Disturbed’s “Music as a Weapon 2” Tour

When a lighting design company has Rob Zombie, Black Sabbath, Pantera and Godsmack in their list of past and present clients, you know they know something about hard-hitting lighting design. You also know that they require tough lighting gear.
 
The House of Blue Lights
The House of Blue Lights, a design partnership between Thom Roberts and Sonny Satterfield specializing in lighting design and automated lighting programming, recently completed a progressive lighting design for metal band Disturbed’s “Music as a Weapon 2” tour. Currently on the road with support acts Taproot, Chevelle, and Unloco, the hard rocking band is playing dates across the US beneath a MAC 2000/Atomic 3000 rig supplied by Upstaging.
 
The partners have a wealth of knowledge in the lighting and lighting design field. Sonny has 16 years experience in the industry, most of that spent with Pantera, and has either designed or operated lighting for the likes of Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, and Godsmack. Thom, who boasts over 25 years in the industry, has designed for top names like Eddie Rabbit, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill and others. Current projects for The House of Blue Lights include Rob Zombie, Pantera and Randy Travis.
 
MAC 2000/ Atomic 3000 design
Thom and Sonny’s lighting design features 12 MAC 2000 Wash, 12 MAC 2000 Profiles and 18 Atomic 3000 strobes, among other fixtures, supplied by Upstaging. Thom completed the lighting programming while Sonny handles the operation on tour.
 
“It’s a fairly simple design,” Thom states. “There are three straight trusses across the stage with side trusses at a low trim. It was specified that it had to fit into a wide variety of venues, from 2,500 to 8,000-10,000 seats, which meant that sections might have to be left in the truck without compromising the integrity of the design. By keeping it simple we were able to achieve that.”
 
First time MAC 2000 series users
Sonny and Thom, who were long time users of another make of automated lighting, felt they owed it to their clients to look at newer fixtures. “We spent a lot of time investigating the new generation of moving lights. This is the first time we have used the MAC 2000 series and are very happy with them,” Thom states.
 
“We were both knocked out by the output and reliability of both the MAC 2000 Profile and MAC 2000 Wash,” he continues. “After 5 weeks of touring, the only failure was due to a forklift mishap! No lights have failed in normal operations, which is very impressive. We are able to use at least 1/3 fewer wash fixtures then we would normally have required - with no loss of coverage. Likewise with the Atomic strobes. They let us cut our requirement by 1/4th, due to their incredible intensity, and flexibility.”
 
Lead Singer David Draiman and Guitarist Dan Donegan, who write all the lyrics and music, respectively, for Disturbed, and Manager Dougie Thomson contributed valuable ideas during programming. Their input was integral to the finished show.
 
Disturbed will be playing US dates until May third and then heading to Europe for a string of shows.  
 
Upstaging Crew:
Crew Chief: Ron Shilling
Moving light/FOH technician: Jason Bullock
Dimmers and PD: Jorge Velaquez
Account Executive: John Bahnick
Production Coordinator: Nook Shoenfeld