“One of the things that sets 44 Designs apart is, we are first and foremost a creative team,” says 44 Designs’ Jeff Lavallee. “We come up with great, cost¬-effective designs. Our clients always have a unique look that matches what their music is saying. An artist spends tens of thousands of dollars making a record sound right, but they don’t always take into consideration the live performance. That’s where 44 Designs comes in. We want to match the quality of the music to a visual design. We have helped our clients brand themselves on stage. We make their live show the perfect partner, visually, to their sound, image and to themselves.”
The emphasis on creativity is evident when you first step into their Nashville office. The space that is 44 Designs is built for enhanced inventiveness — every table surface, including the kitchen, is a white board, so the team can spontaneously start drawing and planning ideas as they come up. There are just two rooms —warehouse and office, both wide open and free from cubical dividers. And, of course, there’s Sir Hank the Fourth, the resident bulldog. “We’re not solely a production company, we’re a visual design company first with production support,” Lavallee explains. “Here the creative comes first. Everyone else looks at the budget, the bottom line, and then goes from there. We conceptualize first and then figure out how to make it work within a budget.”
Lavallee has had opportunities to move to New York or Los Angeles, but he spurned the larger markets for the small town feel that is Nashville. He established a reputation for doing a lot with a little, starting out with just a couple of High End Systems Intellabeams, eight LED strips and a Hog 500 lighting board. He built on that while touring with Paulina Rubio, Hank Williams Jr., Arlo Guthrie, Toby Mac, Julio Iglesias, Lady Antebellum, Trace Adkins and more.
The Road to Nashville
Lavallee’s foray into the live event business follows a typical trajectory but a very different road. Yes, back in Welland, Ontario, he was friendly with a local band and they needed a lighting guy. The high schooler took over the controls and was immediately inspired to pursue a life in lighting. He next volunteered to go on tour with the Christian rock band Hokus Pick. “They said if I wanted to go, the bus was leaving the next day, so I sat my parents down, broke the news, and hopped on the bus.” This would be the one and only time he was fired — though not because of his lighting skills. See, the gig’s duties included him also driving a 1983 Eagle International bus of questionable reliability. “I was throwing the guys around in the back all the way to Vancouver because I had no clue how to drive one of those things, so at that point they gave me a one way ticket back home!” he laughs.
Home became Toronto, and he started doing small events and bands when he got an invitation to come down to Nashville. He arrived in 1993 and immediately took to Nashville’s music scene, and it to him. After touring for over ten years, it was time to transition from a road guy to a designer. He thought about selling his gear, but decided to rent it out. Soon those eight lights turned into 16, then 24, and then he built up a significant inventory that now includes a wide range of lighting gear and a video wall and grandMA2, Hog and Jands Vista consoles.
There are many highlights so far. One was lighting up President George W. Bush at Ford Campbell two months after 9/11. “The Bush event was a somber time in the nation, and it was an honor to be part of that,” he says. “Doing my job can bring all different kinds of feelings to the surface, for the audience and for me, and that event was particularly emotional. It was a moment in time that I was lighting the most powerful man on the planet on Thanksgiving Day after the biggest attack our nation had experienced in generations.”
When working with alt rockers Mutemath, an up and coming band on a severe budget, Lavallee proposed using good old fashioned custodian grade fluorescent lights. He set up 100 of them and ran them through his system. Other designers pointed out that “you can’t stick those with a dimmer, as the lights would freak out.” This was just another benefit, as far as Jeff was concerned. He put some Martin MAC 250s in front them and spiced it up with gobos for a completely unique look. And it had one more benefit: “The cool part is, you could break them!” he says. “During the show, they would hit them with their guitars and such and the audience was like, ‘holy sh**!’”
44 Designs is called on for television productions and recently managed China’s X Factor TV series. On a separate show in China, they designed and directed a televised New Year’s Eve event at Guangzhou Stadium, seen by 80,000 spectators in the stadium and broadcast to more than 100 million viewers. “I have a good friend in China and she wanted me to come down and design the lighting for their Guangzhou New Year’s Gala,” says Lavallee. “We did all the lighting design and collaborated with the video design team there in China. Two weeks before the show, I traveled there with my programmer, Chris Nathan. We had two full size grandMAs, one in the stadium and one in our hotel room next to the venue. We would program in the stadium at night and sleep for a few hours then wake up and start programing in the hotel room.”
Music Video Production
44 Designs recently designed the lighting and set for country music duo Thompson Square’s video, Trans Am. The band liked the design so much that they took it out on tour. This is the fourth straight year that the band and 44 Designs have worked together. “The song and video capture the brazen passion and energy of Thompson Square’s live shows,” says Lavallee.” The startling design included a variety of mid-air scanner and beam looks, which created laser-like effects without actual lasers. The team also designed custom carts for the lighting system that could quickly roll on and off the stage. “It was effective and could be dismantled in a matter of minutes.”
In addition to working with their artists’ music videos, 44 Designs also collaborates with several local video directors on several projects each year. From live DVDs to music videos to live events, 44 Designs applies their design flavor to these projects with the same fervor and excitement as with their touring artists.
Lavallee never got around to getting any “training.” As he notes, “there’s no formal education in any of this, it just came naturally — I look at something and see its potential.” Christian artist Natalie Grant gave him the ultimate compliment once by saying, “Jeff, you make good lemonade, “ meaning when all he has to work with is lemons…
“We’re not corporate,” Lavallee declares. “We honestly care about you and your show. And we’re fine with staying at this level. I’m not striving for the Lamborghini. I love my 1998 Ford truck and don’t need anything else.” He has surrounded himself with like-minded professionals, and they are a tight team, creating a fun, energetic space. They are proud to enjoy the reputation as the friendliest crew in Nashville’s tight knit professional touring community. “We just threw a big Christmas party and a lot of the other production company people came,” says Jeff. (The year before he put them to work — he was expanding his shop and needed a wall knocked down. Sledgehammers were provided along with the snacks and beverages.)
For Lavallee, it always comes back to creativity. “Someone said that we are the software to hardware companies. The hardware is out there, and we take whatever is available and mash it up and customize it to make an artist and their show look amazing. This truly is the best part of our job. I wouldn’t trade it for the world!”
For more information, please visit www.44designs.com
