Kid Rock turned 40 this year, and he had a small party. Just hundreds of thousands of his closest friends. Also, it went a little long. Eight months.
Part of the party was set/lighting designer and programmer Richard “Nook” Schoenfeld, who has been lighting up Rock since 2000. And there was a lot to light, too. Rock brought out a 10-person band plus four dancing girls. Kicking off in Detroit, Rock’s hometown, the high-energy flame-ignited spectacle dazzled more than 50,000 at Ford’s Field on July 17. He took the party across America through to September.
“I had all the toys!” Schoenfeld proclaims. “All the lights, lasers, video and pyro I needed.” As for the music, “this year he put out a classic American rock album in the Bob Seger/John Mellencamp tradition. He reinvents himself all the time, going from rap to metal to country and now classic rock. He’s never boring.” This translates into a different audience experience from someone who saw the show in Boston to one who saw it in San Diego. “Every few days, he came to me with changes, so the programming never stopped. He’d show up at 4 in the afternoon of show — he’s doing this song in calypso style, and ‘Oh, now there’s a sax solo here.’ Sometimes I’d have 15 minutes until doors opened to make the changes!”
But Schoenfeld did more than design the set and lights. While he’s worked on every Rock tour since 2000, Rock said they needed someone to out and direct it. “And I said, ‘F*** it, I’m going out on tour!’” It had been a decade since he rode on the bus, and what a ride it was.
So what was it like out on the road for the first time in 10 years? “It was a world of total debauchery: Sex, drugs and cold pizza,” he deadpans, before adding a quick “Just kidding. We are all older now. Despite the strippers and tons of theatrical gags, it was a highly-tuned rock show, and I treated it as such. The sweeping lights flying down for a guitar solo, the 60-foot-wide waterfall of pyro, the dazzling lasers are all highly choreographed. I utilized all these effects at different times so they never step on each other during the show.”
A Matter of Truss
Schoenfeld first met Rock in 1999 when his first album, Devil Without a Cause, started climbing the charts. Schoenfeld was working the Gravity Games, and Rock was one of the acts. Rock was intrigued with the trussing he had constructed. “It was off the hook — I had diamonds, curves, all kinds of configurations, and Rock walked in and said he wanted to buy the rig right there.” Schoenfeld politely explained that it was a rental and not for sale. Rock was persistent, saying he needed it for his first arena tour, “so I just threw out a figure, and he looked at his tour manager and said, ‘Pay the man!’”
This latest tour started out much as the others have. “The boss and I sat down, and he told me a few things he wanted,” Schoenfeld explains. “He asked for a Western feel on stage, but intimate, like a living room. He envisioned big cow horns and really big guns. I said, ‘Dude, we could have that living room with fireplaces for a Kenny Loggins show, but we’re a 10-piece band! How about a saloon?’” Not surprisingly, Rock loved the saloon idea.
There were a lot of set pieces. In addition to the rifles, Rock wanted some steer horns and a big cow head. “But all these pieces were carved out of foam, so what happens is, you see a 3D rendering, the design got bigger. I tightened up some rifles to scale at 24 feet. The steer horns doubled as railings and had dancing girls on them at various times in the show.”
Once designed, the challenge was constructing it all. “Fabricating the rifles that I use to mask the truss was not easy,” he sighs. “It required me to draw 3-D CAD drawings of Winchester rifles. These were then used for artists to model large blocks of foam into precise accurate dimensions of the real rifle. The foam was then painted and hardened into sturdy pieces that can ride around the world in set carts.”
A Matter of Trust
When Rock saw the initial renderings, he moved some things around and said “Dude, we’re done with this!” Schoenfeld felt good and flew home. But stepping off the plane he had a realization: They hadn’t discussed lighting at all. Sure, that 12-foot bald eagle in flight was worked out, but how to light it wasn’t. “Then I realized he had faith in me,” he says. So he went to work designing the lights, and, later, when he showed him what he was going to do, Rock moved a few things around, smoked a cigar with him and said everything was good. “He watches the tapes of the show every night, and he’s had two comments all year, and they were spotlight cues.”
Pyro, Lasers and Video
In addition to the Martin MAC 2000 Washes and Vari*Lite VL3000 spots Schoenfeld often uses, he added 42 Clay Paky Alpha Beams. “I can’t say enough about those Clay Pakys,” he says. “I did 75 shows with them, and never had to fix a single light. They were the workhorses of this show.” Eight Martin MAC 401 LED fixtures further augmented the eye candy as well. “I don’t use them that often, but I love them.”
Pyrotechnics was very much a part of the “Classic 80s Rock Show” feel. Clint Ranse from Pyrotek Special Effects was the shooter, and he says as he entered his third year with Rock (the company has been with them since the beginning), he developed a good sense of what he likes. Building on that, and showing off some new products, he and CEO/principal designer Doug Adams showed him their ideas and Rock “loved it. Then it was just a case of spending a few days in the warehouse, and then we settled on the tour we went out with.”
And it was a hot one. “The show had a lot of gas flames — we burned through 180 pounds of propane per show!” Ranse laughs. They put a lot of it downstage, which had the audience feeling the heat. (He adds this was a bit uncomfortable in places like St. Louis, where temperatures hit 106° F. on the day Rock performed to begin with.) Their new fire screens were put to use, and as they are a modular programmable pixel-based unit, it allowed for great control on creating walls of flames up to eight feet high. They ran it using 176 channels of DMX, and there was a Jands Vista lighting console triggering all the effects. “They had a giant 60-foot wide waterfall, various spinners, and a 25-foot tall dragon that was great,” Schoenfeld adds.
The laser system came from Howard Ungerleider’s Production Design International and was programmed by Scott Wilson.
Video was supplied by Nocturne. “After years of running media servers, I decided to give all the video back to the guys who deal with it full time,” he says. He hired Lightswitch to create and format all the media for the tour. “They then handed it off to Nocturne’s John McLeish, who ran the media servers through a Maxxyz lighting console.”
At a time in the business where accountants are too often calling the shots, Rock appears to be something of an anomaly. “Production costs are huge,” he says. “He always says it’s not a money thing, ‘I have enough money now, I just want people to see the show.’ He purposely lowers the cost of the tickets down to $20, and he is always trying to get the beer prices down.”
Sheryl Crow Shares the Limelight with Kid Rock
Many of this summer’s reviews of the Kid Rock’s concerts mention the genuine chemistry on display between the Rock and opening act Sheryl Crow, who would join him for several songs during his set.
Paul Guthrie was her lighting designer, a position he’s held since 1994. “This year’s design for Sheryl’s headline shows was based around a small floor package that had to supplement in-house rigs,” he says. “We wanted something small that looked good, drew little power and had a small footprint in the truck.” This translated to eight Clay Paky Alpha Beam 300s, four Martin MAC 350 Entour LED source spots, a backdrop and his grandMA2 console.
Challenges included “not adding 50 more lights and two crew members,” he jokes, acknowledging that, while Crow is a star in her own right, she was in fact a guest at Rock’s party. “But it was a lot of fun. It’s a great collaboration and a great match. Kid Rock’s crew was extremely accommodating and courteous. Plus it was fun getting in front of his audience, which is much more boisterous than Sheryl’s normal fan base. We have definitely been spoiled!”
He was limited in that he couldn’t use Rock’s lasers or pyro, but had access to everything else in LD Nook Schoenfeld’s tool kit. But since the stage space Crow was allotted was modest, and most of the time she was playing as the sun was setting, it made him get creative with the lights, video, playback and cameras. All in all “we couldn’t have asked for a better opening act scenario.”
Guthrie works through his company, Toss Film & Design and has also worked with Colbie Caillat, Fleetwood Mac, Chris Isaak and Billy Idol, among many others.
Crew
Tour Manager: David Licursi
Production Manager: Eric “Shakes” Grzybowski
Production Assistant: Aaron Siegler
Production Designer/LD: Richard “Nook” Schoenfeld
Stage Manager: Steve Carlsen
Head Rigger: Dan Michaels
Lighting Crew Chief: Dean “Dino” Thomsic
Lighting Technicians: John Bailey, Mohawk Mike Coryell, Jim Fredrickson
Pyrotechnician – Shooter: Clint Ranse
Pyrotechnician: Adam Cryderman
Laser Technician: Alex Wilson
Video Director: Robert Smith
Video Crew Chief: John McLeish
Video Technicians: Kimberly Caldwell, Joshua Marrano, Michael Hossack
Gear
Lighting:
2 grandMA consoles
1 Maxedia media server
20 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spot fixtures
24 Martin MAC 2000 Wash fixtures
42 Clay Paky Alpha Beams
24 Atomic 3000 strobes
8 Martin MAC 401 LED fixtures
8 Martin MAC 2000 Performance fixtures
10 8-lite Moles
120 feet, GLP LED tape
4 Lekos (26°)
12 Martin Stagebars
Pyro:
20 x 20 Silver Gerb Waterfall
20 x 20 Silver Gerb Fountains
Flash Reports
1 x 25 Silver Gerbs
Pre-loaded Flash with Bang
Red / Blue / Silver Airbursts
20 x 20 Red / Silver Gerbs for Spinners
Double Headed Dragons
Firescreen Modules
Cryo Jet Heads
