A founding member of the Grateful Dead, along with Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, drummer Bill Kreutzmann is still going strong after playing in all of the 2,300 live performances the iconic band made during its lifespan. Kreutzmann showed a large, appreciative crowd that he hasn’t missed a beat when he performed at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC with his red-hot band, Billy and the Kids.
Keeping pace with the legendary drummer and his cohorts was a dynamic collection of fixtures from CHAUVET DJ. Lighting designer Manny Newman used four Intimidator Spot LED 350 moving fixtures, along with a collection of Rogue R1 Spots from CHAUVET DJ’s sister company, CHAUVET Professional, to accent the band’s power-driving stage performance.
The intense output of the Intimidator fixtures and crisp gobos worked well against the Rogue’s bright output. Other CHAUVET DJ products in the rig included the Intimidator Spot LED 250 moving head. Six of these Intimidators were positioned on top of upstage cases to sidelight the performers and cover a large area of the audience.
Also colorizing the stage were 14 SlimPAR 56 RGB units from CHAUVET DJ. The lighting designer used eight of these par-style fixtures mounted on stands as side washes, and positioned six more on crank truss to serve as back washes. For audience blinders, he used CHAUVET DJ MegaStrobe FX12 LED strobe lights.
“We were all extremely happy with how this show turned out,” said Newman. “I have always used Chauvet. The fixtures are very reliable. They’re very affordable, but, at the same time, their brightness and quality stands up to big house light rigs.”