PLSN caught the final night in San Francisco of rapper, singer and songwriter Lil Nas X (Montero Lamar Hill) on his Long Live Montero Tour, for a high-octane evening of song, dance, choreography, and visual stimulation. Lil Nas X rose to fame with his county-rap single “Old Town Road” which topped over 10 million units in streaming and sales combined. We got to speak with members of the Sinclair/Wilkinson design team about the tour which includes Lighting Designer Rob Sinclair, Associate Lighting Designer Meg Sinclair, and Lighting Director Luke Rolls.
Rob Sinclair
Lighting Designer
Lighting Designer Rob Sinclair was brought onboard to design the Lil Nas X tour through friends at eighteentwentysix, the full-service production company for concert tours, shows and events that was founded in London in 2007 and is now based in Los Angeles. Lil Nas X’s team—Hodo Musa and Saul Levit—came with a very well formed, articulate vision for the show, notes Sinclair. “The narrative arc, costumes, and Broadway-style were in place when I had my first meetings. There were the usual budget twists and turns, but we made pretty much everything work thanks to a really understanding management and production team. I then helped design the set and form some ideas. eighteentwentysix referred us to David Mendoza at ShowFX Inc. who did a great job on the scenic elements.”
Sinclair has a long relationship with Kevin Forster at Fuse. “He and the whole team were really helpful and helped us get the equipment we needed—both Kevin at Fuse supplying the lighting and Patrick Eaton at Fuse handling the video/LED side of things. I’d just like to thank Meg, Luke, Video Programmer Brian Spett, and Tour Director Darren Mullis and the team at eighteentwentysix. Things are so much easier when you work with friends.”
Meg Sinclair
Associate Lighting Designer
This was Meg Sinclair’s first time working with Rob Sinclair as an Associate/Programmer she notes. “Rob not only has great taste and creative ideas but also a plethora of experience and technical knowledge so it’s always interesting to work with someone with that level of proficiency. During pre-production Rob did the bulk of the work. I would update the drawings here and there, interface with vendors, Rob would ask my opinion on certain design elements which I think is how we ended up choosing [GLP] JDC Lines to frame the video wall. Then we went to Fuse together to test different fabric samples for the projection, etc.”
Sinclair then went into previz and production rehearsals where she worked on her own basically. She built the previz file in Depence via their Vectorworks drawings and programmed the show how she saw fit. “Rob had input during production rehearsals, of course, and helped highlight the things that were important to the artist and other creatives. Luke was a big help at production rehearsals dialing in key light and tracking all the moves of the dancers. The set list itself didn’t change much from my recollection. Lil Nas X only has one album so there wasn’t much you can really change in that regard. We did, however, have a ton of arrangement changes. Easily the most changes I’ve ever had on any project. Just doing the admin of making sure we were working on the most up to date track and updating the programming to reflect the new versions was a big part of the job.”
This was Meg Sinclair’s first time using GLP’s JDC Lines. “At a low level, they are Sceptron-esque,” she says, “but also bright as hell when you need them to be. The smoke diffuser attachment actually addressed the age-old problem of disguising ugly pixels that everyone hates to see in photographs.” When asked about technology, Sinclair says she loves what technology has done for our industry and knows it’s the foundation that makes it possible to execute a lot of creative ideas. “I still sometimes think about how technology has molded the current environment of the industry. A lot of roadies, especially in lighting, basically have to be nerds now. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way because I am also a nerd. They’re expected to know so much now—networking, Vectorworks, Depence, various audio software for timecode, MA2, and soon enough MA3… that’s just off the top of my head. Conversely, when I started in lighting, I was using floppy disks to save my showfiles—shout out to the Avo Pearl 2004!”
The show is pretty much 100% timecoded, notes Sinclair, and she says it makes sense for this show. “This may be a controversial opinion, but I love timecode. It allows a level of precision a human isn’t able to replicate. If I still toured, I would prefer to tour with a timecoded show because I love small details and just dialing everything in perfectly. I love the continuity and consistency and that’s what allows shows to get better and better as a tour progresses. I don’t care about the human factor. Humans make too many mistakes, so I feel better putting my trust into robots. And if you program a show well enough it looks human (if that’s what you’re going for), timecode or not.”
“I don’t think Rob knew this at the time when he asked me to do this, but I had been low key trying to work with Lil Nas X for a while, so I was elated to be involved. I have a lot of respect for Nas X and his fearless approach to doing things unconventionally in a way that I think is also very authentic. So not only was that a treat, but this project felt like a hang with good friends. It was really refreshing to be a part of a team where we knew we had each other’s backs. And luckily, I’ve made some new friends in the process like the team at Immanent and Darren Mullis and Aubrey Caswell at eighteentwentysix.”
Luke Rolls
Lighting Director
Lighting Director Luke Rolls was brought on about three weeks out from production rehearsals. Rolls has been working for Rob Sinclair since the middle of 2018 supporting his design work through technical drawings and renderings. “Only this year have I started touring, with Nas X’s Long Live Montero being my second tour. The production rehearsal period took about 10 days; classically never enough by the end of the process, but by the time we hit NYC at Radio City Music Hall, the show was pretty well locked in by then. Rob and Meg were at the Detroit show, and then I parted ways with them until Rob came back for the NYC show. As much as the entire process is enjoyable, a big part was having the company of Meg’s dog Rupert Rumple at production rehearsals. The perfect excuse to get a bit of fresh air was by taking him out to walk.”
Rolls says the GLP JDC Lines were probably the standout fixture for the tour. “They did so much work musically, that even when we had to do a show with just the central screen it was important to make sure we could hang these fixtures somehow. This also became apparent when we did the festival show at ACL [Austin City Limits]. Luckily the headliner had some Solaris Flare LR Q+ that I was able to clone the JDC Line onto, and that helped push the energy that those fixtures carry out during the show. Due to the way the Lines were hung, the white strobe section sat on a group master at 6% with the black smoke diffuser on the front too. They are very punchy—if they were used at full, they would have been distracting and blinding. The Robe BMFL LT were also a lifesaver during the tour when we were able to hang our followspot truss. We made sure to freshly lamp them once we hit the road and were able to get up to four times the output in some venues compared to the house spots. It was sometimes quite easy to lose Montero visually with the mixture of video and punch from the fixtures like the GLP JDC1 and the JDC Line. The BMFL LT made sure that his fans could see him along with his fantastic wardrobe designed by Coach.”
Rolls also notes that except for about six cues in the show, the entire show is run off of timecode. “More attention can be placed on making sure Nas is well lit, and the balance between lighting and video can be looked at during the show, so that we can actually have some foreground and background and not lead to video just washing everything out by being too overpowering, or the same with lighting washing out the video. The GLP products constantly had group masters being adjusted from show to show,” he says.
“A big thanks to Rob. I love working with him. With Covid, and his relocating to the U.S., we hadn’t been in the country at production rehearsals at all until the first time in May. It has been lovely working with Meg. I always find it quite interesting to see how people program on MA and going out on a show as a touring LD, I find it quite intriguing figuring out why programmers did something a certain way. It has been an absolute joy working with the crew on getting this show in each day and to our wonderful creative team for such a strong vision to deliver to Montero’s fans each night.”
Production Team
- Lighting Designer: Rob Sinclair
- Associate Lighting Designer: Meg Sinclair
- Lighting Director: Luke Rolls
- Lighting Crew Chief: Vreje “V” Bakalian
- Lighting Techs: Christopher “CT” Thomas, Ryan Christopher Torok, Ricardo Garcia, Eric Marshall
- Video Programmer: Brian Spett
- Video Operator: Ivan Cerron
- Video/LED Crew Chief: Jamey Malcolm
- Video/LED Techs: Roberto Valentino, Isiah Limon, Tom Kozmiuk
- Tour Director: Darren Mullis
- Tour Manager: Silbert Mani
- Production Manager: C.J. Blair
- Production Coordinator: Aubrey Caswell
- Production Stage Manager: Tom Keane
- Show Caller/Props: Aaron Gilman
- Laser Programmer: Seth Griffiths
- SFX Tech: Dave Romola
- Carpenters: Chris Raines, Joey Lunger
- Rigger: Lori Benson-McCloy
Vendors
- Lighting: Fuse Technical Group/Rep. Kevin Forster
- Video: Fuse Technical Group/Rep. Patrick Eaton
- Scenic Fabrications: ShowFX Inc./Rep. David Mendoza
- Visual Content Creation: Immanent
- SFX/Lasers: ER Productions
- Horse Designer/Fabricator: Margot Rada
Gear
Lighting
- 1 MA Lighting grandMA3 full-size, MA2 Mode
- 1 MA Lighting grandMA3 light MA2 Mode
- 38 Elation Artiste Monet
- 17 Elation Artiste Van Gogh
- 16 GLP impression FR10 Bar
- 42 GLP JDC1 Hybrid Strobe
- 24 GLP JDC Line
- 2 Robe BMFL LT
- 1 Robe BMFL FollowSpot
- 4 Reel-FX DF-50 Hazer with DMX Relay and Fan
Video
- 1 disguise Media Server
- 2 Brompton Technology SX40
- 1 LED Processor
- 1 Barco 24K UHD Laser Projector
- 1 2,080×1,920 Center LED Wall
- 2 960×1,920 Flanking LED Walls
