Each year, I get a few calls from bands looking for a set or lighting design for their tour. For Imagine Dragons, there was one stipulation — whatever I designed had to fit in a 16-foot trailer towed behind a bus. I thought about something my friend Jonathan Smeeton described on Facebook. He developed a “set in the bag” concept for one of his artists. Some simple cloth sails made of stretchy silk-like material that one attaches to a skeleton frame of aluminum. I was thinking tent pole style nylon sails. But once I drew my idea on paper and sent them to my artist, I realized they were a lot bigger than what I originally thought of. I had envisioned a little freestanding half moon shape behind the drummer. Once drawn, it turned out to be 15 feet high by 32 feet wide. Then I asked for two smaller shapes that could go downstage on the sides of the half moon. My artist Chris Tousey came up with some shark fin-shaped sails that added to the depth of the stage. In front of these sails I designed four aluminum trees. — 14 feet tall by about eight feet wide. Complete with faux leaves. The trees looked totally 3D and curved like old fruit trees. I hung three Martin MAC 101 LED movers and three homemade lanterns from each tree. Joe Gallagher built the entire set for a fair price, and it fit on top of lighting cases. The whole set was huge, but took up four feet of truck space.
—From “LD-at-Large” by Nook Schoenfeld, PLSN, April, 2013, page 60.
