Fall Out Boy Wraps Up a Two-Year Tour with a Fresh Look
It’s been about 20 years since Robb Jibson graduated from high school and got his tail back to Chicago, the town he loves and swears his allegiance to. He’s been practicing lighting ever since, and from what I saw at the Fall Out Boy (FOB) show the other night in Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, MN, he has mastered his skill. Even as he claims, “I’m never done building this show. I will be refining it until the last gig.”
While Jibson has been a freelancer for most of his career, he took a lot of paths to get to where he is today as the production designer for this act. This includes stops at Midwest shops including Vari*Lite, ILC, Windy City and Pete’s Lights. Working with a stable list of around five artists, he tends to stay pretty busy riffing with the changes.
Nonstop Gigging
This last leg for Fall Out Boy is a culmination of 18 months of touring. Robb got a call in 2013 from the Chicago band when they regrouped after a five-year hiatus to release an album called Save Rock and Roll featuring the multi platinum single “My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark (Light Em Up)”. While touring that year they wrote and recorded their next album, American Beauty / American Psycho. They never really stopped gigging, though Jibson did redesign the systems around a few times to suit the co-headline tour legs with Paramore in 2014 and Wiz Khalifa in 2015, and then again for the European legs and venue changes.
The stage set is simple with just a tiered drum riser, built with no backing so the audience can see video elements across the whole stage. There is a V-shaped thrust that reaches a point about 60 feet out from the promoter stage. A VIP area in the center of the triangle-shaped structure accommodates 150. FOB obtained the set through All Access Staging & Productions, working with account rep Dave Agar. The lighting rig mirrors the stage set, and when viewed from front of house, it reminds me of a Flying V guitar. There are three straight trusses over the stage that are different lengths and set up in a symmetrical way to resemble a trapezoid pod. Two torms hang down each side of the upstage video wall as an extension to this structure. From the center of the trapezoid, there is a long straight truss that extends from midstage center out 60 feet into the arena. Finally, there are two front trusses, located all the way by FOH, that are loaded with GLP X4s and Clay Paky Mythos fixtures that have been turned into automated spotlights with handles.
Robb explains why they exist. “As you know, touring acts normally pay to utilize the house spots at venues. Some of the times they are fine, but as you know, sometimes the instruments and their old bulbs just don’t cut it. The killing point for me was when we played the amphitheater in Dallas two summers ago. The spots were incredibly dim. The promoters figure that ‘Hey, if the spotlight strikes, it’s good.’ But we know better. I actually had a front spot in that venue that metered a whopping seven foot-candles on stage. I complained, to no avail. They thought it was okay to charge the band for that. Jeez…”
At that point, Jibson figured he had endured enough. He refused to be subject to what amounts to thievery by the local venues and started carrying six small Clay Paky Mythos fixtures. Controlled by wireless DMX and able to plug into the local power, the crew roped them up and hung them off railings in the existing spot baskets in the amphitheaters. Now, in arenas, he mounts them on a truss that is about 140 feet from the stage. Still using local operators, Upstaging utilizes the Limpet winch system that hauls the ops the 45-to-60-foot trim height in each of these places. More fall prevention than fall protection, and no heart attacks! In this configuration he gets total control of the fixtures and more than 200 foot-candles at the stage.
One of the most unique things about Jibson’s FOH setup is his custom headset/intercom system. He gets an in-ear mix from the monitor console so he hears the playback tracks precisely when the band does, without a 15-millisecond delay from the PA. That mixes in with his Intercom feed so he can still hear the spot operators over the in ear music and talk to them. In addition, he has a foot switch that routes his intercom mic into the band’s in-ear monitors on stage so he can talk to the band while they work. “I may see a guy with a cool sign held up and say, ‘Pete, look at the dude on your left,’ and the musician will point and give a shout out to the fan, making his day.”
Lighting, Video, Effects
“This show is predominantly a cinematic experience. Custom content was made by several organizations led by So Midwest, Inc. The lighting has its hero moments and is also used as an extension of the content to set the mood, time and place. I have been just blown away by the video product we are using,” the designer says. “Screenworks supplies most of the video package with cameras, switchers and an upstage wall that is made up of Roe’s 7mm black glare-free product. This is a 14.4 meter wide wall that is six meters high. But I removed certain tiles along the bottom to give it a jagged tooth sort of look. Next, I was fortunate to get my hands on some of the new 25mm Vanish product that Roe makes. These are the see-through type panels that are just unbelievable.”
“We have four rolling 3.6-by-2.4-meter carts of this product that we use for a silhouette gag to hide the players before the show starts. On a down beat in the show’s opening, we put a hole in the video content, and the band is silhouetted behind the transparent screens. The screens then roll off stage and around the set, where they sit just in front of the 7mm Roe wall,” Jibson adds. “The thing is, this 25mm product looks as good as any 12mm product I have ever seen.” The contrast between the two video surfaces is evident, especially if they play different content. But when he expands an image to stretch across both the upper and lower walls it almost looks seamless. The Vanish tiles had to be built into custom rolling carts. Upstaging was called on to manufacture them as well as provide the Vanish product.
Robb admits to a bit of Chicago nepotism as far as this production is concerned. After all, he is So Midwest. Local lighting vendor Upstaging and laser and special effects company Strictly FX were called on early for their services. I must say, the laser work on this show was some of the best I have ever seen, and Jibson was well aware of when to turn off other elements and concentrate on just letting them do their thing. Streamers, snow effects, gerbs, bowls of flame and other effects from Strictly brought gasps from the all age crowd.
Besides the Mythos that Jibson swears by, he had quite an arsenal of lighting products. Rows of Ayrton MagicPanels provided tight wash beams, while an assortment of Clay Paky B-Eyes provided eye candy. He enlisted a lot of SGM Q-7 (v2) flood/strobe fixtures. They appeared everywhere (including on top of a custom bracket built for the top of the Clair PA) and lit the audience easily.
A Unique Career Path
Robb started out by playing in a hair band in his young days. For some help with the image, he went to junkyards to remove old headlamps to use in his stage show. He did not realize why they blew up when he applied 120 volts to them, but, hey, “it was a cool effect” — until he got in some heat with the local cops about using them. Eventually someone pointed out to him how to wire the bulbs in series, and he was off on a mission wiring all kinds of bulbs together for his basement show.
By the time 2007 came around, he had been touring for a few years as an employee of the bands he worked for. In order to move up to the next level and become a bit more legitimate, he decided to incorporate himself as a business. Not wanting to take it all the fun out of it and not wanting to name it after himself, he needed a clever name. One day while in the Empty Bottle in Chicago he picked up a 1-inch punk rock button on the ground. It simply read, “So Midwest.” He realized this was the perfect name for his new company.
So Midwest owns the control consoles and media servers that Jibson prefers using. He has built his own setup out of Jands Vista wings powered by Mac minis and Vista D1s for the processing. He has his own media servers running PRG Mbox software as well. He is the only constant employee of So Midwest and brings in help when needed. He prefers to run the shows he designs whenever possible. With the amount of talent Robb displays and the list of bands that he works with at times (Incubus, Deftones, Panic! at the Disco, My Chemical Romance) I’m not sure how long he can go before he’ll need to clone himself.
Robb Jibson can be reached through his website, www.somidwest.com.
Fall Out Boy American Beauty/American Psycho Tour
Crew
- Production Designer/LD: Robb Jibson
- Production Manager/FOH Engineer: Chad Olech
- Production Assistant: Tessa Greiman
- Stage Manager: Sean Bates
- Lighting Cos: Upstaging/Neg Earth/So Midwest
- Lighting Crew: Franklin Antonio (Crew Chief), Christopher Dries, Kile McClure
- Video Co: Screenworks
- Video Crew Chief/Engineer: Brooks Gotham
- Video Director: Jack Edinger
- Video Techs: Mike Christino, Sean Lee
- Pyro/Effects: Strictly FX
- Pyro/FX Crew Chief: Eddie Romack
- Pyro Tech: Joey Atkinson
- Laser Tech: Mike Hartle
- Staging: All Access Staging
- Carpenters: Ricky Ortega (Head Carp), Eric Martinez, Charlie Marshall
Gear
- 1 Custom control setup (Jands Vista, Vista D1s, Mac Minis)
- 44 Clay Paky Mythos fixtures
- 6 Clay Paky Mythos fixtures modified with handles
- 16 Clay Paky B-Eye K20s
- 40 Ayrton Magic Panel 602s
- 20 Ayrton MagicDot fixtures
- 62 SGM Q-7 Wash fixtures
- 56 GLP impression X4 fixtures
- 1 Upstage video wall (Roe 7mm, 14.4m x 6m)
- Custom carts with Roe 25mm Vanish tiles
- 5 Radiance hazers
- 5 Versa fans
- 4 HES FQ-100 foggers
- 24 Tyler GT truss sections
- 4 Tomcat Swing-Wing Truss sections
- 50 Lodestar motors
