Working collaboratively is fun, exciting, and rewarding, and a space that production designer Fenton Williams and lighting designer/programmer Aaron Stinebrink enjoy in developing vibrant and imaginative lighting schemes to keep the Dave Matthews Band (DMB) looking fresh and different every year for their summer tours.
This year, Williams and Stinebrink chose some powerful and flexible Robe products to help their creative journey in the form of 24 iFORTES, 36 Spikies, 14 MegaPointes and two iFORTE Follow Spots running on a pair of RoboSpot BaseStations, all supplied by rental company TMS (Theatrical Media Services) in Omaha, Nebraska.
Overseeing the whole operation technically on the road was production manager Anthony Giordano. Williams has worked with the band since their formation in 1991, and Stinebrink joined the team as an additional lighting programmer in 2002, when he was working full-time at TMS. Stinebrink has been freelancing since 2021, and TMS has also clocked up a long and successful client relationship with DMB’s production over many years, all adding to the family vibes.
In January this year, TMS entered a new and exciting chapter, being run by a new management team, comprising three longtime employees – John Hansen, Michael Arch, and Jamie Hurst. The trio took over the company’s ownership, bringing over 60 years of combined industry experience to the table, together with huge enthusiasm for taking TMS into a new era.
Williams produced the production design for this year’s 15-week tour, which included an impressive 54 ft wide 26 ft tall arched truss over the stage, large LED surfaces upstage and some striking 15 ft semi-circular truss pods that were filled with lights and moved.
The lighting design was a joint effort between Williams and Stinebrink, and its starting point for this year’s tour was a regular acoustic gig in Cancun, Mexico by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, which has been staged in January for around the last 8 years. Williams and Stinebrink have always seized this as an opportunity to experiment with a few new visual ideas and concepts.
So, while a separate touring show design was already being developed, everyone loved the look, style, and atmosphere of the 2025 Cancun show so much that it was decided to adapt its essence as a base for the summer touring design. Williams specifically wanted “a design with smooth edges,” explained Stinebrink, and this started with the upstage arched truss and one large LED screen surface.
Williams also controlled and output six layers of video – including a pre-cut IMAG feed from live camera director Michael Lane – to screen via his lighting console, and works closely with Stinebrink, Farrington to create the playback content through his video company PXLField, which also supplied the LED and camera package.
So, the two visual entities were fluently and thoughtfully merged into the show aesthetic. Williams wanted to continue the clean lines and contemporary feel through to the six 15 ft semi-circular automated trusses downstage of the main arch, which were fabricated by automation suppliers, All Access Staging.
Twelve of the iFORTES were strategically positioned on the automated half circles, while an additional twelve are placed on the downstage truss to provide the bulk of the key light. “The high output and great CRI are a perfect fit for any key light scenario, and especially when utilising IMAG, as the quality of light ensures that everyone and everything looks beautiful on camera,” Stinebrink stated.
He thinks that the iFORTE’s feature set “leaves very little wanting,” and emphasised that the “fantastic” output helps the beams slice precisely through the ambience emitted from the LED screens, making “a truly amazing presence” as part of the picture.
The tour prompted TMS to double its previous iFORTE count, which they considered a timely investment. “It’s the light that everyone wants on their plot, so it made complete sense for us,” Hansen explained. Their new fixtures were all supplied through Robe’s North America HQ in Florida.
The MegaPointes and Spikies were rigged along the inside of the upstage double arched truss used for numerous beam looks and effects. MegaPointes were chosen as a superlative match for and combination with the iFORTES, both visually and in terms of features, and the fixtures were hung at multiple different angles.
“MegaPointe still is THE industry standard hybrid fixture in its category,” enthused Stinebrink, a sentiment echoed by TMS’s VP of Production, Arch. TMS purchased their first MegaPointes back in 2018, also for a DMB summer tour, and shortly after the fixture was launched by Robe, so it is great to see them still being utilised inventively.
Hansen added, “The MegaPointe output and features always come over super clean and slick on the camera, even in haze, and the size and weight are just right!”
The Spikies lined much of the perimeter of the arch, effectively framing the video surfaces, and Stinebrink noted that they needed a physically small fixture with “a couple of cool tricks to break up the beams, so the Spikie’s prism and ‘Flower’ effects were ideal.”
Spikies were positioned in groups of four and used for fan shapes as a throwback to the days of conventional ACLs – a vintage look that still has its relevance, and Stinebrink also noted that the compact size enabled them to fit more fixtures into a smaller space, always a delight to LD’s ears.
The crew will usually receive the setlist about an hour before the band go on, and the list can be radically different. The opener one night could be the closer the next, or not even make the setlist, and the band has a comprehensively rehearsed back catalogue of over 130, plus a trove of hundreds more on which to potentially draw. Whatever order rocks up, Stinebrink and Williams try to devise a ‘show progression’ with the lighting.
Utilising a series of inhibitive masters to introduce specific groups of fixtures and video elements, automation cues operated by Ben Ullmann are added in, so the whole performance takes on an elegant, organic flow that keeps everyone on their toes and makes each evening unique.
This is a great bonus for the many super-fans who attend multiple shows, but could still be surprised by new visual moments.
Stinebrink commented that the genuine family atmosphere on the tour is another brilliant aspect of being part of the DMB phenomenon. “A big thank you to all the crew from TMS, including crew chief Josh Albright, Jerry Woiderski, Jerry Kaiser, Chris Tsuji, Bodie Tureson, Robert Chaize and Holden Fershee, and account handler Mark Huber,” he said, together with All Access, and PXLField.
Stinebrink highlighted the dedication and hard work that went into the tour from everyone at all of the vendors, which, like TMS, have been with DMB for some time, and “have always gone above and beyond to set up the tour and their crews to help make it such a success.”
