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40 AT 40: Will Twork
Job Title: Lighting Designer
The people are what sets Bandit Lites apart from the rest of the industry. Once a week, for 40 weeks, Bandit is showcasing an employee that has made a substantial contribution to the company, whether it be in an office, on the road or somewhere in between. Bandit would not be celebrating its 40th Anniversary without the hard work and dedication of every one these employees.
Will Twork, currently the lighting designer for Lenny Kravitz, is no stranger to the stage. Starting out as a musician at the age of 14, Twork spent some time as a drum tech before finding his niche in entertainment lighting. Here are a few questions we asked to get to know him a little better.
Q: What is your title? Please describe your job responsibilities.
A.: I'm a lighting designer as well as a touring lighting director. My responsibilities are to design a lighting system that adheres to the touring act's budget. If the artist has any ideas, I meet with them and discuss their wants and needs. I then take their ideas and draw/design something that will work within the budget, but will also keep them happy. Having said that, some artists don't have an agenda regarding lighting. In that case, I design something that I feel will work for the artist being lit, as well as keeping it within budget and to my liking.
Q. How did you get involved in the entertainment industry?
A. I was a musician from the young age of 14 (drummer) and played in and around Detroit until around the age of 18 with local bands. My only claim to fame was opening for The J. Geils Band (Popular 1970's-80's Boston based blues band) when they recorded their live ‘Full House' LP in Detroit in the early 1970's. Then a few friends of mine got a gig playing bass and drums for Ted Nugent/Amboy Dukes in 1970. My friend KJ Knight was the drummer, and he needed a "drum roadie" for the Nugent tour of that summer. I was a drummer, so I figured I could set up his drums! It was my first taste of the road. I made $75.00 a week and I slept in the back of a (moving) Ryder truck on a suspended hammock! I remember the back door was banging from the wind and was extremely noisy, but I was on the road, even if I was scared to death! After that experience, I just kept on the roadie work wherever I could find it. I ended up moving to Los Angeles and I was washing clothes in the Laundromat one day and saw a flyer for an act looking for a drum tech. It was Bobby Womack - a guitarist that had written some very popular R&B songs in the 1950's as well as playing with the late Sam Cooke. He paid $450.00.a week. I was on my way to the big time. I even managed to have him retain me between tours. I got $100 bucks a week to stay home (not bad in 1973-74). I still don't know how I ever managed talking him into it.
Q. So how did you get into lighting then?
A. The guitarist friend I moved to California with got a gig with a band called ‘Legs Diamond' and I started working for them. They asked me to do the lighting as well as setting up the drums for their opening slot on an Alice Cooper tour. I was scared to death. What did I know about lights? I actually started out by turning the rehearsal studio floodlights on and off with the music being played. They were the old household dimmer type. Push on, and turn! As silly as that sounds, it was then that I realized that this was kind of fun. And I had great meter, I was a drummer after all.
Long story short, I kept hunting for gigs throughout the 1970s. Then in 1981, I got a call from a friend I had met on one of the tours I had done a year or two before. He was now working with a Swiss Metal band ‘Krokus' and they needed a lighting director/production manager. I jumped at the chance. By then I had gotten pretty good at stage lighting, but had yet to design anything or even know how the mechanics worked past the console. I stayed with Krokus until 1984, but along the way we did a "co-headlining" tour with a Southern Rock band, ‘Blackfoot'. It was 1983. Michael Strickland was the production manager and Pete Heffernan the lighting director for Blackfoot. Bandit was the lighting company used so it was then that I began my relationship with Michael. He must have thought I was pretty good at my job because after the tour finished, I got a call from him asking me if I wanted to work for him. I said yes.
Q. Fast forward 24 years and you are still working for Bandit Lites. What is it about Bandit that has kept you here all of these years?
A. To be honest, there was never a reason to leave. In the early days, not many acts had an LD. And because I was one of only a handful of LDs in the company that liked and had experience lighting heavy metal bands, I got most of the gigs! The checks were never late, my pay raises were always fair and I had no desire to work for some company that looked at you as if you were a number with no 401k or even health insurance. It was a no brainer really. But bottom line, Bandit has given me a chance to do the only thing I know how to do; design and direct stage lighting. I'm 55, happily married and don't need to work all year every year. It all works out nicely actually. And I'm one hell of a 6-lamp bar repairman! It's a nice trade-off actually. And it gets me home by 6pm-5 days a week when I'm not touring.
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