PLSN caught up with Bon Jovi’s longtime designer Doug “Spike” Brant of Nimblist, the company he runs with Justin Collie based out of Lancaster, PA. Together the two designers and their team put on various immersive entertainment projects, live sports, broadcast specials, festivals and special events and most notably concert tours with the likes of Lady Gaga, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, just to name a few. We spoke with Brant about his work on the current Bon Jovi — This House Is Not For Sale Tour, along with lighting director and automation programmer Joe Bay.

Doug ‘Spike’ Brant
Production and Lighting Designer

The tour design conversation started with Brant & Jon Bon Jovi before the album was finished last spring, where they sat down at Jon’s home studio in New Jersey after a band rehearsal.

“Jon discussed where he was coming from and brought up an image he had seen of a dilapidated house that had grown roots. That Jerry Uelsmann image became the album cover. The last tour set the bar very high. Both Jon and I felt it was the best show yet that leveraged video projection in a very spectacular way that was very over the top.”

“This time, the brief was to simplify and move away from spectacle and focus on the music. Through a lifetime of work and love for the music, Bon Jovi has grown from being the star of an era to become a timeless icon of American songwriting. The design draws inspiration from the transformation that Jon embodies. We sought to give voice to the honest, introspective, uplifting message that the man and his music bring to the fans. To do that, we wanted to strip away the distractions of the production, but still present a dynamic show.”

They picked six key words to guide them forward — “Integrity, Authentic, Wisdom, Mortality, Endurance” and “Transcendence.”

“We had three key themes as the basis of the design. First off was ‘The House’ — the form as a symbol for everything that Bon Jovi has built over the years, and its deep roots. Its construction and transformation tell the story of his career. Second was ‘Light’ — volumetric beams of light form ethereal architectures. Light can define spaces like physical materials do, but they also refer to the limitless and transcending nature of the Bon Jovi story. Third was ‘Industry’ — Metal structures of beams and truss allude to the labor of building a monumental legacy. The strong architecture of these structures evoke endurance, and purpose.

“We finally sat down with Jon last fall and presented the initial design with no video elements, but with scenic elements functioning as kinetic machines to create ethereal and industrial architecture with structures and light. He loved it, and challenged us to develop an opening to not only build excitement but to give context to the moment. This added video elements to the show.”

Brant has again partnered with Tait Towers for the production design coming to life.

“We have pushed the limits of design and technology since we started designing Bon Jovi in 2000. The Navigator system is unparalleled in the industry. Without it, the motion in this show would be impossible. For this tour, we took the machines that were designed and built for the last tour and repurposed them in a different way. The telescoping triangular towers and the Y-winches that made up the solid hex columns for projection were stripped down to their raw essence.

“We made the conscious decision not to clad anything and make scenery that was a facade. Everything is real and practical. The design is simple and raw, yet transformative and dynamic. It has become the trademark of Bon Jovi arena shows to present a clean stage to the audience when they enter the room that becomes kinetic and ever evolving throughout the show. It is important to be able to direct the audience’s attention.”

PRG is the Bon Jovi tour lighting vendor again for 2017, with Mark O’Herlihy, Eamonn McCullagh and Jennifer Christiansen as tour reps.

“[PM] Jesse Sandler has a deep relationship with PRG, and has his go-to team with Tim Probert (lighting crew chief), who understands what he expects from his road crew and vendor. For the design team, Hayden Katz was the star. He was there for all the overnight programming sessions and helped tech all the gremlins out of the rig.

“The lighting rig is very powerful and the [Claypaky] Scenius spots are the stars of the show; they are the best hard edge currently available. I am also a big fan of the X4 XL from German Light Products, with the concentric rings on them. It takes away the glare off axis and helps them not feel like an LED fixture. The Showtec Sunstrips are a simple fixture, but so effective, and they give us an authentic tungsten look the show requires. The Solaris Flares are a workhorse, and we could have used more! They really have no competitor for a super bright wash/strobe. The PRG Best Boys are the Swiss army knife of the rig and live on all the kinetic lifts and winches.

“For the towers, we originally spec’d the Robe Spikie, but after getting our hands on them, we realized we needed more punch. PRG offered the Icon Beam, which has proven to be a great light and reminded me of the bygone days back at LSD. Finally, we are using the PRG Ground Control for all the spots in the show, giving us consistent level, angle and cuing impossible using house spots.”

The tour is Tony Bongiovi’s return as video director, after taking a hiatus to start a family and grow his pasta sauce business, says Brant.

“The camera package includes two cameras at FOH and two mounted on a track wrapping around three sides of the stage. Tony and the flypack live backstage. The 7mm LED screens for I-Mag are only visible to obstructed view on the side, behind the stage or upper bowl seats that can’t see Jon and the band. If you have a good seat on the floor or lower bowl we don’t provide a TV for you to watch… this is a live rock show. Watch the band and listen to the music!”

Brant wanted to find more ways to use the projectors beyond the two-minute opening.

“I imagined roll drops behind the band for a second moment in the show, but kept the idea to myself. During rehearsals, I was with the band discussing the new record and the heartfelt stories Jon was telling, and how we should find a way to add that to the show. Jon asked about adding a backdrop for that moment in the show. That discussion turned into deconstructing that backdrop into the five strips we have now. The third way we use projection is to project directly onto the band, stage and audience as a texture. The six Barco 30K’s are hung in portrait in pairs. Control Freak handled the screen control and playback of the PRG projectors using d3 media servers.”

Brant’s company Nimblist produced all the content for the tour.

“We tapped my friend and collaborator Scott Peterman to be the content creative director. Scott and I come from totally different worlds but we have a kindred spirit. We have worked on many projects, and he is a strategic partner to Nimblist. I was excited to bring him into the world of rock ‘n’ roll. His point of view as a technologist, screenwriter and creative director was refreshing and invaluable through the process, not just with the content, but looking at the overall arc of the show. It started with the intro, where we took Jon’s inspiration for the opening, and developed the concept of a custom opening for each city. Scott worked with our favorite animator and visual designer, Andrew Hildebrand, to build it out.

“They both created custom coding and scripting to make the daily customization practical and affordable. When Jon added the roll drops for the storyteller portion of the set, which focuses on the new songs, we worked with the existing videos that were shot along with creating some new content from scratch. With the increased scope of the content needs, we reached out to Oli Goulet from 4U2C and his team to help us with the additional content. All in all, the team did an amazing job of delivering, with minimal revisions, exactly what Jon was looking for. For ‘Scars on This Guitar,’ we do use a live camera with a sepia effect which works nicely.”

The conversation always starts with Paul Korzilius, who sets the tone of each tour cycle from the start, says Brant.

“Paul has been with Jon since Slippery When Wet, where we met on my first tour. He was very clear from the beginning where Jon wanted to go with this tour. He is constantly challenging us to justify the design and cost, which I see as a healthy practice. Jesse Sandler has been an awesome partner in putting this show together. With Bon Jovi, not only do we need to deliver an amazing show, but Paul also demands efficiency and high return on his investment. This means keeping the production in as few trucks as possible and justifying every expense. Jesse has been great fighting to get what is needed for the show and balancing the design and reality of operations.

“This tour, we had a completely new design team to program the show, starting with the lighting director Joe Bay. He is a young star and this is his first tour. We took a chance on him a few years back and gave him his first job in the industry. Recently, he has been working under the mentorship of Eric Marchwinski and Kirk Miller at Earlybird Visual LLC. He has built his chops programming, impressing designer Kille Knobel on Pearl Jam and my partner Justin Collie on Ice Cube at Coachella. As the LD and programmer, he has pushed the limits of the grandMA2 as the central show controller.

“At Tait, my old friend Matt Hales was our project manager and helped get us through all the challenges of a system this dynamic along with Jimmy Southworth, the Navigator programmer. We also had the Tait super stars of Alex Serrano and Ben Gasper help get all the machines running flawlessly. The biggest star on the automation side is Madison Wade, the tour Navigator tech and all around smart dude. We were lucky to have him, and he was critical in letting us push the limits of everything.

“The tour and design represent the evolution and continued relevance of Bon Jovi. The band sounds better than ever. This show reflects where they are now; more comfortable than ever with who they are. It’s a great show that doesn’t distract, but adds to the music and the message.”

Joe Bay
Lighting Director and Automation Programmer

Joe notes that this show provided a few technical challenges.

“We’re driving lighting, video playback, and automation all from a single console. It took a few weeks just to develop a programming workflow that’s efficient yet powerful. With just under 40 axes of motion moving constantly throughout the show, there are a lot of important elements to think about. One major feat was the stage tracking. This allows us to take any fixture and focus it on Jon — regardless of it’s position/rotation. This level of tracking gives us the ability to create powerful looks that weren’t possible before. This was made possible by the real-time positional feedback from Navigator. I was able to push the XYZ tracking functionality of the grandMA2 and always had a quick response from the guys at ACT Lighting whenever needed. We also used XYZ tracking for the less noticeable things, such as evenly lighting the hex towers as they move. Because the console knows where the moving pieces are, it allows us to track those pieces with light.

“The approach to programming automation is a lot different than programming lighting. Lights are more forgiving; you can try things and quickly determine if you like them. Automation, on the other hand, requires more care. With that much weight in the air, you could very quickly cause problems if you’re not cautious. That’s when MA3D proved to be a great tool. It allowed us to create elements in previz, and then send it to the real world when we were ready.

“Having a strong relationship with Spike is important, especially being both the programmer and the lighting director. This show isn’t something that you program once and take out on the road, it’s an evolving thing that I’m constantly improving. The set list is flexible, with songs being added to the show all the time, meaning I’ll often be programming up until doors. Luckily, we have an awesome crew that is always ready to go and make it happen.”

Spike Brant and Justin Collie Rebrand

Performance Environment Design Group (PEDG), noted for their creative work in the live event and installation world and currently designing the Bon Jovi tour, has rebranded.

“We realized it was time to actually design our company, form it into what we want to represent and where we would like to go,” says Doug “Spike” Brant. “We wanted to come up with a new name that both represented and inspired us.”

If the “Nimblist” name is new, the partnership between Brant and Justin Collie is anything but; their alliance has already spanned 18 years. And they made the joint decision that their hearts and phone call queries were taking them beyond what the alphabetically formulaic “PEDG” moniker might suggest.

“The name Nimblist reflects our approach. It’s how we do what we do,” Collie says. “We have a deep commitment to our craft and are dedicated to creating memorable events and experiences for our clients.”

Among the many acts they have designed for are Beastie Boys, Beck, Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Lil Wayne and Pearl Jam. Other work includes the NHL Winter Classic, NFL Kick Off, Pepsi Fan Jam and the first YouTube Music Awards. Major projects for large consumer and entertainment media brands include Nike, Syfy Channel and non-profits such as Robin Hood Foundation, David Lynch Foundation and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

With offices in Lancaster, PA and Los Angeles and a total of 20 employees, they now look for challenges and partnerships that allow them to apply their skill set in boundless ways. “I don’t want to be limited — and with a name like ‘Nimblist’ we can do anything!” Brant says, with a laugh.

Beginnings

“I’ve been doing this my entire adult life,” Brant says, of live event work. Raised in Arizona, he discovered lighting and audio to avoid singing in his parent’s church choir.

That experience evolved into getting a job with a local company and starting on the road as a lighting technician. Ironically, his first tour was on Bon Jovi in 1987, the sixth person on a five-person lighting crew. “I toured and toured and came up doing every crew job there was,” he says.

Collie says he “stumbled” into the business after being an electrician’s apprentice and getting a job at the then London-based Zenith Lighting (now based in Florida). In 1987, he landed on a Mötley Crüe tour, his first foray into the U.S. Later, on Def Leppard’s Hysteria tour, he met Brant. They clicked and became good friends, going on parallel career paths for a while.

However, when Brant needed an assist on a Korn show in 1999, he turned to Collie. The experience was productive and enjoyable, and the two decided to form a company together. In 2000, they founded ArtFag, which became PEDG in 2007.

“The original name became an issue, and we had to move on from that, and in the absence of any branding skills, we went with Performance Environment Design Group, which was originally our tagline,” Collie explains.

“We continued to grow and evolve, developing a much more diverse skill set allowing us to focus on a variety of work. We realized we needed a name more suitable to who we had become.” They hired Pentagram, a New York-based design consultancy, and arrived at Nimblist.

Brant says they are building a new company that is innovative and generative. Generative? “We’re not based on generating revenues for the ‘shareholder,’ as typically defined in the world of publicly held companies in the traditional business world,” Brant says. Collie adds they were inspired by the “generative” idea after reading Marjorie Kelly’s book, Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution.

The book encourages business owners not to focus exclusively on maximizing financial income, but create conditions for life for many generations to come. “It’s what we’re all about,” Collie says. “We make a profit, but that’s not our primary function — we want to provide an environment where employees have work/life balance and do work that they believe in.”

“At the end of the day we want to be part of something making the world a little better place,” Brant says. “We want to work with good people and for good causes, and we want to apply our skills and talents — [to] use our powers for good!” he says, with a smile.

Concert Touring and Beyond

In the concert touring world, there’s longtime client, Bon Jovi (see “Designer Insights,” page 32). The team first got the call to work with Bon Jovi in 2000, which Brant calls their “big break.” “We’ve been doing design work for them ever since,” Brant says. “We’ve gotten to do incredible things for them over the years, and that usually involves bringing in new technology.”

This tour is a bit different, though — it’s the first major tour that began without longtime guitarist Richie Sambora, who parted ways with the band during their “Because We Can” tour in 2013. Sambora’s replacement, Philip Eric Xenidis, a.k.a. Phil X, is now an official member of the band.

“We looked to what we’ve done in the past but wanted to be a little more efficient, plus have it be a good experience for the band,” Brant says. “When you walk into the arena for this one, you don’t know what is going to happen, because the stage is very clean. But there’s a lot of moving elements, and it’ll be more kinetic and dynamic.”

Interestingly, the new show will have little video. “People need a break from the g*d#$m screens!” They promise that the set will be constantly morphing into other things. “But in the end, it’s all about the music, and the band sounds better than it ever has.”

Collie says in addition to focusing on the concert touring segment, they are developing a diverse group of projects. Current and recent collaborations include a project with artist Simon Birch called 14th Factory, which is due to open this month for a six-week run in a former Chinese import/export factory in Los Angeles’ Glassell Park neighborhood. Nimblist also worked with the city of Houston in support of Super Bowl LI. Other collaborations include the design of Cher’s final residency in Las Vegas, with shows in February and May 2017, staged at the Monte Carlo casino’s 5,200-seat Park Theater venue, among others. And Nimblist is also supporting a number of charity events this year.

“We position ourselves as partners in helping clients get to the big picture,” Brant says. “We’re able to build something with them and fulfill a variety of roles that ultimately are design-centric.” Their permanent installation work is a newer area of focus, which both say is exciting for them. “Permanent installation work is intriguing, especially as technology evolves and allows a wider array of tools. Coming from a live/show business background, taking how that world uses videos, computers, LED, etc. and transposing that into an installation is exciting.”

Kille Knobel and Nimblist Serve Up a Unique Design with a Darkly Lit Forest of Ropes

Temple of the Dog consists of vocalist Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam members Stone Gossard (guitar), Jeff Ament (bass), Mike McCready (lead guitar), and Matt Cameron (drums). The band released just one album in 1991, but its success really grew much stronger the following year when the band members, along with TOTD guest vocalist Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam, emerged as music industry icons.

Last year, the original TOTD band members reconvened to mark 25 years since the release of that self-titled album. We spoke with lighting designer/director Kille Knobel and production designer Spike Brant, who both have a history with Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.

Familiar Faces, New Looks

“Kille and I have a very long and special relationship with Pearl Jam and, specifically, “Smitty” [tour manager Mark Smith],” says Brant. “The vibe of everyone involved was very comfortable, smooth and calm. Everyone that I talked to when the tour was announced was excited about it. We were coming off the large Pearl Jam shoot at Wrigley Field, and the brief for TOTD was completely different. We designed into one truck and a very tight budget. It was a great challenge on top of the design parameters defined by Jeff Ament.”

“I knew while it was a familiar crowd, it would be a very different kind of show,” says Kille Knobel. “The Temple of the Dog touring personnel was largely comprised of Pearl Jam staff. Having worked with both Pearl Jam and Chris Cornell from Soundgarden, I was delighted to be asked to participate,” she adds. “It was really fun to have the opportunity to challenge ourselves and to step outside of our familiar world to achieve something that felt very different. No one wanted it to feel or look like a Pearl Jam or Soundgarden show.”

The Production Design

With the trees depicted in the TOTD “Hunger Strike” video as a key starting point, the team came up with ideas on a production design. It would be impractical, of course, to tour with actual trees, so instead, the design team came up with the idea of using a forest of ropes instead.

“Through the inception process, we explored many options, from realistic to abstract,” Brant notes. “The idea of the ropes creating the tree shapes satisfied all the requirements of the design; organic, transparent for the 360-degree shows, packed small, played big. Once we had the concept and approval from the band, we reached out to our partners at Atomic Scenic to manufacture them. They are Nimblist’s (formerly PEDG) preferred scenic vender and part of the Rock Lititz production community. With the Nimblist office in Lancaster, PA, it was awesome to be able to drive 15 minutes and look at prototypes and work through the many steps of the design process in person, as pictures can’t replace being there.”

The Lighting

As for the lighting design, “we were given some pretty specific starting points that we got to run with, for the look of the show,” Knobel continues. “Key lighting concepts were the feeling of darkness, starkness, unconfined washes, hidden sources, asymmetrical lighting and heavy floor lighting. I was asked to not use any ‘cones’ of lights, which I knew meant graphic hard edge use and gobos. The hard edge in the air was up there to help out lighting the ‘trees,’ and when I used the fixtures overhead, pointed anywhere except the trees, they tended to be very zoomed-out and soft.

“We used a semi-monochromatic approach in color, erring on the side of less-rich and unsaturated colors — a lot of white, sepia, and what I call ‘no color’ and ‘dirty’ versions of blues, greens, and ambers,” Kille adds. “We did break the self-imposed constraints for some songs, but similar to the hard-edge use, it felt refreshing, because it looked so different. The only changes I really made once we got going was fine tuning, or if we added additional songs.

“While the rig was very small, we had several options to light the trees in terms of angle and fixture choice.” Kille continues. “We were able to treat the trees as a backdrop and it turns out rope is a very neutral material to light. I was able to get a lot of nice breakup and color modeling. Some songs the trees were soft, some textured and some of the prism and rotation work looked pretty wild on our punk rock set.”

The Fixtures

Relying heavily on Solaris Flares as a wash source, Knobel notes that they were her go-to light on the tour to achieve big baths of light. “I rarely used them as a strobe,” she says. “We didn’t want anything to feel too digital, so any multi-cell chasing, both on the Solaris and the [Claypaky] B-Eyes, was done to look cool in the air and not seeing the source. I am not a big fan of seeing honeycomb LED sources but rely on them, because they are such an effective and versatile wash source. There were a few raised eyebrows when I spec’d the B-Eyes, but you cannot beat lighting an entire band from one side with two lights. I’m a huge fan of the Scenius spots, but this was my first time trying the Profiles and thought why not make them the entire hard edge package. I missed some of the gobos of the spot, but these lights are still hands-down my favorite hard edge.”

Kudos for the Crew

Knobel enjoyed working with what was, in her words, “the most overqualified small tour, lighting crew ever!” Her team included longtime crew mates Dan McDonough and Josh Henderson. “We’ve worked together for years, and we are like family. To have both of them on this tour, and Mat Burden as stage manager… the total dream team. I was lucky enough to get to work with Joe Bay for the first time, he is a phenomenal young programming talent and we’re going to be seeing his name a lot in the years to come. Upstaging as usual, did a beautiful job of providing us with the lighting gear. Everyone had to wear a lot of hats, and Ryan Floyd, our rigger was one of them. He didn’t bat an eyelash at being asked to step up and lead our rope-and-sheave ‘automation’ tree department, and he did it with a smile, even when those ropes were tangled and lifting vacuum cleaners off the floor mid-show. Atomic Design did the scenic package and nailed it.”

Spike Brant also credited Knobel for her contributions to the show design. “Nimblist has a very long relationship with Kille, going back to the beginning of our careers.” Brant states. “It has been a pleasure collaborating with her on all these shows in recent years. We were honored to have Kille ask us to help her with this labor of love. It was the perfect design for the band and this moment in time. I am very proud of the work we did together.”

Tribute to Andy Wood

In conclusion, Kille noted how the shows served not just to mark the passage of time, but as a tribute and remembrance. “I think there are a lot of people who are huge fans of Temple of the Dog but never knew why and who the album was written for. Every night was such a poignant tribute to Andy Wood of Mother Love Bone through the music played and the stories Chris Cornell shared. The band did a beautiful job of bringing every audience closer to Andy and his story. It was a powerful bookend to a talent stolen too young by five guys that cared deeply for him. I feel lucky to have been there.”

In the great Texas tradition of going big, Houston welcomed Super Bowl LI with a number of exciting attractions, including the Houston Skylight high atop the George R. Brown Convention Center (GRB). Houston First Corporation, which maintains GRB, asked Nimblist to conceive and execute the Houston Skylight, a rooftop beacon that marks the center of the city’s cultural activities. Nimblist designer and creative consultant Spike Brant devised an array of 36 Claypaky Supersharpy fixtures, mounted on staging on the GRB roof overlooking Discovery Green park.

More details from ACT Lighting (www.actlighting.com):

The Supersharpys swept the sky with powerful searchlight-style beams and created numerous lighting effects as well.

“We have an ongoing conversation with Mike Waterman with Houston First about using light as a beacon to connect all of Houston,” says Spike Brant. “The Houston Skylight would symbolize energy as light and serve as a visual metaphor connecting the Super Bowl festivities. The installation was commissioned as a proof of concept for a broader effort illuminate Houston to the world and create a citywide attraction using multiple types of lighting installations.

Few fixtures are powerful enough to meet the demands of the Skylight’s searchlight-style application. Given time, budget and logistical constraints Brant couldn’t use lights that had to be mounted by cranes,  were a big power draw or had high maintenance issues.

So Brant thought of Supersharpys, which he had never used before but believed might be the right choice. When used collaboratively the Supersharpy’s low-wattage beam light could challenge a traditional searchlight, reaching never seen before mid-air distances. It’s not only an incredibly powerful beam light, it also provides the utmost in terms of light quality and number of effects. A.C.T Lighting, Inc. is the exclusive distributor of Claypaky fixtures in North America.

“The Supersharpy is three times brighter than Sharpy, and its power consumption is little more than Sharpy’s wattage draw,” Brant explains. “So we did a test a few weeks before the Super Bowl.  We put them in a 3×3 grid and saw that there was sufficient brightness when used as one converged beam. We used MA 3D to build out the lighting array with a model of the city, and we determined 36 was the minimum quantity of fixtures that we could use and have enough impact to get notice during SB51. But where were we going to get 36 in a short period of time?”

A.C.T Lighting helped Brant arrange for Claypaky’s factory in Italy to immediately build and ship 20 Supersharpys, which Houston First purchased through local dealer LD Systems. “A.C.T got us the lights quickly. I can’t thank them enough for their efforts,” Brant says. Other vendors brought the Supersharpy inventory up to 36; the array was mounted in a 6×6 grid.

“The Supersharpys were lightweight and had an insignificant power draw compared to other sky trackers, the whole installation only required 50amps 3 phase,” Brant notes. He used the 36 fixtures collaboratively to form a single, white searchlight beam. Then he broke the array into four beams and into 36 single beams to create a waterfall cascade and flower effects. Felix Peralta programmed the light show on a grandMA2 Light console. A.C.T Lighting also distributes MA Lighting products exclusively in North America.

The Houston Skylight debuted on January 27 and remained in operation through Super Bowl Sunday, February 5. Its beams pierced the sky from sundown until 11 pm. The Houston Skylight was well placed for FOX’s Super Bowl telecasts: It was right in the middle of wide shots showing the network’s broadcast center.