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PRODUCTION PROFILE
PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS
Photos by bree Kristel ClarKe
My Morning Jacket
Eight Sizes Fits All — with a Few Alterations
The floor lighting package has been, and will remain, an important part of the overall look of Janowitz’s lighting design for My Morning Jacket.
By Frank Hammel and Bree Kristel Clarke
[Shortly before this article went to press, My
Morning Jacket had to cancel the European leg
of its Evil Urges tour. Frontman Jim James had
fallen from the stage during a concert in Iowa
City, Iowa and was hospitalized with injuries. The
band had also rescheduled its Chicago area tour
dates from early October to December. — ed.]
My Morning Jacket’s music defies
conventional music categories.
LD Marc Janowitz describes it
as a combination of “classic rock and
Southern rock, but then also funk and
psychadelic rock.” And the music isn’t the
only thing noticeably different about this
band when they’re on stage.
Lit from Within
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“I’ve been working with this band for
about two and a half years,” says LD Marc
Janowitz. “I started developing a floor
package for them almost right away. The
idea has always been that the light should
be emanating from and through the band,
and from the stage, as opposed to top-lit,
or lit from far away.”
The asymmetric overhead rig adapts to different-sized venues with truss arranged in a “train wreck” configuration, allowing most
of the gear to be used for most of the shows.
42 PLSN NOVEMBER 2008
A big show date last June at Radio City
Music Hall, 10 days after the release of the
band’s Evil Urges album, called for an overhead
rig and custom backdrop featuring
large monster eyes to go with the floor
package. But the varying stage sizes and
trim heights of venues on the subsequent
tour — ranging in size from Red Rocks Park
and Amphitheatre outside Denver and the
Greek Theatre in L.A. to much smaller clubs
— required accordion-like flexibility.
“We’d be at House of Blues one day
and then Red Rocks the other. So we
needed to make sure that the lighting rig
could be set up a lot of different ways,”
says Eric Mayers, production manager,
without drastically altering the overall
look of the show.
Evolving Organically
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Even so, the lighting rig has been a work
in progress, evolving as the tour continues.
“After six shows, we finally got to hang the
rig for real. I looked at it, and on the seventh
show, we completely turned it on its end,”
Janowitz says.
Rather than duplicating a single monolith
of a lighting rig, the Evil Urges tour
flows with a more flexible, asymmetric assortment
of light sources and levels, with
hinged truss that has evolved into a zigzagging,
semi-circular “train wreck” configuration
above the stage.
The overhead rig’s design started with
the ideas incorporated into the band’s appearance
at Radio City Music Hall in June,
with gear supplied by Scharff Weisberg. At
the time, the 29-year-old lighting, video and
sound company was in the midst of moving
from New York City to a 98,000 square-foot
facility in Secaucus, N.J.
“They hadn’t quite moved their video department
in, so they had a lot of space in their
shop,” says Ben Price, lighting tech. “We were
able to spend three very long days at their
shop for preproduction, and because of all
that room, we were able to pretty much hang
the entire thing.”
Modular Flexibility
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With so many variables in the size and
shape of the tour venues, however, the lighting
rig and design needed to stay flexible.
Mayers supported the idea of a modular approach,
using eight-foot-long sticks of truss
as “building blocks,” according to Janowitz.
“From February to June, we had that period
of time to figure that out. Then we had
our Radio City Music Hall show June 20 th to
sort of flesh out a slightly different version of
it, and learn from that. And then we ultimately
compressed that and condensed it slightly,
and that and made it our touring package,”
Janowitz says.
“Even then, when we hit the road, we
changed stuff,” he adds. “The Showguns were
meant to be in the air, but for the first few shows,
there were low trims, so we put them on the
ground, and we liked them there a lot.” By the
time the tour reached Red Rocks, big enough to
bring the Showguns “upstairs,” Janowitz opted
to bring them back to the floor.
Train-Wreck Truss
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The rig and lighting design continued
to evolve. “When we were inside at the Fox
Theatre a couple of dates later, we decided
LD Marc Janowitz started off with a floor package for My
Morning Jacket in early 2006, making it seem that the band
is lit from within.
to try out another idea. Instead of having the
modular sticks at different levels, why not just
have them all pitch in different directions?
That became the concept I now call the ‘train
wreck,’” Janowitz says.
“When I saw it, I couldn’t believe it,” Price
says, of the zig-zagging configuration. There
are advantages and disadvantages, Price
notes, but adds that it lends the stage with a
natural, “organic” feel that seems well-suited
to the band, its songs and shows. “Each light
suddenly becomes all that more important,
because its location is different from every
other fixture. You’re not looking at two fixtures
with the same height anymore.”
“As an LD, I find that asymmetry sets you
free,” says Janowitz. “You don’t have to match
beams. It’s not really about that. You don’t have
to be right in the middle of a room and get everything
perfect from one side to the other.”
From A to G…and H
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Instead of a one-, two-, or three-sizes-fitsall
approach, My Morning Jacket’s tour now
has variations labeled “A” to “G.” And even
with that amount of flexibility, alterations are
sometimes required.
To date, Stubbs BBQ in Austin, Texas takes
the prize as the tour’s biggest rigging challenge,
with its trim height of just 14 feet.
“There are no rigging points there,” notes
Price. “I would call that ‘position H.’”