It’s a Friday afternoon, and Nate Almeida and the rest of the East Coast Lighting & Production Services team (ECLPS) are gearing up for another stop on Groove-Boston’s Cohesion Tour. These players have been collaborating on large-scale shows for 10 years and six consecutive tours. GrooveBoston combines massive pro-ductions with resident DJs to create immersive concert events on college campuses. ECLPS has been a key partner in creating a majority of the visual designs for each show since its’ inception.
While the rest of the ECLPS team is busy prepping gear, Nate is working on his previz file for tomorrow’s show. Nate explains that he works closely with Ed Slapik, GrooveBoston’s production director. “Since our shops are two hours away from each other, Ed and I do a lot of phone calls and video chats.” Google’s Hangouts ap-plication allows Nate and Ed to edit documents and 3D designs together in real-time, which helps them create concepts, identify issues and design an ideal result without the delay and limitations of hundreds of back-and-forth emails.
Campus Events
GrooveBoston has been uniquely successful in cultivating long-term relationships with clients — primarily colleges and universities. An impressive 96 percent of events become annual campus traditions; some schools even bring GrooveBoston in for multiple appearances within a single academic year. This success also means the design team is faced with the challenge of constantly delivering something unique.
Slapik explains: “We are playing 25-35 shows each year on college campuses, and the venues range from gyms to theaters, from field houses to arenas. But no matter the room, it’s our job to design the most legendary show we possibly can that will be remembered forever. Our designs need to be powerful and consistent, yet totally versatile at the same time. We design around each venue’s capabilities, as well as each client’s budget and vision.”
“I like to look at it as more of a challenge than a restriction,” explains Nate. “You can have hundreds of fixtures, and a console loaded up with pages and pages of sequences and executors, but it’s what you do with them that makes the show. I like to use fixtures that give me the most versatility in relatively small numbers.” For Nate, a perfect example would be the Robe Pointe and the Martin MAC 101 fixtures. “These units are lightweight, fast and have great attributes for maximizing the impact, regardless of the budget.”
Careful fixture selection has been a priority since the beginning. “Even though it is an EDM show, I like to throw in some old-school fixtures like Moles and ACLs. The quality of light from those fixtures adds a special look and action to the show.” Nate feels that some of the older incandescent and arc fixtures have taken a backseat to the LED source, and while new technologies have opened up some very cool new visual options, newer isn’t necessarily better. “To me, it’s all about the quality of light. If all your fixtures have the same color temperature and lamp source, there are less layers of light you can apply to your show.” Nate has always fa-vored a layer-based approach to visual design, and has learned to rely on creative placement, unique layouts, and varied fixture types.
GrooveBoston’s unique approach to concert events has been a central part of the company’s success. Director Bobby Dutton explains: “In general, EDM is not pro-duced in real-time, and consequently, the songs themselves can’t be performed in real-time. The physical presence of the producer(s) is no longer a critical part of the experience.” Recognizing this simple but massive shift was the epiphany that defined the company ten years ago, making GrooveBoston one of the pioneers of a new breed of live events. Dutton continues: “By removing the costly line-item that was once earmarked for talent fees, we have seen the complexity of the produc-tion grow significantly. Our events are now more versatile musically, and more massive technically, as compared to most traditional, artist-oriented concerts.”
Good Vibes
GrooveBoston’s music team spends hours each day on music discovery, and crafting their sets. Resident DJs are then equipped to mix the right versions of the right tracks in the right order to maximize crowd happiness.
I asked Nate if time code is ever used to trigger lights and video for specific moments throughout the show. Nate explains: “The song mix changes with each show, so like the DJ performance, we want the visuals to be controlled live, too. This approach creates a more organic, reactive show, as compared to a fully scripted time-code approach. I also like to keep the audience on their toes.” Unlike many EDM events, where the fans are simply immersed in lights and effects, Nate wants to con-sciously draw the attention to the stage and all the visual elements. “It’s a total theatrical experience.”
Of course, every show requires a good director to bring all the visual elements together. That’s where Jason Slomovitz, GrooveBoston’s creative director, comes in. Jason follows the DJ’s screen closely (Serato music data is shared at strategic “battle stations” throughout the venue). Jason then offers broad direction to Nate as well as video, laser, and FX personnel — both via intercom and a custom screen network — to manage the show as a whole, rather than a set of disparate elements. For example, Jason will call broad color cues, laser “solos” or time-sensitive cryo bursts. With all the moving parts of a GrooveBoston show, there’s potential for crea-tive chaos, and this layer helps build something deliberate and powerful.
According to Nate, “Creating with Jason and Ed is a great experience. They bring a lot to the table. The three of us are very passionate about our respective fields and this allows us to be at the top of our game. Jason and I connect regularly to chat about new tracks and sequences from the music team, and the way we want to incorporate them visually.”
A Long Partnership
As Nate and I started to wrap up our interview, I asked him how he feels about working with GrooveBoston for the past 10 years. “We’ve been through a lot togeth-er,” Nate laughs, reminiscing about how far things have come. “I’ve been with ECLPS for 10 years this coming spring, which means I’ve been part of the GB team since my first day. I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend the last decade.” The team has performed on hillsides, quads, field houses, arenas, and everything in between.
Rather than a traditional vendor relationship, the ECLPS and GrooveBoston teams have a deep history, and a bond that has lasted the past decade. To quote Nate, “We have spent a LOT of time around each other, and learned how to work creatively together in a way that is truly a win-win. We all have personal ties to each other outside of the office, too; we celebrate in each other’s successes and support each other. As the scale of our shows has grown, we’ve become a tight-knit team, a fam-ily, and one thing has always stayed the same: It’s all about happiness.”
According to the GrooveBoston website GrooveBoston.com, happiness is the name of the game, and indeed, it seems to be working.
Bob Morrissey and ECLPS
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If you have been around our business long enough, you probably have crossed paths with Bob Morrissey, or at least his gear somewhere in New England. He owns East Coast Lighting and Production Services, the largest lighting vendor in the Providence/Boston area. With well over 400 shows coming out of his shop per year, I was fortunate enough to catch up with this lighting icon and learn a little about him and the company’s history.Bob is one of the few owners of a lighting company who did not start his company in his fathers’ garage. It was not that easy. His first gig took place on a U.S. battleship more than 40 years ago when he lit a band called Fire & Ice. His lighting equipment consisted of four Fresnels and two ellipsoidal fixtures, with a homemade switchboard as a controller. Bob points out that’s how everyone was doing it back then. He was 20 years old when he partnered up with a younger friend named Andy Polin to start their first company called Polico. Andy lived in a small apartment building. Polico kept their gear next door in another pad, as well as the basement. Bob spent hours of his life hauling single light fixtures and cables out of that basement. Pretty soon they invented the PAR can, and whenever Bob accumulated enough dough he would make a pilgrimage down to New York to see Ronnie Altman and purchase more of this new product.
Eventually, they moved into a proper warehouse and started in the touring business. Perhaps their biggest break was getting to light the band Boston. Back in the 1970s, there were some New England promoters named the Banzini Brothers, who booked shows at colleges and other venues in the area. Morrissey had heard some things about this upstart band and aggressively pursued an opportunity through the promoter to light the second show Boston ever played. This was around 1975. After the show they met with Bob and were so thrilled they hired him as their LD. So off he went to buy some more PAR cans and on the road he went.
It went like this for some time, as Bob would tour with his crew. By the end of the bands’ second tour, the band was playing stadiums, and Richard Ocean was brought on as the LD. Bob assumed the crew chief position at that time. He had a business to run, and it was okay with him. His crew on that Boston tour consisted of Richard and himself along with two other crew guys you may have heard of, Leroy Bennett and Lee Rose. They carried a large light rig for that time and this immense, legendary pipe organ structure that lived upstage. According to Bob, many toes and fingers were sacrificed as they loaded that beast of a structure into venues.
Back in 1996, Bob took sole ownership of the company and rebranded it as ECLPS, a company that is continuously voted as a finalist in the Hometown Hero category of the Parnelli awards. Growing pains forced the move to a 10,000 square foot warehouse a couple years back, and his ever-growing inventory fills that to the brim. Constantly upgrading his gear to meet the demands of his clients, there is no show that Morrissey and his gang can’t pull off.
— Nook Schoenfeld
