It's been 20 years since I had anything to do with country music. This is not by choice; it simply never played out that I got a chance to light any artists in this music genre. So when a friend asked me to design the first annual Country Throwdown tour, I immediately replied that not only would I like to design it, I'd go out and run it. Warped Country
Kevin Lyman has made a name for himself by promoting various festival tours over the years. He's actually in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for promoting the annual punk rock classic, the Warped Tour. I have been fortunate over the years to design various fusion, metal, and hip-hop tours for the guy. But country music? He didn't really know how it would play out. By the end of the six-week run, we knew we had something cool in the making, and a yearly tradition was created.
Country music tours are a bit different than your normal traveling rock show. If you are involved with the giant extravaganzas like Tim and Faith or Garth, it can be just like the majority of arena tours – spectacular events scripted and choreographed with immense scenic designs and nifty video elements. But the majority of these acts don't roll that way. In fact, it's a whole other world to seasoned touring vets. Perhaps a little history can enlighten you.
Towel Trauma
In the late 1980s, various moving lights were being invented. I did some work for Morpheus Lights back then, and one of their clients was Alabama. Mike Swinford, a hugely popular LD in the country music scene to this day, was their LD. He had rented out a bunch of moving lights called Panaspots for his act. I got to go out and wiggle some for a few shows.
Back then, moving lights constantly broke down. One tech would sit in a truss all day lowering broken fixtures and hoisting spares into the air. Technicians like me were constantly in need of a phone to call the shop to order parts to be FedEx'd. My first day out, we were at a fair somewhere in the pouring rain. The moving lights were certainly not UL listed back then, and I needed a whole lot of parts and fast. So I walked into the production trailer and asked to use the phone.
The reply was certainly unexpected. "Well Nook, we don't actually have a production phone per se. But if you walk out of the trailer and hang a left, you'll see a pay phone down yonder. Go wait on line and it'll free up in no time." Luckily, we all had ATT phone cards back then, because only the truly wealthy had those briefcase-sized cell phones. After the long hot day, I finally finished load-out and returned to the production office in need of a towel and a shower, and this was the response: "Well Nook, didn't nobody tell ya? Out here you got to carry and wash your own towel."
The Mall Scene
Twenty years later, we now have towels. But not everything has changed. These acts can book a whole summer of shows just at county fairs. In the touring biz, it's not unheard of to drive 600 miles overnight between gigs. It's common to pay all the truck and bus drivers extra cash per mile for every mile over 500 in one night. Drivers love the money, and heck – during the late night hours, they can drive 80 miles an hour. But country acts tend to count pennies. They don't like to pay for overdrives. They also don't like wasting money on hotel rooms. When they do rent them, they insist on doubling up the crew and band members two to a room.
I'm fortunate in that when I cut a lighting deal, I insist on single rooms for myself and the members of the lighting crew on every day off. But it's a little strange. You see, quite often the crew will wake up at noon on a day off and find themselves in a parking lot by a mall somewhere. The crew is left to his or her own devices to go see a movie and drink beer somewhere, as long as everyone's on the bus again by midnight when the driver rolls to the next venue. This way, the band doesn't have to pay for an overdrive or for rooms for most of the guys. Many veterans of the country music scene just grin and bear it and receive a weekly salary whether they are on the road or not.
Montgomery Gentry was headlining the Throwdown festival. A talented veteran by the name of Michael Shucher has been their lighting designer for 10 years. He and I hit it off right away. Before I designed the light rig, I blew him a courtesy phone call to see what he may be interested in for a light rig. He replied that he'd love to see some curved fingers of some kind protruding from an upstage truss full of PARs. I immediately thought of a design I had in my computer and emailed him some renderings. He liked it.
It had curved fingers with truss toners, lined with a bunch of moving lite LED fixtures. I mixed in 20 Vari-Lite VL3Ks and 120k of PARs that Mike could not possibly live without, and we were set.
Upstaging Lighting gave me a great price, but I was short a little cash for a crew guy. I asked Mike if he ever did any of the physical work erecting his own lighting rig. "You gotta be kidding me," he says. "I work straight from load-in ‘til load-out every day. That's how we roll out here." I instantly found myself a working LD. Not only that, but Jamie, a guy on the MG crew, worked his tail off helping with rigging and all the rag trusses. We developed camaraderie between all departments that is rare these days, and it worked out great. Due to some long overnight drives and bus failures, our production bus found us a few hours late to a couple of gigs. But by the time we arrived, Mike and Jamey had tipped the trucks, bolted the truss, set up the dimmers with power and were rigging points with the locals. This was all without being asked. They just did it.
The camaraderie out there didn't stop. Traveling with us was the now infamous "Barbecue Band." This group of guys didn't get paid, but were allowed to play on the B stage as well as interact with everyone on the tour. Every evening after the show, they would set up a barbecue station in the parking lot of the venue and put up a small PA with some mics. They cooked after show barbecue for over 100 people while all the musicians from the 10 different bands took turns jamming with each other. These after parties went on long after load-out was finished, and we all drank lots of beer (and Jim Beam of course) while dining on lots of roasted pig and assorted barbecue.
