Following the October 2017 release of their collaborative album Lotta Sea Lice, Courtney Barnett, a Grammy nominated Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett, and American singer-songwriter Kurt Vile hit the road for a co-headlining tour with a lighting package provided by Bandit Lites. Taking into account that almost each of the venues on the tour featured a solid in-house over head rig, Lighting Designer Nicholas Beachen designed a floor packaged that made each room look specific to a CBKV show.
The show is filled with relaxed conversation about writing styles and anecdotes, including how the two artists kept bumping into each other on the road, leading to their eventual collaboration.
“After starting the tour, I had some basic direction in that they wanted the show to contain no strobes or crazy lighting,” Beachen said. “The show was much less of a rock show than anticipated. I kept a lot of the lighting on players and on the stage, only moving away from the stage for movement which wasn’t so often. This worked really well for their style of music; I was very happy with the results.”
Bandit Lites supplied GLP X4s, Cuepix WW2 Blinder, 1k Fresnels, Bandit’s exclusive GRNLite LED Pars along with a grand MA 2 Lite console for control.
With a primary focus of creating a design that would both effectively light the band and the stage and be compact enough to fit in a bus trailer and operate without a touring technician, Beachen credits Bandit Lites team for the ‘A+’ gear prep.
“I can’t stress this enough,” said Beachen. “It was a very impressive prep; it allowed me to load in the package myself with four stage hands very easily.”
“I can’t thank Brent Barrett and Project Manager Gene Brian enough,” Beachen finished. “Although this was a very small job in the scheme of things, I really felt like they cared about what I was trying to achieve every step of the way. Really great work, and I hope to do this again soon.”
“Nicholas Beachen was an absolute pleasure with which to work,” Barrett added. “He had his vision as to what look he was going for, and was flexible with fixture types to both accomplish the look and still hit the needed budget. Working with both Nicholas and Anthony Hook (TM) was a positive experience, and I hope we have the opportunity to do so again in the future!”
