Xavier Diaz is on the run. Not only does Intocable’s lighting and video director have to make sure his rigs are up and running, he’s also serving as the production manager for the Tejano/Norteño influenced band as the collection of musicians hopscotch’s between Mexico and the United States. Where other bands hit the road to support specific releases, the band members and crew for Intocable seem to be perennial road dogs, playing over 100 dates a year at venues as large as Reliant Stadium in Houston and as small as dance halls in their hometown of Zapata, Mexico. Indeed, their recent itinerary included stops at the Greenville Civic Center in South Carolina, the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and a show at the Texas Music Festival in Houston.
Diaz first joined the Intocable carnival six years ago, just as the band was heading out to support Sueños in 2002. Since then he has taken on more and more responsibility, including the complete design of the lighting and video presentation.
Inspiration, he explains, comes from trying to give the fans a good show. “Ricky (Muñoz, Intocable’s singer and accordion player) and René (Martínez, the drummer) are the owners of the band, so I talk to them and the manager, and ask them what they want to do,” he says. “If I have an idea I explain it to them and they’ll tell me if it’s good or not.”
Diaz designs the Intocable light show using WYSIWYG lighting design software and programs it by using Avolites’ Diamond4 console. Diaz also relies on a pair of high end video graphics cards running ATI Catalyst systems, a 3.3 and a 1.2, to design the video portion of the show. While he will occasionally capture live footage for broadcast during the show, much of what Diaz programs for the video portion of the show, especially any clouds, waves or kaleidoscope images, comes from stock video supplier A Luna Blue (www.alunablue.com).
The band sticks to their set list, so all of his cues are pre-programmed. There are those times, though, that he’ll want to adjust for the mood of a particular show and he’ll do that by adjusting the color palette in the Diamond4.
Diaz’s video rig includes two Christie Road Runner projectors, 120 Mega-Lite Enigma Matrix 16mm Pro Panel screens and 20 42” Panasonic plasma screens. According to Diaz, Intocable was one of the first bands in Mexico to incorporate LED screens into their stage setup. The lighting rig also includes 30 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots, six Martin MAC 2000 Wash fixtures, a pair of MAC 700 Wash fixtures, and 144 channels of dimmers from the Avolites ART2000 system.
Because the band plays in a wide range of venues, from stadiums to clubs, Diaz must always be ready to shift his rigging set up. In fact, there are dates when he’s not able to fly anything, so he builds a ground support system using three trusses with a 40-foot long 12”-by-12” truss span across the top and rigs Vari*Lites and screens on them. On regular dates, though, the lighting is rigged off of 27 Tomcat PRT trusses with eight Procans.
Intocable owns and travels with the entire audio, video and lighting systems, pushing three semis with 20 or so crew from show to show in the United States. When the band tours in Mexico the crew swells to 50 and there are six semis along for the ride. To make up for any shortages, Diaz is responsible for finding extra stagehands via union halls and is often renting extra gear for larger venues.
While his responsibilities include lighting, video and production management, Diaz takes a people first approach to his work. In fact, he believes it’s more important for the audience to focus on the band and not on the visuals. “For some songs I will move the lights, but I like the lights to be static,” he says. “When the lights are moving a lot for five or six songs, the people say that that’s a lot of lights. I listen to the people who come to see the band and sometimes I’ll ask them what they think of the lights. When they say that it’s great, then I feel really great.”
