This month I welcome a little change. I have no musical tours to design or program, but because I have a lot of friends who do the same thing as I do for a living, I have plenty of work as their substitute for a few gigs.
The music business is quite different from other sides of lighting. The main thing is that it isn’t consistent, and it often leaves holes in your schedule — and by “holes,” I mean time periods where we aren’t gigging and we ain’t making no cash. It pays to keep in touch with your fellow lighting brethren. Besides the fact that they are your friends, there’s an old adage that really applies to the music biz: “Out of sight, out of mind.”
You see, when someone calls me for a gig that I can’t do, I immediately find someone else who can cover it. I usually try to think of the last few friends who have contacted me looking for work. Their names are on the top, outer layer of my brain, and I will contact them to see if they need any work. But if I haven’t gotten an e-mail or phone call from them in a while, they are not on my mind and, consequently, are not at the top of the list of people who I will call.
Many of us rock LDs know each other. We are a tight-knit community. We respect each other and — with the exception of a few slimeball designers — we do not poach each other’s gigs. In other words, if a manager calls me to light their act and I know one of my friends designed their last tour, I will not agree to take the gig immediately. Instead I offer to give them a design in a few days as a stalling tactic while I contact my old friend, the previous LD for this act.
I do this out of respect. Chances are the old designer was not asked back for a reason, like the band wants to head in a dif-ferent direction, or possibly the designer is not available due to a conflict in schedule. Of course, this can bite me in the ass, but I feel I am a better man for conducting my business affairs in this manner.
I recently got a call from a band that my friend Joe Paradise lit last year. He had submitted a design for them this year as well. So I politely declined the offer to send a design concept to this act. I’d rather have Joe as a friend than have a gig. In the end, Joe did not get the gig, but I don’t care. I can always find another gig. Two months later, Joe called to inform me that one of my bands had contacted him to design their summer tour. I gladly handed over the reins and told him to have a great tour. It’s all about mutual respect.
Because my friends know I will cover any act without trying to poach it, I get a lot of gigs as their temporary replacement — basically the substitute LD. These gigs are a lot of fun for me, and they enable me to meet a lot of other management types. These guys will be loyal to their band personnel, but they, too, will end up working for another band at times. And when that new band needs an LD, they often call me.
Last month, I got a call from Mikey Z. He’s been looking after the lights for Counting Crows for years. Starting next month, he will embark on a two-year long tour with them. But last month, the Crows had a few one-offs they had booked. Mikey was out looking after another act during this time, so he called me. It gave me eight days of work, and that covered my bills for the month.
Then Greg Maltby needed someone to cover some Huey Lewis shows. I’m in. Mike Ledesma needs someone to do some Kenny Loggins work. More dinero. Alex Skowron has about four bands on tour right now. It’s a full-time job just covering gigs that dude can’t make. This can turn into a profitable month just being a substitute LD. I’ve been designing Kid Rock tours forever. But I usually have Brad Teagen cover them as the director. Now Brad is on tour with someone else, so I am actually substituting for the guy who substitutes for me.
My favorite substitute is Joel Rieff. He’s out running Keith Urban’s tour at the moment, but he covers a lot of gigs for a lot of guys, including me. He directed a Jack Johnson tour for me last year. Now when Jack’s people call him for a design, he calls me. He knows how to play the game correctly. He covered CSNY for designer Keith Wysmer last year. When they asked him for a design, he declined to give them one because it was Keith who had called him and it was Keith’s gig. The word “poach” is not in Joel’s vocabulary. And he gets some choice gigs.
Enough of my soap-box politics. How do you actually cover a gig with an act that you are not familiar with? Well, there are two ways. The first is to use the existing show. Quite often the lighting rig is the same one that the usual LD tries to use at all his one-offs and corporate gigs. In this case, there is often a show disk with cue info in it. If each song is one big cue list where all I have to do is press a Go button, it makes it easy — if you know the music. If you don’t know the mu-sic, it can be harder, and it won’t look as nice as it could.
The other way to do a show is to just plain punt. Building a proper punt page is an art form. Usually the more faders on a console, the better you are for punting. I believe the MA Lighting grandMA is the best thought-out console for punting. Not only does the operator have 20 faders on one page, but he has another bank of “executer” buttons. These buttons can do anything from trigger a series of macros to simply turning all your moving lights to blue. Plus, the grandMA has more options for what each fader can do than any other console.
But I can also punt the hell out of a show using the old Avolites Rollacue with 15 submasters and 30 individual faders. It’s all about how you set up your console to punt. Those who have worked with me know that I write what I call “Nook’s Ultimate Punt Page.” If you’ve ever done a radio show (concert with several bands that is promoted by a radio station), you’ll know the importance of a simple punt page and the fat looks you can get if a good LD has programmed it. I can make any schlock LD look fantastic using just one page of a console.
For years I’ve watched LDs trying to rewrite their whole show, cue by cue, for a one-off. But it always looks better when they just resort to a good punt page. After all, lighting a one-off is not rocket surgery. And making your act look good is the key to preventing holes and periods where we ain’t making no cash.
Nook Schoenfeld is a freelance lighting designer. He can be reached at nschoenfeld@plsn.com.
