Country music singer/songwriter Cole Swindell is one busy guy opening for Dierks Bentley on the “What The Hell World Tour” and headlining his own dates coast to coast. Production designers Sooner Routhier and Robert Long of SRae Productions have created a system, featuring Claypaky Mythos fixtures and a grandMA2 light console, which does double duty for both of Swindell’s gigs. A.C.T Lighting, Inc. distributes Claypaky fixtures and MA Lighting gear exclusively in North America.
“Cole wanted his scenic design to consist of distressed wood and metal,” said Routhier. “We were inspired by some architectural elements we had seen in our travels and pulled from those inspirations to create an asymmetrical fascia of wooden ‘pick up sticks’ that stick up at different angles.
“Behind the sticks is a back plate of corrugated metal painted to look rusted and distressed. Nestled within the sticks are tiny lights that fit nicely in the holes of the scenic. On top of the carts is a row of Mythos, and above the carts sits a video wall. Video is important to Cole, so we made sure that the video surface was a large, clean palette for content to work with.” He added.
Routhier and Long have positioned 16 Mythos in a straight line at the top of the set. “We love that you can get so many diverse looks out of Mythos,” she said. “We use every feature in the light to make sure that every song looks different from the one before and after. We also use Claypack A.leda B-EYE K10 fixtures on the floor, stage right and stage left, as side lighting for the band.”
Associate lighting designer/programmer Andre Petrus controls Swindell’s lighting and a Catalyst media server with a grandMA2 light console, one NPU and two MA nodes.
“The grandMA has always been my console of choice,” he noted. “The advantage of using MA on all shows is its user flexibility. It is extremely powerful and is an open source programming platform, which allows you to control and manipulate just about anything.”
Petrus says some of his favorite grandMA2 features include “the use of layout views, timecode and macro functions. I timecode 90 percent of the shows that I program. I set up the show file in a way that anyone can walk up to it and make the show happen. Layout views have really changed the way we look at a lighting console,” he added, “and macros have allowed us to come up with some very efficient workflows.”
Nashville’s Elite Multimedia supplied the Claypaky fixtures and MA Lighting gear. “Everything from Elite was amazing!” said Routhier. “They made this entire process very, very easy.”