Out on a Badder Than Ever spring tour through April, lighting designer William Bennyhoff needed a rig that could complement Thorogood's high-energy boogie-blues style and found it in Elation Platinum Beam 5R Pro, Rayzor Q7 and Cuepix Blinder WW2 fixtures.
"Five years ago we were looking to have an ACL look for our show without having to carry ACL bars," explains Bennyhoff, who works for Toucan Productions of Oklahoma City, provider of lighting, truss and control for the tour. "We looked at all the options out there, which wasn't many, and decided to use the original Platinum Beam 5R."
Last year was George Thorogood and the Destroyers' 40th Anniversary, which required a bigger setup, so Bennyhoff added Rayzor Q7's and Cuepix Blinders to the rig. "We chose those fixtures because of the light output to weight ratio," he says. "They are super bright and light. This year we added eNode4's to the rig as well so that we could save on cabling to the 'light pods' we have."
Bennyhoff's challenge was to create big looks to match the powerhouse rock but without taking the main focus away from the artist. To do that he placed six Platinum Beam 5Rs on 5' sticks of truss in a set cart and spaced an additional 12 Platinum Beam 5Rs around the stage deck. In the four overhead light pods he placed 12 compact Rayzor Q7s for colour washes and beam looks, along with 12 Cuepix Blinder WW2s for punches of bright white light.
"I have had the Platinum Beams out on my rig for five years and almost 400 shows now and have had very few issues with them. Reliability and performance was most important with all the fixtures," Bennyhoff concludes.
(Jim Evans)
