I got a call a few months ago from my old friend "Shakes." He has been the production manager for Kid Rock forever, it seems. And his boss is turning 40 this year. He wants to have a big party, followed by a week of rehearsals for a tour to promote his album. But he wants two distinctly different looking shows. The party was booked in Ford Field and was all about special guests and being a big party for 55,000 of his closest friends. The tour will last two years and come back to Detroit this summer to play the baseball park across the street. Hence he needed to come up with separate designs to mix it up. Last November, I found myself sitting in the client's rehearsal space discussing set ideas with him and Shakes. First, we knocked out a birthday bash scenario – two large cakes, some backdrops, a couple of 50-foot-high by 24-foot-wide video walls flanking the stage to set the tone. I drew in some vertical towers of lights and various scrims that would mask the PA. The lighting rig I would use for this show would be similar to one we used the previous summer, but beefed up with more firepower. Lasers, pyro and dancer placement finished off this scenario.
Westward Ho
Then it was time to see what the boss had in mind for a touring set. He walked me inside and said, "Nook, I'm thinking about a set that matches this particular car." The 1964 Pontiac Bonneville he pointed out was featured on his album cover. It had western-style leather seats and a nine-foot-wide set of longhorn steer horns mounted on the grill. He then went on to talk about his recent hunting trip with Hank Williams. He said he needed some guns, like really big guns, mounted somewhere. I had an idea, so I steered us back to the conference room and fired up my Mac.
Last year, the artist had come up with his own brand of beer. At that time, my wife said common sense dictates that I should design a saloon as a set. So I had drawn in an old fashioned western set with steps that lead to different platforms on which various musicians would live. Everything was made with a pine finish. Sixteen-foot-wide bars flanked the deck of the stage, wide enough to allow dancers on top, á la Coyote Ugly. Upstage, I had a couple of 24-foot hinged trusses with scaled Winchester rifle replicas mounted to the front. The front truss protruded into the seats of the arena, and it had a 12-foot-wide by six-foot-tall gold eagle attached to it. I showed the artist the renderings, and his eyes lit up. I showed him various camera angles from the audience point of view, and he started coming up with his own ideas.
Tweaking the Concept
Rock had me move musicians around on the plot. We added some practical lights in strategic places. We decided to mount LED tape in the bars and thrust. He chose the wood samples to match the faux wood. Artist John Rios was brought in to finalize the artwork on various scrims, roll drops and Austrian drapes we fit into the puzzle. We then set about configuring a 50-foot-long thrust and wide catwalks made of grille, where flames would shoot through. Shakes and I talked him into using a turntable lift on which he would rise, playing the piano for the encore. We picked out a reasonably-sized video wall that matched the set. The client requested we build a screen surround for it, so it would resemble a picture frame. Jim Beam sponsors the tour, so getting old whiskey barrels, mirrors and neon signs to fill out the theme was easy. Finally, Rock decided we should mount a longhorn steer head with 14-foot wide horns on the set to be used for railings up top. No problem. I put lamps in his eyes and had him exhale cryo fog (CO2) before I was through.
Armed with seven pages of notes, I left for a flight home to Minneapolis. I started corresponding with my artist out in Vegas. Chris Tousey has been transforming the Vectorworks drawings into beautiful renderings for all of us at Visual Ventures for years. He is a master at drafting in Cinema 4D; he has done so much work for us that he can almost nail down my design over the phone. I got him started on the scenic elements and forwarded him my CAD drawings. Finally, Chris asked what I had in mind for lighting the set, and I realized we had never really spoken about a lighting design. I had various scenic trusses taking up real estate in the air, so I needed to design something that would fit in the space between them. After 12 years designing stuff for this artist, he's comfortable with the way I light his show.
Adding the Firepower
Upstage I had a 28-foot-wide video wall above the set. Offstage of this, I had some eight-foot roll drops with flags on them. I don't like for light beams to have to compete with video, so placing vertical pipes next to the video wall is always a nice touch. I mounted some Martin MAC 401 large format LED lights there for eye candy. Downstage of it were the rifle trusses – HUD Truss filled with Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots and MAC 2000 Wash fixtures. The rifles would be sculpted out of foam, painted by an artist and hardened with some agent. I had a scenic truss as well as a pyro truss full of various exploding gadgets downstage of the rifles. This left me a 14-foot-by-60-foot open area to put in something cool. I added in a couple of 18-foot wide X-shaped trusses made of HUD Truss. I stuffed 12 Clay Paky Alpha Beams and some strobes into each one, and they provided me with bright ACL rock looks galore.
I mounted a bunch of Upstaging Headlites (incredibly bright squares of white LED light) to these Xs to fatten it all out. Then I added some more angled trusses full of Vari-Lites, strobes and MAC 2000 Wash fixtures where I could, to fill out the air above the stage. By the time I got the lighting plot done, Chris had finished his third set of renderings. I liked what I saw. I e-mailed them to Shakes and the boss. A few comments and minor changes later, I got a thumbs up and was told to start getting prices for everything. It was time to call Joe Gallagher, longtime fabricator of my sets and owner of Accurate Staging. I emailed him the renderings with plans to get him the detailed Vectorworks files of every 3D item drawn to scale.
Everything I send to him to be custom-built must be triple-checked for proper sizing and location. Joe takes pride in themed sets like these. He called and told me he'd found these terrific hurricane lanterns for the bar. "Fabulous," I said. "Now go find me a chandelier made of an old wagon wheel." Ten minutes later, I had three samples in my inbox from which to choose.
Now that a design was in place, it was time to assemble the team that could bring this show to life. But that's next month's article.
