Top Vote-Getters for Five U.S. Regions and Canada Honored for Taking Care of Business
PLSN readers have put the latest spotlight — scratch that — hybrid LED moving light — on who they think are the best of the best of their region when it comes to lighting, staging and video. We have some fresh faces and some “repeat offenders.”
All of these are bestowed with a little something to hang on their wall with the Parnelli logo and all the honor, glory and bragging rights that go with it. Learn about some companies you might not be that familiar with, and reacquaint yourself with others — then make sure you vote for the company most deserving of the 2015 Parnelli Hometown Hero Lighting Company of the Year award, to be presented at the annual gala Oct. 24 at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
Northeast
BML Blackbird – Secaucus, NJ
“Business has been consistent for the most part,” says BML Blackbird’s Elliot Krowe, of the past year. “While we still do events and tours, we continue to expand in TV and film work. I will say our festival work has increased this year.” BML-Blackbird Theatrical Services was born when Krowe partnered with Eric Todd in 2006. Todd started BML Stage Lighting in 1975; Krowe had been vice president at The See Factor and worked as a road manager and lighting designer for many acts. Today the company is supplying gear and crew to the New York City region and supports tours, concerts, live events, video, film, TV, exhibitions and corporate events.
“We have 75 full time employees along with countless freelance technicians working out of a 50,000 square foot facility,” says Krowe. Their inventory includes gear from ETC, Martin, Clay Paky, PixelRange, Chroma-Q, GLP, MA Lighting/grandMA, Chauvet, Staging Concepts, CM, HES/Axon and more. “This year we have increased our stock of moving lights, cable, distro, dimming and control.”
The many unique and notable events that BML Blackbird supports include the Annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Shluchim, a gala banquet for 5,500 held in a warehouse in Brooklyn. “That was interesting, because there was no infrastructure and we had to provide everything from power distribution for creating a kosher kitchen to all the lighting and rigging,” Krowe says. “We’ve also been busy during the festival season, which included the Governors Ball, Interlochen and Mountain Jam, to name just a few.” He adds that they put a lot into the annual EDMBiz convention, including draping, video, audio and production coordination for Insomniac, the company that produces the annual event.
“We use our extensive experience and talented team to provide technical production solutions,” Krowe says. “Production is mess and often unforeseen issues come up, so you need to have creative, efficient and, most of all, executable solutions. When we sign on with a client we consider ourselves partners. We are very pleased to win the Northeast Region designation again this year. We have consistently provided high quality services, and that is reflected in the voting.”
Southeast
The Magnum Companies – Atlanta, GA
Magnum may be a relatively new name, at least to the Parnelli Hometown Hero winner’s circle, but it’s been serving the greater Atlanta area for a long time. “My dad Eric started out in 1980 on the front porch of our home here in Atlanta,” says Todd Finch, principal. “And I grew up in the business.” The senior Finch did mostly corporate/industrial work in the early days. Todd would go off to Florida State University where he graduated with a degree in English and Business in 1997 before returning to the family trade. “It was pretty small until the last 10 years, and since then we’ve grown a great deal.” Indeed. Today 25 full timers and nearly 300 freelancers work with Magnum as it operates out of a 35,000 square foot warehouse.
“We bought some of the first Martin MAC 500 and 600 lights and, ever since then, we’ve grown with them, buying many of their products first off the line,” he says. In addition to Martin lights, there’s also plenty of Robe and GLPs. The board of choice is a grandMA. “We recently bought the dot2, which is really a cost-effective entry level board that’s so easy to operate it’s bound to take over.” They’ve been expanding into video, audio and rigging. “Now we’ve grown to the point where we’re doing permanent installs, sales with or without labor, and serving clients who have big rental needs,” he says. “Since 2014, we’ve more than doubled our trussing, with more from Thomas and Tomcat and motors all from CM.”
Corporate gigs of note including a three-day trade show for Gulfstream Corporate in July that Finch recalls as “pretty cool.” They handled all the needs including the nightly concerts, one featuring the Lt. Dan Band. But perhaps the client that gives him the most satisfaction is his alma mater, Florida State. “It’s pretty cool to go back to your school and get your tuition money back,” he laughs.
Also pretty cool is winning best regional sound company of the competitive Southeast. “It’s always entertaining to be in the running, but to be named a finalist is totally dumbfounding,” Finch says. “To be honest, I think we’ve grown because we’ve stayed true to our core base. I think that’s paying off, because our customers are in tune with us and support us.”
Midwest
TLS Productions – Ann Arbor, MI
“We feel like having a tremendous team of talented individuals is paying dividends,” declares TLS Productions’ Brad Hayes, president. That dividend would include their first win of a Hometown Hero Award. Based in Ann Arbor, the company has roots going back more than 60 years. Today they design, rig and light productions of any size, from the biggest gig to individual trade show booths. They’ve provided custom production lighting and rigging for the major U.S. exhibit companies at shows in Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Miami and D.C. You’ll find their permanent installations at museums, universities, high schools and casinos.
Brad Hayes and Bill Ross are the firm’s new co-presidents. Along with its full-time staff, TLS works with cadre of experienced “perma-lance” contractors such as designer and master electrician Michael Keller, who has supported shows featuring John Mayer, Paul McCartney, Lionel Richie, Santana and others. “In the last two years, we’ve dropped a million bucks on lights,” Hayes says. “We bought Elation exhibit lights and also invested heavily in Stagemaker motors and hoists, bumping our inventory of those rigging products to 100 units. It’s important to stay current and relevant to our clients’ needs.”
Car shows and related press events have been their staple. Chevrolet, Toyota, Lexus and Scion are among their clients. They were called in for the NACE CARS expo and conference, highlighting the GM Genuine Parts area. A show like the North American International Auto Show, also in Detroit, can take up to four months of preproduction followed by three months on site. But this year they’ve been expanding outside that niche market, moving to support other corporate areas like health care. They’ve also stepped up their work in theatrical and special events — one highlight was handling the visual elements of the ESPN Night of Champions event in Dallas celebrating the inaugural College Football Playoff championship in January. That was a particularly fun one for Hayes, who says he’s “a huge college football fan.”
As for the Parnelli Hometown Hero honor, Hayes says, “It’s nice to be voted this by peers who do the same kind of work you do. For us, there’s no such thing as a small event. Each client’s job is the most important thing we’re doing at the time.”
Northwest
Stageworks – Seattle, WA
Simon Clark has that typical backstory of being the touring professional (for nearly three decades) who wanted to get off the road and provide the kind of service he understood so well. “I had worked for a lot of major companies, including Sound Design and PRG, and I just got out of the business and came up here to Seattle for three months.” That three months turned into three years, and then four and five, and then, in 2007, he founded Stageworks. The company provides video, lighting, scenic and media design as well as production, technical and logistics management, and delivers complete packages with lighting, switching, media servers, rigging, installation and content.
But it all started with the tours.
“There was a need for acts that wanted to do large format touring, but didn’t want to be with a huge company where they get lost behind 20 other large acts,” he says. “We started pushing out tours only two or three at a time,” and they got a strong response for touring artist who wanted the extra attention. Touring acts like The Killers, Skrillex, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, the Shins, Flogging Molly, Wilco and many more. “As the artists evolve, we evolve with them.” They’ve also done Coachella for three years, and recently they once again did the Sasquatch Music Festival. Clark says festivals are an area that they see as a growth area. Mixed in that with that was corporate work, which now accounts for about 30 percent of their overall business. Today, they have five fulltime staff members plus two on the road with tours, all working out of a 8,000 square foot warehouse located on Vashon Island in the Seattle area. He says they will likely double that number next year.
“It’s been interesting because we’re going through a massive growth spurt,” Clark says. After acquiring 500 Absen A7 LED video panels (as to the choice of brand, “we hunted for a long time to find the right one,” Clark says the company plans to be making a significant investment in moving lights in the coming year. “We’re lucky to have a vendor like Christie Lites so when we need hundreds of something we can get them, but we’re going to spend around half a million dollars on the things that are hard to get quickly.”
Southwest
Total Lighting Support – Tucson, AZ
Scott Plummer had his hands on bulbs since high school back in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, and that grew into doing lights for area bands. In 1988, he and a buddy moved out to the Arizona desert, mostly on a whim. “He had some lights, and I had some lights, so we combined them and started a business,” he says. “Times were lean — we had a few PAR cans and few Lekos, and that was about it.” They started with smaller concerts and club gigs, and built a solid regional lighting company, with galas and fundraisers being their staple. “We were good at getting the distribution of power right.” Then, when the industry changed about 10 years ago with that advent of LED, he knew he had to jump on that bandwagon.
Today, they have a lot of 120K rigs and are largely a Chauvet shop with plenty of their beams and washes. “We have a lot of Chauvet as they are always good at getting us parts and support.” There are also Martin MAC 2000s and a lot of battery-powered LEDs in the mix, with more gear on the way. (During the interview with PLSN, Plummer was preparing for a “garage sale” to get rid of the older stuff to make room for Robe BMFLs, which he called “bad” [as in good], and a light that will help them stay ahead of the curve). Then there are fun toys like moon balloons and searchlights. Things like that that keep them ahead of the ambitious area DJ companies who he says are evolving into “entertainment companies.” Plummer aims to stay ahead of them by distinguishing himself. Total Lighting Support’s consoles of choice are Avolites and High End System’s Hog 4s as “they are on all the riders.” They recently brought into their inventory a Stageline mobile stage and a Chauvet 5mm video wall.
They’ve lit Fall Out Boy, Peter Frampton, Vince Gill and others, and much of what happens at Tucson’s Anselmo Valencia Tori Amphitheater, a 5,000-capacity shed. The local casinos also keep Total Lighting Support busy — one of them uses a house rig that the company provided. “And, of course, we’re always doing the weddings and Bar Mitzvahs,” says Plummer, an avid PLSN reader. “I was blown away when we won the regional award.”
Canada
ShowWorks, Inc. – Brampton, ON
ShowWorks returns to the winner circle for a third time, the last being 2014. Since then, Craig Bickerstaffe, who founded the company in 2007, says they’ve added a couple new members onto the sales team and moved into a bigger warehouse to accommodate their continued inventory growth. What gear is going in that extra space? “I have continued to work closely with Microh professional on their brand development in our market and we have expanded and added all new LED Lekos, LED Fresnels, LED wash fixtures and IP-rated units to our inventory this year,” he says. “On the media server side, we have added new ArKaos units to our rental inventory. We also had to acquire more High End Systems Hog 4 lighting consoles, as demand is really starting to pick up in Canada for these units — we just can’t keep them in the shop.”
As far as highlights go, he says, he has to mention the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, Ontario, near Toronto. “We built a custom stage and plot for an artist from overseas and really was able to showcase what the Microh Professional lighting fixtures can do in a large scale arena environment and we were able to push our Hog 4’s with Art-Net, media server control and over 100 fixtures in the air.” Bickerstaffe says they were also were lucky enough to work alongside another touring crew from Europe and support them with fixtures and consoles for an event they were working on. “We had limited space to work with and came out with a design that was able to wow every member of the audience.”
Not surprisingly he’s pleased to be named best regional lighting company in Canada again. “To even be nominated with those established companies on that ballot was a great honor for us,” he says. “We have worked hard to build our brand and create a product that’s unique to the Canadian marketplace. Winning Canada for a third time proves that we are on the right track. Our staff has done everything for our clients to make sure shows happen smoothly and with no issues. The support we receive from Microh Professional on their fixtures and High End on the console side is still top notch and a reason we have been able to stay at the top of our game.”
