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Mathias Kuhn lights Creed shows with Robe

Floridian hard rock band Creed’s “Summer of 99” and “Are You Ready?” tours this year were among the fastest selling rock shows in the USA. The production design was created by Mathias Kuhn and included eighty Robe moving lights and LED fixtures - 36 MegaPointes, thirty BMFL Spots, four BMFL FollowSpots, ten Footsie2 LED footlights, and four RoboSpot remote follow systems - all supplied by rental company Bandit Lites out of Nashville.

The initial summer tour played a mix of arenas, theatres and amphitheaters with 10K to 36K capacities and the most recent leg stepped up to arenas, including Madison Square Garden, which were all sold out. Kuhn is based in Hamburg, Germany, and brings his style and aesthetic to a lot of rock and metal bands, a genre he loves and that offers plenty of scope for imagination and dramatic lighting.

Kuhn talked to the band after being asked onboard, who revealed that they liked the idea of a circular halo-like shape being associated with the stage look. Kuhn took this as a stylistic starting point, basing the essential trussing architecture around two circles, a main 41-ft diameter sphere that defined the space, in conjunction with a smaller 21-ft diameter “supporting” circle flown inside the big one. Both were scalable to deal with different sized venues.

The fragmented LED screens were part of the look Kuhn crafted to avoid the “big TV” syndrome, complete with ladder trusses loaded with fixtures in between to further break it up and enhance the depth of the performance area. He controlled the screen outputs via his Resolume video server, triggered by the lighting desk, which ensured there could be a mix of playback content and IMAG footage from seven cameras.

Robe MegaPointes are consistently Kuhn’s first choice of moving light. “They are the first piece of kit that goes on the plot”, he says. Eighteen units were rigged on ladders in between LED screens at the left and right upstage corners of the rig, hung vertically in a line of nine each side, with the other 18 deployed on the floor on rolling Tyler GT truss, located directly underneath the LED screens.

BMFLs were chosen as workhorse fixtures. Eighteen units were rigged on the downstage half of the large circle, with four on each side of the stage on subs to extend the overall stage look. Four standard BMFL Spots were also part of the follow spotting system together with four BMFL FollowSpots (with the integral camera).

It was Kuhn’s first time out with the Footsies, which were used to assist key lighting, running in combination with the four-way RoboSpot system controlling the eight BMFLs. They were rigged four per side on two small truss sections flown downstage left and right. Having the follow spots at this very steep angle to the stage ensured they had a neat trajectory and minimized unsightly spillage.

Also on the rig were some other hard-edged fixtures, strobes, blinders and FX units with LED floodlights on the large halo, plus a few wash lights on the floor - Kuhn is not a fan of wash lights in conventional contexts. Different shades, textures and variations of white dominated the show, making it raw and contrasty, with color mainly introduced via the video content. Kuhn’s personal presence is generally to avoid distracting gawdy or “candy colored” scenes and keep it stark with the focus on the band and music.

The principal idea was to keep the band front and center of the action and at the epicenter of the picture. “It’s a live rock show, not a YouTube stream”, says Kuhn. Video content was commissioned by Creed and delivered by Wayne Joyner and Dave Letelier with a lot of discussion between them and Kuhn as it was imperative for the two medias to dovetail. “They did a great job”, says Kuhn. Content was shaped for each song, leaving enough black and dark spaces for him to mix and apply IMAG feeds and effects as he felt appropriate.

Kuhn set up, programmed lighting and ran the show for half of the first leg of the “Summer of 99” tour before leaving due to other commitments, with lighting crew member Brian Bogovic operating for the remaining dates. Bandit’s lighting crew chief was Cheyan DeBrower who was joined by Haley Elliott and Lucas Gamez, with Kenneth Ackermann working as video crew chief for this department which had equipment supplied by PRG.

(Photos: Chuck Brueckmann/Mark Scherer)

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