The sold-out co-headlining Trey Anastasio Band (TAB) and Goose winter 2022 tour played multiple arenas along the northeast coast and was a massive hit with fans, who, not only enjoyed some superlative music, but also witnessed a fantastic collaboration between the two artists’ respective lighting designers.
LDs Marc Janowitz (TAB) and Andrew Goedde (Goose), plus their lighting directors / programmers and operators on the road, Patrick Hayes for TAB, and Tony Caporale for Goose, engaged in some great teamwork and creative synergy to make this happen while utilizing Robe moving lights.
The mix of Robe FORTES, Tarrantulas, Spiiders, Spikies, and Tetra2 fixtures was supplied by Gateway Studios & Production Services (GSPS), together with all the tour’s lighting equipment. There was no playback video onstage, but all the shows were streamed, so both band sets were lit for a full live broadcast camera package, as well as for the live audiences.
For expediency and efficiency, some lighting elements were shared but there were also individual aspects to each rig to meet all the various creative requirements. With Goose playing first, their complete floor package and risers had to be struck after their set each night. TAB’s set up and the relevant overhead lighting bars were flown out and in during an impressive lightning-quick 30-minute changeover. This feat of creative co–operation, production value, and logistical planning was masterminded, coordinated, and supervised on the road by Production Manager Jesse Sandler.
The 90-minute Goose set, and 30-minute changeover was followed by 90 minutes of TAB playing some of their most popular numbers. The show closed with a combined 15-minute encore, replete with exclusive collaborations presented by both bands, thrilling all in the house.
At the start of this tour, both TAB and Goose had been on the road throughout 2022, so base lighting designs existed for both, which assisted their integration for this double headliner. The existing TAB rig was almost doubled in size to fill the arena sized venues, with three overhead trusses – front, mid and back – on which were hung 27 Robe FORTES, 17 Spiiders, 26 Spikies, and some strobes.
Both bands shared the downstage overhead truss (loaded with 10 FORTES and 6 Spiiders), plus two upstage / downstage oriented side trusses flown at the downstage corners, each rigged with five Robe Spiiders deployed for cross stage washes. Seventeen of TAB’s Spikies and 17 more Spiiders were rigged on nine vertical ladders on their upstage truss, and their mid stage truss also had a ladder below the center point with a single Spikie. Goose’s two overhead trusses featured 16 FORTES and 16 Tarrantulas, eight each on the upstage and mid.
All the floor-based kit was designed and rigged on wheeled towers and dollies to facilitate its rapid positioning onstage for smooth changeovers and to ensure it was practical to tour. Goose’s floor package was slightly larger and included their 16 Robe Tetra2s attached at jaunty angles on eight floor stands. They also had 8 FORTES behind the low riser line for blasting in high impact light and beam effects from behind.
It was Goedde’s first-time using FORTES, and he was impressed at the sheer power, “I had to keep the intensity down as they really punch through,” he commented, adding that he was also “very happy” to make a swap to FORTES, a topic decided during early discussions about lighting the joint tour.
Caporale appreciated how the FORTES looked, especially when playing the 360˚ shows. He particularly likes the new split-color gobos and the accurate, sharp framing shutters, summing up, “All of the FORTE characteristics have been a big hit with us.” He and Goedde enjoyed integrating them with the Tetra2s and Tarrantulas which they also used on the Goose tour earlier in the year. The two of them loved having the additional scope for flower effect looks running the combination of Tarrantulas and Tetra2s.
For TAB, this co-headliner also meant a change up from Robe BMFLs on the previous tour to FORTES, a move that Janowitz and Hayes had already been considering, and now came the perfect opportunity. “It was also great to finally get to work with a full LED rig,” noted Janowitz, who reckons the FORTE is a “beast” of a fixture.
The process of updating their 120-page showfile from BMFL to FORTE was relatively straightforward, with the gobos and zoom values needing to be tweaked as you would expect. The biggest challenge according to Hayes was mimicking the double animation wheel of the BMFL, but they found a neat trick to achieve the objective. “Once we had completed the updates, we realized just how much the FORTES were able to do and bring to our show, like produce stunning effects and incredible intensities even when in the deepest colors and combining gobos.” Janowitz adds that team TAB is also a big fan of the flower effects in the Spikie and Spiider.
Hayes operated TAB’s lighting using an ETC/High End Systems Hog 4 console while Caporale used an MA Lighting grandMA3 for Goose. All four lighting creatives knew of each other before this tour, but now are adamant about how much they enjoyed this experience of pooling talents and ideas… and the switch to Robe FORTES, “We would love to work like this again,” stated Caporale.
They also applaud their wonderful lighting crew from Gateway, without whom none of it would have been possible. Led by Lighting Crew Chief Chastity O’Bradovich, the crew was comprised of Dimmer Tech Benjamin Beardon, and Lighting Techs Joshua Blair, Geoffrey Bourlet, Andrew Kenneth, and Daniel McDonald. Gateway’s Project Manager was Conway McDonald-O’Lear.
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