Dierks Bentley's longtime lighting designer Chris Reade has worked with the country star for the past two decades, and serves as programmer, touring lighting director, and creative director for the current Off The Map Tour. Bentley's show at the Fontainebleau BleauLive Theatre in Las Vegas on Saturday, December 5, is a highlight of LDI's Backstage Las Vegas event, with Reade talking to the group about the tour lighting and how it adapts for venues such as this one.
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Live Design: How long have you done lighting for Dierks Bentley, and how has the rig/technology changed over the years?
Chris Reade: I have had the honor of working with Dierks for a long time now. We are just wrapping our 20th year together. Obviously there has been quite a lot of growth in the technologies available to us during this time. We have gone away from incandescent instruments and lamp sourced moving lights to mostly LED based instruments, as most people have over this time. We have weaved in and out of some design choices over the years in regards to special effects and the like, and of course scale has varied throughout this time as well.
For this tour we went away from using content and focused on IMAG windows on the LED wall. We use varied looks in regards to sizing and treatments. The power of the looks come from direction and cuts instead of relying on content.
LD: What does he look for in lighting his shows – do you have an artistic / aesthetic vocabulary you have developed together?
CR: Dierks provides me with a lot of space when it comes to lighting. Early on there were a few things we discussed like color choices and why songs felt the way they did, what the message should be. It's been a wonderful opportunity for me, as we do tend to like a lot of similar things. Vibe and punch are consistent descriptions that fit the overall vision we go for.
Color palette is easier to say what isn't used (magenta and greens). They don't really fit what Dierks is doing artistically, to me. We use a lot of color temperature looks, whether open white, a version of CTO or CTB and mix those in with some of the harsher primary and secondary colors.
LD: How does the tour lighting adapt for a venue like BleauLive?
CR: Each adaptation is pretty unique outside of our regular tour design. Some tour stops require some tweaks, usually based on rigging. These kinds of theater shows rely on the house lighting system, with supplementation of parts of our tour design to try and emulate what the design is for the tour. That's easier said than done, but we try pretty hard for consistency between shows-whether for the tour, a festival or for a theater such as this one. We will frame the video wall with part of our tour design, and have our floor/set package as well. I think we will probably end up with about 85 instruments from the tour to supplement the overhead theater instruments.
LD: What is the most challenging and/or satisfying thing about lighting design for you in general?
CR: Each design has its challenges, and that's ok. That's a part of anything worth doing. I think the most satisfying part of design is the collaboration with others to get a cohesive design that we can be proud of. We have had the good fortune to design with and learn from Bruce Rodgers of Tribe, Inc for the last 12 years or so, and I am so grateful for that opportunity.
LD: And Rodgers adds: “I think Chris Reade is a brilliant lighting designer who has a natural knack for epic and emotional lighting as well on the fly changes that occur in a tour like this. He and Dierks have a way of communicating that is unlike any other designer/artist relationship out there and it shows across the years of their collaborations together.