Bob Harmon on 45 Years of Service with Eggshell Light Company
Jay Robert [Bob] Harmon and his Eggshell Light Company are celebrating 45 years in the live entertainment business in combination with being a three time Hometown Hero Finalist (and winner in 2014). Over the years, hundreds of people in the biz have shared their tales of working with him while he consistently pulls the proverbial rabbit out of the hat and generally has a grand time doing it. Their stories point to why he and Eggshell Lighting continue as a unique standard in excellence and longevity. PLSN caught up with him to find out how it all came about.
Though unknown to Harmon at the time, he was bound for glory when his family navigated west from Ohio to Southern California. He has always been an enterprising guy with an imagination far out enough to make him a successful entrepreneur as well.
It was bound to happen. His penchant for knowing when opportunity knocks began at an early age while doing yard work for an elderly couple near his family home in Corona Del Mar, California. The couple had worked for Charlie Chaplin; the gentleman as a cameraman, his wife a Keystone Cop Bathing Beauty. They paid Bob a dollar for reading the “Keystone Weekly” to them, in addition to giving him some reels of old films and a projector.
He first dived into exploring lighting with his brother, who staged early psychedelic shows with projectors and oils. Bob of course, ran the projectors. In 1969, the family transferred to the Island of Oahu in Hawaii where his father, who had been an aerospace engineer, decided to focus his work instead on submersibles.
“By this time, I was about 12,” recalls Harmon, “An ice cream and pizza parlor had just opened near my home.” He reeled up some of the films he had acquired, doffed a straw hat and suspenders to demonstrate his wares to the owners. Too young to work legally at age 12, Bob took out a business license when he turned 13 under the name “Olde Tymer’s Film Services” showing silent movies to paying customers.
“By age 16 his priorities had changed somewhat. A local promoter came in the restaurant one day curious about the films. Capitalizing on the work he had done for his brother’s psychedelic light company, he casually mentioned he used to work with a lighting company. “Kismet!” the guy shouted; a term Harmon had never heard before, thereby staging his first lighting rig while still in high school for Brewer & Shipley.
Directly after that success, he secured a loan from a “reasonably wealthy” neighbor, a pediatric dentist, to the tune of $60,000, who bought into his fledgling company. In so doing, Harmon was able to purchase enough equipment to do his first big arena show at the HIC Arena (now the Neal Blaisdell Center). It was Kiss in 1976.
He looks back at those four years between 1974 and 1978 with a bit of amazement and awe about all that transpired. “The amount of shows we did during that time was an incredible experience — we did so many. I was fortunate. Everyone comes to Hawaii at some point, and this allowed me to spend quality time with a number of great lighting designers and directors on their way up.”
OMG Moments
In 1978, Harmon worked as the owner/operator for his lighting company, and he and his brother went on an inter-island tour with Hawaii-born singer/songwriter Yvonne Elliman. It took until 3 a.m. to strike the gear each night, and then, after loading gear on a DC-3 at the airport, the crew boarded a private prop plane to get to the next island. “I was oblivious to the lack of sleep as I played backgammon with Brother John. Drinking a Bloody Mary and flying over Haleakala at daybreak, I thought to myself, as I looked at the sunrise, ‘I could get used to this.’” But it was 1980, when he provided a lighting rig for the Police in a 900-seat venue at the University of Hawaii, that he recalls clearly that “if ever I doubted this was to be my calling, it disappeared then.”
The paradise that is the Hawaiian Islands provided Eggshell’s broad spectrum of client’s unique opportunities to light a rare landscape and cultural heritage, including the Kualoa Mountains to the only royal residence on American soil, Iolani Palace. The singular venue settings also provided his most memorable concert lighting moments, such as lighting Paco de Lucía, John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola and Steve Howe at the Waikiki Shell with a full moon overhead. Providing a system for Michael Keller, LD for Tina Turner performing in the Diamond Head Crater, was another once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“Truly, those were OMG moments,” he recalls. And as a matter of course in conducting Eggshell’s business, he has met world leaders such as Barack Obama, Margaret Thatcher and the legendary Dizzy Gillespie.
None of these visual and emotional experiences come close to “marrying Young, my wife and life partner, who is a saint for putting up with what I do. That is so hard to find in this business; someone who will give you that license and that space.”
When asked to name some of his mentors, Harmon reels off a list of names that runs the full spectrum of A-listers and the who’s who of LD’s in the industry. “I was taught by Peter Morse that every light is a brush, but honestly, there have been hundreds since that moment who are all my mentors. I have picked up a great deal from all of them. Through them I learned how to approach music, lay out cues, busk a show and possibly most important, how to be honest with the people that make this a business.”
The Business of the Business
Resources for stagecraft products were scarce on the island. Harmon took many trips to California and other parts of the mainland buying gear, meeting vendors and coming in contact with people he has remained in business with since the 1970’s. His too- many -to —tell- here- tales are epic in their scope.
“I met Jeff Ravitz at Morpheus and Jim Moody at Sundance Lighting, Mike Garl with Thomas Engineering; Curry Grant with PRG. Marshall Bissett and Colin Waters were working out of a garage at that time when they were just forming TMB. I went to Upstaging in Chicago to meet John Huddleston.” All hold an important place in his mentorship.
Most acts that come to the Islands bring a minimum of production due to the freight costs of what is essentially a “one-off” inside a tour. Consequently, he gets many diverse requests across his desk. While he strives to provide his customers their ideal gear list, he has to be very creative in assembling his inventory to provide those services. “Our gear does not tour. Everything is a one-off. I can’t look at a piece of equipment as something that will go out of the shop and on tour for weeks or months and generate income.” His ingenuity in coming up with exceptional alternatives has also won him many fans in the business. “HUD truss was one of my initial investments and it has been a boon to everything we do. Every show leaves this shop fully prepped, and HUD truss makes that exceptionally easy.”
Undaunted by any challenge, Harmon would resort to just building what he could not afford to buy. This was the end result when U2 LD Willie Williams requested a Leprecon Rainbow console that, at the time, was the latest-and-greatest pin matrix console around. Harmon simply could not afford it. This was around 1987. Instead, Bob built a similar board with Doug Armstrong of Fine Focus Lighting from scratch that became known as the Polex. “Only two of these boards ever existed,” he adds. “One for Doug, and one for me.” He made six trips to the States to buy all the parts from Doug, in the process “learning how to actually solder too.”
Eggshell has a somewhat unique shipping situation, since anything going outer islands involves an airplane or a ship. During the early days, the same freight baggage handlers worked the docks and the tarmac, with no differentiation between luggage and freight. “Road cases were kind of an affront,” says Harmon. “The labor crew had this attitude of ‘Oh, now we gotta work.’ Some items just did not get the attention or care they needed, which is how the Eggshell’s name came into being.”
Harmon was witness to a horror show of a situation when a friend’s $20K ($100K today) sound console got dropped out of an airplane bay with nothing to receive it. “Just tossed like a bag. The console broke into pieces.” Bob walked over to the crew beginning to unload his stuff, and they asked him, “What’s in your cases kid? “Eggs, I told them.” The workers then very deliberately handed the gear off without dropping a thing. For about six months onward all his freight was labeled agricultural and shipped for seven cents a pound.
One day, however, while searching for a missing dimmer rack, and describing it as “about this high and this wide,” the freight service guy asked, “Like a small refrigerator?” And…mystery solved. “Just like that, they pulled it out of the deep freeze, covered in frost,” Harmon says. And that’s when he fessed up. “It’s a joke, son. It’s the Eggshell Light Company!”
Local artists are a good 25 percent of Eggshell’s business. “There are a multitude of stars in their own right on the islands,” he adds. “I’d like to think my efforts of in helping them put on a successful show contributed to that popularity.”
Regarding his long run of success, Harmon says his best advocates are, “first and foremost, a crew that cares, and the fact they can pull the event off if I’m not there.” What he has most enjoyed about his career is not all the cool shows or legendary artists he has met. It is the fact that, “whatever the event, it’s always someone’s most important moment, and they trust me to bring my best.”
Harmon was one of 20 people that MA Lighting brought to Germany to participate in a discussion of just what the original grandMA console, then still on the drawing board, should have. “It wasn’t even built yet. I suppose because of my wide variety of customers from different backgrounds and countries, they considered my opinion valuable.”
Doing business with an international client base can be a mixed blessing, in terms of keeping sane hours, however. With his customers are in both the eastern and western hemispheres, “when the day ends with my U.S. clients, my Asian clients are just waking up.” This fact typically pushes him into 20 hour days, in the middle of which “I just thankfully drop my head and think… onward, here you go.”
Company Stats
“I have to keep the company lean, because our seasons are completely opposite of the U.S. mainland,” Harmon continues. “It’s rare we have shows in summer. Our season starts at the end of it. For conventions, too — as soon as the snow falls, we are off and running.”
He has eight full-time employees, the nucleus of which has been with him over 20 years, including repair techs Chris Swain, Glenn Ege and his truck driver and tech, Colin Che. He does have locals to add on seasonally. “I also bring over lighting directors, techs and even other company owners when times are particularly busy. I have a long list of people that want to come to Hawaii. Admittedly, it’s a smaller list that wants to come here to work,” he laughs.
His 10,000-square-foot warehouse includes a previz suite and enough floor space to lay out a 60-foot truss to prep and fire. It is “very vertical,” with more than 500 moving heads of Martin, Vari-Lite and GLP products. Eggshell expanded into large scale video projection, with the purchase of three Christie Boxer 4K30’s. Video content is created in ArKaos, Resolume and “even an old Martin Maxedia.”
Advice for the Next Generation
A rule Bob lives by and considers the best advice he can give to the younger person coming into the business is, “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. Not my words, but I love that.” A corollary to that is a business motto: “Your clients are golden. If they come off as skeptical, don’t take it personally. It is because they have been let down before. Do not presume that you are friends because they gave you an opportunity. You must always exceed their expectations. Friendship will follow.”
For more information on Eggshell Light Co., go to www.eggshellhi.com.
