Ed Warren Sets Mood for Mumford and Sons Tour Before The Tour with ChamSys

	"We decided against video to keep the shows warmer, more intimate and more like the 'good old days'," says Warren.

A few years ago, folk rock band Mumford and Sons withdrew from their self-described "almost nonstop touring schedule" to channel a new more organic and personal wellspring of creative energy. Ultimately, this led the iconic band to record Rushmere, their first album since 2018. "Because we're no longer as rushed as we used to be, the creativity of Rushmere comes from us carving out more space for our best artistic selves," Marcus Mumford told an interviewer after the critically acclaimed album was released in March and instantly reached the top of the charts.

Mumford and Son's longtime lighting designer, Ed Warren, reflected this mood in his work for the band's Tour Before The Tour, a limited run of shows at mid-sized venues before their 32-city North American arena-amphitheater tour scheduled for this summer.

"Like the band's new creative outlook, Warren's lightshow was designed to give the heartfelt emotions behind the music," the company says, "a chance to breathe and flourish, unencumbered by extraneous things. Video walls were not to be seen on this tour's set, neither were an abundance of fixtures on the stage deck."

"We decided against video to keep the shows warmer, more intimate and more like the 'good old days'," says Warren. "For the same reason, we also kept the stage uncluttered."

Helping Warren along the way from venue to venue through a variety of different house rigs was his versatile ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M Stadium console. "The Group Cues feature in my MQ500M was very helpful, since we were presented with a different house rig every show, as the tour moved through the UK, USA, and Australia," says Warren. "Having my cues, programming and effects all adapt seamlessly to the different variations of fixtures and fixture amounts saved a lot of hassle.

"Also, the Pan and Tilt Offset was also very useful for the same reason," he continues. "With every show, more often than not, I only needed need to update a single position. Since my ChamSys adjusted every other position for me automatically."

Warren programmed his show at home before the start of the tour, which had lighting supplied by three different vendors (Neg Earth in the UK, Solotech in the USA, and Chameleon in Australia.) When programming, he found the Timeline feature to be an "incredible" time- saver.

"Having the audio loading and skipping along with each cue was great," explains Warren. "I programmed every show using internal timecode, even though the show itself is not timecoded."