From Chicago’s Adler Planetarium to a Global Trek with Taking Back Sunday
In our continuing search for the next generation of Parnelli Award winners, PLSN was told we ought to take a look at a lighting designer named Eric Price. He came highly recommended by some friends that have known him most of his career and he serves as our last NextGen candidate of 2019.
As of November, Eric Price has wrapped up the 20th Anniversary Tour for the band Taking Back Sunday. The tour was a year long trek that took the band from the U.S. to Australia, Asia, South America, Europe and then back to the States.
Raised in Connecticut, Price headed out to Portland, OR once he finished school. “The town just seems to suit me,” he says. “I first started in the business here as a stagehand, pushing cases in the Crystal Ballroom, using my muscles while I learned.” He wasn’t really sure what he wanted to do in life until his mid 20’s when he decided to take a chance on a Full Sail education and off he went to Florida. “I decided I liked lighting and wanted to learn how to design. That wasn’t going to happen as long as I was just a hand, so I figured this may be the best way for me to learn. It turned out to be a great knowledge experience.”
Working His Way Up
Once he finished school he needed a place to start his career. He reckoned Portland wasn’t the ideal design mecca, but he knew a couple friends from school that were getting responses to job inquiries in Chicago. Price headed in that direction, with no exact idea what he was going to do. “The thing about Chicago is, there are a lot of companies located there, many of which are small and needed a little help. Of course I was willing to do anything. I started helping with corporate events, mixed in some theater and even offered to work for free at some points just to get my foot in the door. Companies like Frost and ILC were very helpful to me when I was starting out.” Smaller production companies working on small independent shows hired him as well.
“I really wanted to design lights for touring artists, be on a personal level with them — I wasn’t much interested in being a tech. Of course I knew I had to pay some dues, and Chicago was a great town to get around with mass transit, some cheaper housing and better options for living as a young person trying to break in.” So off he went. Through networking, he started hanging out with likeminded individuals who were working with local bands and picking up some work from them. “We had a little fellowship of people in the Chicago area, still do. Jason Reberski was a young man working out of his parent’s garage when we first met. I used to get jobs with bands who had no money. I would hit up Jason for a few lights for $100.
“I got an interesting job lighting the Adler Planetarium in 2012. I had been talking with a local AV company who had been approached by the oldest planetarium in the country to provide a lighting system. I took on the gig, but I had no idea what I was doing. I needed lights and cable etc. so I turned to Reberski to source the gear. That show is still up and running. That led me to getting calls from local bars to overhaul their lighting systems.” Eventually Adler called again, this time to design the inhouse light system for the Johnson Star Theater at their facility.
An Opportunity to Tour
In 2008, Price met a guy named Dave “Cash” Witalis in Chicago. Cash was looking after a couple of young bands. He needed someone to look after the opening act on one of his tours. So Price caught his first tour, working with an artist named Kevin Hammond. “We were all in a van, playing support for whoever we could. I was the tour manager, merch guy — pretty much everything. Occasionally, I got to run lights. I knew the moment that tour was over that I really never wanted to tour manage any group again.”
A few months later he found work with other bands such as Bayside, The Academy Is and Dizzy Wright. Eventually he went out as a light and video tech for the duo Phantogram. He did production management and took on any gigs he could, but he soon realized he wanted to do more lighting work, specifically with hardcore acts, the types of bands that had played on the Van’s Warped Tour.
He ended up as the lighting designer for Thrice, a SoCal rock band that is still at it today (scheduling conflicts prevented Price from working for them on their current tour). Through The Academy Is and Thrice, Price befriended a guitar tech named David “Suge” Jun. Jun had taken a gig with Taking Back Sunday, a Long Island rock band that had amassed a good following. Suge hooked him up with their production manager. “Andrew Sprague had been working with the band as their tour manager for some time,” Price says. “I guess the band had had a few LDs before, but Andrew would end up having to be a button pusher as well at times. I think he may have been tired of it, and the organization decided they needed a full time LD for the most part. This was in 2017, when they wanted to ramp up production and fill out the crew.”
This was the first time in Price’s career that he would spend a full year working with just one artist. “Usually I end up looking after three or four bands per year. A lot of the times, I am the one-man lighting crew.” Last summer, while on a co-headline tour with Coheed and Cambria, he had a proper touring rig, “but now we are out doing something pretty special. We are playing theaters and large clubs, booking two consecutive dates.
Lighting, Backdrop and Lasers
“On the first night, the band plays their entire first album. The next evening, they play the second and third albums, for the most part. I am carrying a floor package from JRLX in Chicago and my Hog 4, my choice of control. Some [Robe] MegaPointes and Spiiders, Elation SixBars for side light and [CuePix Blinder] WW2 and WW4 fixtures for blasts. Add in some local gear everywhere, and I’m set.”
Also for Taking Back Sunday, “we have a custom sign that’s built with a bunch of City Theatrical Neon Flex. Think rope light. The sign rises, working off an airlift, which is actually easier to set up than to fly the set piece. Basically I have three looms of cable to run out every day and stay self sufficient with the gear and maintaining it.”
And adding to the lights, “I’m carrying two 5-watt and two 3-watt lasers called Club Cats. These are handly little lasers from JRLX that are controlled via the Pangolin Control FB4 software. I have a custom fixture library that treats them like a media server, from my console. I have all the FDA-approved paperwork for them.
“For the first year it was easier for me to punt all the cues as we went from venue to venue and were dependent on their selection of lights,” Price continues. “We started the tour in Australia, punting with local gear while I learned the show. Then once I got to JRLX, they had a previz setup that I was able to use while his shop was tech’ing the touring gear. I have the majority of the show programmed on cuelists, but there’s two or three songs I still like to bump faders on.”
Price is admittedly single and pretty much married to his job. Now that his career has taken on the touring trade for a while, he found the time was right to relocate back to Portland. He’s gearing up to spend New Years’ through Valentine’s Day with Motion City Soundtrack on a U.S.-Canada run.
Looking for a button pusher? Eric can be reached at price4192@gmail.com.
