USA - On their current Good Together Tour, the multi-genre band Lake Street Dive uses varied contrasts to make every show impactful and memorable. Audiences experience diverse colour palettes, striking staging and special effects elements, intriguing lyrical themes and an overall attitude that the quintet has described as “joyful rebellion”.
“One of the things the band kept saying during the lead-up to this tour, was that it’s a ‘joyful rebellion’,” lighting director Andrew Froehlich explained. “The album is also all about that feeling: there’s joy, but a little bit of sourness in there. Everything kind of sucks sometimes, but we’re here, we’re living, we’re breathing, so let’s make it better, together.”
From his spot at front of house, Froehlich makes deft and artful use of contrast to enhance the impact of every song and lighting look. It’s a design that intertwines “joyful rebellion”, while keeping everything highly cohesive and visually pleasing at the same time.
In explaining his creative methodology, he described it as “deliberate, rhythmic and punchy”, while taking a tailored approach to each individual song. In the rig for this tour, suiting that style are the five Skywriter HPX M-10 laser fixtures, made by X-Laser.
He said the X-Laser Skywriter fixtures provide just the right dynamic and punch, while fitting into the grandMA3-powered rig seamlessly – and perhaps unexpectedly.
“We never expected or thought we’d be using lasers,” Froehlich said. “But with how easy it was to integrate them with the Mercury firmware, you can just plug in a DMX cable and program straight away with the other lights, it’s really incredible.
“It used to be so inaccessible and expensive and you needed a whole separate tech and controllers, and now everything’s so streamlined and compact thanks to Mercury. We took advantage of that, and created a rig and an environment that lets us make the most of the lasers as impact effect fixtures.
“The lasers are basically guide lights above, with one fixture positioned above each of the five artists in the band,” Froehlich explained.
Unlike many typical implementations of laser lighting, Froehlich’s design has the laser beams aimed downward at the stage rather than outward over the crowd. The beams reach each artist’s spot on stage, providing a more impactful effect than a traditional spot fixture could. With safety in mind, Froehlich aims the lasers with sufficient margin around the performers, who in turn, know to avoid the beams.
Speaking to the overall production design by Emily Cox, Froehlich explained that having the lasers on the tour is a perfect fit for the creative concept that called for a lot of neon, saturated and “retro” colours throughout.
“We were going for a design inspired by James Turrell from the 1970s and 1980s with a lot of retro, saturated colours with smooth lines, clean lines,” he said. “Emily came up with a few different options for us and everyone fell in love with the rainbow-shaped backdrop.”
