The Eggshell Lighting Company was started in Hawaii in 1974, by Jay Robert “Bob” Harmon at 16 years old. Actually, it was Harmon’s second company after the one he started at 13 showing vintage films he had collected. The young entrepreneur didn’t know a lot about lighting for concerts, but he was a quick study and very mechanically inclined. 50 years on, today Eggshell is the premier lighting company in Hawaii and handles a range of projects from supporting major touring acts playing the islands, to festivals, special events, corporate gigs, dance, fashion shows, and more.
Let’s Start a Lighting Company
True, Harmon was a little on the young side when he started Eggshell and lighting shows, yet he wasn’t a complete unknown; he ran projectors for his older brother John’s psychedelic lightshows in the 60s. Harmon recalls the impetus to starting a lighting business. “Eggshell is my second business. When I was 13, I started a company called Olde Tymers Film Services showing old films, like Chaplin’s Gold Rush.” His first business lasted for three years. When Harmon was 16 years old, “My thoughts were going to girls, and I was a maturing kid looking for something else,” notes Harmon. “One day this gentleman comes through my door to ask about where I got the films I was showing. It turned out this guy was a promoter who had just done a show the week before at the University of Hawaii. He had not been impressed with the lighting company he used and swore he wouldn’t use them again. I had told him I got the films from a lighting company (my brother’s) I used to work for, so he asked if I could light a show he had coming up in four days with Brewer & Shipley. I told him absolutely!”
Beg and Borrow a Lighting System
Harmon immediately went to work assembling a lighting system in a most unconventional way. He explains, “My high school had both theater and TV departments. The TV department had a handful of Fresnels, and the theater had some more, so I went to both to get lights. I said to TV, ‘ The Drama department needs some of your lights’, and to drama that ‘the TV department needs to borrow some of yours’. So now I had some lights. Luckily, a few months before, a local Japanese theater from the 20s, the Toyo Theater, had been renovated and threw out four 2,000W auto transformers that I had salvaged, so I had my dimming controls. I paid some other high school kids to ‘scrounge’ up some pipes from around our school. Within minutes they had pipes loaded into my pickup truck. I took them to the hardware store and had some of them threaded and now had cross pieces. I found some wood pallets that I drilled a hole through and ran the pipe through, now I had light trees, but they were a bit iffy. Luckily, sailing on catamarans was a part of my youth, so I grabbed some parts, cables, and turnbuckles and ran one to each corner. They weren’t bad, but when I hung lights on them, now they were top heavy, so I borrowed a friend’s spare tires for ballast. I ran the cables to my dimmers, and I now had a lighting system.”
He continues, “The only thing I couldn’t fake were two followspots, and I didn’t have the ability to rent anything, so the promoter rented those directly. That shop taught my guys (friends from my high school) to run the two spotlights. I’d seen pictures of concerts, and everyone had a headset; I didn’t know then what you did with them, but I thought we had to look the part. I ‘borrowed’ some from the school’s language lab, but they had a circuit that wouldn’t work outside the school’s system. My friend cut out the circuit, thinking we could return them repaired, but they were ruined. Half my $300 fee for the gig went to buying new headsets for the language lab, but we’d experienced our first lighting job.”
At the edge of the sea in eastern Waikiki is the location of Diamond Head Crater. In the early 70s they held the annual Sunshine Music Festival, more commonly called the Crater Fest, and this would be a key moment for Harmon’s budding business. Harmon and his lighting buddy wanted to see the festival, so “I thought we could trade lighting services for some passes to the festival. We had found two streetlights that had gotten hit and were laying next to the road waiting to be hauled away. We thought that we could use them someday and threw them in our pickup. Having them gave me the idea and I talked to the festival Production Manager, Bob Peyton. I told him ‘everything’s about the main stage, but why not show some respect to the local acts stage at the festival’. I said I had a couple of streetlights and could light the area so people could at least get out safely. He agreed and gave me two passes and a parking pass, but he warned me to stay clear of the promoter, Ken Rosene. We assured him we’d stay out of the way. We got our streetlights set up at the secondary stage for the local bands and then we cruised around the place. There were tens of thousands of people. We saw people coming in and out of a trailer with food and drinks, and we were hungry. Nobody told us we couldn’t go in, so we walked right into what we discovered was catering and we helped ourselves. I saw a guy in the corner talking to this very pretty girl, telling her that they weren’t scheduled to play, so maybe they could schedule something in several months when their record came out. Besides, it was getting dark. I figured that this must be the promoter Ken Rosene, the guy that the production manager warned me to stay away from, but I piped up and said I had two lights over at the local stage and we could get them over to the main stage as fast as they could clear a path through the crowd. Bob Peyton is looking at me, not happy that I was speaking with Mr. Rosene, but they got us a jeep and we got our streetlights over to the stage. I held one on one side, and my buddy held the other across from me. As far as I can tell, we lit what was one of the first concerts of Fleetwood Mac that evening. And sure enough their self-titled album came out seven months later.
From his very humble beginnings of borrowed gear, Harmon experienced phenomenal growth. He started the Eggshell Lighting Company, lighting shows for another promoter, John F. Leonard, working out his garage. He also borrowed money for the first time to buy more equipment. “I had a neighbor who was a pediatrician and children’s dentist and was wealthy. He lived in an isolated house, but I mowed his lawn. He lent me $60,000, which would be well over a quarter of a million dollars today. The deal was, he bought one third of my company until I could buy him out. It took me two years to buy him out. That money really let me grow the company.” Because of that investment Harmon lit his first arena show, providing lighting for KISS, which introduced him to the Carone brothers of Upstaging fame.
Handle with Care
When asked where the name Eggshell came from, Harmon tells the wonderful story that, “In my earliest days sending show gear to the Outer Islands of Hawaii, I was grateful to follow Randy Nutt of Nutt Brother’s Sound’s lead. He had decades more experience at this than I at this point, and thankfully, he promised to show me the ropes. He took me to the airport to collect his newest soundboard that had just returned on a passenger flight from Maui, and to help me ship my lighting gear to a show over on Maui. This was back when baggage and air freight were handled by the same crews, as co-promotions with the airlines often resulted in band gear traveling on passenger flights. This day, the DC-3’s cargo bay opened before either a ramp or forklift was in place. We shuddered in horror as Randy’s brand-new sound console, which had been leaning against the cargo bay door, fell 20’ to the asphalt. While Randy dealt with his damage claim, the lead Lading Manager approached me and asked, ‘and what’s in YOUR cases, kid?’ After an overly long pause… I replied, ‘EGGS! There are EGGS in our cases!’ Much to my surprise, not only did he believe me, but the baggage handlers hand-carried my gear including all the accompanying steel parts onto that same, now outgoing, plane. When I went to retrieve my gear, over on Maui, I noticed the air bill was stamped ‘Agricultural’ and had a specially mandated carriage rate of 7 cents a pound, which was less than a third of the then going rate for freight. Also, for the next six months, our ‘eggs’ were considered perishable and as such would bump other baggage if needed. That was all well and good until the day the freight handlers put my dimmer rack into a freezer since eggs are perishable! It took a while for that rack to ‘thaw’ out. So, that’s where the name, Eggshell Lighting Company came from.”
Milestones, World Leaders and Rock Stars
Over the years, Harmon and the Eggshell team did a lot of projects—both big and small. They have worked with global acts and they have done a lot of work with local entertainers. Hawaii is a real melting pot of people from all over, and Harmon has worked with everyone. “As soon as I started doing lighting, I started to do concerts with local entertainers. Gabby Pahinui, one of the great slack key guitar players in Hawaiian history, along with the Sons of Hawaii and The Brothers Cazimero. Having worked with all of them at such a young age, it certainly changed the outlook of everybody. I was just honored to be there. I wasn’t doing anything to try to get somebody’s attention. I was just doing the next show. So, to me, that was huge.”
Over the years, working on various events has led Harmon to meeting world leaders, dignitaries, and a wide range of performers. “I did the Asian Pacific Economic Conference that was filled with presidents, kings, and prime ministers. I’m backstage in the wings when someone taps me on the shoulder. It was Margaret Thatcher asking if she looked okay, and what did I think? I said to myself that she probably doesn’t want to hear ‘grandmotherly’, so I said ‘commanding. You will command the room’. She liked that answer. Who am I, but I guess for a moment, I was an inspiration to a world leader. We do a lot of different things. We did lighting for the Bolshoi Ballet company. We do massive private parties and corporate events, and most recently FestPAC’s opening and closing ceremonies.”
In fact, Harmon and his Eggshell team were currently right in the thick of supporting FestPAC at the time of this interview. The 13th Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture is where a wide array of Pacific Island Nations gather all in one place, this time Hawaii. “We’re pretty busy right now,” says Harmon, “being in the middle of FestPAC. There are 28 Island Nations converged here with kings, queens, princes, princesses, dignitaries, and all their entourages. It’s pretty crazy. Eggshell provided the lighting for the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as a Sunday Ecumenical Service, at the Stan Sheriff Center, a 10,000-seat sports arena at the University of Hawaii. It’s a big deal as this is their first time being held in Hawaii.”
Looking back at the Fleetwood Mac gig in their early days, Harmon mentions he also got to light an early Police concert in Hawaii, which again Ken Rosene was promoting. “The Police were coming to Hawaii and I was going to do lights,” says Harmon. “We were having a pre-production meeting with Ken Rosene, because I was doing all his shows then. I asked if anybody knew how the band sets up, how many people are in the band? They all looked at each other and nobody knew. Ken said he’d investigate it for me. A couple of days later, I am sitting in my living room when there’s a loud knock at my door and a guy from the courier TNT, a predecessor to Federal Express, is asking if I’m Jay Robert Harmon. He has me sign for an envelope. Inside is a one-page message from A&M records in London. It cost $250—which would be almost $800 today—to get this piece of paper in my hands. On A&M letterhead is a hand drawn, in Sharpie, stage plot. It’s got three positions marked with Xs for Sting, Andy, and drummer; Stewart Copeland isn’t even named. That’s it, that is all I got. I’m still left trying to figure out what I’m going to do for these guys. So, I took a Vermette crank up lift and buried the base of it under the drum riser and hung a convex security mirror up with a ring of PAR36 ACL lamps, wired in three circuits around the mirror. On the floor around the drums, I set up strip lights. Remember, this was way before video, but with the mirror anybody in the house could watch Stewart Copeland play from his point of view. Here’s the big kick, I had very narrow PARs on the floor, probably too many, but I liked them. They would shoot up and when they played a guitar solo, a light from behind Sting would be focused to hit the convex mirror and spray color to the crowd. The band’s response was ‘That was really cool!’, which they told me when they invited me to their dressing room and gave me a copy of their promo record.”
From the salvaged streetlights for Fleetwood Mac to the mirror rig for The Police, a lesson Harmon has carried through from his very first concert lighting gigs to today is: if you can’t find it, build it. “When I say I design lights, I design how lights would work. People ask if I am a Lighting Director and I reply, ‘no, I am a Visualist.’ That’s important. I am the one who’s going to capture how it all comes together. I look for different ways of doing it, because I also use projectors as well as lights and other stuff. I’m very mechanically inclined, so I have an idea of how I’m going to build things and how I’m going to get a look out of it. What’s paid me well is, I don’t get lost in what I’m unable to do, but look for the, ‘how are we going to achieve the result you’re looking for?’ My answer is often, ‘Well, this would be unconventional but…’ I usually go with that idea. I still build stuff to this day. I do a lot of work at the Waikiki Shell, where the stage is 175’ across and there is a dome that goes up half as high again. I set convex mirrors on the floor and fill the shell up with color and gobos. I do experiments with things all the time. When I come across a new light, I’ll try to take it to its nth degree beyond its natural focal point; I’ll try half colors or something to mix it up as an aberration.”
Loyal Clientele
Harmon’s can-do attitude is a core principle at Eggshell Lighting, and when it comes to Eggshell’s clients, many have been loyal over the years working with the company to support their many different projects. To Harmon and Eggshell, it’s not just about gear, it’s the service, support, and everything else that goes into supporting a client’s project. Harmon points out why he feels Eggshell is so valued by them. “I think we’re a valued friend. I think it started so innocently. I’m so happy to take people around. I would take people around whether they used us or not. And we don’t let people down once we cross that line of saying, ‘we’re going to do this’; we damn well do it. I think it is friendship and trust. We get referred to as a boutique lighting company. And I know some hear that and say, ‘well, that just means you’re small’. No, I think it’s more than that. I think it means we’re handmade. And I think that’s powerful.”
Harmon hopes that the industry, and the readers of PLSN, understand that Eggshell is all about, “the people,” he says. “Certainly, we buy cutting-edge gear. It’s great to have good gear, but at the end of the day, it’s the person standing in front of you that says, ‘yeah, we’re going to deliver for you, and we’re all going to feel great about this at the end of the day.’ The Eggshell team is a great group of people who deliver every show, every day. And, ‘where do we go going forward?’ We continue to build friendship, new and ongoing ones. The Eggshell team and our clients, friends, are a clique that I’m proud to be a part of.”
50 Years On
If you were to walk into the Eggshell warehouse, “you would see hundreds and hundreds, if not a thousand of posters,” says Harmon. “I used to keep a list—sometime 20 years ago—I think we passed a phenomenal number. It was like in the tens of thousands of shows. And we don’t tour. If we did, then we’d be taking our gear away from the possibility of people who want to do a show here. It’s an interesting market because, of course, for people from Asia, it’s their first step into America. So, Asia is a significant part of our market. Hawaii is just as cosmopolitan as it gets. There are people of every shape, color, and creed here—the stereotypical melting pot. It’s an amazing place. You can’t go through being all by yourself and succeed. You’ve got to live cross-culturally. You’ve got to be sensitive to things. You’ve got to be open to most everything, and my crew reflects that. We have all different backgrounds, and it’s great to see us all working together.”
It’s obvious that Harmon has always gone with his gut instinct when it came to seeing opportunities and making business decisions. When asked about advice he’d give, Harmon comes back quickly with “if you have an idea, if you’ve got something that motivates you, you just shouldn’t be compelled to look for exactly the right time. You should decide, ‘isn’t this the time?’ If you have the energy and the wherewithal to do this, then the only thing holding you back is yourself. My father is an entrepreneur, and he certainly was a motivator, and so was my mom. But I can tell you that I think the most powerful gift I was ever given by my parents was that I never learned, ‘NO’. I was allowed to fail. As long as my heart was in it, it was acceptable. That taught me a great deal.”
