Bandit Lites is excited to be working with multi-platinum country recording artist, Blake Shelton. Since 2001, Shelton has held the No. 1 chart position for 13 weeks and his current tour features those hits as well as hits from his current album, Pure BS Deluxe, which will be released May 6, 2008.
Lighting designer, Jody Marsh chose to use Martin MAC 500s and MAC 600s for this tour. Lighting is controlled by a Whole Hog II. He said the thought process behind the design had to do primarily with the venues they would be playing.
“I know what I’m going to get from local vendors and then I make changes accordingly to essentially pull off the same show every night,” Marsh explains. “You may not see the lights hung the same every night but you’re still getting the same overall product, or as close to it as you can get. Creatively, I know what I can do with the lights.”
Marsh notes that biggest challenge for this tour is just to be flexible. “This past weekend we had two shows. One show was a ‘normal day.’ The second show, I didn’t have the ability to hang any lights upstage. I had my towers and I had them bring some additional towers. It was a completely different rig, but with adjustments the show was essentially the same,” Marsh comments. The other challenge is to have a big show with a limited amount of truck space. Additional factors include the size of the stage and the quality of local crew. Marsh says that he has an idea of what he wants the show to look like but he has to be realistic. That being said, Marsh believes they have the biggest one-truck show on the road.
When asked where the tour is headed, Marsh replies, “Right now, I’m in the process of designing something for an arena tour. We’re always looking down the road. Definitely, the thought process is that this is going to get bigger. It’s grown since I’ve been involved. I definitely see Blake Shelton standing under a huge lighting rig in the future.”
Marsh says that Starstruck Management Group’s involvement has been a vital part of this tour’s success. “I’ve had a long-standing relationship with Blake’s manager, Brandon Blackstock. Both Brandon and Narvel Blackstock are very creative people and they have contributed greatly to my work. It’s awesome to have an extra set of eyes that may see a moment that I might have missed. It continues to be an exciting environment to work in.”
Additional Crew for this tour includes tour manager, Kevin Canady, production manager, Jeff Parsons, Bandit lighting technician, Matt Dean, monitor engineer, John Stoffel, and guitar technician, Mark Ramsey.