The BACK Tour (subtitled Old Songs, New Songs, F*** You Songs) is an ongoing concert tour by Australian musician Tim Minchin.
The tour started back in 2019 and due to the popularity of the sold-out Australian and New Zealand tour, it was announced that Minchin would be touring again as an Encore tour in March 2020, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, dates had to be rescheduled to January and February 2021, then again to June and July 2021. The Sydney and Newcastle shows are postponed until February 2022.
“With all the postponing and the closing of borders, we end up with a 16-month gap between shows,” commented lighting designer Cam McKaige of Let There Be Light Designs. “The latest TM tour was a disaster for the crew, being that we were all based in Melbourne. At that time Sydney was fine and Melbourne had just gone back into lockdown. We were only able to do the six Melbourne shows after they had been rescheduled. The monitor rigger came out of Sydney and was able to do all shows!”
As borders closed, the production team called on crew and supply companies around the country to assist in the absence of the normal crew and gear. For the Adelaide Festival shows the lighting still came out of the normal supplier Res X in Melbourne but the crew came from Res X Sydney with Tim Bradsmith travelling from Perth to operate Cam’s lighting.
The Brisbane shows had Melbourne Res X equipment with a local lighting crew including DB as the operator. In New Zealand, MJF Lighting was the supplier with David Eversfield stepping in to operate.
Designs for the show started in 2018 when Tim Minchin, Michael Lynch (management) and Cam met in a pub in South Melbourne to discuss lighting and video ideas for the upcoming tour.
“Tim mentioned he wanted his show to look more mature,” said Cam. “The first thing that came to mind was red drapes and red legs, something that wasn’t the norm. Tim also mentioned he wanted some lighting towers on stage and in my head vertical truss in front of red drapes sounded great, but not right. I then suggested the truss be dressed in a Roman Column as the set component in front of the red drapes and that sounded perfect!”
Cam says that he doesn’t like doing the “normal” or the “easy way” adding that he likes to think of things that other people wouldn’t do because it would be too hard or too much trouble.
“I wanted an original experience for the audience,” he said. “I do like coming up with some kind of set idea that sets you apart from other shows.”
Touring a floor-based set design is quite a challenge. Each of the twelve towers has an 800mm base plate and is uplit from the floor by twelve Martin MAC Auras. There are three sets of red velvet legs and a full stage rear red velvet drape uplit from the floor by twelve Ayrton MagicBlade FX. Added to that are 25 x ShowPRO GoldenEye77s – 20 on the front of the stage facing up and five in front of the drum riser vertical.
“That’s a total of 12 towers and 49 x fixtures meaning 61 things on stage from the lighting department!” remarked Cam. “Needless to say, space on the floor was my biggest challenge. Apparently, there is a band as well or something ……”
The rig 16 x Claypaky Scenius and 20 x ShowPRO Colliders above stage plus five Martin MAC Viper Performances and custom walk-in Gobo onto Kabuki on the front truss. Stage wash was by ten Martin MAC Quantum Wash and each of the twelve towers are topped by a Claypaky B-Eye K20 for effect lighting.
On the floor are the 12 x Martin MAC Auras up lighting the towers, the 12 x Ayrton MagicBlade FX up lighting the red drapes and the 25 x GoldenEye77.
“Tim’s last song of the night before the encore is called Fuck America,” added Cam. “He wanted this to be the biggest song of the night and so for that reason alone, it’s the first and only time I use the 20 x GoldenEye77s on the floor! I only used the five GoldenEye77s in front of the drum riser for one cue in one song – Woody Alan Jesus, and the cue was “I AM JESUS” which was perfect!”
Haze was supplied by a couple of MDG Hazers and control was an MA Lighting grandMA3 full size with a grandMA3 lite as a backup.
“I programmed the show on a grandMA2 full size and MA2 onPC but operated the show on a grandMA3 full size in MA2 mode,” confirmed Cam.
Reveal Productions, a set design company that Let There Be Light Designs use a lot for clients, created the set elements. They also supplied the 12m x 7m black satin Kabuki stage cloth with Res X supplying the 12 x Solenoid release units.
“Once I got my ideas across, Reveal was able to create a set that could be packed down well and toured in Australia and overseas for the past three years!” Cam added.
A 5m x 4m video wall is located upstage centre between the 2 x 4.5m set pieces with a camera FOH, one prompt side and three remote cameras onstage. Video is supplied by Big Picture.
As well as supply production, Res X also supplied the crew of Eve Conroy and Steven Valvasori.
Unfortunately, Cam will not be doing the upcoming shows in the UK due to Qantas charging $20,000 for a ticket back home with no guarantee.
Photos: Andy Hollingworth
