Natural beauty, deftly lit, and singular acoustics are why the Volcano Room is among the most memorable of music venues. From the moment audiences and artists arrive, they realize this is something special. It may be the only venue that needs tour guides to get the 600-person audience to their seats. The Volcano Room is actually 333 feet below ground in the Cumberland Caverns of McMinnville, TN, and it is the home to the popular Bluegrass Underground radio and television series.
A Unique Performance Space
Cumberland Caverns, a U.S. National Natural Landmark, has been a tourist attraction for decades, and it was, in fact, a daytrip that led to it becoming the home to this bluegrass and American roots music presentation. Bluegrass Underground’s series creator and executive producer Todd Mayo recalls, “I was on vacation in 2008, and we kept passing all these signs that said, ‘See Cumberland Caverns,’ so we went to see Cumberland Caverns. I’d never been in a cave before. It was about five minutes into the tour when we got to the overlook of the Volcano Room, and it hit me right then and there — the name Bluegrass Underground; the whole concept. I’d been looking for a unique place to do a show, and I knew I had just found it.”
Mayo spoke with the Caverns management and with a friend at WSM radio, the legendary Nashville radio station, all of which led to Bluegrass Underground becoming a reality. As a music venue, the ideal acoustic atmosphere of the naturally carved space cannot be overstated. Sound engineers have found the room resonates at two frequencies, meaning it’s as acoustically perfect as the inside of a recording studio. “The sound here is very special,” states Mayo. “It was formed by two rivers intersecting and carving out this incredible space that is acoustically perfect and visually amazing. When we started it, it was only the radio show, but I knew if we could figure out how, it would be a great television show as well.”
Providence came to Mayo in the shape of Todd Jarrell. “He came to interview me about the radio show for NPR,” explains Mayo. “I told him that my real vision was for it to eventually be a series on public television. He mentioned that he did some independent producing for PBS. I said, ‘We need to talk.’” Jarrell remembers, “It was a story about presenting music 300 feet underground that ended with us shaking hands to see if we could get this idea to PBS television.” Todd Squared, their producing company was formed, and now the Emmy-winning Bluegrass Underground is in its third season; shown on 80 percent of the PBS stations in the country.
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Jarrell, executive producer, had plenty of experience, but none of it was doing television in a cave. “Usually there are people you can call and ask some questions,” he says, “but that first season we just had to figure it all out. Now it turns out that if you want to do television in a cave, we’re the guys you call; but when we started, we didn’t have anyone to call.” Of course, they did make one particularly good call, notes Jarrell, “I called Allen Branton. I told him that we were thinking about taking this radio show in the cave to television and he said, ‘I’m in.’ His first two words — ‘I’m in.’”
The two Todds knew that Branton was an ideal fit, explains Mayo. “It was a great confluence of people that came together to make this a quality show. Of course, one of those people was Allen. His reputation speaks for itself. We knew that as a canvas for an artist like him, someone who paints with light, a cave is very singular and exceptional. The cave is naturally such a wonderful backdrop, and to have someone the quality of Allen to come in and highlight that has been great.”
Jarrell agrees. “In the cave there is a total absence of light, so for Allen, it is a totally blank canvas. We discussed that you can take a big budget with a lot of lights and approximate a lot of things that are really cool, but what we were starting with was really cool, so we all wanted to just accentuate that. None of us want any gobos or spinning effects. We all just wanted to take what was there and make it more beautiful. Really, whoever is onstage performing is the cave’s co-star. Allen got that immediately.”
Artistic Restraint
Renowned for his concert and television design work, Branton’s Emmy Award winning style has always been to avoid lighting just for lightings’ sake. He’s not interested in showing off the equipment’s’ features, but rather in ensuring the lighting is serving the artistic purpose of the design as well as the requisite function of illumination. “It is not a complicated lighting job,” comments Branton. “Other than the degree of difficulty of actually lighting in a cave. The challenge designing in a space like this is more psychological — it requires restraint; you have to let the cave speak for itself. You have to avoid doing all sorts of groovy lighting in there. That’s really essential for it to be successful. When I first saw it, I thought, if there has ever been anything that I worked on that needed to be seen for its own sake, without any artistic interpretation from me, this is it. The cave has to be the star.” That approach has worked well for the show and garnered Branton, along with gaffer Han Henze and electrician Wally Bigbee a 2012 Regional Emmy Award for Best Lighting Design. Branton also worked closely with Larry Bearden, video engineer, colorist, and shader for Bluegrass Underground. The LD adds, “Larry had much to do with the quality of the pictures we sent to PBS.”
Since Cumberland Caverns is an established tourist site, there was already a minimal amount of power run to the area as well as a concession stand and bathrooms inside the caves. After using the small amount of existing power the first season to run a severely limited rig, the production now has a generator above ground and runs 1,000 feet of feeder into the cave. Mayo describes, “When you are loading in — it is like preparing for a journey to the center of the earth, but you have to think of it like any production. It is just a cable run, a really, really, really long cable run. Sure, loading in and out is unique, but at the same time, it’s nothing unusual… except it’s in a cave.”
The “Meat Grinder”
That caveat is the mantra of the team, states Jarrell. “You just have to take into account that everything you want to do ends with ‘in a cave.’ That, of course makes it all a little tougher, because everything you do, you first have to get into the cave.” For Branton and his crew, that means driving in small loads of gear at a time. “The access is very irregular along the 600-foot path from the entrance,” explains Branton. “You’ll go into areas where the cave is 20 feet over your head, and you go through others, one they call the meat grinder, where you have to duck. The way they get everything down there is by using golf carts that have no top on them. You load the equipment on a trailer behind and then haul it down in mini loads. When you go through the meat grinder, you have to bend over in the cart and hide your head beneath the steering wheel to get by there.”
The rig itself has changed over the three seasons, but it is still compact and carefully selected. Branton points out, “Lighting-wise, there isn’t much to it,” noting that it consists of about “35 ETC Source Four PARs; 10 Source Four ellipsoidals; and six [Vari*Lite] VL3500s. Some LED heads including the Martin MAC Aura and a bunch of [Philips Color Kinetics] ColorBlasts. Mainly, the lighting is purposed for the viewer to see and appreciate the cave.” The first season the lighting positions were a sort of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants proposition, recalls Branton. “Everything was ground-supported on pipe and base, or we would find a little ledge where we could position one light with some sandbags. It was very ad hoc. Of course, key light was all very shallow that way, and it polluted the natural stone background too much. For season two, we thought we could get it to look a little snappier by rigging the keylight a bit steeper to separate the cave features that were behind the performers from their faces, and manage the two elements separately and cleanly.”
“Liquid Light”
For the second season Todd Squared worked with the caves management and were able to strategically drill holes and install rigging points that allowed them to hang a FOH truss in the Volcano Room. They were also allowed to rig a backlight pipe. Branton uses an intersecting cave opening at the rear of the naturally occurring packed earth stage to create a visually stunning background to the performance and a stage entrance like none other. It’s a particular favorite element of Branton’s lighting for Mayo. “Behind the stage the artists step out of this void of hazy light,” describes Mayo. “It’s a great effect; it looks like liquid light, and it works wonderfully in the cave and when seen on television. Allen once said to me, ‘I could spend a million dollars and not get that look anywhere else.’ It’s a simple lighting effect, but because of the environment of the cave, it is transformed.” This is the area where Branton uses the majority of his LED fixtures.
The use of color on the cave walls was an important consideration for Branton, who points out, “Color was more of an issue than you might think, because the natural gradations of color in that place are really sandstone color, and then they will gradate toward pink or over to blue. You want to see all that natural beauty and enhance color gradation just slightly to see the contrast. That took some time to figure out. It goes back to a commitment to the cave. If you lose that visual thread, the whole exercise is pointless.”
Lighting for the Cameras
In terms of brightness Branton comments, “We key to about 30-35 footcandles. We tried to crowd it down to the 25 range, because we thought the background would soften and the pictures would be more inviting. But the cameramen were having trouble holding focus on certain groups.” For color temperatures, Branton says, “We do about 3,800K for color temp, the notion being that the LED lights would give us a little nicer color rendition if we cooled everything else down a bit. That’s something I play around with from time to time. Down there, with so many conventional tungsten sources, changing the color temp is a big deal because you have gels all over the place you have to match. The first year we didn’t have any of the VL3500s: everything was Source Fours, so it was warmer, but it made the cave look too red. Also, there is a grand chandelier in the room, so if we went too cool, its bulbs and crystal would skew red. That chandelier is iconic in the Volcano Room, so you have to protect that. It has become a sort of signature shot for the show as well.”
Branton concludes, “The approach is to get the cave lit properly so that it photographs really nicely, then light the stage simply but so that it all exposes well. Every season we just try to improve on that model. There are images that just take your breathe away, there are moments you look at and think if you tried to recreate this on a soundstage there wouldn’t be enough money in the world to get this look. It’s really fun to work in such a wonderful environment. It’s really primitive down there, but amazing.”
Branton’s two-word answer, ‘I’m in,’ has spoken volumes in the success of the show. “Allen has done a great job,” states Jarrell. “He has created this amazing depth of field. His lighting really highlights the amazing natural beauty of this great setting for this profound musical heritage. Todd Mayo once said — ‘it’s Austin City Limits meets Nova.’ We want Cumberland Caves to be the place for this kind of Americana music for generations; it deserves that, acoustically. It deserves to be in the same sentence with places like Red Rocks and Carnegie Hall. Mayo shares that vision, adding “There is a lot of great music out there that we look forward to showing in a great light in this wonderful environment.”
Crew
Executive Producers: Todd Mayo,
Todd Jarrell (Todd Squared)
Lighting Designer: Allen Branton
Gaffer: Han Henze
Electrician: Wally Bigbee
Technician: Todd Latia
Gear
Provided by Keylight LLC
1 MA Lighting grandMA2 console w/backup
12 Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlast TRs
2 Philips Color Kinetics PDS 750& Cable
2 LCD monitors
1 Ethernet router
1 Ultratec Radiance haze machine w/ backup
1 208V distro w/DMX splitter
1 110V Dadco distro
1 DMX splitter
1 AC cable package
1 DMX cable package
1 Feeder & snake package
6 Pipes, bases, sandbags
Provided by 4Wall
36 ETC Source Four PARs w/ WFL lenses (12 w/C-clamps, 24 w/floor plates)
6 Top hats for Source Four PARs
9 Source Four Ellipsoidals w/50°
Lenses (including 2 each: 19°, 26° and 36° lens tubes)
8 Vari*Lite VL3500 Spots
6 Martin Professional MAC Auras
6 Color Kinetics ColorBlast iWs
1 Color Kinetics PDS 750
2 24×2.4kW ETC dimmer racks
1 Haze Base hazer
4 10’ truss sections (20”x20”)
1 5’ truss section (20”x20”)
2 ½-ton hoists w/cable & distro
1 4-pin data cable package
1 Socapex cable package
2 10’ #2 feeder 5-wire set
