Beartooth kicked off 2025 with a January 17 homecoming concert at Columbus’ 20,000-seat Schottenstein Center. Immersing the crowd deeper into this experience was a lighting and production design from Squeek Lights. Victor Zeiser, Ben Jarrett and the Squeek team relied on the punching and colour rendering power of 119 CHAUVET Professional fixtures for the show.
Drawn from Squeek Lights’ own inventory, these fixtures included 22 Color STRIKE M motorised strobe-washes, an equal number of Maverick Storm 4 Profiles, along with 18 Maverick Storm 1 Hybrids, 18 Storm 2 BeamWashes, 24 STRIKE Array blinders, and 15 COLORado PXL Bar 16 battens. Also lending a special aura to the show was the video content design by Luke Shomo (brother of Beartooth frontman Caleb Shomo), which was run live by Drew Mercadante of Supervoid Productions.
“Victor and Caleb have been dreaming about designing a large arena show for Beartooth for as long as they’ve been working together,” said Jarrett. “So, when Caleb told Victor it was finally happening, the directive was clear — we wanted to go as big as possible, to create a really special hometown show to cap off a very big and successful 2024 touring season for the band.”
Setting the stage for this special show was a massive (60’ wide by 16.5’ high) upstage blow through video wall, along with (26’ W by 13’ H) DS video banner sides, and a (60’ W by 13′ H) DS video banner center.
“We wanted a big wall with enough transparency to let light shoot through it, while also still looking like a solid video wall when there was nothing behind it,” said Jarrett. “It was also important for us to get lighting between the upstage video wall and the downstage header walls. It can be very challenging to get light through such a big video element, which is why we selected the Storm 1 Hybrid and Storm 2 BeamWash. Besides having an intense output, they have that super narrow beam action which will cut through any video screen.”
The big video wall was used throughout the 18-song set to change the aura on stage. At times, the wall seemed to disappear, before returning to present a very large single image that enveloped the entire stage. At other times, the wall content was divided into different images. As for the content itself, it presented a fascinating and evolving storyline that included real images and abstract patterns, all of which stirred emotions without distracting form the performance of the band on stage.
“Luke was very dialed into the music and what his brother Caleb was looking for,” said Jarrett. “This made the imagery meaningful in the way it related to the music. A lot of credit also goes to Drew Mercadante for running the live video and playback to the DS video banner walls. We all worked together closely to make sure our colours for each song matched or complement each other.”
Playing a role in making this coordination between lighting and video content was the Squeek team’s skillful fixture placement. They flew 12 Maverick Storm 4 Profiles as side lighting and relied on the remaining 10 units to line the upstage floor. The Maverick Storm 2 Hybrids and BeamWashes made up the bulk of the overhead rig and were spread across two 48-foot truss structures, while PXL batten were arranged on the floor to line the stage.
Singling out the Maverick Storm 4 Profile, Jarrett, called it a “beast” of a fixture. “The incredible zoom range and brightness in saturated colours were vital to my big crowd blinding moments in this show,” he said, noting that this was the largest show Squeek Lights has ever designed. It was also the largest headline show to date for Beartooth.
