Most jam bands play two or three sets of music each night and have a couple hundred songs in their repertoire. It's tough to program individual lighting cues for that many songs, especially since the arrangement of each song can change at any given time. What most of us who light these acts do is create the ultimate punt page (or several of them) to be able to grab cues on the fly and keep up with the musical changes as they come. The hardest part of this task is making the lighting non-repetitive. I hate seeing the same lighting effects over and over at any show…With two operators controlling different type fixtures, it's a lot easier to not repeat your light cues, because the chances of both of you bringing up the same look twice is unlikely. Plus, I like to do something a little different with jam bands. I like to give the band a bit of a light show that they can watch while they are playing on stage. I like to fly some structure out in the middle of the arena that can light the crowd, the ceiling or any multitude of fabricated scenic pieces I can fly from such a structure.
Nook Schoenfeld, "LD-at-Large," PLSN, Dec. 2010.
