MAC 700’s for John Butler Trio

Once again John Butler Trio management (Jarrah Records) had asked Jared Hawke to both design and operate the lighting for the Australian band’s latest national tour “Homeward Bound.”

Jared leapt at the opportunity to use the Martin MAC 700 on this prestigious local tour and Chameleon Touring Systems obliged. A total of twelve MAC 700’s were used on the production supplied to Chameleon through Martin’s Australian representative, Show Technology.

”I’ve been really impressed by the MAC 700. For such a compact unit they deliver a huge punch,” commented Jared. “I’m also astonished by their speed; you can get them from one position to another very quickly. They’re certainly not sluggish. The color mixing is fantastic - it’s great to be able to bump to another color with such smooth transition. I like most of the gobos and the animation wheel works really well for me. I use it twice during the show and it works really well in both a horizontal and vertical sense.”

Jared reports that he hasn’t had one problem with the MAC 700 units while on tour.

The John Butler Trio designed a 12m x 8m backdrop displaying the sunset previously used in their "Sunrise Over Seas" album. With this backdrop, Jared worked closely with the band to design a rig that included a 4m Stage Tools circle truss hung vertical in the frame of the sun similar to a clock face.

Surrounding the inner ring of the sun were eight Martin MAC 600 wash luminaries rigged evenly around the circumference of the truss. A round rear projection screen is stretched across the global ring where carefully chosen images of The John Butler Trio are projected.

“The MAC 600’s have been working well despite having been worked hard over the past five years, they just keep on going,” added Jared.

Jared has been so impressed by the MAC 700’s he is going to purchase eight of them for his own production company Frontier Lighting.