Pop rock duo Aly & AJ is comprised of sisters Aly and AJ Michalka who were just 15 and 13, respectively, when they signed their first recording contract in 2004. Now 34 and 32, they are touring in support of their fifth album, With Love From, released in March 2023. Along with their musical careers, the two have also gotten into acting, including in the Disney movie Cow Bells. The duo has won three Radio Disney Music Awards, two American Music Awards, the 2013 Popdust Awards, 2015 Napa Film Festival’s Special Jury Award for acting and 2021’s Video Music Award for Best Comeback Song for “Potential Breakup Song.” PLSN spoke with the design team for the current tour.
Marc Janowitz
Lighting & Production Designer
“This was the first collaboration working with Aly & AJ,” says Designer Marc Janowitz. Having seen his work with other clients, management reached out last spring for their 2022 tour, but the timing didn’t work out until this year. “My initial concept meeting was with their creative director (and Aly’s husband) Stephen Ringer. We talked about creating a timeless feel for this tour, like something that felt antique and classy yet also current. Upon listening to the new music, my first thought was towards bronze tones, soft curtain canopies and, most particularly, gramophones. When I clicked play on “Open to Something” (the first track of their new album) and heard the first few notes, I felt like I had dropped the needle in the groove of something that had both existed for a long time yet had a breath of fresh air. And then hearing their voices just transported me.” Almost immediately, Janowitz pondered how to combine the gramophone shape with a lighting fixture.
With the predominant inspiration for the set, Janowitz had this thought to juxtapose what is commonly thought of as an auditory outlet (the gramophone bell) with a visual kinetic element. “At first, I thought that I’d embed a small wash light inside an existing 10-12” gramophone bell and dot those all over the stage as the featured lighting/scenic piece. Remnants of that initial concept survived in the footlights. Those units are GLP Atoms with the half dome soft cover. We purchased replica gramophone bells, cut off the backs and set them on the Atoms as a snoot.” The snoots and exposed fixture bodies were then all painted with a bronze finish.
Janowitz knew that the set needed more than that—something dynamic and central to the stage look, but also a journey of stylings. The IVL Photon seemed like the right lighting fixture to him to give a dynamic and diverse range of vibes—from a calm and understated sort of background light all the way to a high energy explosion of dancing laser beams. “However, I needed to reconcile the modern sort of techie plastic look of the fixture body while also creating a scenic design element that could stand on its own.” The idea came to Janowitz that the Photon could be set into a shroud that is actually a scaled-up gramophone bell. He presented a concept deck to Aly and AJ that combined the notion of gramophones, bronze finishes, mother of pearl texture, lighting decor, light beams, and curtain canopies. “Then I showed them a sketch of how it could all synthesize together. It struck every chord, and they loved it. Soon thereafter the three of us got on a text thread where we continued to iterate on visual ideas and share photo references.”
Janowitz had worked with Austin Grundberg of ELS before on the 2022 Dispatch/OAR summer tour. “ELS is particularly adept at these boutique-type fabrication projects that combine lighting and scenic in a creative manner. Austin is multi-talented and able to bring together structural, logistical, creative, and budgetary solutions in a very custom and end-user-oriented way.” Janowitz worked carefully to make sure that the Photon laser had its full range of motion, except that the final 10-15°of tilt would allow the light beams to graze across the face of the shrouds, forming a self-illuminating scenic/light piece.
The designers also opted to use footlight and sidelight as the predominant key light to keep the girls “in” the world they had created. For the Minuit Une IVL Photon fixtures, in their explorations of how to model the gramophone bell in 3D, it became apparent that many of the original phonograph accessories were in fact assembled from individual petals. “When aligned one to the next in a radial pattern, it creates a flower. And that’s exactly how the scenic pieces were made. I took the inspiration of mother-of-pearl and applied it to the petal faces of the shroud. Each petal was 3D printed and then fastened to a connecting ring that fit over the face of the Photon. We found a mother of pearl laminate appliqué and applied it to each petal in a somewhat randomized pattern.” At many points throughout the show, the Photons tilt inward and just light the petals only. “We might start a song like this and then push the Photon beams outward in a musical swell as if the sound bloomed out in an array of dancing light beams.”
Pulse Lighting gave all the specialized attention that they are known for, says Janowitz. “No detail was left out, and every effort to bring the project to fruition was made. We programmed for a week in their facility, full scale. Terry, their shop manager led the charge to blackout all the skylights so we could program during the day (while still working well into the night).”
“This is one of those projects that reaffirms my career choice. Aly and AJ were engaged and excited with the process and their enthusiasm helped to drive mine,” notes Janowitz. “They are talented rockers who command the stage. They’ve got a great band, management, and crew. Their TM/PM, Wes Switzer, is top notch and played a critical role in making this design a success. I’m thrilled with the project and very happy with the results. LD Jacob Wesson joined me starting in 2018. We hit it off immediately and Jacob has been involved with virtually every project I’ve done since then. This is the first of mine where he took on the touring LD role. I couldn’t be happier with the decision.”
Jacob Wesson
Lighting Programmer & Director
The Lighting Director for the Aly & AJ tour is Jacob Wesson who started working with designer Marc Janowitz in the E26 Design office in 2018, and since then have worked on numerous tours together. Typically, their process involves previz work in the office before they hit rehearsal. For this tour, since the IVL Photon fixtures are complex laser scanners, they’re not able to be rendered in any viz program at the moment. As a result, they decided to prep the rig early out at Pulse Lighting in Nashville for a week to program. “We walked into production rehearsals with a really solid foundation after some late nights at the start. Each song is cue stacked out with various hits and flourishes programmed to faders and buttons that I’ll layer on top during the run of the show.”
Wesson says the Minuit Une IVL Photons are incredible lights, and the gramophone shrouds truly take them to another level. “By having a scenic element that the laser can bounce off, we found a way to keep the lights in the picture even when the lasers aren’t tilted out for aerial beam effects. The operation is pretty simple once you wrap your head around it—there’s a master fixture that controls the laser scanner in the middle, which corresponds to zoom and gobo parameters. Then there are eight sub-fixtures which control the mirrors that ring around the laser scanner, each with individual tilt, color, and dimmer. So, any effects we programmed function like effects in any given multi-cell fixture. Minuit Une’s logline for these fixtures is that they are meant to simulate arena-style lighting in a compact package, and they live up to that hype and then some.”
Wesson’s first time working with Pulse Lighting was as the FOH Tech/ALD on My Morning Jacket’s 2021 tour. Janowitz is the long-time LD for MMJ and brought Wesson along. “Marc and Paul Hoffman, who’s the head of Pulse lighting, have been friends and collaborators for some time. Pulse is great for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the endless amount of care they give to any project from inception all the way until the end of the tour. Walker Howell, who was our project manager, and Nick Dragon Rotondi, who prepped the rig, were both amazing collaborators who gave their all to ensuring this design was realized to its full potential, and we wouldn’t have had half the show we did without their hard work.”
Wesson and Janowitz programmed all 24 songs in the set before they hit rehearsal. Aly and AJ’s new record dropped on March 15, but they had the masters all the way back in October, so they’d been conceptualizing looks for months before they ever got in front of a console. “We’ve got the floor package which consists of [Ayrton] Mistrals, [Minuit Une] Photons, and [GLP] Atoms, and we also carry six overhead Mistrals to ensure a consistent overhead look every night,” Wesson says.
“Every opportunity to work with a designer as talented as Marc is a gift, as is touring with such a great crew,” Wesson concludes. “We’ve put together an incredible show, and every single person involved in the process has put their entire heart and soul into making sure the audience leaves happy each and every night, so I feel lucky to be a part of the operation and hope we keep rocking in the future.”
Production Team
- Lighting & Production Designer: Marc Janowitz
- Lighting Programmer & Director: Jacob Wesson
- Tour & Production Manager: Wes Switzer
Vendors
- Lighting Company: Pulse Lighting / Paul Hoffman
- Set Fabrication: ELS Nashville / Austin Grundberg
- Backdrop: Sew What?
Gear
Lighting
- 14 Ayrton Mistral S
- 7 Minuit Une IVL Photon
- 8 Robe LEDBEAM 350
- 11 GLP Atom
- 1 MA Lighting grandMA3 Console w/MA3 software
- 2 Antari HZ-1000 Hazers
