Matt Mills of Touch Light & Media runs the lighting and video for the USA tour by Sammy Hagar and his band The Circle in support of their current Top Ten album Space Between. With him at every turn of this tour was a collection of Chauvet Professional Strike 4 fixtures, supplied by Felix Lighting.
“This was the first tour I’ve done in over five years that was not locked into time code,” said Mills, who co-designed the two-hour show with Production Manager Alastair Watson and also served as its lighting director, as well as lighting and video programmer.
Helping Mills keep pace were the eight Strike 4 fixtures he flew on downstage truss. The high-output fixtures were positioned at different angles, so the warm white light from their 100W COB LEDs covered a wide section of the audience at the tour’s amphitheatre stops.
“I started out using the Strike units as normal four-light blinders early in the show, then once we got a few songs in I brought them to life by using their strobe functions,” said Mills who had 25 songs programmed, in addition to maintaining an extensive punt page. “These fixtures gave me a lot of great opportunities to accent different moments on the fly with sudden bursts of light.”
The warm white light of the Strike 4 fixtures also helped Mills create a mellow look for Hagar’s softer songs, as well as the more classic numbers from the superstar’s four-decade catalogue of hits. Evoking images of incandescent fades, the Strike 4 fixture’s smooth dimming curve added another timeless element to the show.
Also helping to make things click on the tour, which ended in June, was the compact size of the Strike 4 relative to its output. This allowed fewer fixtures to be included in the rig, saving precious trailer space.
