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or concert designers, one of thebiggest challenges occurs when a

band goes out on tour without a newalbum. New music can provide a focusfor a tour; without it, the productiondesigner can be left without ametaphorical rudder to guide the show.Such was the case for Fleetwood

Mac’s current Unleashed tour. “Part ofthe issue with the band was thatthere was no new artwork or nobranding identity to use as any kindof springboard for ideas,” admits Paul“Arlo” Guthrie, of Toss Film andDesign Inc. Nevertheless, Guthriewent into production with certainconcepts in mind. “I wanted tosomehow incorporate some elementsfrom earlier on in their career as a

design aesthetic,” he says. He alsohad some firm ideas on what he didand did not want from the lighting rig:“From the beginning, I also knew Iwanted to incorporate PAR cans orsimple imagery that would hark backto RDS projection and PAR can rigs.”What he didn’t want bucks thecurrent trend in concert lighting:“Early on, I made a consciousdecision that I didn’t want to see anyLED sources—I really wanted to getaway from the very modernassociation, that kind of LED feel thatis popular at present.” Guthrie alsolooked to the members of the bandfor their ideas: “I’ve been designingeveryone’s separate solo outings, sowe had to meld what we had been

doing for Lindsey [Buckingham] andStevie [Nicks] into something all fourwanted to have on the road.”There were extensive discussions,

and even more revisions to theconcepts favored by Guthrie as well asthe talent. In the end, the designercreated a beautiful, tasteful productionthat eminently suits Fleetwood Mac.The stage, designed by Guthrie andfabricated by All Access of Torrance,California, is brand-new. “We tour thestage—which a lot of arena acts do—for a number of reasons,” saysGuthrie. “We can set the lighting up offthe floor while building the stage, wecan drill holes in the decks and runcables underneath, and we can evenhave a patio area out back forquick-change tents.”The visual nexus of the set consists

of six 24'-wide by 7'-high light boxesthat provide the backdrop for theentire production. “Two of them areon the floor upstage, while four hang

A greatest-hits tour gets a thoroughlymodern look and soundBy: Sharon Stancavage

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off Kinesys hoists; they’re like bigcurved soft boxes. Inside, we haveMartin LC Panels that provide theinterior light-box effect, and then weproject onto them with High EndSystems DL.3s,” Guthrie explains.The panels move throughout theshow, transforming the stage. Attimes, they are also reminiscent of aCalifornia landmark: “If you took theHollywood Bowl and cut six sectionsout of it, they curve that way in abowl around the band. Two of themstand upright at the back of thestage, in a 7'-high upstage position.The other four are overhead, andmove to different positions—it makesit look like a cyclorama, when they’resoftly, evenly lit.”Guthrie created the imagery for the

light boxes. “Regarding theprogramming and content, because Iknow what I want and I think that Iknow how to do it the quickest way, Iwant to keep control over it,especially with a client who isdemanding,” he comments. “Therewas never going to be any wildly

complex 3-D animation or anythingthat would be very time consuming.”The six Barco/High End DL.3 digital

lights that illuminate the light boxesexternally are provided by ChaosVideo of Los Angeles. “This tour is aliving example of convergence,” notesFleetwood Mac’s video director, BobHiggins. “Lighting is involved withvideo, and video is involved with thelighting.” However, says Guthrie, “It is

quite a stark contrast between theinternal LED from the Martin LCpanels, which can create quite abright, vibrant effect, to the DL.3s,which provide a kind of subtleprojection on the face of it.”The DL.3s do more than just

provide textual effects. “We also use

them as a camera feed,” explainsHiggins. During “Big Love,” fans aretreated to a shot of Buckingham’sguitar, and in “World Turning,” MickFleetwood’s face appears on the lightboxes. “His face is so fantastic that itworks great,” notes Guthrie.Although most of the imagery

within the show is textural, there are afew instances where it becomes a bitmore literal. “The band really wanted

to incorporate some kind of imageryof the USC marching band with‘Tusk,’ and we project that. ForLindsey’s song, ‘Go Insane,’ I puttogether a combination of Saul Bass-style rotating elements—like in [theAlfred Hitchcock film] Vertigo—andimages similar to a Rorschach ink blot

The curved light boxes are a kind of allusion to the curves of the Hollywood Bowl.

“I don’t use a lot of color combinations; thereare only two colors together at a time, withmaybe some kind of projection texture that willadd a third color. It’s not a rainbow of fruitflavors or a bowl of Skittles.” —Guthrie

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test,” Guthrie says. The imagery forboth songs is created through acombination of LC panels and DL.3s.For content playback, Guthrie

chose the Mbox EXtreme mediaserver from PRG. (The company alsohad a hand in supplying the lightinggear.) Curry Grant, PRG’s vicepresident of touring, coordinated theoverall production package. “There’sa lot of great media servers out there,but the Mbox has same-layer cross-fading, which helps me out, and it isMac-based, so, to me, it’s just a workflow and familiarity thing,” Guthrieexplains. The Mbox also suited thenature of the project, he adds: “It wasnever going to be wildly complexmedia server playback; I just wantedsomething that was reliable and easyto use and familiar.” Indeed, theMbox and LED panels are critical tothe show, and are utilized frombeginning to end.Guthrie’s lighting package has a

surprise built into it in the form ofLEDs. “We’ve got 120 Barco LEDPAR cans in the rig,” he reports. Theunits are a custom solution built forthe tour, and provided by ChaosVideo. “We took Barco O-lite panelsand fitted them into an eight-by-eight

tray that sits in the back of the PARcans; the yoke and everything else isthe same. It’s all hanging in a pre-rigtruss; instead of the bulb, there’s aneight-by-eight block of LEDs—whenyou look it, it looks like four trusses ofPAR cans, which is a very iconic lookfor a lighting rig.” The LEDs alsosaved Guthrie and his lighting crewsome time: “I knew that I wanted toestablish that look, with the truss anda bunch of PAR cans coming out of it,and then I knew I didn’t want to dealwith a hundred dimmers and focusingand gels.” The LED PAR cans unitenew technology with a traditionalconcert approach to create atraditional, yet modern, look.The rest of the rig is chock-full of

automated fixtures, including a varietyof Vari-Lite fixtures: 14 VL3500Washes, six VL3000 Spots, sixVL3500 spots, eight VL1000Tungstens, and seven VL500s. Alsoon hand are five of PRG’s new BadBoys. “I got a sneak look at the BadBoys last year and loved everythingabout them,” Guthrie notes. “I wasmost impressed with the quality andattention to detail that had been putinto everything about that light—thedimmer, the movement, the color, and

the optics are absolutely superb. I putfive of them on the upstage truss in abacklight position and was blownaway at their ability to cover theentire stage or the entire 60' x 30'backdrop. It is really exciting andrefreshing to use a light that moves,responds, and works with suchprecision and beauty.” The rest of thegear list includes 14 MR16 mini-strips, six NILA lights, and six ETCSource Four PARs.The show’s color palette is keyed

to the origin of the individual songs.“There is a fairly big division betweenLindsey’s signature songs andStevie’s signature songs,” Guthrieexplains. Moodier songs like“Rhiannon,” “Gypsy,” “Gold DustWoman,” and “Dreams” belong toNicks, while “Big Love” and “Tusk”are bolder. “Lindsey is moreMondrian, and Stevie is moreImpressionist,” he explains.Overall, the color palette is tasteful

and appropriate. “I don’t use a lot ofcolor combinations; there are onlytwo colors together at a time, withmaybe some kind of projectiontexture that will add a third color. It’snot a rainbow of fruit flavors or a bowlof Skittles,” he adds with a smile. The

The light boxes are lit internally with Martin LC Panels; Barco High End DL.3 digital lights project onto them.

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production is filled with lavenders,aquas, and golds, as well as boldreds and ambers.To program the show, Guthrie used

a grandMA from MA Lighting, distrib-uted in the U.S. by A.C.T Lighting.“The grandMA has taken over theentire planet,” he says with a chuckle.It’s his console of choice for severalreasons: “It’s familiar, it’s reliable, andour lighting director owns one.”The final component of the video

page is the IMAG, provided by Chaos

Video. The video package includes aGrass Valley Kayak HD 300 M/Eswitcher, seven Folsom Image Pro HDimage processors and a plethora ofcameras, including four Sony DXC-D50Ws, two Sony BRC 300s, twoToshiba IK-HD1C ice cube cameras,and three XC 999 lipstick cameras.There are also two AV Stumpfl 12' H X21' W screens placed in the traditionalright/ left configuration, and “a coupleof 18K Barco FLM 18 projectors,”reports Higgins.

Tour your own wayThe man behind the front-of-housedesk is veteran engineer Dave Kob.He’s touring with a “Beta edition” ofClair Brothers’ I-5 line array. “I believewe’re the second or third tour out ofthe door with the new system, andwe’re doing a lot of field research,” hereports. On the outside, the new I-5looks exactly like its predecessor, theI-4. All improvements, both physicaland electronic, have been implementedinternally. The only obvious external

modification is the new hanging hard-ware, which is a vast improvement inflexibility, durability, and facility overthe I-4 system. For Kob, the biggestchange sonically is in the mid-range:“There’s a lot more clarity anddefinition, which is most apparent invocals and acoustic instruments.Also, the off-axis cabinet response ismore even over the entire frequencyspectrum; that makes for muchsmoother coverage throughout thearena.” Kob is pleased with the

results thus far. “It’s a work inprogress, and we’re still doing sometweaking, but it’s definitely a big stepin the right direction, and we’regetting positive results,” he says. Atthis point, Clair Brothers is compilingdata from a variety of tours to seehow different engineers tune thesystem; the company will thenincorporate the mean values into thenew system’s software options.The tour has twenty-eight I-5

loudspeakers and twenty-eight I-5B

bass cabinets for the main line array,with two side arrays comprised of anadditional sixteen I-5s; all arepowered by Crown Macrotech 3600amplifiers. There are also eight FF2full range speakers spread along thefront of the stage, and two BT-218subs on the floor downstage centerto fill in the front rows and make it, inKob’s words, “all warm and fuzzy upin there.” As for the rest of the rig, hereports, “The low-end I-5B/BT-218package is a perfect match for this

Four of the six light boxes are controlled by a Kinesys motion control system, with 24 half-ton, 12 one-ton, and 12 two-ton motors.

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band. Fleetwood Mac’s music doesn’tneed to have rolling thunder at 40hzand 110db. It’s a full-range mix, butnot overtly low-end heavy—norshould it be.”To mix the band, Kob is using two

consoles: the Yamaha PM5000 for the

bulk of the analog inputs and aDigidesign VENUE with a Profilecontrol surface for all the digital andthe extra analog inputs. “I’m anunrepentant Analogasaurus. Analogsounds better, and I prefer theergonomics of analog consoles overany digital control surface that I’vetried. However, in a situation whereyou have so many changes and cuesthat you need total recall to execute

them, or you have an over-the-topnumber of inputs or need foroutboard gear, then digital is the righttool for the job. I think if you checkaround, you’ll find that a largepercentage of FOH engineers doinglive rock ‘n’ roll only recall basic fader,

bussing, and muting functions, anduse very little of a digital console’sprocessing capabilities,” he explains.Another key factor for Kob is thereliability factor: “In countless showsover the last five years or so, thePM5K has never let me down or evengiven me cause to be nervous. Adigital desk is just a computer withelaborate audio interface softwareand a custom control surface.”

Monitor engineers Rachel Adkins and“Team” Ed Dracoules are using twoDigidesign Venue consoles to handlethe band’s monitor mixing.

For outboard gear, Kob has “lotsof big, cool, expensive things,”including Summit TLA 100s andSummit DCL 200s for the vocals anda Manley SLAM! for John McVie’sbass. The effects list includes Lexicon480L, Eventide H-3000, Yamaha SPX-2000, TC 2290 DDL, and Aphex 612noise gates. While some engineersonly use certain brands of micro-phones, Kob adheres to a differentapproach. He’s using a Sennheisere935 on Nicks’ vocal, an Audio-Technica AT 6100 on Buckingham’svocal, with the other vocals splitbetween e935s and Shure SM58s.The drum kits include a array ofBeyer, Shure, AKG, Sennheiser, andAudix mics. “I’ve never locked into asingle manufacturer or endorsement,as I feel there’s no one company thatmakes the best microphone for allapplications, I prefer to play the fieldand experiment. All the major brandsare well represented here.”Fleetwood Mac’s Unleashed tour

ended last month; however, the bandis scheduled to tour Europe and theU.K. starting in October.

Guthrie lights Buckingham’s songs differently from Nicks’. “Lindsey is more Mondrian and Stevie is more Impressionist,” he says.

“I’m an unrepentant Analogasaurus. Analogsounds better, and I prefer the ergonomics ofanalog consoles over any digital controlsurface that I’ve tried. However, in a situationwhere you have so many changes and cuesthat you need total recall to execute them, oryou have an over-the-top number of inputs orneed for outboard gear, then digital is the righttool for the job.” —Kob