Nathaniel Rateliff and his band The Night Sweats played their annual homecoming holiday concert at the Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado with lighting crafted by Jeremy Roth, who utilised over 100 Robe moving lights, including FORTES, Spiiders and MegaPointes plus a RoboSpot system for the show.
He programmed and operated lights for this performance himself, working alongside Lighting Director Adam Waguespack. At Ball Arena, Waguespack took on the vital role of coordinating the follow spots and RoboSpot system.
Additional video came in for the production in the form of three large upstage screens, with the department overseen by Mike Grant (Black Keys). The production design saw both lighting and video technologies share the stage, based on a scaled-up version of their current “The Future” tour which hit the road in April 2023, and an augmented package used for another set of sold-out local shows at Red Rocks last summer.
The video screens, which were framed by single LED blinders, were one of Roth’s creative starting points for the Ball Arena show, with the overhead lighting rig like the touring version populated across six trusses. Two mid-stage trusses were flown one above the other, arranged in U-shapes to boost the depth, with a straight front truss over the stage apron at the front and a reverse U-shaped advanced truss.
The back truss was rigged with 12 FORTES, picked for their impact to project textures on the red velour drape behind the video wall, with another 13 FORTES on the front truss, working with four more on the advance truss. These last four FORTES were all running on a four-way RoboSpot system.
The production started touring the RoboSpot system after encountering ongoing challenges with other remote follow spotting systems, and since that time, they have “never looked back.”
He further elucidated that follow spots were an issue, especially when touring, as venues tend to have mixed experience and ability follow spotting teams. However, using RoboSpot takes the pressure off them, meaning they are free to focus just on the movement, as all the other parameters can be run through the console. “It’s simply fantastic knowing they are all going to black out at the same time or bump colours absolutely together and on cue, so the spots simply blend into the show, work their magic but are never otherwise noticed,” he noted.
On this tour, they replaced the BMFL Spots used on the previous tours’ RoboSpots systems, which Roth also really loved for their carbon arc characteristics and colour rendering. “FORTES have been absolutely rock solid for us,” Roth noted.
Initially, LEDBeam 350s were on the rig, but these were eventually swapped out for the 33 Spiiders boosting the output and the wash coverage. Spiiders have also been a favorite of Roth’s since first using them on a Sheryl Crow tour. “The colours are excellent, and the flower effect is an ingenious idea that projects a nice impression of speckled light onto the floor or other surfaces. That and the wide zoom range really increase the fixture’s overall flexibility,” he commented.
Having a wash beam fixture on the rig enabled him to pivot between the two modes and effectively have another set of fixtures up in the rig. He has even used them as pseudo-PAR cans at times like on a Wilco Sleater-Kinney double bill tour which featured 72 Spiiders in double hung rows.
Robe’s MegaPointe has been omnipresent on Nathaniel Rateliff’s lighting schemes ever since Roth has been onboard with “The Face Down in The Moment” singer in 2017, initially as part of the floor lighting package and they have featured in every design since. At Ball Arena, 11 MegaPointes were positioned on the deck, and ten on the advanced truss.
“It is an excellent back profile lighting fixture that is very vibey and can be used to shoot through the band from upstage without blinding the audience,” he remarked, adding that he does not use them in ‘beam’ mode at all for the distinctive throwback retro soul sounds of Nathaniel Rateliff. “Robe will always be on my list for profile and wash fixtures,” noted Jeremy, and he also regularly uses the manufacturer’s linear Tetra2 and TetraX LED battens.
He confirmed that multiple ambers and colour temperature whites are used extensively in lighting this artist, and he found colours, the colour ranges, dimming curves and the CRI of the Robe products “consistently good and reliable – I know what I am getting with Robe,” he confirmed; adding that contemporary stage lighting should look great in multiple scenarios – for the live audience, on fans’ social channels and whenever shows are streamed or otherwise broadcast.
Roth, Waguespack, and Grant engaged in three days of pre-visualisation at Brown Note’s Studio in Denver ahead of the Ball Arena show, and a further three days of technical rehearsal at Denver Coliseum before loading in on the morning of the actual gig. Lighting was programmed on an MA Lighting grandMA3 console running in MA2 mode.
