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Grateful Dead landmark event features Robe BMFLs

US band The Grateful Dead celebrated their 50th anniversary at Soldier Field in Chicago with the three final ‘Fare Thee Well’ shows, produced by Paul Shapiro over the 4th of July holiday weekend 2015, playing to record crowds of 70,000 each night. This followed two gigs the previous weekend, each pulling capacity audiences of 65,000, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

Lighting was designed and directed by the band’s long term LD Candace Brightman, who started with them in 1972. Paul Hoffman of Pulse Lighting LLC provided programming and equipment selection. The pair have collaborated on the Grateful Dead since 2004. Central to the large lighting rig were 50 x Robe BMFL Spots and 32 x Pointes supplied by lighting vendors Felix Lighting in Santa Clara and Bandit Lites in Chicago respectively.

The stage was defined by a series of curved trusses wrapping the central performance space and topping off the PA/side screen wings. Upstage center was a 30 ft diameter circular truss covered with a stretched scrim.

Assisted by Bandit account handler Dizzy Gosnell on the CAD elements, the lighting design and system evolved and morphed several times in the run-up period as new elements - like a live YouTube internet stream at Soldier Fields - came into play.

The BMFL fixtures were hung on the curved trusses. The BMFLs emphasized the general outline of the trusses, allowing them to shoot right to the back corners of the stadium and also to be focused in onto the circular scrim where their gobos could produce projections.

Robe Pointes were used around the central circle to project onto the circular scrim, giving some different patterns from the BMFLs, and also out on the wing curved trusses and floor for some long-throw beams.

As with all Grateful Dead or jam band shows, the challenge was the fact that the same song is never played twice in the same way, so instead of being able to prepare and execute a tightly pre-cued show, Brightman operated the GrandMA 2 console very similar to a musical instrument, playing along with the band as the set unfolded.

Joining Brightman and Hoffman on the creative team for these seminal shows were video operator Aaron Stinebrink and video content producers Tim Zgragen and Obsura Inc. The lighting crew chief was Chris Coyle and the account handler for Felix was Roger Pullis. The webcast from Soldier Field was the first ever live webcast by YouTube.

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