TheRoad Utotopia · David we were able to integrate the use of it in many more creative ways than...

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84 • June 2018 • Lighting&Sound America

David Byrne’s new tour is loaded without-of-the-box solutions

By: Sharon Stancavage

TheRoadtoUtopia

Copyright Lighting&Sound America June 2018 http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html

one might expect, David Byrne was a driv-ing creative force behind his currentAmerican Utopia Tour. To quote from hisblog: “The show concept is simple...allow

everyone to be mobile on an empty stage andimagine what that allows.” Byrne, formerly of the band Talking Heads, has a strong

production sense, and the film Stop Making Sense is seenas a seminal work in the concert movie genre. ForAmerican Utopia, he collaborated with lighting designerRob Sinclair. “Stop Making Sense has been such an influ-ence on my life and work that I was overjoyed, nervous,and excited to work with David,” Sinclair admits.The concept for the American Utopia Tour came from

two sources. “First was David’s awareness that in a lot ofhis previous work the impact that the people onstage hadwas far greater than that of screens and technology,”Sinclair says. “The second was from his recent tour withSt. Vincent, which featured marching band-style brassplayers. The energy and freedom of a musician untetheredto a mic stand and a stage uncluttered with backline waswhat he wanted the tour to be about. David’s initial brieffor the production design was for a large curtain to hide allthe backline, to allow for the performers to be the centerof attention. He did a couple of sketches of a stage designwith three big walls at the back and sides and with differ-ent variations of slits or doors or overlapping panels toallow musicians to enter and exit.”The search for a scenic curtain to fit the bill led to a

KriskaDécor product called Snina Babylink. It’s a 5/16"-by-1/2" link chain curtain that weighs 13oz per square foot;it’s sold by Daisycake. Sinclair notes: “We specified the fulldrop version, rather than the half drop, so that the densitywas not as great and there was more negative space forRF to travel through.” The concept of an empty stage didn’t simply mean a

lack of risers and instruments. “David’s rule meant thatthere could be noside light and no traditional floor pack-age,” Sinclair says. “This led us to think in different waysabout creating depth, texture, and variety. It was quite ter-rifying in some ways to not have some of the usual go-totools: the line of upstage floor lights that I love, and thesidelight. In the end, it was actually really fun to have towork out new ways of doing things.” Sinclair, who has worked with Queen and Peter Gabriel,

is perfectly capable of creating big rock lighting, but, henotes, Byrne had something different in mind: “To looselyquote David: ‘So many rock shows are about seeingbeams of light moving around in space and you can’tactually see the people playing the music.’ He told usabout times he’d walked into venues and asked the light-ing guy to turn all the lights on at the start of the set, turnthem off at the end, and that was it. Hearing this had amassive impact on how we lit the show.”

The bulk of the lighting design was created during theR&D stage at the Clair Global facility in Manheim,Pennsylvania. Sinclair explains: “David, myself, andDouglas [Green, the tour’s lighting director] explored all thepossibilities of the basic space and lighting. I was in anempty warehouse with David Byrne, making silly shadowshapes and playing with lights. That’s not something thathappens every day.”The light also interacted with the chain. Sinclair

explains, “It acts a little like a sharkstooth gauze becauseof the way the links are joined; toplighting the chain withour two rows of [GLP impression] X4 Bars allows us tocreate two-part gradients on the chain and make it appearsemi-opaque, thus hiding all the equipment behind it.”Sycamore, Illinois-based Upstaging, the tour’s lighting

vendor, also played a part in the creative process, Sinclairsays: “Upstaging made us a perfect light—a 1.2kW tung-sten projector bulb and reflector—that sits downstage andcasts massive shadows on the walls. [The choreographer]Annie-B Parsons worked with the light in rehearsals to cre-ate some iconic shadow imagery just by moving peoplearound the stage and playing with their relationship withthe wall and the chain. I’ve been dreaming of this shadowlight for 30 years and never quite made it work this well.And then Upstaging made all my dreams come true.”Sinclair’s design is simple: three straight trusses hung

between 27' and 31' above the stage, with no floor pack-age. He explains: “Martin [by Harman] MAC ViperPerformances [33 total] are the main light source for thestage; they are versatile, reliable, and play very well withBlackTrax [the real-time tracking device from CASTSoftware]. The framing shutters are integral to the designand even though a lot of the show is lit in a flat white, weuse all the features of the lights at some point. For thewalls, GLP’s impression X4 Series is our workhorse; weuse [sixty] X4 Bar 20s and [four] 10s to create a seamlesswash on the walls, with some X4S units tucked in the cor-ners to fill in the tricky spots. Their zoom and tilt allowedus to create a number of looks that we wouldn’t have beenable to do with a fixed-focus cyc light. Logistically, manu-ally focusing all of those lights every day should be impos-sible.” The lighting package also includes five ETC SourceFour LED Series 2 Lustrs, and four hazebase base *hazer*pros. The lighting rig also includes a theatrical ghost light.Sinclair explains: “I knew we had to do something with alamp in the show; it’s such a strong reference to StopMaking Sense. It’s one of the only two lights allowedonstage and is brought on and off by a musician, to breakthe rule of backline and technicians being on stage.”Discussing the decision to use CAST BlackTrax, Sinclair

says, “When I first met David, I knew a little about theshow and that using followspots would be a nightmare. Istopped in New York for the meeting between Queenrehearsals and brought a BlackTrax BTStringer and

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BTBeacon with me, put them on the table, and explainedhow they worked and some of the possibilities. Davidimmediately understood that this was a new world thatneeded no spike marks, which would open up fun newthings.”BlackTrax technology also fit into the production con-

cept, Sinclair says: “It was the perfect match for the ‘total-ly mobile band’ idea, and during our R&D sessions withDavid we were able to integrate the use of it in many morecreative ways than just a replacement for traditional fol-lowspots.” Especially appealing to Byrne is the consistency

BlackTrax brings to the production. “David is incrediblyastute and involved in all the elements of the show,”Sinclair. “He knows what all our cues are and where theygo. BlackTrax eliminates the potential for any variationcaused by having different followspot operators for everyshow.” There are 12 musicians on stage, including Byrne, each

sporting a BlackTrax BTBeacon. “Their BTstringers areattached in a number of different ways, depending onwhat instrument each of them plays and if/how theychange them,” Sinclair says. “The singers and guitaristshave stringers sewn into their costumes—everyone in theband wears a gray suit—and the drummers have theirpacks attached to marching band-style harnesses thathold their percussion instruments.” Eight cameras arelocated onstage and offstage areas for to monitor perform-ers. The BlackTrax system—used with 33 Mac Vipers—was

programmed by Oli Metcalfe; on the road, it is handled by

Sam Augustus. “Sam and I will be in constant communica-tion throughout the show; I instruct him to make liveupdates as things need tweaking,” Green says. “For exam-ple, if beam diameters need adjusting or prediction speedsare wrong, and people keep walking out of the light, hecan adjust those things mid-show. Being able to have mul-tiple merges is a great addition to the software; there is amoment in the show when all 12 musicians are standing inindividual fixed downlights—à la ‘Cell Block Tango’ [fromthe stage musical and film Chicago]—then, toward the endof the song, we turn the merge on and the lights instantlystart following their respective performers as they walkround the stage.” Aside from festivals where Byrne isn’theadlining, BlackTrax is the only system used for fol-lowspots. “We don’t even have followspots as a backup; insituations where it’s not feasible to use BlackTrax system, Iuse a series of washes,” Sinclair says. Green runs the show on an MA Lighting grandMA2.

“Because the console is so widely used,” he says, “thereis a great amount of knowledge out there that people arewilling to share, so it’s more than likely that someone hasencountered the same problem you have and has aworkaround or solution. Ben Cash, Brian Spett, AaronVeness, and Ambersphere UK all gave me a hand at somepoint in the process. For example, I needed a quick way toquickly focus our 60 or so X Bars in all their differentfocuses. Aaron shared a tilt offset macro that was devel-oped for FragmentNine’s design for Alt-J’s most recenttour and it has saved me hours of focus time.”

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Bryne came up with the basis of the production, a stage with a curtain at the back and sides.

Audio“This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,” saysByrne’s front-of-house engineer, Pete Keppler. The touremploys Clair’s new Global Cohesion CO-10 PA; it’s thecompact version of the popular Cohesion CO-12 system.“Currently we’re using fourteen CO-10 cabinets per side;we have six CP-218 subs and eight CP-6 cabinets as fills.We can’t have anything on the front of the deck, so they’replaced in the corners, on top of the subs, firing into thecenter as corner fill. They’re our near fills, but they have tobe placed off to the side.” He adds, “The whole rig soundsreally, really nice. Clair has taken such good care of us, andour technicians—Jamie Nelson, on monitors and RF, andJeff Wuerth, our system engineer and FOH tech—areabsolutely top-notch.”The DiGiCo SD10 is Keppler’s console of choice for the

tour. “I wanted a small footprint desk, since we’re doing somany festivals and I want to be able to get in and out

quickly,” he says.In terms of outboard gear and plug-ins, Keppler is

something of a minimalist. “I like working within some con-fines; that’s how I grew up,” he admits. Still, he is usingWaves F6. “It’s a six-band dynamic EQ that does a lot, andI rely on it heavily. It’s my go-to plug-in for what I’m dealingwith on stage. It softly gates everything in the upper rangeof the vocals: I use a keyed, filtered version of each vocalto side-chain the mid-high band of the F6, so it only opensthat range of the vocal when the performer sings, not whenthe drums and percussion are near the vocalists.”High frequencies are “where all the percussion and drum

energy becomes a problem,” Keppler says. “That’s wheretheir sonic focus is, and that’s the problem I have—all thatspill from cymbals and hi-hats and shakers and percussionand snare drums. They cause a lot of clatter comingthrough the vocal mics and I needed a way to tame all thehigh-frequency spill. With the other five bands on the F6


All 33 Martin by Harman MAC Viper Performances are on the CAST BlackTrax tracking system.

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acting as a more normal dynamic EQ, I can keep my chan-nel strips nearly flat. I have far more gain than I used to.”The one piece of outboard gear at the front of house is

an ‘80s-era Lexicon PCM 41 that Keppler located and pur-chased himself. “It’s an old digital delay,” he says. “It hasthis thing called an infinite repeat switch on it. In thebridge of the Talking Heads song ‘Once in a Lifetime,’Brian Eno, who was producing it, grabbed a piece ofDavid’s vocal, and made it repeat infinitely; he thenmessed around with it while it was repeating.” Keppleralso uses it on Byrne’s guitar solo in “Born UnderPunches.” Key to making feasible the show concept of 12 unteth-

ered musicians on a completely empty stage was the wire-less microphone system. “We had to come up with a tech-nology solution,” says monitor engineer John Chadwick.“The world of wireless audio has been dealt some harshblows over the last decade or so. The spectrum we usedwith wanton abandon has been re-allocated to deep-pock-eted cell phone companies and digital TV stations.Attempting this tour with a high channel count of tradition-al analog RF microphones would have been akin to sign-ing my own death warrant. So I made a phone call to myfriends at Shure and said, ‘Please tell me you have some-thing in the pipeline that can make this happen.’ Theyreplied, ‘Yes, we have something that is going to bereleased in a few months.’ And that was Axient Digital.Without it, we wouldn’t be able to do this.”

The Axient system accounts for 48 channels of wirelessmics. “Typically, on a day, we’ll use 42, but out of those42, we use 48 belt packs, because we have multiple beltpacks for bass, guitar, and David’s guitar,” Chadwick says.“Everything onstage, apart from the keyboard systems,which is in wireless MIDI, runs via Axient. All the drums,vocals, guitars, basses.” Keppler adds: “The digital RFsystem uses far less bandwidth; we have nearly 50 inputsof wireless and 18 outputs of wireless. In other words, thewireless mics coming into the console and the wireless in-ears coming out of it would not be possible with an analogRF system; we would not be able to find enough frequen-cies to do that job. The other reason I really love this sys-tem is that because it’s digital it involves no companding.With digital, there are no noise floor issues, and to my ear,this system sounds as good as a wired microphone.”The scenic chain placed on three sides of the stage

was a challenge as well, Chadwick says: “At the R&D ses-sion last August, we hung the chain in the air, and myself,and Kevin Dennis, from Clair Global, spent two days myth-busting to see if RF could get through the chain, where thebest antenna placement positions were, and how thisaffected everything. The signal can get through the chain,but the performance is significantly reduced; the perform-ance changes also, depending on how far the antennasare from the chain. The closer they are, the worse the per-formance. We have our antennas 32' up in the air, on topof the lighting truss, pointing down at the stage. It’s a little

To avoid interference with the chain curtains, the RF antennas are placed on top of the lighting truss, pointing down at the stage.


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For atmosphere, the production uses four hazebase base *hazer* pro units.

This render by Sinclair shows the streamlined nature of the lighting rig.

tricky to exactly replicate all the scenarios you might findyourself in, because when we hung it all we were in a largespace, which had lots of reflections, and most of the festi-vals we go to are open-air and you don’t get those reflec-tions. Blasting it through the chain wasn’t as optimal asputting the antennas on top of the truss and pointing themdown into the performance area. We’re doing the slightlystrange thing of running 100' of cable to the Shure anten-nas up in the roof.” There are three antennae in the air; tworeceivers for the microphones, and one transmitter for thewireless in-ears monitors. An additional antenna in monitorworld takes care of PFL [pre-fade listen] and guitar techduties.“All six percussion guys can change their instrumenta-

tion for each song,” Chadwick says. “For instance, justbecause Aaron is playing kick drum in one song, for thenext he could be playing snare drum. Someone could playbongos in one song, congas in the next, and a very inter-esting Brazilian instrument called a bolacha following that.Therein lays our main complication: The wireless packs

have to be mounted directly to the instruments, not to theperson.”Microphone selection began early. “When we got to

rehearsals, we had to rethink some choices because ofphysical limitations and so forth,” Keppler says. “I’m usingmics on the bass and snare drums that I’ve never usedbefore. It’s just what worked for the instrument and forphysical reasons. Jerry Johnson, our drum tech, has mademagic happen at stage right; he’s managed to make somevery small and lightweight drums sound larger than life.Patrick Lachman, our guitar, bass, and key tech is alsovery instrumental—no pun there—in making this all hap-pen as well. Two techs for 12 musicians is quite a tallorder!“Typically, you would body-mount the transmitters;

they’d go onto the musician,” Chadwick says. “Thebiggest issue was finding somewhere to attach the trans-mitter to various drums, and a lot of the Brazilian percus-sion.” There was also the fact that the musicians frequent-ly change instruments during the show. “We’ve mounted P

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Byrne specifically wanted a production that illuminated the performers, rather than an elaborate lighting show.

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some microphones, via neoprene packs, to the hardwareon the drums, which has brought up a whole set of prob-lems, because some of the drums are made of metal. Thatwas a process of experimentation of where we couldphysically put them and still see an antenna, and of howto attach them.”RF quirks appeared during rehearsals. “Specifically, we

were having issues with dropout and really bad noise inter-ference, and we could not figure out where it was comingfrom,” Keppler says. The culprit was a surprise, Chadwicksays: “We discovered the hard way that if you put a belt-pack transmitter somewhere in the region of the hi-hat, thetwo pieces of metal hitting together distorts the RF waves;at Shure’s labs in Chicago, they replicated our setup witha hi-hat mounted to the snare drum. It was discoveredthat if the belt-pack transmitter got to within 6" of the hi-hat, we’d start to get distortion in the RF.” Solving the RF problem, Chadwick says, “was all about

finding places where we could put the transmitters awayfrom metal hitting other pieces of metal. It was like findinga needle in a haystack. There were lots of places wecouldn’t put them, and very few places we could.”There was a similar issue with one of the berimbaus, a

Brazilian percussion instrument. “It’s a single metal stringacross a bow that you then hit with a stick,” Chadwickexplains. “To change the pitch of the note, you either havea pebble or metal disk in your hand, and it’s like a hand-held fret you press against the string. Two of the berim-baus used pebbles. One had a metal disk. We were get-ting interference with one of them; we changed the micro-

phone, we changed the belt pack, and we changed thereceiver. Eventually, the penny dropped: Whenever themetal disk would just lightly rub against the string, wewould get some get RF interference.” The solution was tosimply replace the metal disk with a pebble. The choreog-raphy also brought up some RF concerns. “The show isvery highly choreographed,” Chadwick says, “and we’vehad a little bit of input and raised the red flag when need-ed, saying, ‘Please don’t put these people next to thosepeople.’ The choreographers were amenable to us and didthings like changing the timbale and kick drum positionsaround. In one song [“One in a Lifetime”], a percussionguy comes onstage with big marching band cymbals andbashes them together. Everyone is walking around con-stantly, and we had to ask him to avoid certain peoplebecause, as he got close to the transmitters and smashedthe cymbals, he could cause a problem.”Since the musicians rapidly change instruments

throughout the show, the microphone system has to berobust; unfortunately, this rules out certain DPA mics,Keppler notes, because their mounting systems weren’tsufficiently robust. Nevertheless, he says, “The vocal micsare all DPAs [4088s], and a lot of the other drum mics areDPAs [4099s on the bolachas, darbuka, and small andlarge talking drums] and they have to be in protectedplaces where they aren’t going to get whacked. To my ear,they sound the best, but, in some instances, I had to putthat aside and go with what is most functional for thistour.”One of Keppler’s most surprising microphone choices

was the Audio-Technica AE2300. “We put it up againstDPAs, a couple of Shures, and it won,” he says. It is onboth snare/hi-hat kits. Chadwick adds: “The berimbau is


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Bryne wanted a show with an empty stage, which resulted incountless wireless belt packs.

From left to right: Jamie Nelson, monitor/RF tech, JohnChadwick, monitor engineer/RF tech, Pete Keppler, FOH engi-neer, and Jeff Wuerth, system engineer.

probably the most interesting in terms of microphones; wefinally used a C-ducer, which is kind of a tape microphonethat you stick onto instruments.” The microphone packagealso includes and Audix D6 [bass drum], Shure Beta 98s[toms, conga, bongos, drum body harness] andSennheiser e 904s [timbale, repique, and more.]Signal latency might have been an issue due to the use

of the Shure Axient Digital system in HD mode. “David wasconcerned that latency might throw the band off,”Chadwick. “We set up the system, ran it through a DiGiCoSD console with analog outputs and AES from the AxientD both at 48K and 96K. The quickest path through theconsoles was with AES and 96K; using the Axient D inhigh-density, as opposed to standard-density, mode addsaround an additional millisecond of latency. All that said,out of the back of the Axient D into the DiGiCo, back outto the [Shure] PSM 1000 [personal monitor system], theactual round trip was just over 3ms. David tried it, sang,played guitar and was very happy.”The wireless theme continues in monitor world. “The

band and crew listen through PSM 1000s into JH Audio in-ears,” Chadwick says. “The PSM has been around for agood few years now; it’s very reliable and robust. We’recarrying 18 channels of PSM 1000s; typically, we use 11 ofthem a day. For the 11 that are on air, we are using 20 in-ear belt packs, which are for musicians, me, and technicalmixes. We’re running 20 because you can have more thanone belt pack on the same in-ear mix. The 18 channels areacross two frequency ranges, so if we come up to some-where in the world where we can’t use one frequencyrange, we flip to the other range.”The setup at monitor world is simple. “It’s just a DiGiCo

SD5, and SD rack, an SD Mini Rack, and two Soundcraftreal-time rack units. I’m not using plug-in after plug-in afterplug-in; it’s all fairly straightforward. There is no playbackor Pro Tools or anything like that in the show; everything isdone live,” Chadwick concludes.David Byrne’s American Utopia Tour continues in the

US—and worldwide—for the remainder of 2018.


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Byrne and the other musicians all wear BlackTrax BTBeacons.

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