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Martin Dudley connects UB40 to fans with help from Chauvet Professional

Lighting designer Martin Dudley, owner of Martin’s Lights Ltd, chose Chauvet Professional’s Strike 4 blinders and Rogue R2X Washes for the just-concluded 8-city UK leg of UB40’s international “Red Red Wine” tour.

“The Strike 4s were on the front truss as good old-fashioned crowd blinders, and the Rogue R2X washes were in three sets of four fixtures on the floor, one set behind each band riser”, reports Dudley. “As everyone knows, there’s a lot of crowd participation in a UB40 show, so the blinders helped the audience become part of things, in addition to helping the band see who they were singing to.”

“On this tour, the Rogue washes did a lot of traditional ACL-style looks from the floor”, he continues. “With the Rogues, we were able to do the crowd washing in different colors, and beam widths, as well as with movement, which helped us reflect the energy of the show.”

Dudley arranged his rig to ensure that fans had clear sight of the band regardless of where they were sitting. “We had a video screen that is 4.5 m (14.8 feet) tall and its lower edge sat just above head height for practical reasons”, he says. “So, the lighting trusses were trimmed just above the top of the screen - around 6.5 m (21.3 feet) for the back truss and a little higher for the mid truss. The front truss was as high as we could reasonably get it to be, because we did not want it blocking anybody’s view of the stage, even if they were in the furthest away and highest seats.”

Also, engendering the sense of intimacy between the band and its fans was the clean look of the stage. There were 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, taken from Martin’s Lights’ own inventory, were behind the risers.

“The only lights in front of the risers were six moving spots, all tucked away where they didn’t cause any problems”, adds Dudley.  “There are a lot of band members and several of them were frequently moving between the stage and the risers. So, we didn’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 were doing a fantastic job looking after the lights”, says Dudley. “We were also lucky to have Nick Jackson looking after the video screen, and I had my long-term colleague Chris Davey from Touring Electrics Ltd setting up the floor lights.”

After the UK leg of the “Red Red Wine” tour, this team is now off on an 8-city EU run, which began November 26 in Luxembourg and ends in Berlin December 4.

(Photos: Richard Purvis/RJP Photography UK)

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