LD Systems Deploys CHAUVET Gear at San Antonio Rodeo

	The Mavericks provided visiting lighting designers with many creative options, allowing them to light their clients from any angle.

The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo, held in February at Frost Bank Center, was packed with challenges for David Jackson of LD Systems. Each day of the three-week run, Jackson and his crew set up and closed down a 40'-wide-by-34'-deep stage while accommodating floor packages for star entertainers Nelly, Keith Urban, Jon Pardi, Joe Nichols, the Eli Young Band, LeAnn Rimes, Sammy Hagar, and Dwight Yoakam among others.

"For our crew, the challenges of working within the limited time windows to maintain the rig had to be addressed," says Jackson, who served as lighting lead and programmer for the rodeo, which drew about 1.5 million visitors. "The artists have their time on the stage and, once they're off, we're able to bring in the rig for fixture swap-outs. Typically, we will be ready to move as soon as the stage is out of the arena, so we are not holding up the livestock or dirt crew from leveling and setting up the arena for that night's performance."

When moving the big stage off the arena floor, Jackson and his team "strike everything to the middle," of their rig and fold it up to a 40'-by-14' structure. This was as big as they could have the folded stage measure while still getting it into its storage area during the rodeo. Visiting floor package fixtures along with the house rig featuring CHAUVET Professional Maverick Storm 3 Beam Washes and Color STRIKE M motorized wash-strobes had to fit into this fold.

As challenging as pulling this kind of logistical magic is multiple times during the rodeo, it didn't quite equal what was involved in coaching some visiting lighting designers on how to run their shows on a 360 stage smack dab in the middle of a 19,000-seat arena.

"Our biggest challenge with being in the round was handing off the rig to lighting designers who have never experienced doing a show on this kind of stage," says Jackson, who ran shows himself for acts that didn't bring their lighting designers. "We worked well with the visiting lighting designers and assisted them as much as we could with big position looks and advised them how to eliminate all the 'specials' for the individual musicians."

Taken from LD Systems' inventory, the Color STRIKE M and Maverick Storm 3 BeamWash fixtures in Jackson's rig played a key role in helping him meet the challenges of lighting the rodeo. The 18 Color STRIKE units were run nine apiece on two house trusses, used for audience lighting.

The Maverick Storm 3 BeamWashes, provided the rodeo's "main wash," Jackson says. He flew five units on each side of the 50' square truss structure over the stage. From this position, the Mavericks provided visiting lighting designers with many creative options, allowing them to light their clients from any angle. Visiting lighting designers also used the RGBW washes to cover the stage in a rainbow of hues to reflect the music and personality of each artist, while the fixture's wide zoom range made it simple to change coverage areas on the stage.

"The Storm 3 BeamWashes were so bright that we had to limit them down not get cameras blown out," says Jackson, who notes that he and his team (stage manager, Aaron Canady; and project manager, Tony Carey as well as lighting assistants Joe Redd, Martha Zatorski, Aurora Bauer, and Brian Ledet) appreciated how the fixtures performed as beams to pump up the crowd during the rodeo's special openings.

Jackson particularly liked how the Maverick fixtures and the rest of the rig worked with the house lights to make the start of each show sparkle. "Every night when we took the house lights out for the start of the show, we fired up the rig to build excitement," he says. "We actually ended the build-up with a Texas flag made from the lights on the dirt that always got a great reaction.

"Another of my favorites was in the opening sequence when the lights swelled up with the chorus from the video. So many people came up and told me that part gave them chills."