Twenty One Pilots’ Tyler Joseph founded the band in 2009 near Columbus, Ohio with two college friends. The band’s name is linked to a 1947 Arthur Miller play, All My Sons. That play is based on a real-life scandal. In the 1940s, aviation company Curtiss-Wright, which traces its lineage to the Wright Brothers, was caught selling defective parts to the U.S. military. In the play, a character who at first thinks of his actions as being for the good of the company and his family takes his life after recognizing that his misdeeds caused the deaths of 21 pilots.
Although founding member Tyler Joseph is still with Twenty One Pilots, the other band members left in 2011 and were replaced by Josh Dun, former drummer for House of Heroes.
LD/production designer Daniel Slezinger first crossed paths with the trio-turned-duo act in 2012 when they performed at a Nashville live music venue 12th and Porter, which Slezinger ran with partner Justin Roddick. Slezinger picks up the story of how that encounter eventually led to the key role he played on the production team backing Twenty One Pilots’ 2015 Blurryface shows.
“It’s one of those ‘only in Nashville’ situations. In 2012, I owned a fairly well know music venue called 12th & Porter with a long time friend, Justin Roddick. Justin was booking the venue those days, and I handled production. At the time, we had a lighting rig that consisted of several Clay Paky fixtures, a handful of Robe lights and some old school Dataflash strobes. The production value helped us book awesome bands like Twenty One Pilots. We hit it off with the band and management at the first show. After our third show with the band, Justin and I met with band members Tyler and Josh and expressed our desire to partner with the band to help take the live show production to the next level. The band invited us to watch their show at Bonnaroo in 2013. The next day, we became partners.”
Twenty One Pilots’ Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun always put their stamp on their design. Their longtime friend and creative director Mark Eshleman worked with Slezinger to program the duo’s tour promoting their breakout album, Quiet Is Violent, in 2014.
“Mark already had a great creative vision, and I simply helped him get there from a programming perspective. For the 2015 Blurryface tour, the Concert Investor team designed the set, lighting and video elements in preVIZ. We used preVIZ to create a 3D movie of the show for Mark and the band to review, make changes and approve.”
The band has used video since day one to achieve the creative vision, but stepped it up this year
“Tyler Joseph likes to use video to tell stories so it has been part of the creative vision. He wanted a wall of video on this run so I designed a scalable system of LED set carts with the help of James Miller and Accurate Staging in Nashville. We played 2,500-15,000 capacity venues this year, all with different size stages and rigging capabilities. Everything had to be ground-supported. We decided to take LED panels out of sections of the wall and replace them with strategic lighting that didn’t affect the LED video content. We manufactured six 8-by-14-foot set carts for video.”
Tyler Shapard, aka ‘Shap’, started out as the lighting tech. It didn’t take long for him to become the LD and co-lighting designer with Slezinger on the Blurryface tour.
“I originally hired Shap as Mark’s lighting tech on the road. It didn’t take long for us to notice Shap’s passion and role flexibility on the road. After a year, the band promoted Shapard to LD. At that point, Mark’s focus shifted entirely to creative direction. Shap had to adapt to several different environments on two world tours and, in the process, became an extremely proficient programmer. We teamed up on programming Blurryface, and the results were fantastic.”
Slezinger worked with Accurate Staging to create “mini stage” risers that act as a landing pad for Joseph. He uses the risers much like a writer uses punctuation.
“Tyler Joseph is very energetic and constantly moving. The ‘mini stage’ risers act as landing points, each with its own specific personality. Accurate Staging is a fantastic partner and continues to do an excellent job realizing the creative vision.
“One of my favorite parts of the show is when the lights and video are almost non-existent. Josh and Tyler share a very small stage within the set and play a medley of music that dates back to Twenty One Pilot’s roots in small coffee shops and clubs.”
In the beginning they made it a point to stay away from spot fixtures.
“I designed a rig with predominately wash fixtures that permitted individual pixel control for the Quiet Is Violent tour. The design allowed us to make the lights ‘dance’ using bit-mapping and other complex lighting effects to get the most out of the fixtures.
“I introduced spot fixtures for the first time with the band on the Blurryface tour. We chose the Robe Pointes to play a leading role because they are reliable, fast with tight beams. The fixture allows for geometric shapes to be painted in the air and then quickly break out and play along with a soft beam.
“We have strobes everywhere. Sometimes, the goal is to see the outline of Tyler’s body as he’s jumping off his piano or swinging his LED microphone behind him as a backdrop. Sometimes it’s only half his face that is lit at a time, but alternating quickly between both sides, keeping some mystery there for what is right in front of you.”
Slezinger and Justin Roddick started Concert Investor in 2013 with a shared vision to invest in the early stages of a band’s live show. Twenty One Pilots was the company’s first “investment.”
“Our model is to give a band the best gear available for little or no up-front costs. Our theory is that, if you support a band in its infancy stages and give it everything you’ve got, you may spark a massive fire, so to speak. We supported this act when they were touring in a van and trailer. Our goal was to get social media talking about ‘the live show.’ At this point, the word seems to be out. Twenty One Pilots will continue touring through next summer and will officially end with two sold out nights at Madison Square Garden.”
Twenty One Pilots are on track for a bright future in the music industry. Slezinger’s guess is that they will be playing stadiums in a couple years.
“Twenty One Pilots is one of the best projects that I have been involved with. It is not often that you see such an enthusiastic crew, management team, booking agent, record label and fan base that are perfectly aligned for a common goal. I can’t wait to see where Tyler and Josh go from here.”
Twenty One Pilots 2015 Blurryface Tour
Crew
Production Designer, LD, Set Designer, Programmer: Daniel Slezinger
Lighting Director, Co-Designer, Programmer, Rigger: Tyler Shapard
Creative and Video Director: Mark Eshleman
Production and Stage Manager: Daniel Gibson
LED Technician: Adam Peck
Lighting Technician: Sam Wilson
Special Effects Op: Bryan Retay
Tour Manager: Michael Gibson
Video Content: Tantrum/Chris Schoenman
Lighting and Video Co: Concert Investor
Concert Investor Account Rep: Justin Roddick
Staging Co: Accurate Staging
Special Effects: Glow Motion Technologies
Trucking Co: Stage Call
Gear
2 grandMA2 consoles
36 Robe Pointes
2 Robe 1200 LEDWash fixtures
8 Clay Paky B-EYEs
10 Clay Paky Sharpy Wash fixtures
6 Martin MAC Viper Profiles
24 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
5 Solaris Flares
12 2-lite Moles
2 DF50 hazers
2 Martin Jem ZR44 foggers
1 Custom LED microphone (Glow Motion Technologies)
140 WinVision 18mm video panels
2 Green Hippo Hippotizer HD i7 media servers
For more Twenty One Pilots 2015 Blurryface tour photos by Steve Jennings, go to http://plsn.me/PLSN-blurryface
