Halestorm, who has earned a reputation as a powerful live music force, headlining sold-out shows and topping festival bills around the world, brought the hard rock thunder back Down Under.
Initially, the band approached Mike McDonald from Twenty20 Creative to design and tour their lighting but, like everyone else, Mike was too busy so he introduced them to Dan Evans of Evans Above Designs.
“Fortunately, I was available!” said Dan. “They wanted me to use house rigs and consoles but after some research on the band, I thought they needed a bit more than what I could program in the short load in time on house consoles. So I decided to take my MA Lighting MA3 command wing out for its maiden tour which worked very well and I was able to have a semi-pre-recorded show to run.”
The band are quite traditional when it comes to performing, they don’t use click tracks or timecode so it was back to old-school button smashing and big looks.
“Vocalist Lzzy is a force to be reckoned with and there are many moments where she is belting out a powerful roar and I like to emphasize it with focused backlighting followed by huge strobing sweeps when the band comes back in,” added Dan.
The tour was short and sweet; three shows, three cities in three days. Dan comments that flying then straight into load-in and show was not ideal but the touring crew were professionals and they managed to pull it all off.
The house rigs were a very generic 10 x spot, 10 x wash and 3x truss rig (although The Tivoli in Brisbane had some floor fixtures) which is the base rig Dan designed the show around.
“I had about twelve tracks in the can and a busking page that worked for any songs I hadn’t programmed,” said Dan on his programming. “I had watched the latest YouTube clips of their Barcelona show at the Razzmatazz Festival for reference and moments where the band interact and solos etc. The show consists of big colourful looks for each song, big scene changes for breakdowns and accentuated highlight looks for guitarist Joe’s solos.”
The only set pieces were the two upstage banners with the Halestorm logo for this run although the band do own a huge logo set piece filled with LED that looks impressive but it wasn’t logistical to tour it on this run.
“I have several favourite lighting moments in this show,” remarked Dan. “The beginning of Steeple (often the opening track) starts with Lzzy silhouetted by all the rear spots downstage centre singing This is my Steeple! with her arm in the air. Classic rock moment!”
Photos: Dan Evans, Jason Stoltzfus
