Nashville New Year's Eve Rocks with Bandit Lites

	Nashville New Year's Eve celebration

More than 20lb of confetti rained down on 130,000 people in Music City as the sixth annual Jack Daniel's Bash on Broadway rang in 2015. Bandit Lites worked with lighting designer John Lucksinger and production manager Chris Lisle to provide the lighting for the event where more than 40 acts, including Lady Antebellum and Gavin DeGraw performed. Storme Warren emceed while Charles Esten hosted the segments airing on ABC's Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest!.

Lucksinger created three looks for the bash: the main stage, tower, and Broadway. The main stage consisted of an "old school" look with 324 1k pars, 40 Clay Paky Sharpys, 18 Vari-Lite VL 2500s, 10 ETC source 4 lekos, and six 8-light moles.

"Pars are great for doing the show on the fly," said Lucksinger. "Just an old flash and trash show. The Sharpys were chosen to cut through the pars; I used them as big punchy looks. The combination of pars and Sharpys was great as I could just use the pars and go with a big power look, or take the pars out and just use the Sharpys to give it more of an industrial feel. Put both together and it was a nice mix of old and new. The VL 2500s were mostly used to fill space that was left over."

For the tower holding the 15' tall music note that lowers as the quintessential New Year's Eve ball, Lucksinger used 32 Martin Mac 101s, 32 GRN Battens, and 16 GRN Moving wash.

"On the tower I went with LED fixtures to keep power down plus they hold up better in the weather," explained Lucksinger. "The tower and the lights on it are the highlight of the production. After all, the only reason we are there is to celebrate the New Year and to drop the giant music note. As the note moves down the tower, the 101s and battens change color, strobe, and whatever else I can think off to make the countdown fun and exciting."

Lastly, the street used four 8-light moles, and 16 ETC source 4 lekos. Lucksinger utilized gobos to aid in branding the city, where attendance for this year's celebration increased dramatically from the previous year's 85,000 to 130,000 even with below freezing temperatures.

While outdoor shows present their own unique set of challenges, Lucksinger said the main hurdle for the team was weight.

"Between Bandit, All Access stages, and myself, there were seven different plots to try and get the main lighting rig underweight. I had to drop some things, move some things, but we got there in the end."

"As always, my experience with Bandit and crew was excellent," added Lucksinger. "Project manager Matt King and Dizzy Gosnell worked really hard on the front end to get the show underweight and keep the look I was going for. On site, Jon Houle, Andrew Heid, Carter Fulghum, and Sarah Eucker were a pleasure to work with; they all worked really hard and in freezing conditions... that's not easy to do."