Lighting is so much a part of the Brothers Gow experience that their website refers to their LD Matt Collier as the sixth member of the band. Collier, who traverses the country with the well-travelled band (it's been averaging over 80 shows a year), shares the group's passion for taking the audience's experience to the next level. This commitment led him to expand his lighting rig for the current tour by adding Rogue R1 Spot LEDs from Chauvet Professional.
"I've been wanting to add Rogues to the rig for some time," said Collier. "Their brightness and speed drew me to them, and they have a lot of special gobo features that I could use to create unique looks. This is important to us. We don't want a Brothers Gow show to look like any other concert that you see at whatever club you find us at. That's why we don't rely on house lights for our rig."
Collier is using four Rogue R1 Spots on the Bring The Heat tour. He's hanging the moving fixtures evenly spaced on 20' upstage truss flown 15' in the air by stands. "I make the Rogues the focal point of my rig because they are so bright and have very crisp, good looking gobos. The band covers a very wide range of musical styles and is very improvisational, so they can veer off in a lot of different directions. My Rogues are great for this environment, because they can keep up.
"The Rogue's colour wheel and gobo wheel are very fast; so is the pan/tilt movement, which is great for the intense high impact songs," continued the LD. "But the fixture is also very smooth on slow pan/tilt movements for the softer songs. Touring a lot, we also play in a variety of places with different size stages. In the short time since I added them to our rig, the Rogues have been excellent in every kind of venue."
Joining the Rogues on the upstage truss are eight Chauvet DJ SlimPAR 64 RGB LED colour mixing fixtures. "I hang the Rogues from the truss and put the SlimPARs on top," said Collier. "This creates some nice depth over the stage."
Above the upstage truss, Collier positions two Chauvet Professional Q-Spot 560-LED moving fixtures. He also flies two additional Q-Spots on downstage truss.
Also contributing to the eye searing look on the downstage truss are eight additional SlimPAR 64s and four Intimidator Wash Zoom 350 IRCs. Rounding out Collier's Brothers Gow rig are four Q-Spot 260 LED moving fixtures positioned evenly apart on the drum riser and on cases that flank it on either side.
Outside his rig, Collier has positioned four Intimidator Beam LED 350 fixtures. This gives him a crisp border for his design.
(Jim Evans)
