When I first started my lighting company, I didn’t know what the hell I was doin’. . . not that I know anything now. Working with nearly hundreds of musicians and artist in the first couple years, I was more interested in the art of lighting and of course meeting girls. I was Charlotte’s indie lighting guy working with anybody who would give me a chance to practice my art. I felt a certain amount of prestige working with the best of Charlotte’s local musicians. I have played music venues all over the east coast, and I am comfortable in the indie circuit. I was barely making $300 a week with my 6 movers and 3 LED pars, I did everything my way, and I was happy.

Well, I cashed in, grew up, or whatever you want to call it. Over the years I have learned a couple things; my clients have learned to trust my judgment and art. Selling out to the high paying clients, I don’t work the indie circuit anymore. I could use my kid as the excuse but honestly I love designing bigger shows and buying more gear which requires lots of money. Now that Eye Dialogue has 8 full time employees, I spend most my time chasing the big fish and the pressure sometimes gets to me. When Vance Carlyle asks me to light his band’s CD release party at Snug Harbor, I really wanted to do it. First, I hadn’t setup a show at Snug Harbor yet, Charlotte’s sheik new live music pirate bar. Also, Vance is a friend of mine from the beginning years. Plus the Houstons are one of my favorite local bands. They ask how much it cost. I told them both that they couldn’t afford me and they need to just make an offer. The amount of money wasn’t important but when I do things for free I am usually taken for granted.

Snug Harbor is a small hip live music venue with no accommodations for the power needs of cans. If you know anything about my company, you know that doesn’t matter because our entire inventory is LED and movers (with a dozen Lekos and pars . . . shh! Don’t tell anyone). Vance was the creative direction behind the show and he didn’t want a rock concert. We decided to use only LEDs because he wanted subtlety and ambience.

The setup was simple but effective. 8 Elation Opti RGB lit the stage. Justin Faircloth, the main singer, was cross washed with two LED’s. The remaining members each had a dedicated light. Vance decorated the stage with white Lycra stretches on the walls giving me an empty palette for color. I lined the back walls with Color Kinetics Colorcast 14’s to create layers of light.

The ability to light every musician individually with LED’s allowed me to high light them during features. For instance, one of the songs, I was running a water effect created with a strong blue and a random morphing of green unique to each fixture. For the singers and soloist I manually morphed the dedicated light to yellow- a dynamic and complimentary color. The back drop remained solid blue increasing the visual depth from front to back of the stage threw darkening colors.

If you haven’t got a chance to hear the Houstons, go to their myspace page (www.myspace.com/thehoustons). They are remarkable musicians and extremely nice guys. The CD release party was a huge success both captivating musically and visually stunning. I was honored to help create a visual presentation worthy of the artist.