Boston-based Hoffman of Pulse Lighting designed, built and operated the tour using 16 x Pointes and 16 LEDWash 300s.
Due to availability, he needed three companies to supply the gear. The main vendor was KM Productions of Long Island, New York, supplemented with Pointes from Main Light Industries in Wilmington, Delaware and LEDWash 300s from TERI Productions of Knoxville, Tennessee. "This tour featured a lot of firsts for me," said Hoffman. "It was my first tour with Moe., - a jam band that became popular in the early 1990s - and the first time I have toured with primarily Robe fixtures."
The band's history includes 24 albums, scores of festival dates and fundraisers, and a tribal travelling fan following (who call themselves moe.rons). Much like their unpredictable music, there was no real creative direction that Hoffman had to follow, or a set to design around.
With this freedom to design and having seen several Moe. shows in the past, he understood the look the band was going for. "My goal was to bring in some new, innovative equipment and looks for the band," he explains.
He wanted to replace the large lighting products they previously carried with more compact, energy efficient fixtures - but ones that were also feature-rich for clubs and cramped venues where it's difficult to rig lights. Hoffman was impressed by his first encounter with Robe Pointes on the European festival circuit last summer - although the festival environment was not the best place to test-drive a fixture. So recently in Nashville, he placed 16 x Pointes in the rig for The Warren Haynes Xmas Jam ... and knew that he found the perfect fixtures for Moe.
"Moe. has always had an aggressive light show, and the Pointes are punchy and graphic when in beam or spot mode. This provided the big looks in the various sized venues, and I had the option to hang them wherever I could with the ability for wireless control using three universes of Lumen Radio wireless DMX."
(Jim Evans)
