One of the hottest tours of late was the co-billed Taking Back Sunday (TBS)/Angels and Airwaves (A&A) tour. Before working as TBS’ lighting designer/ director, John McGuire designed video systems for various artists. He also worked with Coheed and Cambria’s 2005-06 tour before heading out with TBS. This is Kevin Cauley’s first solo design. Before A&A, he programmed and directed the lighting for Mötley Crüe, Jane’s Addiction, Beck, Michelle Branch, and Stereo MCs, along with various other artists. We spoke to the two of them about their lighting and video rig.
John McGuire: My show design consisted of four scenes: the first was a full light rig and 100 Element Lab Versa Tubes vertically mounted on six risers and a basic artwork with two suits along a city backdrop emphasizing the vertical towers. Second was a more classic movie theatre look with the addition of our marquee theatre sign and red Burgundy drape covering our backdrop and risers. Third was the reveal of another 30 Versa Tubes underneath our three circular risers and the scrim partial reveal of our 160 horizontal ‘Tubes along our upstage edge. The scrim was a sharkstooth with black and white cartoon speaker stacks sewn on the front of it. It blocked some of the ‘Tubes and blurred the others. My final look was the full reveal of our upstage Versa Tube wall against a black backdrop. I choose a lot of fixtures that I’ve been comfortable with from previous tours and tried out the new Studio Commands. They were very reliable with a great pan and tilt motion—a really bright wash fixture. Of course I also had Cyberlight Turbos for the mirror speed. I got a lot of shit from people for still using them, but nothing moves like they do.
As for programming time, I actually only had the rig to myself for about six hours. Most of my pre-production was getting the rest of my crew used to working with the new risers and constructing the floor package rig for my vertical Versa Tubes—thank you Home Depot—along with going over with the band why I spent all their money and what it was going to do and when. I actually was using a laptop version of ESP Vision in the corner of the rehearsal space to program the lights along with my Catalyst set up. I did have a couple of cues for the band to see during rehearsals which I programmed sitting on my couch at home using the laptop and the Hog USB wings, and those cues were pretty much my test cues to make sure ESP was everything AJ told me it was going to be. He was right. After the band was done sound checking I gave the rig over to Kevin to start.”
Kevin Cauley: I used a Vision system supplied by PreLite for two days of at-home programming. Once onsite, I had 24 hours to load in, make the system work, and finish programming. It was a long day.
John McGuire: Our initial design called for a video screen and the Versa Tubes on either side of it in a Fibonacci [A sequence of numbers in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. Fibonacci numbers appear in nature in sea shell shapes, flower petal arrangements, pineapples and pine cones. – ed.] spiral arrangement, but when the screen was cut I spread out my ‘Tubes to make as good a low-res video image as I could. The ‘Tubes were provided by Marty Wickman at CWP. The back wall consisted of eight columns of 20 ‘Tubes hung on a slight offset. Each column consisted of five Element Labs racks that held four ‘Tubes each with the power and data supply mounted to the bottom one. I also had six 4-by-4 risers with three upright towers with various heights and offset mountings. To finish it off, each of my three circular risers were dressed with them along the downstage half of the circle. Nate Cox was responsible for the mounting of them each day. The Versa Tubes are extremely light and each four could be easily lifted by one person for set up. The pixels were mapped in a way that the whole stage was one large image that could be broken up into smaller elements during different songs. I programmed all the content using a Catalyst. The Versa Tubes were light, easy to use, pulled very little power and could be rigged to anything. The ‘Tubes gave me a nice clean look and cabling was light!
Kevin Cauley: “I decided to use 28 of the James Thomas Engineering PixelLine 1044s. From day one the band wanted to do some cool backlight effects. I had seen the 1044s used in Europe so I knew what they could do but I had no experience with them—so I ordered 28! Just prior to the start of the tour we spent a month in Europe doing the club thing.
I was able to rent six of the units for the club shows just so I could get my head around them. They were awesome and brighter than I had hoped. At this point I felt a lot better about ordering 28! John and I are using the same lighting rig, but while he’s using the Versa Tubes I’m using the PixelLines. I then added my own floor package.”
John McGuire: I love working with TBS. They appreciate what I’m doing for them and they pretty much let me do any of the ideas I have. You just can’t hate a band like that!
Kevin Cauley: I’d like to add a thanks to crew members Ethan Merfy and Todd Fass. Also Kevin Forester and Ed & Ted’s Excellent Lighting, Tom Thompson and PreLite, Joey Kozlowski and Accurate Staging, as well as John Wiseman at XL Video.
