Lighting Co
Premier Global Production
Venue
Various (Tour)
Crew
Lighting Designer: Eric Cathcart
Programmer & Lighting Director: Eric Cathcart
Tour Manager: Ryan Westbrook
Production Manager: Arthur Switzer
Trucking Co: Special Event Transportation/SET
Gear
1 grandMA2 Command Wing
25 Chauvet COLORado 2 Quad Zoom Tours
10 Martin MAC Axiom Hybrids
10 Elation CuePix LED battens
6 Robe PATT 2013 fixtures
1 Base Hazer
Designer Insights by Steve Jennings:
Eric Cathcart
Lighting Designer
Greta Van Fleet are out on a sold-out theater tour in support of their new album release, Anthem of the Peaceful Army, which topped the Billboard rock album charts. This is their first full album after two successful EP releases
“As with everything else in this business it’s about who you know, maintaining, and growing relationships with people, says Cathcart. My good friends from PGP were at a social/networking event and were introduced to the bands manager. Naturally they asked if the band was ready to bring some lighting out on the road with them.” That led to a discussion about other shows their manager had seen and liked the lighting and production on and over half the shows that he mentioned were projects that Cathcart had worked on. From that point, PGP reach out to Cathcart, where he roughed out a quick idea, had a meeting with the band and their manager and here we are, he notes.
“Initially the thought was to have Cathcart design the show and send a lighting director out to tour with it. After meeting with the band, and listening to their music, he decided that this was going to be too good of a show to not be a part of nightly.
“Keeping with the classic rock vibe of the bands material, I wanted to keep most of the looks subtle and not have a lot of movement. The other consideration was that when the tour started we were in one bus with one small trailer. Whatever I designed, it had to be compact. I figured a six bar PAR Can vibe would work nicely, but didn’t want to be limited to one color per fixture. The natural conclusion was to go with LED PARs. I was given the opportunity to select what I would like to use by PGP, who were going to buy them new. My first qualifier was that the face was similar in diameter to a PAR64. Once I saw that the Colorado2 had that diameter, and that it also zoomed, the choice was made. After receiving the fixtures and beginning to program, I discovered how smooth the dimmer curve on those fixtures is and am completely smitten with them. They even have a similar decay to a tungsten bulb when quickly dimmed to zero.
“PGP fabricated a custom meat rack for me so that I could leave the Pars intact on their pipes from show to show. I added the PATT’s for additional texture and because I always love to have at least one tungsten source. I have 10 Axioms on the floor, in a bit of a semicircle around the band. I don’t use them for a ton of movement, but I do utilize the zoom quite regularly. The ability to zoom from a tight beam to a super wide flood is very effective. I’ve used the Axioms on a few different projects recently, and have been very pleased with them.”
More Greta Van Fleet 2018 tour photos by Steve Jennings:
