“This band plays live, and so do I,” the lighting director says of Jason Aldean’s current “Ride All Night” trek.
As a lighting director, Keith Hoagland has become a director of designers, so to speak. Hoagland first worked with Jason Aldean in 2008 when the artist headlined at the Huntsville, AL Spring Jam festival, which he had designed. Management and Aldean were impressed and asked Keith to come on board as the lighting director when Aldean got a chance at a headline tour later that fall. An established lighting designer known for his impeccable timing, which is what brought him to Aldean’s attention, the management of the artist has a preference of bringing in new designers every so often. But Keith always runs the shows.
“It’s crazy, really,” says Hoagland, “As far as designers, it comes and goes.” This year Hoagland, as he has in the past, chose the design team. Fireplay would design lighting and video for Aldean’s 2019 “Ride All Night” tour.
To understand how Hoagland arrived at this enviable position, PLSN delved into his origins in the business and what brought him to the world of working in live entertainment.
Beginnings
Hoagland started his way on his path in high school. “I’m a self-taught musician and taught myself how to read music as best I could.” Wanting to build on those efforts led him to join the school’s marching band. By the time he graduated from high school in 1985, he was a dues-paying member, playing gigs for the local federation of musicians union in Oklahoma City. The thought came to him that “Wow, I could maybe do this for a living.”
A professor from the local college heard him playing in church one Sunday. Impressed, he approached Hoagland after the service and asked if he had learned to be a musician in school. His answer was no, of course, whereupon the professor started ticking off Hoagland’s assets — playing live in an orchestra, getting paid as a professional union musician. “‘Wait a minute,’ he says to me, ‘we need to get you into school.’” Hoagland’s benefactor got him squared away at Oklahoma Baptist University, “Where I finally learned how to read music properly.”
He pursued two degrees, majoring in classical performance and TV production. “The TV production class is where I learned about four point and the other basics in lighting,” which interested him enough to start dabbling with the lighting board and system in his church. At the same time, he got a part-time job running audio at the local CBS station, “But I was intrigued by it all — I paid attention all of it.” Before he could graduate from the university, he got an offer to move to Nashville and mix audio, after musician Jeoff Benward heard him mixing the college symphony. This was about 1990.
By the fall of ‘91, Hoagland had branched out a bit in Nashville and landed a job as carpenter on a tour with Amy Grant. “She was wonderful to me and truly the one who got me established in Nashville. Though I was just a broke roadie on her tour, with no credit cards, she arranged for a car to get me home when I decided to get married. She is, and remains, a dear friend of my family. We may go long periods without seeing one another but we pick up like it was yesterday.”
Bending Toward the Light
Stable and comfortable with a little bit of cash as a cushion, Hoagland was ready to accept whatever came next. That arrived in the form of a young Christian rock band called Geoff Moore & the Distance. “They were looking for an LD, and I said, ‘Sure, I’ll take the job,’” laughs Hoagland, “even though my lighting experience was minimal! I had done an Easter play and a Christmas special for my church, but nothing like we have going on today.”
Moving lights were in their infancy. Intellabeam 400’s from High End Systems and Vari-Lite series 2 and 3 were on the market. Hoagland went to Austin and Dallas, respectively, to learn about the systems, before going on the tour. “I took all my knowledge about sound and music and just changed the source of the signal path. It’s all about timing, and my timing has all been good ever since my marching band days.”
He looks back on those days, shaking his head and smiling. “My marching band days were one of the hardest things I ever did. I look at the national competitions and wonder how I could ever walk and play and remember all that stuff to do on the field.”
For lighting as well as audio, Hoagland adds, “I understood how the layer thing works. I got that from writing arrangements for the orchestra or symphony for recitals in college, which is all about layering. It’s the same with mixing audio. It’s all relative. It’s learning how to put a something in the right place at the right time so it sounds or looks amazing.” But it also requires a deft aesthetic touch, Hoagland adds. “Sometimes when you put it all together, it can come out like fruit salad that looks hideous.”
Hoagland credits the infrequent appearance of those fruit salads and his approach to lighting to mentors Howard Ungerleider and Eric Wade. “I did two world tours with Rush as Howard’s house guy, which was an amazing time. Eric was a huge influence on my work. The work he did with Peter Morse doing Usher and Bette Midler was a fortunate time for me. With Bette, I was the crew chief for her [2003-2004] “Kiss My Brass” world tour, where I learned a lot of his ways. Then he put enough trust in me to board op for Usher and several other tours he designed. I’m honored and blessed to take those moments and translate them into something Jason wants.”
He has worked in both rock ‘n’ roll and Christian tours over the years. His uncanny ability to take the huge budgets for big looks available in rock ‘n’ roll (he was one of three program/board ops on the Aerosmith Get a Grip Tour) and translate them into the somewhat fiscally tighter Christian market is what he became known for. Pretty soon the country market took notice. Management for Tracy Lawrence and LeAnn Rimes were coming around and asking him how his designs could turn out these huge looking rigs, yet still fit it in one truck. Hoagland’s response? “Easy, it is all about being creative.”
One of the things Keith is most proud of is his family. “I have been married to Colleen for over 27 years now. We met when she was a management assistant for an act I was working for. They hired her the week a band I was with landed a winter tour. I took off for the road and she became the person I would call into every day for management updates. I proposed to her in front of the main gates at Opryland. She has put up with me touring this whole time since 1992 and given me two children. Both kids are awesome and my wife, well I would not be where I am today if I did not have her being there all the long way. Good and the bad, she has stuck with me and we have worked hard together to do this thing called life.”
Present Day and Fireplay
When Hoagland suggested Fireplay as the design team to Aldean’s management this year, he was harkening back to familiar ground. “I did some stuff with Nick Whitehouse and Fireplay back in 2013. When I got the call to come back to Jason, the simple instructions to the design team were, “Do what you want, and show us what you come up with.” This was along with a list of venues for the tour, so ideally the full rig went up every day. Management was also looking towards a stronger video presence. “We wanted a killer show, but stay mindful of the budget,” Hoagland told Whitehouse. Above all else, and most important, Fireplay were told to keep in mind not to light this as a solo act; light the whole band. “Most people think since there’s one name on the ticket, he is the star, and they’re not wrong,” adds Hoagland. “But Jason wants to interact with his band guys, he wants the impact to be that ‘We’re a band.’”
Hoagland adds that the joke with Jason, is ‘“We’re a rock act with a hat.’ We have our country flavor. At the live show, it’s all about having a good time. We’re up against a lot of heavy hitters. Our fans have a wide spectrum of people they can see, from No Doubt to Def Leppard or the Stones, Eric Church… all these other amazing people, so when they buy a ticket for Jason, we realize they are giving us all a career. Year after year, we try to create new excitement and a unique style of his kind of party.” As Aldean puts it at the end of the show each night, Hoagland adds, “‘This is the best badass band in the business!’”
A well known service that Fireplay offers up with their design production company is the ability to place their own people in key positions, such as programming and directing. The Aldean project differed in that usual scenario. Whitehouse was adamant about Hoagland programming the show.
“Nick told me, ‘We want to give you the platform for you to do what you do. Use our design; use our talent to make sure you and Jason get what you want. You need to be given the best tools available.’” Fireplay producer Kelly Stickel saw how Hoagland had a lot of the production staff pulling on his coattails as the go-to guy for information about the system.
Hoagland gladly accepted Fireplay’s offer of their programmer Dominic Smith to provide a bit of relief by dealing with a lot of the video programming. That allowed Hoagland to concentrate on lighting and serve as the answer man Aldean needs. But they also wanted Keith fully involved and visible at the board. “You are the guy they are used to seeing, the guy who will be behind the desk all year, so we don’t want to break up that continuity,” Whitehouse told him.
Another feature Fireplay is well known for is designing shows to run on SMPTE timecode. Such was not the case here. “My love is doing the lighting and being in control of all that,” says Hoagland. “I don’t use SMPTE for any lighting cues ever. I feel my timing is what gets me the work I do.” Everything you see, every cue, every look is run live by Hoagland every night. “Yes, I do receive timecode to my desk to trigger the disguise media server for video, but that’s it. This band plays live, and so do I.”
Often, a mix like this of different designers, a separate video programmer and a separate lighting programmer can lead to headaches. “This was anything but,” says Hoagland. “This was awesome. This was like complete fresh air. As [Fireplay producer Kelly] Stickel told me at the beginning of this, ‘We’re gonna change the way we do things. We trust you, we love what you do, and here is how we’re gonna do it.’
“It was really nice working with these guys,” Hoagland adds. “So much so, I’m looking forward to having Fireplay back in 2020. We haven’t even started our second leg this year, and we are already looking at getting stuff on the calendar. But more than anything, I’m really honored and blessed to be working for this man. Jason and I just clicked.”
To see more of Keith Hoagland’s past projects, go to www.ckplighting.com
