Hozier (Andrew Hozier-Byrne) is an Irish singer-songwriter and musician whose music often touches on literary themes and social justice. He brought the crowd together in unison for a night of great music, and to immerse them deeper into the songs visually was the work of Production Designer Steven Douglas and Tour Director Duchess Iredale, to bring together his Unreal Unearth tour.
As lighting designer, Douglas covered shows on Hozier’s first album cycle around the album release in 2013 when his original designer had some scheduling conflicts. When the second album cycle came in 2018 Douglas was asked if he would be interested in returning to the camp as the position had opened up. “His management and tour director knew me from previous work internationally and of course in Ireland it’s a relatively small country so most people in the business know each other as well.”
Douglas, having known Tour Director Iredale for years, made for an easy process working on this tour with her. “I’ve covered other shows for her artists like The Cranberries and Maria Doyle Kennedy as well as an annual Christmas charity show that we worked on together for a few years. Duchess very much lets the creative side of things run its course and then gets more involved when the practical side of things needs help, making suggestions to preserve the concept for the day to day of the tour.”
“Originally we wanted all the content to be projection-based and appear more natural rather than just having a big screen but it became apparent with the number of outdoor venues we were going to play with daylight until at least changeover that blending projectors was going to be very difficult, so we reverted to the idea of a screen with the metal mesh diffusion drape in front of it so at certain moments we can almost make the content look it might be projection but allow us proper control and reliability of the image every night.” The metal mesh was painted sandstone brown to give it the vague feeling of a rock face. “Due to the nature of the mesh it never really sits the same way every show, so it changes throughout the course of the tour which lends itself to the idea of it being something natural and not too constructed.”
Coffee and a Chat
This tour design all started over a coffee and a chat with Hozier and Iredale to talk through the concepts and ideas behind the album. “I’ve always been a firm believer that the music leads the design and that’s definitely even more true with a Hozier show because Andrew is so creatively minded and involved conceptually.” They were looking for a statement piece in the show to match the windows they had on the last album cycle he notes. “The springboard idea was the cover art for the first single “Eat Your Young” which featured an inverted world with the sky below and earth positioned to the top of the image and with the recurring reference points in the album to Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell. We thought it could be great to have a moment to have the show go ‘underground’ at a certain point before returning to the light later in the set. From there the idea of automating some trees to fly in and out came to pass and from there we built a second position where the trees fly to a 50% position to resemble roots as well. There are little details that hopefully some people notice such as when we are in the upside world the birds in the video content flying around are inverted.”
For the majority of shows Douglas designs he tries to stay hands-on for as much as possible. He says that with everyone being so busy on different tours it’s been a little trickier to do this but notes he’s been lucky to find a small team of people that he can rely on to run the shows when he’s not available. “I’ve got Chris Pedersen, my FOH Tech on The Killers who can step in, Madison Adams here on the Hozier tour, and Joseph Morris who worked on The Killers previously with me and is currently in Australia as Lighting Director on The Corrs tour I designed.”
Douglas says he has a great relationship with Christie Lites for many years—they’ve serviced the U.S. tours for The Killers since he started with them in 2005 and Hozier since 2013. “In the UK and Europe for Hozier we also have a long running great relationship with Adlib who have provided tours over there since Hozier’s career started.” Douglas says he’s been pretty lucky in terms of fixture availability. “I think maybe the [Claypaky] Volero Wave was a little tricky to find given that it’s relatively a newer unit but other than that the rig is exactly as originally spec’d. In the UK we are only changing the [Martin MAC] Quantum Wash to the newer PXL Wash, to save on needing to sub rent.”
Video Director Colleen Wittenburg is someone Douglas met a few years ago when they worked on the Aerosmith Las Vegas Residency in 2019. “She very quickly moved into the director’s chair and took over calling the show and has been directing shows full time the last few years. I knew she was going to be the right choice to direct this show this time around. Colleen, Jackson Warner (our Media Server Operator) and myself all worked through it together to find a good balance, to make sure that we don’t end up with one element overshadowing another and that it all works properly in sync together.”
Douglas and Iredale brought in Lightscape, a Dublin-based visuals studio, who’ve previously done content for artists such as Franz Ferdinand, and have done other projects with Iredale before. “We brought them in during the summer for Hozier’s big Dublin show just to run some Notch camera effects, etc. for I-Mag and we were very impressed with what they were able to pull together with such a quick turnaround so were very keen to get them involved on the full content creation and camera treatments this time around, they pulled off some fantastic work.”
Douglas notes they have some great people who worked on building set elements and drapes for this tour—including Jon Perry of Perry Scenic Studios and Megan Duckett of Sew What? for drapery. “They have been great at interpreting my random emails and phone messages about how we’d like to have the set and the drapes hang and all the small details that go into things that make it so much better. Also, Gallagher Staging were great in helping source a good printer for the custom flooring and building little things like brackets to hold the video panels to the band risers. etc. My hats off to all those involved in making the tour come together.”
PRODUCTION TEAM
- Tour Director: Duchess Iredale
- Tour Manager: Samantha Pauly
- Production Manager: Nick Lawrie
- Production Designer & Lighting Director: Steven Douglas
- Dep Lighting Director: Madison Adams
- Lighting Crew Chief: Kitty Hoffman
- Lighting Techs: Arnold Pereira,Patrick Boidnicki, Brian Gallagher
- Video Director: Colleen Wittenburg
- Video Crew Chief: Conrad Perry
- Media Server Operator: Jackson Warner
- Video Techs: Chelsea Baker, Randy Ice, Nicholas Mackie, Nick Strand, Skip Twitchell
- Automation Tech: Emily Belliveau
- Carpenters: Michael O Sullivan, Jeff Irizarry
- Rigger: Dan Michaels
- Stage Manager: Ray Wszolek
VENDORS
- Lighting: Christie Lites
- Video: Switch Video, Universal Pixels
- Content: Lightscape
- Scenic: Perry Scenic Studios
- Staging: Gallagher Staging
- Drapery: Sew What?
GEAR
Lighting
- 58 Martin MAC Ultra Performance
- 21 Martin MAC Quantum Wash
- 10 GLP JDC 1 Strobe
- 6 SGM Q7 Flood
- 22 Claypaky Volero Wave
- 14 Claypaky Panify
- 9 4-Lite Mole Blinder
- 4 MDG ATMe Haze Generator
- 1 Ultratec Radiance Haze
- 1 Follow-Me Remote Followspot System
- 2 grandMA3 light Console
Video
- 174 ROE Visual CB5 Air Frame Panel
- 32 ROE Visual CB5 Half Panel, Risers
- 3 Barco 22K Projector
- 1 Blackmagic Design ATEM 2 M/E Switcher
- 1 Blackmagic Design ATEM Camera Control Panel
- 3 Blackmagic Design URSA G2 Camera
- 2 Blackmagic Design Micro Studio 4K Camera
- 4 Marshall CV730-VK PTZ Camera
