Multi-platinum, chart-topping rock band Shinedown just wrapped up its Planet Zero World Tour, that was in support of its seventh studio album of the same name. Shinedown has announced their upcoming fall The Revolutions Live Tour, prior to which they will play a round of smaller venues and festivals this summer. Having been with the band for the past five years, Production and Lighting Designer, Mitchell Schellenger, Principal Designer of Denver, CO-based Station Six, provided them with a radical new design with a massive thrust for this tour. Lighting Director, Carter Fulghum, who has been with Shinedown for 11 years, is back as the Lighting Director. PLSN spoke with both Schellenger and Fulghum about the design and gear choices that support Shinedown on the road.
Mitchell Schellenger,
Production & Lighting Designer
Schellenger started working with Shinedown in 2018/19 on their Attention, Attention tour. “I was brought in to do lighting programming, and that evolved into some screens direction and other things,” recalls the designer. “The band invited me back for this new album cycle to do full production and lighting design, along with a bit of creative direction. Zach Myers, the guitarist, wears the creative director’s hat with this band, so he and I collaborated quite a bit to put this new show together. We’re quite pleased with how it turned out.”
Schellenger tells us about the aesthetic they were going for on the Planet Zero tour. “It had a very kind of futuristic feel to it,” he describess. “It was a concept album, so it had these pillars throughout. The music itself, there was this siren voice, basically this kind of futuristic woman that would speak throughout the album. So, we wanted to play off that futuristic, almost spacey vibe and aesthetic, but we didn’t want to overdo it. I didn’t want it to feel like in-your-face outer space thing, nothing like that, instead we wanted to have a modern, futuristic feel to it.”
It was important to Schellenger to create something that, no matter where the audience was in the venue, they felt close and part of the show. “That’s where the choice to use this ridiculously long thrust came into play,” laughs Schellenger. “The band performs the entire show on the thrust, which is cool, because basically anybody on the floor is right there at the barricade and very close, and if you’re in the bowl, you still don’t have a bad seat.”
In keeping with the futuristic, space aesthetic, clean lines came into play. Schellenger has always been a fan of having the show look really clean at times. “I always say, ‘It’s easier for me to make a clean stage look messy than a messy stage look clean.’ There are a lot of very linear components, and the whole system is automated so that we can suck everything up to the grid. There’s really no height variation to the stage. We can make it look sterile at times. The lighting is all high, and really flat. The stage is very flat. There’s nothing on the stage. We’ve hidden all the floor lights underneath the grated deck so that the light beams pop through the decking, but you don’t see the actual fixture. To keep the show dynamic, we build various looks both structurally, as well as with the lighting devices, so we can keep it continuously moving into a new look and vibe; heavy songs can be gnarly looking.”
With Cybermotion automation, they can rake all the trusses so that there’s really no sense of what’s going on. And then, to contrast that, “we can put everything in a really clean, simple look with a simple lighting focus, and it looks like a completely different show,” explains Schellenger. “I think that that clean look, that can evolve into something messy using the Cybermotion system, that we have on everything, allowed us to progress the show in a dynamic fashion.”
The lighting equipment was supplied by Bandit Lites, a longtime vendor for Shinedown. Bandit’s Brent Barrett was the Account Executive who supported this tour. “Shinedown is the first time I’ve personally—apart from festivals—worked with Bandit on a show of this size,” Schellenger says. “It was great. They’re really great people, and the gear is really good.” Schellenger noted some key gear choices that supported the versatility in his design. “The first thing I always choose is the control, especially since I programmed this show myself. I don’t program a lot of my shows these days, but this one, I thoroughly enjoyed programming. The music’s fun to program to, and the band is really great to work with. When I’m wearing the programmer hat, I always choose MA. Then, for my lighting choices, I really wanted a whole clean look, clean lines, and a quantity of fixtures. I’d rather take 100 of something than 12 of this, 16 of that, or whatever. I reached out to Bandit to see what they had. We used the Ayrton Khamsin as our workhorse. Every single truss has Khamsin. The floor has Khamsin on it. There’re no wash lights, per se. I’ve always been a fan of these new profile fixtures that they can zoom so wide, they’re still punchy in a saturated color, and they can serve as a wash when needed.”
For the strobes, they went with GLP JDC1s, since they “do what they need to; nice and punchy, and look great,” says Schellenger. For remote followspots, they’re using Robe’s RoboSpot system with BMFLs. Each band number has two, so there’s eight total. There is a rear spot and a high side light for each band member. “We chose not to pair them to speed up load-in,” says Schellenger. “They, like every rock band, don’t want any front light. However, the audience obviously wants to see them, so my favorite trick is to take an eight-foot stick of [Tyler] GT [truss], hang it high, one per side with a couple of lights, to serve as a key light. It’s steep, moody front light, and you don’t get that big ‘pop star circle’ from a traditional FOH followspot. Plus, like all of us, we love the ability to black out eight spots simultaneously and have them snap between color and strobe. So, the RoboSpot system, from a key light standpoint, is the perfect choice.”
Under the stage, they have a grid of Claypaky Mythos to shoot up through the grated stage deck. The reason for that fixture choice was, “Bandit had the quantity that we were going for, it’s punchy, but still has a small form factor,” Schellenger comments. “Since they were under the deck in inverted Tyler GT truss, we wanted something that could move, get really tight, or be fairly washy at times, and be comfortable for the crew to deal with in that fairly tight space.” He wanted a linear light to line the trusses so Bandit hooked him up with “the sexiest light on this tour, the Elation Seven Batten,” he states. “I wanted something to draw attention to the automation movements. We took a bunch of those out and they are stunning.”
Schellenger is very pleased to be working with Carter Fulghum as the Lighting Director for the tour and would love to work with him lots more. “Carter is awesome. I wish I could use Carter for every show I ever do!” enthuses Schellenger. “I mean no disrespect to the other people I have on tour. I love to surround myself with great people. I think the team really makes the show. You can have all the gear in the world, but if you don’t have the right people, what’s the point? Carter is certainly no exception to that. He’s such a go-getter. He’s one of the hardest working lighting directors I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. He’s perfect for the role and he’s perfect for this band, too. He really respects the musicians. He gets them everything they need. If they ask for a change, it’s done. And he’s just such a pleasant human, too. I love doing the late nights in the arena with Carter because he is just such a great dude to be around. Again, I would steal Carter and use him for all sorts of stuff if he wasn’t such a loyal Shinedown Bandit Lites guy.”
Schellenger similarly feels that Shinedown is one of his favorite bands to work with. “They are the most humble human beings on the face of the planet,” he says. “I would drop everything to go work on a Shinedown show, just because they are truly the most sincere, pleasant human beings I’ve had the pleasure of working with. I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to work with them. I think we all collaborated very well together. In addition to the band, their whole team, [PM] Charlie Terrell’s great; everybody involved from the top down, it is a great camp. I always joked, ‘If I was still touring, I’d be jealous of Carter because this would be a fun one to go on the road with.’”
Carter Fulghum,
Lighting Director
Fulghum has been with Shinedown for over a decade, and he takes care of maintaining the lighting design on the road as well as responding to changes and requests from the band. He feels that this design is easy to maintain. “It’s really about the trusses and automation. You just have to get the grid in the right spot and then all the truss moves work properly. You have to stay on top of where the points end up in the mornings and make sure that all of that’s working out right, and then try to cut off any potential problems depending upon the room. Dealing with scoreboards is usually a lot of fun.”
Fulghum and Schellenger planned out dealing with the automation during programming so there wouldn’t need to be a lot of updating of focuses. Fulghum says, “We made it so the specials are only happening in certain spots during the show, and during that time, the rig is in home position—as high as it goes, so, I have to update the home positions. The rest of the positions are all fans, just straight out, doing a lot of aerial type effects.”
Fulghum likes the fixtures that were chosen for this tour, especially the Khamsins. “I can’t say enough good things about the Khamsins, those LED spots are just amazing,” the LD says. “They’re incredibly bright, and they’re very, very good at what they do. They held up well, especially because there’s a lot of pyro in this show, so there’s a lot of dust being thrown everywhere. The Mythos running under the stage held up well too. The Mythos and BMFLs are the only arc sources in the rig, but the LED Khamsins held up against the Mythos and were brighter, in my opinion.”
Like Schellenger, Fulgham enjoyed working together on this tour. “He was great, and he’s been very helpful with making sure that we didn’t have anything that would need to be updated which was critical to the show; nothing that would cause problems with the trusses moving. He didn’t just go, ‘okay, well we need a special here, now we need to move it into this position and do specials here.’ None of that ended up happening, which helped with the day like crazy. He gives great advice that is very helpful with everything.”
The Lighting Director was very happy with Bandit Lites’ support for the tour. “They’ve been doing a great job keeping everything updated,” says Fulghum. “With most of the lights we haven’t had any problems, but whenever we did have problems, they were sending out new parts, or whatever we needed. Bandit, as always, did a great job of giving us any support we needed. Both Matt King, the Project Manager, and Brent Barrett, the Client Rep, have done a wonderful job with staying on top of everything and making sure that everything was coordinated properly.”
Like Schellenger, the LD really likes working with Shinedown. “The guys are great, they’re a wonderful band to work for, very appreciative,” says Fulghum. “I remember when I got hired on the first tour, and Brent Smith, the lead singer called me directly to welcome me to the tour, before I’d ever even got out the door! I’d never had that happen before. As soon as I walked into the first rehearsal, the rest of the guys, were right there saying, ‘hey, how you doing? Nice to meet you. Great to work with you’. They’ve been like that ever since. Zach is very creative and watches a lot of other bands, and other things. He sees a lot of things that happen and is very much in the middle of all of it.”
Production Team
- Tour Manager: Ed Baker
- Production Manager / Stage Manager: Charlie Terrell
- Production and Lighting Designer: Mitchell Schellenger / Station Six
- Lighting Director: Carter Fulghum
- Production Assistant: Erin Masuda
- Tour Assistant: Justin Press
- Lighting Crew Chief: Hayley Elliott
- Lighting Technicians: Andrew Ellis, Lucas Gamez
- Video Technician: Mike Tengdin
- Pyro Crew Chief: Keegan Stalcup
- Pyro Technician: Matt Healy
- Automation Engineer: Christian Burdette
- Rigger: Kirk “Rockit” Larocco
- Carpenter: Colin Barrett
- Assistant Carpenter / Utility Tech: Syrus Peters
Vendors
- Lights: Bandit Lites
- Video: Gateway Studios
- Pyro: Pyrotek
- Set: Gallagher Staging
- Automation: Cybermotion US
Gear
Lighting
- 2 MA Lighting grandMA2 full-size
- 4 MA Lighting grandMA2 NPU
- 55 Ayrton Khamsin S
- 37 Claypaky Mythos 2
- 11 Elation Seven Batten 42
- 35 Elation Seven Batten 72
- 44 GLP JDC‐1
- 1 Robe RoboSpot Package
- 44 Tyler Truss 8’
- 38 DN 1-Ton Hoist
- 6 Reel FX DF-50 Hazer
- 4 Martin ZR 44 Smoke Machine
- 10 Smoke/Hazer Fan
