USA - Billie Holiday observed that every song – like every person – must be unique, or it isn’t music. As a lighting designer, Jack Thomas agrees. Guided by this principle, he set out to leave visual fingerprints on each song in Bayside’s current North American Errors Tour.
“I programmed this show with Bayside to be very precise with cue-to-cue transitions so each moment of every song has its own specific fingerprint,” he explained. “Doing so keeps the energy fresh and exciting.”
Thomas’ ‘fingerprints’ provide the accompaniment to the emotionally powerful music on the New York punk rockers 25th anniversary tour. Calling forth a variety of lush colour blends, artful touches of atmospherics, unique light angles, and a touch of geometric patterns courtesy of this Chauvet Professional Epix Bars, Thomas reflects the distinct personality of each song.
Helping him achieve his vision is a collection of Rogue Outcast 1 BeamWashes, which like the Epix fixtures were supplied by JDI Productions. “Cody Johnson and the team at JDI were extremely helpful,” said Thomas. “It is important for me on this tour to have the right mix of fixtures in a rig that is easy to travel with.”
Getting the most out of his rig, Thomas framed his Rogue fixtures across the stage in groups of three. “We have three beam wash each on the floor, stage left and right, as well as three on each riser behind decorative bandstand stage elements,” he detailed. “These are flanked by four pipes with two Epix Bars stacked vertically on each.”
Thomas leaned heavily on colour changes to reflect the nuanced personalities of each song, often going beyond the customary no-more-than-two-colours-at-a-time rule. “In this show, I’m finding that adding a tertiary colour set to the stage incorporates an otherwise missing layer of depth,” he said. “It can be used to convey action and motion separation from the static looks.”
The colour mixing prowess of his Rogue Outcast 1 BeamWashes, with their seven RGBW LEDs has been essential to Thomas, not only in helping him create compelling colour combos, but also in covering the stage with monochromatic palettes.
Colour mixes are only part of the story that Thomas is telling on stage with light. Also powerful are his ever-changing light angles (aided by the Rogue units’ wide zoom range of 3.9° to 55.3°), and the evocative effects he’s creating with the fixture’s outer ring of LEDs.
Dramatic downlighting and layered looks of beams and washes are giving Thomas’ design an added sense of depth, as are his well-timed silhouettes and gobo effects. Then there is also his use of dark space. “To me, dark space is all about contrast,” he said. “Light is boring without dark space. Cutting through and separating the two gives more dynamic looks overall.”
Thomas is tapping deeply into his array of techniques on this tour, since Bayside is appearing two different nights at each venue, something done to cover the vast catalogue the band has assembled over the past 25 years.
