A new journey

Steve is still the name of the lead singer for this band that hails from the city by the bay--but this time his surname is Augeri, not Perry. Yes, for all those fans who didn't stop believing, Journey is back.

Starting off with an invite-only show in San Francisco last June, LD Warwick Price put together a lighting system for the band that hadn't performed live in 12 years. The LD later went out with them on a three-month US theatre tour last fall. Supplying Price with 20 Icons(R) and 30 Icon Washlights(TM), Light & Sound Design served as main lighting contractor for the Vacation's Over tour. Equipment also included 12 three-cell cyclights and 12 High End Systems Dataflash(R) AF-1000s.

"It's really a moving rig, which made it fun to program because there wasn't a whole lot of equipment," Price says. "Fifty moving lights wasn't really a lot in this situation because it needed to look a whole lot bigger than it was. They didn't have any stage set, so I used the upstage truss with vertical trusses hanging down and two downstage towers to fill out the space. The moving lights were all spaced out and hung pretty randomly, so that also helped make it look bigger."

Price designed, programmed, and ran the show on his own, which he says is his preferred way to work. "I only had two days to program 23 songs. That was pretty brutal, but they had given me the songs a month before and it helped that I had listened to them a lot beforehand."

The only new song the band performed was "Remember Me" from the Armageddon soundtrack. "So the show was pretty much hit after hit," Price says. "The set changed slightly over the course of the tour--it was constantly developing. I programmed every day, and it's always fun to add new looks. By the time we finished the tour, the difference between the first show and the last was night and day."

According to Price, the same was true for the band's performances. "They've got so much talent, and Steve managed to capture the fans from the first two lines of the first song, 'Separate Ways.' There was always such a great cheer at that moment, and it was all downhill from there."

Helping Price out on the road were lighting crew chief Tod Metz, master electrician Katie Marks, and Icon technician Steve Haskins. "They were excellent," Price says. "The band is going back out to play sheds this summer, so we're hoping we can get the same bunch of people out on the tour. The music is great to light. I'm really looking forward to having a new lighting system and going through the whole programming process again. Now that I have more insight into the music, it will be even more fun to program."