latest news headlines
Bandit Lites with Melissa Etheridge
Bandit Lites is once again be working with Academy Award-winning and two-time Grammy Award-winning American rock singer-songwriter and musician, Melissa Etheridge. Her current tour, titled ‘The Revival Tour', features dates throughout the United States and into Canada through to early September.
Lighting designer David Hamilton is in his fifth year working with Melissa Etheridge. He said that for this tour, they are carrying a lot less lighting than they had previously and the majority of this design is LED-based. The Tibetan prayer flag set design was created by tour manager, Steven Girmant, and reflects Etheridge's desire to share her life story and spiritual awakening with her audience.
The set consists of five strings of Tibetan prayer flags strung in front of a white cyc and black scrim with five to seven vertical prayer flags on floor stands stage right and stage left. There are two risers for drums and keyboards. Melissa Etheridge and the guitar and bass have Persian rugs in their positions.
Hamilton said that the lighting and set designs have been kept minimal to both reflect
simplicity and reduce power consumption. "Melissa is widely known as an advocate for environmental issues and we wanted to use as many LED fixtures as we could this time out," Hamilton explained. "So we have 20 PixeLine 1044 LEDs to use as cyc lights, 10 Elation Impression LED wash fixtures, and six Color Kinetics Colorblast 6 LEDs. The only non-LED lights are eight MAC 2000 spots and five Coemar Mini Cycs. The entire lighting rig draws less than 50 amps per leg with everything full on.
"They wanted to go minimal with the number of fixtures and started with a 40 ft. ‘E' shaped truss upstage and ended up reducing that to an asymmetric ‘L' shape with a total of 15 fixtures on it. I went with no front truss after using the Colorblast 6s as the only front light on the Ryan Adams tour, "Hamilton added. "They work well for fill light from the floor downstage without being overbearing and they take up a very small footprint, which works well because Melissa uses the entire front of the stage and they help keep it uncluttered. Having only one side truss was a bit of a challenge, but I put three of the Impressions on the floor on the opposite side and they cover the stage very well."
Bandit business development office and client rep, Brent Barrett attended the Louisville show and commented: "I was so impressed by the immediate connection that Ms.Etheridge made and maintained with her fans throughout her entire very generous and appreciated two-hour and 45-minute show."
Barrett went on to say: "David [Hamilton] has again managed to create and present an extremely tasteful show that compliments the music while not dominating it. Bandit is very proud to have the opportunity work with such a talented artist and quality organisation."
Tour manager is Steve Girmant.
photo: David Hamilton
16th July 2008
HEADLINES
news archive
search stories
FOOTNOTE: Select the news type you require in the red band above; this will enable you to see the current news stories from that section
© 1999 - 2012 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories
