A lighting designer with Nashville-based Pulse Lighting, Justin Casey has been working with the band since last July. Moe. tours year-round; their winter tour recently concluded in Manhattan. "The band celebrated its 25th anniversary year in 2015, and the winter tour wrapped in New York City on St. Patrick's Day," says Casey. "I'll be redesigning the winter rig for Moe.'s summer festival tour." Main Light Industries supplied the lights and consoles for the winter tour.
Casey chose 12 Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K20s and four Stormy CC RGBW LED Strobes for the rig. The B-EYEs were the "workhorses of the rig" delivering the primary lighting for the band as well as "eye candy in their pixel-mapping mode," he explains. "I liked having full control of the lights to create my own very colourful gobo effects - the band got crazy and the lights got crazy, too. The B-EYEs gave me the ability to make things different all the time; they set the rig apart from others that moe. had before."
Casey is new to B-EYEs having seen them at LDI and at product demos. "Up 'til now I haven't had a client who was a good fit for them," he notes. "Moe. is a really creative jam band so the B-EYEs' really cool eye candy and kaleidoscopic looks suited them."
Casey deployed the B-EYEs in a ground package or flew them depending on the size of the venue. "Sometimes we flew half and used half on the ground," he says. "In smaller venues they were all on the ground."
People commented on the powerful lights "every time we did a show," Casey reports. "In their pixel-mapping mode I could do different colour chases and dimming runs. Sometimes I used them as rings, sometimes I used the middle couple of cells, sometimes they were washes open wide and throwing colour everywhere."
But "programming the B-EYEs was a task at first," says Casey who also served as lighting programmer and board operator. "A.C.T was really helpful in getting a profile up and running for exactly how I wanted to use the B-EYEs."
Although a lot of venues have strobe lights in their house rigs, Casey selected the Stormy CC RGBW Strobes to add colour to conventional strobe effects. "They gave us a traditional look for some songs and a lot of color saturation for others," he explains. "It was nice to have them along on the tour.
"Main Light has been great to me during the tour," Casey notes. "They know how the road is and sent me out with great gear.
"A.C.T's technical support was amazing, too. It was really huge. If I had any questions on site I'd call and they were on it right away giving me an answer or walking me through a solution."
Francesco Romagnoli, Clay Paky area manager for North and Latin America, added, "This is a very interesting tour and Mr. Casey was able to create some very unique looks from our fixtures. I'm glad we were about to help him achieve this with our lights."
(Jim Evans)
