Ayrton, zactrack, Green Hippo and MA Lighting partner on Lionel Richie’s Summer Tour
A wide array of Ayrton fixtures, a zactrack automated follow system, Green Hippo media servers and grandMA3 consoles hit the road with Lionel Richie this summer when he co‐headlined the “Sing A Song All Night Long Tour” across North America with legendary band Earth, Wind & Fire, bringing both arsts’ classic catalogues to arenas and major venues.
ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of all of the aforemenoned brands in North America. Eric Wade, one of the Partners and a Senior Designer with Crossfade Design in Garland, Texas and New Albany, Indiana, served as Producon Designer for the tour with Keith Hoagland as Associate Designer and CFD design team designers/programmers Sam Brown and Brandon Wade. Wade has had a two‐decade relaonship with Richie and is also the Lighng Designer for the arst’s connuing Wynn Las Vegas residency.
Crossfade Design boasts a large inventory of Ayrton fixtures. “Ayrton is my workhorse – it’s what we choose first, only filling in with other brands for specialty lighting that Ayrton doesn’t make,” says Wade.
Brian Burke was the tour’s Creative Director and Sagiv Karpel the Co-creative Director.
A multi-tiered set was created with the band on two risers: They were in line with Richie at the piano on the upper level for slow sets while the guitar and bass moved to the lower level with Richie for faster numbers. “The goal was not to have the piano on stage when it was not in use,” notes Wade. "So we designed it so the piano, a custom clear plexiglass Yamaha, would hide under the stage and come up and down when Lionel needed it.”
A 64-foot wide LED videowall opened in the middle with angled screens revealing Richie in a tunnel-like entrance lit by a big blast from an Ayrton EagleStrike in the centre of the floor. Four more EagleStrikes acted as followspots operating with a zactrack SMART automated follow system. All of the EagleStrike key lights were mounted on truss an average of 137 feet from the stage.
"I love zactrack. We own several systems for our use and do a lot of rentals, too,” reports Wade. “In our business, we’re always at the mercy of who’s behind the spot, and very few people are good at spot operating.
So zactrack is absolutely the best option for us today. Keith just calibrated and tweaked zactrack for 20-25 minutes for each new show, and it worked. It was spot on! Extremely consistent, and that’s what you want in a tour situation.”
Ayrton Veloce Profiles also served as followspots for Richie and the band. Six fixtures were in the downstage truss where they acted as static key lights for the band when it remained in position on stage. One Veloce was in upstage truss and was zactrack controlled to follow Richie’s movements. Twelve Ayrton Eurus Profiles also lit the band members who moved to perform with Richie.
Forty Ayrton Kyalamis were the primary effects lights delivering all the beam and prism effects during the show. They were mounted on four-fingered truss over the stage which fanned out to form two V shapes. Two Ayrton Mambas were in upstage truss to create big backlight looks at Richie’s piano, for example in his performance of “Lady” with the late Kenny Rogers on the videoscreen. “The Mambas are huge, bright and dramatic, but we didn’t use them for big beams in the sky,” says Wade. “We zoomed out and used them as a high-power shadow light that gave a big silhouette look. It was cool, like a giant wash light.
"When you can count on your equipment, it makes your days easy and steady,” Wade notes. “When you have problems, it wears out the crew and management is not happy. When I spec Ayrton lighting I can count on it to be there every day. We carried spares but never pulled them out of the box; Ayrton is probably the most reliable brand on the market.”
Crossfade Design also had a pair of Green Hippo MX series Meuse media servers on the tour housed in custom racks built by Upstaging.
Two active and one backup grandMA3s full-size controlled lighting for the show. Two more controlled the Green Hippo Meuse to run media. A grandMA3 compact XT on the side of the stage handled all the effects and pyro.Another compact grandMA3 compact XT was FOH for the lasers.
The grandMA3 compact XTs were provided by ImageSFX headquartered in Las Vegas.
At Crossfade Design Brandon Wade and Sam Brown were instrumental in putting the show together handling the majority of the programming, including zactrack.
Photos © Toni Wade
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