John Mayer

JOHN MAYER: WORLD TOUR 2019

The guitar virtuoso brings his smooth, sonic stylings to arenas across the UK and Ireland, with the UK contingent of 4Wall in tow, providing an expansive lighting rig to the winter tour…

Billed as An Evening with John Mayer, the 2019 tour was a nostalgic exploration of the American singer-songwriter’s back catalogue, featuring tracks including Waiting on the World to Change and Half of my Heart. Following the run, TPi caught up with the man providing visual accompaniment: Lighting Designer, Nate Alves. A re gular fixture on the John Mayer tour bus, Alves has devised the visuals for the artist for the past decade. “I’ve been involved in John Mayer’s past four album cycles,” reflected the LD. “We’ve worked with Treatment Studio and Sam Pattinson as producer for two of those.” Treatment linked up with the camp again to help create the physical set, anchoring Alves’ design. “We created a portal into a scenic installation,” Alves said. “The idea was to have something physical that was primarily lighting and scenery based. As John put it later in an Instagram post, ‘your eye knows when you’re looking at pixels vs seeing something real.’” With the concept in place, the team sat down with Upstaging to create a game plan for the flats and upstage scenery. “The idea was to hide all of the technology that lights the scenic especially,” explained Alves. With a successful US run, both the artist and crew made the transatlantic trip to European shores. For the run, the flown lighting setup was changed due to the availability of lighting fixtures. The rig consisted of three Chroma-Q Color Force II 48s and 72 Color Force II 72s, 28 Martin by Harman MAC Viper Profiles, 34 VDO Sceptron 10s, 20 TMB Solaris Flares, 14 Robe BMFL Washbeams and 38 BMFL Blades. “You can’t beat these fixtures for lighting people,” commented the LD, citing the BMFLs as the main workhouse fixture of the European tour. Alves mixed on an MA Lighting grandMA2. “Almost all of the lighting, scenic and video moves are triggered by a human each night,” he stated. “The sheer amount of material and the non-scripted nature of a lot of it keeps us from locking it down to any type of code.” There were, however, a few elements such as the intro, the video elements of the tracks New Light and Age of Worry, which featured a lyric video locked to code. Th e tour involved a range of very specific scenic lighting fixtures. “4Wall was able to provide exactly what we had been using in the US,” commented Lighting Crew Chief, Chris Coyle. Discussing the company’s involvement with the project was 4Wall Account Executive, Jordan Hanson. “They are all great guys and it was nice to work with them again,” he commented, having worked with the touring party in 2017 under the former HSL banner. “All the US team came to our warehouse in Blackburn to prep, and they hit it off with the UK team straight away. It couldn’t have gone better!” The UK team consisted of Harry Brumpton, Stuart Wright, Simon Anderson and Ameer El-Eryan. Hanson went on to explain that this was the largest production 4Wall had been involved in since having a presence in the UK. “Having a lighting truss not only over the stage but out into the audience was massive for us,” he enthused. The company also provided a Kinesys setup, which was installed within a mother grid. The size and intricacies of the set required a significant amount of preparation. “The use of scenery and a sort of traditional theatrestyle ground row strip light system took a bit of planning,” explained Coyle. “Thankfully, we were able to build some clever bits to allow us to install a theatre rig in an arena at ‘rock show’ speed.” Coyle praised Production Manager, Chris ‘Feelie’ Gott, for offering, “endless support over the years and allowing the team to do things their preferred way”. He commented: “The speed and success of this tour speaks

for itself. Working with 4Wall UK was great. Jordan always goes above and beyond to see that our needs are met.” For Hanson, it was a great opportunity to establish the brand in the UK. “The fact that 4Wall tours like Mariah Carey’s and Christina Aguilera’s arena tour in 2019 have been coming over to the UK helps get the 4Wall name out there,” he shared. In v ideo world, the crew employed the services of Creative Technology. “We tried to use video in a way that complemented the overall stage aesthetic,” stated Alves. “John delivers a setlist anywhere from six hours to 30 minutes before showtime, and they are different every night. The video team will have a look and ask me what colour palette a song is in that night if it’s a new one to them. Our disguise tech, Clif, gives me cue triggers for the individual video looks and I trigger the entire show from an MA Lighting grandMA2.” Having everything come through one desk allowed Alves to adjust levels in real time. “The left half of my console is a series of submasters for video, scenic, backlight and front light,” he said. “This keeps any one element from crushing the other.” Creative Technology’s Nick Knowles shared his experience with the project. “Screenworks has been looking after this show for several years

and they approached Creative Technology to deliver video for the tour this side of the Atlantic – being a part of the NEP group, it was a logical choice,” he added. “Also, having a good relationship with Video Director, Jack Banks helped immensely.” For the European run, Creative Technology provided ROE Visual CB5s for the rear screen along with the backend package consisting of Ross Carbonite PPU and disguise gx 2c media servers. The cameras selected were Panasonic UC4000 and Creative Technology mini cameras. Along with the kit, CT also provided an LED Technician and prep to the existing crew from Screenworks at its headquarters to help with continuity. “This was a great tour. It looked amazing and John Mayer is an incredible artist,” commented Knowles. “This show was a testament to our symbiotic relationship with Screenworks and an example of our ‘one team’ ethos as part of the NEP Group.” TPi Photos: Luke Dyson www.johnmayer.com www.nathanalvesdesign.com www.4wall.com www.ct-group.com