Before the award-winning artists could take the stage, it was longtime festival provider StagePro who oversaw the creation of all the production elements which included an all Vari-Lite automated lighting rig complete with 12 VL3015LT Spot, 16 VL3500 Wash FX, 16 VLX Wash, six VL880 Spot, and 16 VL3000 Spot Luminaires.
"This was a festival rig which was not designed for any one specific band," said Craig Ahneman, StagePro production manager. "As a full service production company, the one thing we fought for on the project was to design a true festival rig where the bands would not need to hang any of their tour lighting since that would cause an indeterminate weight to be placed on the overhead truss every day. When you are requesting that artists leave their rigs in the trucks, you have to have top-of-the-line equipment and this is why we went with an all Vari-Lite automated lighting rig."
With a total of 22 different artists scheduled to appear at the festival, StagePro understood the need to create a diverse lighting rig to fulfill all the various design needs. Conversely, since they have been working with Country Jam for a number of years, they also knew there were common lighting elements often seen with each artist.
Ahneman continued, "We have done the Country Jam festival for the past 21 years and what we have seen year-after-year was Vari-Lite products coming off the trucks. So in putting this year's rig together, we first looked at our headliners, what their touring rigs were, how they were laid out, and then we conducted a conference call with the lighting designers to go over the rig we wanted to put up. In the end, we came up with the all Vari-Lite automated rig that everyone agreed upon and was excited to work with."
Ahneman concluded, "This show was a true group effort with our lighting technicians AJ Avery and Cole Crockett working tirelessly to get the rig in the air and programmed. They did a great job in helping me put together a rig that could literally handle the needs of any type of song. Whether it was a dark and moody piano ballad with gobos and deep colour saturation, or an upbeat song that called for vibrant colours and powerful intensity, none of the Vari-Lite fixtures are a one-trick pony. When you look at other lights many of them have one thing that they do well, but that's all they can do. With Vari-Lite luminaires, I can get so many looks from the same set of incredibly versatile fixtures, and that is why we were able to go with an all Vari-Lite automated lighting rig."
(Jim Evans)
