The Los Angeles-based alt-metal rockers, Tool set out on the road last October and November bringing their unparalleled sonic and visual experience to fans across the United States and Canada. Supporting their record, Fear Inoculum, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top 200 upon its release in Aug. 2019, Tool is back performing more shows this month and next across the U.S. with support from metal band Elder. The creative team for Tool’s tour, which has been with the band for decades, includes Lighting Designer/Director Mark “Junior” Jacobson, Video Designer/Director Breckinridge “Breck” Haggerty, and Laser Designer/Programmer/Operator Scott Wilson from Production Design International (PDI). The three graciously took time out of prepping for the next tour leg to speak with PLSN magazine about their work on the dynamic design supporting the well-respected hard-rocking band.
LIGHTING
LD Jacobson, who has been with Tool for 27 years, begins by saying, “This design dates back a bit, we’ve altered it some for this year, but the core of it goes back to when we started in 2019 before we had to park it for a couple of years. Now, when we went back out, we kept the same core because are playing a lot of places we hadn’t gone to yet. We have altered a few things; however, the lasers have changed as Scott has found some new positions that opened things up.”
While playing arenas, on the recent legs of the tour, the design has flexibility built into it to deal with some venues that have height restrictions. “It’s one of our biggest challenges; fitting into different sized and shaped places this run. We don’t always have the height we want,” explains Jacobson, “We’re playing some places where we’re not going to get 50’ at trim height. We can shrink the video wall as Breck has some side panels that are optional. Lighting-wise, we try to get the whole rig up, it’s more about seeing what height it’s going to be in each venue.” Providing that rig of gear is Delicate Productions, part of the Live Events house of brands, who has been supporting Tool’s lighting needs going back to the earliest days of the band. In fact, Jacobson notes, “Delicate has been the lighting vendor longer than I’ve worked with Tool and it’s really been a good two-way relationship for sure.”
In the Rig
The rig has a lot of Ayrton lights, which Jacobson has been a fan of for some time, in addition to Robe and GLP gear. “Ayrton caught my eye in 2015 when we did a redesign,” he recalls. “It was the first time I used the MagicRing-R9s, which are now kind of a unicorn; they’re hard to find and they’re huge. That’s both a plus and a minus. It’s hard to find parts for them, but Delicate has been doing a pretty good job of sourcing as many spare MagicRings and parts as they can find. We only have a dozen of them in the rig, but they really stand out and have become a signature piece. We’ve got the Khamsin, which is a great profile fixture. Even when they’re up at a 50’ trim height, they’re still good as back keys and cutting through all the other stuff. I know there are some newer, maybe brighter things, but they’ve worked really well, so we haven’t found a reason to move from them. I am also using a few [Robe] MegaPointes and Pointes. Those are always good to have, as they do a really good job cutting through the air and making themselves seen.”
Jacobson doesn’t use any followspots for key lighting. “It’s more about the show,” states the designer. “We’ve got a singer that doesn’t like being lit all that much and they don’t move around that much. He’s got two performance areas, left and right of the drums up on the platform. We have only a portion of it that’s lit, so if he wants to be lit, he’s in it; if he doesn’t feel like it, he can back out of it. The key lights we’ve mostly been using are the [Martin] MAC Aura XIPs. They work really well and provide a good skin tone. Now, we’ve gone more towards a warm white for a key light. It used to be a lot of color, more psychedelic.”
Jacobson’s design also uses GLP JDC1s and impression X-Bars. “We use them under the drum riser that is Plexiglass, so it’s all clear underneath him,” describes Jacobson. “He likes having a lot of light, so we have 10 X-Bars under the drum riser alone to provide some uplight on his kit. Across the front of the riser are [High End Systems] TurboRays that let me get fingers of light patterns instead of just a light curtain. They’re good for a few other tricks, as well. I keep finding new ways to incorporate them.” Jacobson has been running the show on a grandMA3 as of October 2023. “There aren’t that many arena tours using it, and I think we are a good example that it is ready for the task,” he explains. “The extra executor configurations, and the knob executors in particular, have opened up a whole new way to access the inhibitive controls for my key lights that almost remind me of the ‘trim pots’ on the old Celco Gold consoles.”
To increase the number of looks, much of the lighting rig is automated with trusses that can be repositioned throughout the show. “We have 16 short moving trusses with 10’ truss sections,” comments Jacobson. “Each one has one MagicRing, two Auras, and three Geminis. These 12 pods can be repositioned to get some different angles and different looks. Then we have four more on the sides that have WildSuns on them so we can bring those up and down to get more of a cross wash or higher wash. They let us keep things different, though we don’t do a whole lot with them, we are careful about when we use them, because they’re all moving in front of the video, and we don’t want to have trusses hanging in front of the video for the entire show. We also have seven-sided stars on a moving track that can be raised, lowered, and brought up and downstage. All the automation is done by Show SDT out of Montreal.”
LASERS
Laser Designer/Programmer/Operator Scott Wilson of Production Design International (PDI) has been working with Tool since they added lasers to their tour visuals in 2006. “I’ve done probably every show they’ve put on since they’ve incorporated lasers,” says Wilson, who grew up a big fan of Tool, never thinking that one day he’d be working for the band. Of the laser design, he states, “While I coordinate and interface with Breck and Junior, I do get a lot of creative freedom in terms of laser content and how much per song. The sum of the whole is what makes this show. We map out what songs we want to use lasers in, but as far as where in those songs or what moments I want to choose to highlight, there’s a lot of creative freedom left to me.”
When creating his laser design, Wilson tries to keep it fresh looking and interesting to watch. “When audience members see a lot of different shows by different artists that have lasers, I find that often it’s easy to fall into the realm of seeing the same type of effects, or seeing the same stock animations that the lasers are capable of. A challenge on this show is trying to keep it unique, trying to differentiate our looks from other laser shows. We do that with programming, and by creating a lot of custom content, not simply starting with the toolbox that comes with a piece of software. By creating fully custom animations and images it allows us to really tailor the look and feeling of the show. It really helps give a show some of its own life and character to be a little more unique and at times more powerful for certain moments.”
Old School Techniques
To get those unique looks, one way is actually an old school laser effect that has been brought back to bring a fresh visual to the tour. This is a mantra of Howard Ungerleider and PDI—’using old school tech in a new school way.’ For this Tool tour, “we utilize an old school effect called a Machida, something that you don’t see very often,” Wilson explains. “We have a laser downstage center mounted up in the truss, a special piece of optical glass is mounted in front of the beam that gives us a 180° linear diffraction effect. It divides that laser up into a multitude of colored beams split over 180° that creates a large static ‘ceiling’ over the top of the audience. It’s something from the 70s or 80s when lasers first started being used in touring; it’s something you don’t see that often today. An actual optic effect put in front of a laser is a different look than you get just from a set of XY scanners like you’d typically see on most shows these days. You could equate it to a moving light with a glass gobo in it. You get a much different clarity, and zero flicker which is often then downfall of a laser system I call it more of an analog look, a little more natural, not so digital; lasers can be very digital looking at times.”
Flexibility is Key
Positioning and focus are critical elements of the laser design at each stop on the tour. “Every venue is unique, and when we walk in, we need to focus the lasers into safe areas each day, while providing the best possible experience to the audience,” comments Wilson. “We try to have a show that’s a little bit malleable, a bit flexible so we can change a few things on a show-to-show basis to help get the best look. Often, we want to keep the lasers close to the viewing angle of the audience, the lower you can get it, the better it looks generally. I think having a multitude of zones that we focus in a venue each day allows us the flexibility to put lasers into areas of these venues that don’t typically get lasers for most shows. I work with a gentleman, John Borcherding, as my second on the tour. He is key to this tour and helps to facilitate a lot of things throughout the day. We take the time to do a real precise focus on some smaller areas that are lower down to the audience so we can utilize those for some specific moments. I think it brings the lasers closer to the audience members, but it’s also a different look than just all the lasers shooting up into the ceiling, all at the same angle. My hope is that I can bring a laser focus to a venue that no one has done before, that’s one of the goals at least”
For this recent run, there’s new programming and new laser effects, as well as “new laser positions for songs that we haven’t done lasers for in the past,” points out Wilson. “The songs that have lasers have all been reprogrammed and revamped. This happens for most every leg of the tour because the positioning of the lasers change as does the set list of songs, and of course, we want to keep it fresh. Also, technology has changed a lot over the years. We try to utilize any new features of the software or new equipment that has different features that we can utilize to make a better show. We want to keep it fresh and allow the audience to experience something new and different at each show.”
Key Choices
When it came to the laser control software, Wilson took advantage of new features with Pangolin’s BEYOND software. “Pangolin has done many updates through the years that have allowed us to get more out of a laser,” Wilson explains. “A laser essentially is just one beam with a set of X and Y scanning mirrors, but that one beam has to be told to do everything. The Pangolin BEYOND software allows you to create and choreograph all the effects that you see come out of a laser. I think it’s just gotten a lot easier, and they’ve given us a lot more tools to use to help make the process of creating an interesting laser show faster and more intuitive when you sit down with their software these days.” The lasers and control on the Tool tour are all supplied by Toronto-based PDI.
Currently on the Tool tour Wilson uses all KVANT-based lasers with Pangolin’s BEYOND software. “We’ve had a good track record with both of them, with good reliability,” he states. “The lasers themselves, we find tour very well; they’re very robust, as well as their great beam quality. Beam quality is very important in the lasers; you can have a lower powered laser with a better beam quality, and it’ll physically look brighter just because of the clarity, the sharpness of the beam. Wattage is not everything, it’s often the better-quality beams that will make a better looking show. We find that the KVANT lasers have a great balance of features, with high quality beams, low beam divergence, great colors, and precision optics. Obviously, it’s all up to the programmer to make them do the things that they need to do, just like a lighting rig, it’s up to the creativity of that programmer to make it all come to life.”
On Tool, Wilson has five 30W and six 20W lasers populating the stage area, and then four 6W lasers grouped in a cluster at front of house projecting towards the stage. Those four lasers are primarily used as graphics lasers. “The four of them work together in tandem with high-speed scanners so we can create really highly detailed graphic images,” Wilson describes. “We’re not so much utilizing those as traditional atmospheric lasers where you see the clouds of lasers and the beam effects bouncing around, they’re primarily used for graphics. We utilize surfaces within the stage and surrounding areas, whether it be the back video wall or parts of the building’s roof structures, or speaker cabinets—we’re able to focus on these different areas.”
Filling the Void
Wilson, as stated, constantly works on changing the laser design, including finding new positions in the rig to work better for the show overall. “We’ve tried to massage the look of this show for a while; we’ve changed positions and the amounts of lasers over the years,” says Wilson. “Something that stands out this time is, we position the lasers so that they play in the dark spaces to fill the areas of the arenas that might not have something—whether it’s a lighting rig or a video wall—as the backdrop. We put a lot in the upper mother grid truss in order to fill the black area that’s above the stage. We utilize the area above the truss area and fill that in with lasers, paint that black area above the stage with lasers. Then we have satellite side towers that are movable, so at each venue, we look at it and push them out into the wings getting those lasers to emanate from the furthest, to be the most outside source of light, so that it can play in the black space that is on the left and right of the stage. I think that it really helps the lasers cut through and be predominant when mixed and blended with a large video and lighting rig.”
Wilson continues, “One of the main areas we utilize—that I find brings the show to life and really helps fill in an area that is typically just a black square—would be the audio P.A. The P.A. hangs on either side of the stage, and they’re typically just these black squares that hang there unless you treat them with lighting effects or something. By projecting lasers onto them, the precise nature of a laser beam at such a great distance, and the visual brightness of them, as opposed to say a video projector, these geometric images and raster scan like images really pop, and help tie the width of the stage together, widen the look of the stage; even just outlined images on the P.A. system really makes a difference. We can fill them up with color or Gobo like patterns utilizing the laser—we utilize certain images to complement what the video or lighting package is doing. That’s something I don’t think I’ve seen any other tour do, utilize lasers to project on the audio speakers, just to help fill that space.”
VIDEO
Video Designer/Director Breckinridge “Breck” Haggerty has been with Tool since he began as Lighting Crew Chief for Junior Jacobson in 1998. He took over his current role as Video Director in 2003. Breck’s video system is mostly playback with some cameras, and a control system he built using Breckinridge Design Lupo4K Media Servers, based on TouchDesigner. That handles most of the media and generative content and the output mapping for the Tool tour. “We also use some custom hardware that’s been on the show since 2000,” Breck notes. “The way I got the job as Video Director, is that I developed a video system, called NEV, that didn’t really exist at the time. So, I was the provider of the video control system and then when the Video Director job came up, they asked me to fill it.” These days Breck is using Breckinridge Design’s NEV8 and NEV9 to run the Tool tours. “The NEV8 Universal Controller handles Blackmagic [Designs’] HyperDecks for additional real-time media playback,” Breck explains. “NEV8 is 5-pin DMX input and has serial device control. The new NEV9 controls Blackmagic Videohub 40×40 Routing Switcher and a Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K camera. NEV9 is an Art-Net/sACN input and Ethernet device control system. A full-size grandMA2 console controls all the above.”
For the video screens, Breck goes with ROE Visual’s 5mm CB5 LED video panels, which is supplied by a combination NEP Screenworks and NEP Big Picture. On the other end of the snake, Jeremy “AJ” Moore of NEP Big Picture picks up the rest of the video system, where he describes, “We have 580 ROE Visual CB5 full size in T4 touring frames and 96 ROE Visual CB5s out of frames for changing rooms and to deal with trim heights. All the ROE panels are running on Brompton [Technology] SX40 XD processing platform, which we use to represent the darker colors more accurately in the show content. We also have 84 X5C panels for the risers that run on the NovaStar MCTRL4K platform. We have two AWUE100 4x PTZ cameras with a custom signal transmission system for low latency signal delivery. Signal transmission was handled by with a fiber optic Riedel MediorNet MicroN system set up with redundancy routing.” Breck states that “Big Picture, [based in Australia] and Screenworks leveraged both company’s resources to provide the most appropriate touring system. These days, we get our equipment from Screenworks in the States, but our crew is still from Australia. They’re awesome, and definitely worth it.”
Tool has never been fans of using live cameras and I-Mag. They don’t want to see giant images of themselves on screens behind them. “Even at festivals, they ask that the cameras be bagged,” Breck points out. “At the recent Power Trip festival, where there were a bazillion people way out in the back; no cameras!” What he ends up doing is essentially affected I-Mag. “The one shot that we use almost every show is an overhead shot on Danny Carey, the drummer, and then it gets run through a kaleidoscope filter. It’s just a UV map that repeats it around. You only get to see a sliver of the live shot.”
In Control
Like everything else, nothing in video for the show is timecoded. “Plus, nothing plays for very long,” says Breck, “everything is loop based. That also lets us be covered if somebody would go up for solo that they forgot to tell us about. At those inevitable moments I’m not like, ‘Oh no, this video’s going to run out in five seconds!’ What was unique about the NEV system, from the very beginning, was we could do a very agile playback in full standard def. The basic idea of NEV is that it’s originally serial control. The premise was always real-time control.”
There are a lot of different pieces of video content, created by a variety of people and content creators for the Tool tour. Breck sees them as “art pieces and my job is a little bit of being a curator. I get content coming in from so many different people that a lot of my job is arrangement and modification, along with building things to fill in gaps. I look at each one as an art piece or a short film and try and give it its own character. Along with Junior and Scott, we try and give each song its own signature look and something that will carry through different tours. The band handles control of the content creation and they bring in people to build the various content. Sometimes I get no information from the content creator but then other times I get very specific instructions. An artist that creates a whole song worth of material might have a specific idea of how they want to put it together, so I help them make that happen. I try and realize their view of what they want, it is their vision. Adam, the guitar player, directs the music videos and he sometimes gets very involved in the video stuff.”
LAYERED TOGETHER
Having worked together for so many years, Jacobson, Wilson, and Breck really have developed a shorthand—and trust in each other’s creative portion fitting the overall vision. A trust and collaboration that is evident in the amazing shows the team creates. “We make sure not to step on each other,” explains Jacobson. “Sometimes, we have to get together and talk it through. This is especially true for lasers since they really need darkness around them to stand out. That is less these days than it used to be. In the old days, if you were going to do a laser moment, pretty much everything—lighting and video—had to go away. Now that’s not quite as true, since lasers have gotten brighter, but they still call for having some space around them. If there’s going to be a featured laser thing, we will try to make sure we duck out a bit with lighting and video; let the lasers stand out.”
While avoiding letting the video and lighting overpower the lasers, the team still allows the video and lighting to be equally important aspects on the Tool tour. They do an excellent job of mixing everything together to create impressive dynamic looks where no one production discipline is the entire show. “You don’t want to crush the lasers so much that you can’t see them, which is very easy to do, but at the same time you want to dial back the lasers intensity to fit a mood or moment, it’s not full throttle all the time, dynamics and transitions are key,” Wilson comments. “Also, just being able to play in those dark spaces and try to fill the voids that the rest of the rig maybe doesn’t hit, that works well with the lighting and video at times, creating a great look.”
Particularly unique is that all three operators run the shows on their own, with no comms links between them, and no timecode. Their long association helps in knowing—and understanding—each other’s rhythms and flow throughout the show. “We don’t communicate really during the show,” says Jacobson. “We don’t wear headsets. It’s a very loud show; we wouldn’t hear each other anyway unless we had shooting muffs on, but that wouldn’t work, because then we wouldn’t hear the band. It’s more important that the three of us hear the band since we are playing along with them essentially. Usually, we talk about it later. We will occasionally improvise something in the show and after the show we discuss how it went, like ‘that didn’t really work for me’ or ‘that was great, let’s keep that,’ or ‘maybe tweak this a little.’ It’s a constant evolution.”
There are plenty of bands that play without a click track and without timecode, but the team find most people are surprised that they don’t use timecode to sync everything on the Tool shows. “I think that’s one of our more unique things,” says Jacobson. “We use no timecode because the band does not play to a click track, so in order to keep things looking like everything’s in sync, we just have to pretend we’re band members; do it the old school way.”
For Wilson it truly is about the music and helping the audience go on a trip and get lost in the music and their way of ‘playing’ the production elements really lets them do that visually. “It’s a completely analog show—from audio to video to lighting and lasers and automation—everybody’s got to hit their buttons at the right time, or the show falls apart or becomes something different. It takes a lot of concentration and a lot of effort from the whole group during shows to make it all happen; it’s a lot of buttons getting pressed. If there’s a specific delay cue or a specific echo or something, that’s all punched in manually on the fly, there’s no hidden track running that’s keeping us in line. And I think that’s a good thing. I think because we’re all separated, it gives an organic feel to the show and allows the show to adapt to the band. Because they’re not playing to a click, they’re playing with emotion and feeling, you can kind of hop on board with that and kind of make your show fit that. That is when the audience can get lost in the looks, enjoy the music and let the whole show take over.”
VENDOR VIEW
Howard Ungerleider, Production Design International
Toronto-based Production Design International [PDI], has been led by Howard Ungerleider and Brian Beggs since they formed the company in 1994. PDI has supported Tool since they added lasers in 2006. “I don’t really get too involved with the creatives because I have a firm belief in all my employees and give them complete creative freedom. I believe that’s also what has helped my company move forward and set us apart from many other laser companies, because we custom design things and we use a little bit different technology than most other companies,” Ungerleider says.
“Scott Wilson, the lead programmer and designer for Tool, had worked with me on Rush in the past, so he knows what I like to see. With Rush, I was all hands on with the lasers. But I understand that it’s frustrating sometimes for an employee that wants to spread his wings and he can’t because his hands are tied by the main person who’s out there, which on Rush was me. I don’t like tying people’s hands. I like having my guys have creative freedom, so I’ll make little suggestions here and there, but on Tool it is Scott’s show,” he adds.
“One thing I will say about the design is that at PDI, we’re very big on optics, and one of the things that’s important to us is getting people to see something that they haven’t seen before in a laser show. Which is kind of hard because lasers have been around for so long. One way is we pull the optics from older lasers. We like to combine old school and new school technology to come together with a hybrid of different types of effects. We try to stay outside the box on that. For example, there’s an optic, it’s called a Machida effect, which is the size of your pinky nail. It’s a piece of glass that takes one beam and divides it into 180 lines. In the early days we had optical tables for lasers that had a lot of these different optical glass pieces. We still have them. We use them from time to time and a lot of people look at them and they go, ‘what’s this?’ They are not familiar with that. But what Scott had done on this tour, which was quite amazing, was he took this Machida optic, and he built it into a laser system that’s mounted up high so that he could actually layer in a ceiling of light across the whole venue. It’s a lot of experimentation,” Ungerleider says.
“PDI has been with the band since 2006, and I am proud that the crew and personnel that we put out on it keep coming back year after year. They love working with Scott, because he does a great job. We also have John Borcherding out there on the tour as the second laser safety operator. You know, at PDI we just pride ourselves on what we do as far as our collaborative designing. On this Tool tour, Scott, Breck, and Junior are the designers, and they are all collaborative designers, which really shows. The three of them collaborated to get this really beautiful end result. I have to give them credit, because I have a high standard myself when I do my designs, and conceptually I’d like to pass that forward to my guys so they know what I like, so they strive to say, ‘hey, here’s what I can do’. I love that because you can’t drive the boat all the time.”
PRODUCTION TEAM
- Tour Manager: Jerome Crooks
- Road Manager: Brett Bachemin
- Production Manager: Rodney Johnson
- Lighting Designer/Director: Mark “Junior” Jacobson
- Video Designer/Director: Breckinridge “Breck” Haggerty
- Laser Designer/Programmer: Scott Wilson
- Laser Technician / 2nd Laser Safety Officer: John Borcherding
- Lighting Crew Chief: Graham “DB” Jelly
- Lighting Technicians: Paul Mundrick, Greg Nunz, Eddie Viveros, James Hokafonu, Christofer Schneider
- Account Manager: Jeremy “AJ” Moore, NEP Big Picture
- Video Crew Chief: Nathan Barnier (2024), Sean Lee (2023)
Video Crew: (2024)- Emma Cusak, Fraser Kerr, Jerry Rogers, Kevin Parry, Johnathan Noble,Jeffrey Spackman; (2023)- Ramilio Flores, Lee Jon Taylor, Aaron Wagner, Patrick Wilson
- Automation Technicians: Jerome Labonte, Jonathan Theroux
- Riggers: Antoin Patten, Hector Mimoso, Jon Fiebelkorn, Andras Juhasz
- Stage Manager: Brian Kountz
- Production Coordinator: Alexandra Grant
VENDORS
- Lasers: Production Design International
- Lighting: Delicate Lighting, a Live Event Brand
- Video: NEP Screenworks, NEP Big Picture
- Automation: ShowSDT
GEAR
Lighting
- 24 Ayrton Khamsin
- 7 Ayrton Magic Dot
- 13 Ayrton Magic Blade
- 12 Ayrton MagicRing-R9
- 8 Ayrton WildSun
- 22 Robe Pointe
- 12 Robe MegaPointe
- 24 Robe BMFL
- 37 Martin MAC Aura XIP
- 16 GLP X Bar 20
- 24 GLP JDC1
- 24 High End Systems TurboRay
- 36 ACME Gemini
- 1 grandMA3 full-size Console
- 1 grandMA3 light Console
Lasers
- 5 KVANT Spectrum 30W
- 6 KVANT Spectrum 20W
- 4 KVANT Clubmax w/ High Speed Scanners
- Custom Diffraction Effects
- Pangolin BEYOND Laser Software
Video
- Breckinridge Design Lupo4K Media Servers
- Breckinridge Design’s NEV8 Universal Controller
- Blackmagic Design Hyperdeck
- Breckinridge Design NEV9
- Blackmagic Design 40×40 Videohub
- Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K camera
- grandMA2 full-size Console
- 580 ROE Visual CB5 Full Size, T4 Touring Frames
- 96 ROE Visual CB5 LED Video Panel
- Brompton Technology Tessera
SX40 LED processor - 84 X5C LED Video Panel
- NovaStar MCTRL4K 4K LED Controller
- 2 Panasonic AWUE100 4x PTZ Camera
- Riedel MediorNet MicroN System
