his current “Hookin’ Up and Hangin’ Out” tour encompasses largescale lighting, a big sound, pyro and video.
The stage even supports half of a Ford pickup — used for an opening video sequence. The show consists of at least 21 songs per night, with four more on reserve should Keith see fit to perform them. Such a show can put immense demands on the shoulders of its techs, but lighting director Eddie “Bones” Connell and lighting designer Seth Jackson have stuck with Keith for years (four for Jackson and a decade for Bones), and seem to be right at home, even though they come from polar opposites in the entertainment industry.
Bones’ list of past clients includes the now-closed Cowboys bar in Dallas, Texas; the Cowboys in Atlanta, Ga.; an ‘80s glam band called Lillian Axe; and Pantera. “I started in clubs, using just PAR cans like pretty much everyone else did,” Bones remembers. Bones got offered the gig with Keith while working lighting in a bar where tour personnel, Keith included, happened to visit on the same day that they had lost their previous designer.
Jackson, by stark contrast, rose through the ranks of theatre. After studying theatre at Webster University, Jackson went to work for Vari-Lite in 1994, which soon led to his first country tour, Lorrie Morgan. Jackson’s appearance on the Toby Keith tour also seems to have been brought about by a certain degree of providence for all involved. In the midst of the addition of the Ford truck to the tour, and after Ford had hired another designer to light that portion of the show, the Toby Keith tour found itself searching for a lighting designer to tackle the entire project.
“It was completely last-minute,” Seth confesses. “They were taking a big step with the size of their show, and the Ford sponsorship was starting out, and there was an actual, full-size, real, working, with-an-engine truck onstage. Ford had hired Jim Lenahan to design their truck portion of the show, and Toby’s people approached him about just doing the whole thing, but he was swamped and busy, and he and I had worked together for years, so he said, ‘Why don’t you call this guy?’ So, that’s kinda how it all happened. I got the call three and a half weeks before we went into rehearsals or something. It was fast.”
Bones characterizes his meeting with his partner thus: “He was nice and theatre, and I was flash and trash.”
Given the different backgrounds of the two key figures in this lighting rig, one would expect some clashes, but both Jackson and Bones say that, so far, everything has been fine. While each admits to some hesitation in the early days, they quickly realized that they may well have been the perfect pairing to create a solid light show. With Bones’ history of functioning as a human MIDI, and with Jackson’s background in theatre, interpreting pre-existing material to illuminate a cohesive whole (like, say, music), the formula for a driven show drew itself.
“First year was a little ‘how are we going to do this?’” Jackson told PLSN. “But then we kinda clicked.”
Bones is quick to respond with, “We can read each other’s minds.”
The preparation for the “Hookin’ Up” tour commenced in February of last year. Bones, Jackson, production manager Sean Sergeant and production coordinator Mark Sissle opened discussions regarding what the show would look like and how it would move. “You come up with two or three ideas, and they’d go to Toby,” Jackson reports, “And he kinda speaks to what he wants and what he likes — and then that’s done.”
Jackson did the modeling in 3D StudioViz, and then went right into programming in a Bandit Lites warehouse. Of course, the trim, about 18 feet, was about half of what it should have been. The actual touring rig trimmed out to a minimum of 35 feet under ideal conditions, though it can — and has — been trimmed down to accommodate certain venues. With such constraints, much of the result had to be imagined, as many elements had to be excluded from the rig until hang time, but it ended up taking only a few days in what Bones called “scorching” heat. Bones sat down ahead of time to draft out everything from cue sheets to focus charts.
The abbreviated preparation necessitated quick decision making.
“We kept going back and forth on three or four different rows as to what it was all going to be and what was going to be a part of it and would video be in?” Seth told PLSN. “So when we got it locked in as ‘This is what we’re doing,’ there wasn’t time to get to the studio and get the model built. It was just ‘Let’s hang it, and let’s go.’”
The instrument list includes Syncrolites, Vari*Lites, Martin MAC 2000 Washes, Coemar iWash Halos, American DJ P64 LED RGB Blinders and a Barco MiPix LED wall 22 feet tall by 14 feet wide upstage center. Everything is controlled via a Flying Pig Systems Wholehog II. Jackson has worked every tour for the past four years on this console, ever since he first came on board with the Keith camp. And if it’s any indication of the scope of the show they are still running out of DMX channels, despite using a Fleenor Designs Pork Chopper. “We’ve really maxed this thing to its limits,” says Jackson.
The LED wall departs from routes taken by the Keith camp in the past. “We changed it to a vertical one this year instead of a horizontal,” says Jackson. “For years, we’d done the big 30-foot-wide thing, so we turned it on its end this year. Gives it a whole new look to the show, which is great.”
A Green Hippo Hippotizer is currently being used to serve content to the video wall during the show. “Hippotizer came into rehearsals right at the end,” Jackson recalls. “And it got all hooked into the lines, and then Bones and I basically sat there after our show was programmed and went through and added video into every sequence. The Hog is actually firing the loading and operating commands for the Hippotizer.”
Though the Wholehog fires off the video cues, the video team operates independently of lighting itself.
When asked about whether or not they had much of a hand in the actual creation of video content, Jackson’s responded with, “B-rolls, video pieces, that’s all Toby. But the stuff that’s coming to the MiPix, we just did all of that out of the library that comes with the desk.”
Anyone who’s spent more than 12 minutes loading a show in and prepping the gear knows that when more than one crew work at height and in proximity, issues are likely to arise. Who claims which rigging point? Who gets priority selection of power? This has not been an issue for the Toby Keith tour. When asked whether any issues had come up loading video or with projections, Bones assured PLSN that “We all work in concert.”
Since Jackson’s start with the Keith camp the truck has been reduced to half a truck for the Ford portion of the program. Considering that the original truck (and engine) weighed in at around 10,000 lbs., you can rest assured that the staging crew appreciated the move. Show Effects, which built the set, also built the truck. It’s a full-size cab of an F-150, with a hole in its bottom so that Toby can climb up through the stage-deck into the truck to make his entrance.
“It’s an honest-to-God size, scale and everything truck. All the trim pieces come from Ford, so they’re exactly what you’d see on a production truck.” Aside from downsizing the truck, however, the show has grown over time.
Some of the new additions to this year’s rig include more Syncrolites and more pyro. “There are two things that Toby’s very specific about that we were going to increase this year,” Jackson told PLSN. “And that was more Syncrolites and more pyro. We got both.” According to Bones and Jackson, Keith is a big fan of the Syncrolites. We had to ask why.
“Just the big, fat, bright, gigantic beams,” Jackson reports. “When we first brought them out here, everybody wasn’t sure about them. But as soon as everyone saw them — management, Toby, everybody — they loved those things, and so we kept them in, and kept adding them.”
Jackson also likes his American DJ blinders. “They’re eye candy,” he says. “They’re all over the rig and under the deck of the stage. They’re under each step, they strobe, they do all the color changes.”
Like many contemporary touring artists, and most artists in general, Toby Keith offers comments during the development of his stage show, but he balances his own input with a “hands-off” approach. When asked about the specific nature of Keith’s input, Jackson answered, “He keeps in the broad strokes. He’ll come in and look at the beginning stages. He’ll look at the overall look of things. He usually focuses on how the show starts, and that’s the rest of it.”
With two veterans on lighting who have put the years into the tour that Jackson and Bones have, it’s easy for talent and management to trust the team. They’ve learned the music, they know the show, and after four years of working side-by-side, the duo have reached that point where they read each other’s minds and work in perfect sync.
