Chaos, craziness, excitement and anticipation all give Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
gigs a unique edgy vitality that everyone loves! A turbo-charged whirlwind of
energy, politics, clever and meaningful lyrics and some great music, accompanied
by impressive lighting and visuals as eclectic and sometimes eccentric as the music
is brilliant! More of an experience than a gig!
Their just released new album “The Unruly Mess I’ve Made” follows up 2012’s
Grammy award winning “The Heist’ with the band embarking on a major new world
tour. The lighting and visuals design is by Paul “Arlo’ Guthrie and the rig includes
Robe BMFL Spots and PATT 2013s.
Arlo has worked with production manager Chris Fussell for some time, and was
invited on-board to produce a stage design for this new album cycle, a process that
started in late 2015 with numerous discussions around ideas from Ben Haggerty
(Macklemore) and Ryan Lewis who really wanted to step up the production from
their last tour.
The lighting and video is designed to be scalable and deal with assorted venue sizes
in different territories. It features several zig-zagged “finger’ trusses and a large
upstage LED screen which is automated for the larger shows and splits into three
columns. There are also two side stage IMAG screens.
The 22 x Robe BMFL Spots are the key profile lights of the rig.
They are distributed on the overhead trusses and the upstage torms, with two on
the floor primarily to illuminate a scenic version of the band’s flaming match logo
that hangs on a center upstage truss.
Arlo picked BMFL Spots because he likes the gobo ‘layering’ facilities and the wide
zoom range. It’s a fixture he has been using since the launch in September 2014
and which has now become a signature luminaire for Robe.
The four PATT 2013s were used just once on the latest European tour, during the
song, “Kevin’. They were positioned on four stands just behind the band … and
helped close the space down for the song, an intimate and moving tribute to Kevin,
a young rapper associate of Macklemore who died aged 21 of a prescription drug
overdose.
Ryan Lewis makes most of the video content himself which runs in every song, and
this footage helped Arlo choose the base color and adjust the mood of the lighting.
He also mapped the LED fixtures on the rig using content that he created to match.
Tyler Elich is the lighting director for the tour operating all lighting using a
grandMA2 full size console which is also triggering the media servers – in this case
MBoxes. Lighting and video was supplied in Europe by PRG out of the UK, and by
Upstaging in North America.
