Europe - UB40 recently completed their eight-city UK leg of the Red Red Wine tour, which ended 23 November at Belfast’s SSE Arena. Lighting designer Martin Dudley, owner of Martin’s Lights, is bringing the band closer to the audience through some adroit fixture placement, and the inspired use of Chauvet Professional.
“The Strike 4s are on the front truss as good old-fashioned crowd blinders, and the Rogue R2X washes are in three sets of four fixtures on the floor, one set behind each band riser,” detailed Dudley. “As everyone knows, there’s a lot of crowd participation in a UB40 show, so the blinders help the audience become part of things, in addition to helping the band see who they are singing to.
“On this tour, the Rogue washes do a lot of traditional ACL-style looks from the floor. Of course, with the Rogues, we’re able to do the crowd washing in different colours, and beam widths, as well as with movement, which helps us reflect the energy of the show.”
In addition to looking at nuts-and-bolts details, Dudley arranged his rig to ensure that fans have clear sight of the band regardless of where they’re sitting. “On this tour, we have a video screen that is 4.5m (14.8-feet) tall and its lower edge sits just above head height for practical reasons,” he said. “So, the lighting trusses are trimmed just above the top of the screen – around 6.5m for the back truss and a little higher for the mid truss. The front truss is as high as we can reasonably get it to be, because we do not want it blocking anybody’s view of the stage, even if they’re in the furthest away and highest seats.”
Also, engendering the sense of intimacy between the band and it fans is the clean look of the stage. There are no scenic pieces and minimal fixtures on the stage deck. Most of the floor lighting, as well as the ChamSys console used to run the show, which were taken from Martin’s Lights’ own inventory, are behind the risers.
“The only lights in front of the risers are six moving spots, all tucked away where they don’t cause any problems,” said Dudley. “There are a lot of band members and several of them are frequently moving between the stage and the risers. So, we don’t want to put any trip hazards in the way.”
Limiting the fixtures on the stage deck, Dudley created much of the visual excitement from his flown rig, which was supplied by Liverpool’s Adlib. “The excellent team of Will Sutcliffe and Tim Eastham from Adlib are doing a fantastic job looking after the lights,” said Dudley. “We are also lucky to have Nick Jackson looking after the video screen, and I have my long-term colleague Chris Davey from Touring Electrics setting up the floor lights.”
At the end of UB40’s UK tour, this team could look back on an excellent run. Now, they’re off on an eight-city EU run, which began in Luxembourg and ends in Berlin on 4 December.
