Dayne deHaven and Tyler Shapard Bring Classic Vibe to Ben Rector's Tour with CHAUVET Professional

	"The idea around this design, as well as the design for the floor package we used earlier this year, centered around an old school, simplistic feel," says deHaven.

There's a good reason why some old school ideas got to stick around long enough to become "old school." Oftentimes, they even do the job better than any alternative, as Dayne DeHaven and Tyler Shapard are demonstrating on multi-platinum singer Ben Rector's current Richest Man In The World arena tour.

Prior to kicking off this tour on November 13 at Fort Worth's Dickies Arena, deHaven and Shapard, the creatives behind the District 5 design studio, were lighting Rector's shows at theatres and college campuses. Given the power of their client's downhome stage persona, and the pull of his piano-pop sound, they decided that the best way to support his performance on that run was with an old school design concept.

This year, following the May release of Rector's Richest Man in the World, studio album, the singer was set to embark on his first arena tour. Rather than changing their theatre show design concept, deHaven and Shapard, supported by a team that included 4Wall project manager and lighting crew chief Jason Blasing, John Taylor (dimmer tech), Trenton Varnell (front-of-house, light tech), David Ardale Jr (rigger), and Thomas Dulin (audio), remained true to their client's core and continued with the previous tour's old school sensibilities, but in a dramatically beefed up way.

"The idea around this design, as well as the design for the floor package we used earlier this year, centered around an old school, simplistic feel," says deHaven. "Because of this we chose to make clean lines of fixtures rather than spread them out in busy patterns. We just want to light Ben and the band in a way that helps highlight and direct your focus to what they are doing, not make you feel like you are just listening to radio and watching a light show. "In the process, we try to find a good balance between adding energy to big moments, and sitting back on small ones," continues deHaven. "Ben and his entire team, including tour manager Steve Bryan were enthusiastic about this plan. At the end of the day, for this show, a beautiful static look plus Ben Rector on an acoustic guitar, has much more impact than a crazy strobing moment."

Fitting neatly into this design vision are the 20 CHAUVET Professional STRIKE 1 fixtures in the touring rig, which are arranged in "a clean straight line," on the downstage truss. "Since our design for most of the year centered around a par can look for our floor package, when it was time to design the arena shows we chose the Strike 1s," explains deHaven. "The STRIKE fixtures also have the advantage of being excellent audience lights. Lighting the fans was a huge part of this design, because Ben wants to interact with his audience and see their faces when he talks to them, as well as their reactions to the moments in the show."

The STRIKE 1 fixtures were supplied by 4Wall Entertainment, as was the rest of the touring rig, including 76 Rogue R2X Washes, 12 Maverick MK3 Spots, and 12 Color STRIKE M motorize strobe-washes.

Speaking of the latter, deHaven notes that they work in conjunction with the rig's STRIKE 1 units to provide the all-important audience lighting. "We have the Color STRIKEs in a clean straight line on our mid-stage truss," he explains. "They work perfectly with the STRIKE 1s for crowd lighting, A huge part of this show involves using our centered video wall (from PRG) for IMAG, so we need to show the audience reactions in the camera shots. The STRIKE fixtures also light up the crowd with colors and strobing for high energy moments."

Joining the Color STRIKE M units on the mid-stage truss are some of the rig's Maverick MK3 Spot fixtures. (The others are arranged on the deck.) When not backlighting the band, these fixtures are used to give the stage a more expansive look. "They work excellently to extend the stage look into the sky for hits as well as making a reasonably small rig feel much larger," deHaven says of the fixtures.

A notable change in the design as Rector's shows moved from theatres to arenas involves the Rogue R2X Washes. The District 5 partners had 16 of the washes in their floor package for the theatre shows, arranging them in a downward curve with the center upstage fixtures. For the arena shows, they added a chandelier grid of 50 washes upstage in a five-by-ten grid hung from 10' sticks of truss, which are positioned at a 60-degree upward angle that extends the lighting from the video wall upward and outward towards the audience.

"The inspiration for this came from looking at 'old school' par can rigs where bars were hung vertically behind the band," says deHaven. "We wanted to honor that iconic look while also adding the movement and color we get from the features of the R2X fixtures. We used them in their basic mode to get the full face look from a par can instead of the newer pixel look."