A lighting designer with Nashville-based Pulse
Lighting, Justin Casey has been working with the band since last July. Moe. tours year-round; their winter tour
recently concluded in Manhattan. “The
band celebrated its 25th anniversary year in 2015, and the winter tour wrapped
in New York City on St. Patrick’s Day,” says Casey. “I’ll be redesigning the winter rig for
Moe.’s summer festival tour.” Main Light
Industries supplied the lights and consoles for the winter tour.
Casey chose 12 Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K20s and four Stormy
CC RGBW LED Strobes for the rig. The
B-EYEs were the “workhorses of the rig” delivering the primary lighting for the
band as well as “eye candy in their pixel-mapping mode,” he explains. “I liked having full control of the lights to
create my own very colorful gobo effects – the band got crazy and the lights
got crazy, too. The B-EYEs gave me the
ability to make things different all the time; they set the rig apart from
others that moe. had before.”
Casey is new to B-EYEs having seen them at LDI and at
product demos. “Up ‘til now I haven’t
had a client who was a good fit for them,” he notes. “Moe. is a really creative jam band so the
B-EYEs’ really cool eye candy and kaleidoscopic looks suited them.”
Casey deployed the B-EYEs in a ground package or flew
them depending on the size of the venue.
“Sometimes we flew half and used half on the ground,” he says. “In smaller venues they were all on the ground.”
People commented on the powerful lights “every time we
did a show,” Casey reports. “In their
pixel-mapping mode I could do different color chases and dimming runs. Sometimes I used them as rings, sometimes I
used the middle couple of cells, sometimes they were washes open wide and
throwing color everywhere.”
But “programming the B-EYEs was a task at first,” says
Casey who also served as lighting programmer and board operator. “A.C.T was really helpful in getting a
profile up and running for exactly how I wanted to use the B-EYEs.”
Although a lot of venues have strobe lights in their
house rigs, Casey selected the Stormy CC RGBW Strobes to add color to
conventional strobe effects. “They gave
us a traditional look for some songs and a lot of color saturation for others,”
he explains. “It was nice to have them
along on the tour.”
“Main Light has been great to me during the tour,”
Casey notes. “They know how the road is
and sent me out with great gear.
“A.C.T’s technical support was amazing, too. It was really huge. If I had any questions on site I’d call and
they were on it right away giving me an answer or walking me through a
solution.”
A.C.T Lighting is the exclusive North American
distributor for Clay Paky.
Francesco Romagnoli, Clay Paky Area Manager for North
and Latin America, added, “This is a very interesting tour and Mr. Casey was
able to create some very unique looks from our fixtures. I’m glad we were about
to help him achieve this with our lights.”
