It’s not supposed to be like this. Let’s just get that straight. I have enough friends who tour. I’ve listened to plenty of tales of woe, exploding egos, tree pissing contests and the misadventures of local crews with expensive gear — enough to know that load-ins are not supposed to be so easy. “This” is Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing tour, loading in to the Frank Irwin Center in Austin, Texas. It’s an overcast Tuesday morning in late September. Not only do I not see a single argument break out, a single piece of gear mishandled, or hear a single voice raised, but the road crew is all smiling and joking, the local crew are definitely firing on all cylinders, and I’d even say that they’re a pretty attractive bunch as well. Nope, I’m pretty certain it’s not supposed to be as easy as this.
Part of the ease must be due to the fact that this crew has long ago worked out who gets to hold the remote control. Production Manager Rob Kern tells me that the tour kicked off way back in February at the Super Bowl pre-game show and progressed from there to Manila in the Philippines and Macau, China, as well as shows in Japan and Hawaii, before starting a month-long summer festivals run in Europe.
But even before that, key members of the crew worked together on the Styx/ REO Speedwagon Tour. “They came in being a very well oiled team,” says Kern. Epic Production Technologies’ Tracey Ploss tells me, “Yeah, they’re all sick of each other by now,” but he’s grinning when he says it. Once Journey finishes, its back to REO/Styx for the crew, dimmer tech Shawn Welch tells me cheerfully.
While there are probably many factors that combine to make this tour work so smoothly, some of them can also be traced back to the careful planning and preparation that happened before the show got on the road. Using WYSIWYG R24-beta, lighting designer Kevin Christopher of Deuce Designs LLC came up with a simple, yet dramatic rig that would showcase the band on a stage provided by each venue that measured 60 feet wide by 40 feet deep and five feet high.
Christopher (who looks a little forbidding until you see him behind the console, grinning like a little kid with a big box of crayons) worked closely with Kern and Ploss. He said that he was fortunate to have the benefit of the combined production experience of Kern and Ploss, who generously lent moral support and advice. Christopher also noted that “Tracey and his staff devised a way to allow most of the fixtures to ride in the Thomas 30-inch-by-30-inch S-PRT and to only be touched on a minimal basis. This saved on time in the venue, as well as precious truck space, by doing away with 70 percent of the road cases.”
When the seven soft ladders designed to add three layers of Vari-Lites to the backdrop of the stage had troubles, Epic’s crew came up with a solution. Christopher explains: “ Epic’s Jim Rink went to Thomas Engineering to create a clamping knuckle for the bottom of the truss, in which 5’1/2” ‘ladders’ would pin using a pinned spigot method. A VL3000 Spot or VL3500 Wash would hang at the bottom of each ladder. The hardware firmed up the ladders and gave us the desired look and maintained its rigidity.”
The fixtures on the ladders are the only ones to ride in road cases and load onto the truss so quickly that both the editor of this magazine and I completely missed seeing them go up. Under the direction of head rigger, Dale Long, all of a sudden there are 28 VLs up in the air hanging in between these gorgeous pieces of crinkly silver drape.
Christopher tells me, “The soft goods were six 10-foot-wide and 30-foot-high wire mesh legs provided by Sew What in Los Angeles — essentially six big crumpled screens that take light very well.” The backdrop is lit with 36 Martin Stage Bar 54L fixtures, 18 permanently mounted in the truss (for downlight) and 18 from the floor, three to a six-foot plate (for uplight). Along with the rest of the lighting rig, which included 15 Vari-Lite VL3500Q Spots, 14 VL3000 Spots, 43 VL3500 Wash Fixtures, 20 Martin Atomic 3000 Strobes with Atomic Scrollers, 18 9-Lite Mole Fays and 28 PAR 64s, the effect is stunning, giving the rock ‘n’ roll stage an almost operatic grandeur. Later, it will be seen that Journey, who after a long history of hit songs, is still packing arenas, has no trouble carrying off the dramatic promise of the rig.
Video screens go up next, and the load-in is almost finished. The video crew includes Nocturne’s director/engineer Eric Arnett and projectionist/cameraman Kevin Carswell. Kern says, “The band felt very strongly about not using a video wall upstage on the U.S. part of the tour, and that dictated the design and the final wire mesh look” of the backdrop. “However,” Kern adds, “we felt it was important to bring the band closer to the audience, especially in the large arenas. Nocturne provided two 20-foot-by-13-foot projection screens flown offstage left and right using R12 Barco projectors. The band was captured with a total of six cameras including a combination of pedestal-mounted camera with a long lens at FOH, a hand held in the pit, two POVs as well as two robo cams. There is no B-roll at all and all of the imagery is strictly I-Mag.
With the rig up, crew chief Mike Hall has plenty of time to fiddle with a balky fixture. A group of the local crew is thanked and let go until load out. Stan Green, who will be running lights for opening band, Night Ranger, is at front of house behind the second MA Lighting grandMA lighting console, running the moving lights through some test sequences. It’s not even lunch yet. Christopher too, will get behind the console and tweak a bit, but he has 35 pre-programmed song cues and the benefit of having already toured with the band in Europe and the Philippines. He says that he used to get nervous before the show. “I think I’ve learned to relax more. I used to get nervous about making a mistake. I find now that I am typically confident that I have covered all my bases and that everything will be fine.” Although he says doesn’t like calling followspots, he pulls it off.
Of his programming Christopher says, “In most cases, I prefer to stack cues in a sequence: preset, intro, verse 1, verse 2, chorus 1, chorus 2, etc. Then I like to add executors, typically in the same location on every page, so I know where to go without thinking about it. The executors vary from momentaries with moles or strobes, color-changing momentaries for hits and beam-closed momentaries for rhythmic beats.
“In pre-programming mode, I programmed the songs I knew the band were going to play and a handful of songs I guessed they would play based on my time spent with them. As the tour went on they would add a new song or two every now and then and I would program them as they came along. I knew that if they were working on a song at sound check that in a day or so it would get added, so get on it.”
After lunch and all the tweaking is done, the crew gets some down time. (Christopher was seen earlier with his precious golf clubs — a gift from a PGA Tour pro, Dicky Pride, when Christopher and Journey’s pianist/songwriter, Jonathan Cain, played golf with him at Bayhill in Orlando.) The noise boys are sound-checking the band. I note that the spirit of support on this tour extends all the way up to the performers. Night Ranger’s lead vocalist is there the whole time, enthusiastically applauding Journey’s sound check.
It’s show time, and Stan Green does a great job with Night Ranger’s set. Green keeps Night Ranger’s lights dramatic but politely makes minimal use of the rig. The full drama of the lights and video happens with Journey on the stage and Christopher and Arnett behind their desks. The crowd seems to be having itself a very good time, and no wonder, since the band looks and sounds fantastic. Christopher’s stage looks and his timing are impeccable. When one of his monitors is somehow knocked off the table, he is engulfed in what looks like an angry anthill of people rushing to resolve the problem. In no time the monitor is back upright. Through it all Christopher does not miss a single hit.
Tomorrow on the bus, Christopher will call his wife and five year old daughter. No doubt they will talk about their upcoming vacation to Disney World and he will reflect that the only downside of his job is that it takes him away from his family. But he will be grateful for their patience, and grateful that he has the opportunity to make his living doing something that he loves with a bunch people as dedicated and talented as this band and its crew.
When I interview him, Kern gives me a long list of people who he would like to thank (stage manager Scott Nordvold, production coordinator Sarah Shoup and “Jeff Ravitz, who worked with us on venue and cameras lighting for the DVD,” are just a few of them). “This was one of those tours you don’t want to end,” he says. Having seen the show, I believe him. It may not be like this that often, but isn’t it nice to know that, sometimes, it is?