Michael Strickland was truly country before country was cool. He started working with music acts with lighting when he was an audacious kid in 1968 under the Bandit Lites name. While he first worked from his home in Kingsport, then Knoxville, he was quickly involved with Nashville, serving artists including Conway Twitty, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis, as well as a stable of rock acts. He would graduate from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and earn a law degree, all while growing his business. “By 1980, we were doing so much business in Nashville we had to open an office there,” he says. In recalling the modest 2,000 square foot space he originally had, he laughs and confesses that, at the time, he thought that would be all he would ever need (today he has 100 times that). But as country shows slowly got bigger, clients were asking him to carry other things — backline, P.A.s, even concessions.
Now in its 48th year, Bandit Lites lays claim to the oldest lighting vendor in the industry. They serve the concert, film, television, theater and architectural installation fields. The company has won plenty of awards, including several Parnelli Awards, and Strickland even received a CNN/USA Today Entrepreneur of the Year award.
The Loyalty Factor
Like many working for Bandit, VP Michael Golden goes back a long way with Strickland. “I was a jack of all trades at Freedom Hall Civic Center [Johnson City, TN] in the late 70s when I first met Michael,” he says. “Because of my work as a stage hand, I got a call from him to go out with Kenny Rogers.” Golden has been with Bandit ever since. “I’ve been here for 36 years, and we have techs that have been here 38 years.”
You don’t spend time in this business without coming up with good stories. One of Golden’s best ones involves Alice Cooper, a favored client. “We’d been doing his tours for five years in a row when his management called up and said we needed to come in at a lower price.” Golden took the request to Strickland who naturally was less than enthused by the proposition, but Golden saw an opportunity: “I said ‘let’s say okay’, but only if he agrees to play golf with us once a year.” This stipulation was written into the contract. “Now, if we go see his show or he’s playing a few hundred miles of us, we grab our clubs and go!”
Mark Steinwachs has been the GM since 2007. He is proud of their warehouse operation and the foolproof system they’ve developed over the years. Key to it all is an extra layer of quality control. “We have a project manager in charge of every show, and he or she works with the lighting designer and production manager,” he explains. They go through everything down to the length of the cable to make sure every tour has what it needs.
In one of their two Nashville locations, there is a special space called “Venue 1,” a rehearsal facility where they set up tours before they go out. “If it’s not right here, it doesn’t go any further until we get it right,” Golden says. Lighting designers are invited here to run through their looks, either virtually, in the comforts of a production room or literally in the “venue.” The Grateful Dead spent three weeks there preparing for their recent historic Chicago final show.
For Golden, what makes Nashville is the loyalty factor. He tells of Charlie Daniels, who at one point for many years went out with large tours using Bandit. “Charlie doesn’t really carry a lot of gear out and hasn’t for years, but he called us recently and said he wanted to revise his popular Volunteer Jam,” which marked 40 years with its show last August in Bridgestone Arena. “There was no question. We told him to tell us the locations and dates and we’d be there for him. I don’t even know if we charged him beyond labor.” Similarly, when longtime clients Rascal Flatts called for help with a children’s hospital benefit show, they were there for them too.
Golden does say there are many nice benefits to being in the country music business. The country artist likes the same crew year after year, and they like their tours to be like family. They also want to spend time with their own families, so rather than being out for months, or even years, that weekend schedule and home for the rest of the week is enjoyed by the stars and the roadies. “With ‘the country model,’ you can have a real life.”
The Bandit way is about honest dialogue. “If I don’t feel I can do something, I’ll tell the client that,” Golden adds. “There are those out there who will promise anything to anybody but then not be able to pull it off. For us, it’s about integrity and continuity. We have full time employees, we offer health care benefits, 401Ks, vacation pay, all so our employees are able to the make the client happy when the circumstances are right.”
Earning the Respect
“I feel that during the country heyday, Nashville was never given proper respect,” Golden states. “In 1980’s, we worked with Alabama, and they were the hottest thing in country and going out like a full rock ‘n’ roll show, but it was the Bon Jovis and Van Halens that got all the attention. It took a while for the industry to notice what was happening. For example, we were with Brooks & Dunn for their entire 21 years of straight touring. You can’t name a [rock] band that does that. Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson … these were all amazing, ground-breaking tours.”
There is a lot of history at Bandit. Strickland says he was the only one on the scene from 1968 to 1975, and the P.A.s the country acts had were mostly the then-ubiquitous Shure Vocal Masters, which he ended up carrying. “Even the major acts would just have six or eight mics, and the band members would set up all the gear and do a level set and that was it,” he says. “The ‘sound guy’ was the road manager or the keyboard player, who would mix from the stage. Occasionally it was me, the lighting guy! I’d sit there with my board and run the two or three light trees and some foot lights and handle the sound too.”
For Strickland, there were two earthquake-sized paradigm moments. The first came in 1980 in the form of the hit film, Urban Cowboy. “Before that movie, country music was perceived as for pipefitters and unemployed hicks, but that movie made country cool. And up to that point, Bandit had 100 percent of market share — if it was a country act, they carried Bandit Lites. But after that, the rock guys started courting, and a small number of them were ‘wowed’ by the companies that did only rock acts.” Bandit’s market share slipped to 70 percent, but not for long. “The new guys still looked down their noses at the country musicians, and frankly, didn’t treat them very well.” Within four years, Bandit was back with 90 percent market share of the genre.
The second cosmic shift happened a decade latter, when Garth Brooks burst onto the scene. “He came to us in 1989 and told us he wanted a lighting rig as big as the one KISS had,” Strickland recalls. “He had a marketing degree from Oklahoma State with a couple of minor hits, and we kind of humored him, saying, ‘sure, buddy.’ A year later, we were standing in Reunion Arena [Dallas] for his first TV special with 1,500 PAR cans hanging overhead. He had the nerve to approach country in a pure rock fashion.”
Strickland can’t help but note all those companies from the coast who told artists “not to work with Bandit, because we’re a bunch of hillbillies” now have offices in Nashville. “There were 22 lighting companies here at my last count — that’s insane!” But it’s not affecting Bandit. “We’re still the same, still offer our clients a very personalized service. Our staff is full time, and we own our own facilities. We belong to the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and we support local charities. Where other companies use freelancers, our people have health insurance, have homes and families, and we take care of them.”
For more information, please visit www.banditlites.com.
