Lighting Director Scott Cunningham Helps ‘The Line” Shine
Country music’s Florida Georgia Line, comprised of Floridian Brian Kelley and Georgian Tyler Hubbard, are hotter than a $10 pistol. Their sextuple-platinum song “Cruise” broke the record for longest Number One on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs Chart, scoring more than 6.3 million downloads in the U.S. alone. It is the second-highest-selling country single ever. Entertainment Weekly magazine called “Cruise (Remix) featuring Nelly” the eighth-best single of 2013. Their first three singles hit Number One for several weeks each, an accomplishment equaled only by Brooks & Dunn. Their debut album, Here’s to the Good Times, earned the highest album sales of 2012 for a new country act.
The duo and their band toured with Taylor Swift’s Red tour and Luke Bryan’s Dirt Road Diaries tour, then finished 2013 headlining their own 35-city sold-out Here’s to the Good Times tour. They’ll begin 2014 touring with country megastar Jason Aldean on his Night Train tour. They’ve won more awards than they can carry — ACA, AMA, ACM, CMA, CMT, and multiple Teen Choice nominations — and appeared on nearly all the TV talk shows, as well as in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Keeping the shine on the Line as the country band hits the road is lighting director Scott Cunningham, who works with production designer Mike Swinford and programmer Mark Butts to optimize the visuals for each of the band’s songs. PLSN spoke to Cunningham on his holiday hiatus at home in Nashville, shortly before his wedding in early January. Joining Cunningham on the road are Morris Light and Sound lighting crew members Marshall Blair and Zach Schwandt.
PLSN: How did your career begin?
Scott Cunningham: I started at a young age at a small company in Illinois, working on high school musicals and local concerts. I went from there to doing tech work at a church in St. Louis that had begun using moving lights, intelligent fixtures and a Hog console — stuff that was a little more substantial than just PAR cans. I got a summer internship with Integrity Lighting out of Tulsa that provided gear to the Christian band Mercy Me. That gave me a lot more experience checking fixtures and running shows with a lot more top-of-the-line gear. I started doing work for the band and eventually worked full-time for them for about six years. I was doing about 100 shows a year and freelancing when I could with other Christian bands like Tenth Avenue North and Jars of Clay. At the beginning of 2013, Alan Jackson’s production manager called and asked me if I would be interested in going in another direction, so I became Alan Jackson’s lighting director. In September, I transferred over to Florida Georgia Line.
On tour, how do you coordinate lighting with other acts on the shows?
Every tour is different. In the early part of the year, we were on tour with Luke Bryan, whose people were gracious enough to let us use everything that was downstage from their mid-stage drop. For the upcoming Jason Aldean shows, they’ll let us use some of their lighting to accent our show, plus we’ll have some of our own things for our own look. We won’t have to load in our whole rig, but we’ll have our own console to run things independently. For our own Here’s to the Good Times tour, we wanted to show the same hospitality to the other acts on the bill. So we gave them anything they could use downstage of our mid-stage Kabuki drop, which gave them a decent number of fixtures. And I actually ran the program for the opening artists as well.
What size venues did you play on the Florida Georgia Line tour?
There was a wide range. When we first booked the tour, the album Here’s to the Good Times was just starting to break out. We had one semi truck and three buses with trailers, but soon added two more trucks as the venues got bigger. We played Club Nokia in L.A., an awesome club with about 2,000 seats, but also played several arenas of about 14,000 seats. In Lexington, Kentucky, our only outdoor show, we played a minor league baseball stadium that held 30,000 people. We played in the outfield, and the whole field and the stands were full of people. The temperature was fluctuating between 30 and 40 degrees and, of course, it rained that day, too. It was a very long day, but seeing the crowd so into it made it all worth it.
Did you have to notify the FAA about the outdoor lighting?
We didn’t use any lighting that would’ve affected aircraft. No pyro, only cryo (CO2 jets that create “smoke”).
Does each venue you play have its own house lights and rules you have to contend with?
When we played the Nokia Club in L.A. and the Nokia Theatre Times Square in New York (now the Best Buy Theater), we had to scale our rig way back. We used a lot of in-house fixtures in the smaller clubs, but we could usually use our whole rig and coordinate with the local house lighting people as far as cues for intermission and walk-ins.
What is a typical day on the road like as you come into each city?
The tour manager usually gets to the venue around 8 a.m. and load-in starts around 9 a.m. The semi truck’s worth of lighting and the rigging unloads first. We have everything down to a system, so everything is packed and unpacked in the same order. Then I, and my two lighting techs from Morris Light and Sound, Marshall Blair and Zach Schwandt, get to work with the local stagehands on setting up and dealing with any maintenance issues.
On a good day, we’re done with that by around noon, when we break for lunch. I come back after lunch and focus the lights just to make sure everything’s in the right place. There’s some down time after that, unless some new songs have been added. If so, I work on getting those programmed in. Doors usually open around 6 p.m., with showtime around 7:30 p.m. The opening act does 25 minutes, followed by a short break. The second act does 45 minutes, followed by a 30-minute changeover. Florida Georgia Line usually does about 90 minutes. Load-out takes about two hours. By the time the crew’s all showered and ready to go, it’s back on the bus around 1 a.m. for the overnight drive to the next city.
Do you rehearse with the band to get all the cues down?
Well, I had been freelancing with the guys since March, so I was familiar with the band and the cues. I worked things out with our tour designer, Mike Swinford, and our tour programmer, Mark Butts. Mark did the majority of the programming, based on concepts and ideas that everyone came up with to make it show that band and management really wanted to see. We worked with the band members for about two weeks to map out where they were going to be on the 60-by-40-foot stage at any given time.
At first, since they had never headlined before, they weren’t used to having a whole stage, so we got them to use all the space they had, and we could incorporate special elements. Now, on the high-energy numbers, they are all over everywhere! They are all bouncing about the stage, just loving their jobs and feeding off the crowd interaction.
Is each song programmed and then just punched up?
We laid it out so that each song is programmed individually in case the order of the set is changed. We can plug the song in wherever it needs to go, with its own cue list. I manually fire all the cues and the video instead of using an automated timecode, in case something changes or goes wrong. In my in-ear monitors, I also have a click track that the drummer also has for synchronizing the
tempo. Everything is backed up on second computers that can take over if needed.
Describe the video gear you’re using on tour.
We use a flexible video screen [PixelFlex] as one upstage center video wall. It’s more like a curtain that folds up into cable trunk cases. It’s so convenient because it folds up small enough that you can put it wherever you need to on the truck without taking up a lot of space.
And your most impressive effect?
The [Ayrton] MagicPanels are definitely our most impressive fixture. They’re the latest thing on the market and a lot of tours are using them. We’re very happy with their performance. They’re a very bright and powerful product that blew everyone away.
What are some of the big technological changes you’ve seen?
There are just so many more options available. A new “latest and greatest” will come out and be the only one available, but before long, every brand will have its version of it. So many things have gone to LED and they’re brighter than ever, with greater ease of use, less cabling and lower power consumption. That’s the biggest change I’ve seen.
Is it hard to keep up?
Yes and no. Every year, there are different conferences and conventions for operators and designers to see the newest products. Mike goes to those and brings back recommendations. That really helps me a lot, because I’m on the road so much and can’t get to those events.
Is there a danger that lighting effects can overwhelm the show, maybe outshine the band?
Not really, not if it’s done correctly. Obviously, there are moments when you want the lights to shine, but of course, a well-done show just accents what the band is doing. We definitely try our best to make that happen.
Do you get tired of working on the same songs every night?
No, it’s a very high-energy set. The band is at 110 percent every night and I personally feed off of that energy. In the talk-back monitors, everyone is encouraging everyone else. All the band guys, especially the lead singers, have such great care for the fan experience. The excitement of our crowds has been on a whole other level, with the fans singing along to every song. I really enjoy being a part of that.
Florida Georgia Line
» Crew
Production Designer: Mike Swinford
Lighting Director: Scott Cunningham
Lighting Programmer: Mark Butts
Lighting Co: Morris Light and Sound
Lighting Crew: Marshall Blair, Zach Schwandt
Tour Manager: Troy Johnson
Production Manager: Ken Thomas
Production Assistant: Jeff “Beaner” Griffin
Video Co: Vision Visuals
Video Crew: Ryan Stowe,
Anthony Hollingsworth, Mike Boggs
Set/Staging Co: Setco, Inc.
» Gear
2 grandMA2 Lite consoles (1 Main/1 Backup)
4 grandMA NPU (3 Main/1 Backup)
48 Ayrton MagicPanel 602s
24 Vari*Lite VL3000s
24 Solaris Flares
8 Martin MAC Auras
4 Clay Paky Sharpys
2 Philips Showlines
14 PixelFlex LED panels (18 mm)
2 Green-Hippo Hippotizer HD media servers (1 for backup)
