#216 - Nick Whitehouse from Live Redesigned / Fireplay

0:04 Hello and thanks for joining me today on Gears of Gear Episode #216. Today's podcast is brought to you by Mainlight. Mainlight is the partner you trust with the gear you want. A dry hire rental provider who excels in offering superior lighting and stage equipment without competing with its customers. Offering everything from high intensity lights for large events to precision fixtures for theater and TV film. Main Light also offers for sale used equipment with a 60 day depot warranty. All equipment is meticulously maintained, tested and main Light owned with no brokerage with four key locations. Main Light Tri-state in Teterboro, NJ, Main Light East in Wilmington, DE, Main Light South in Nashville, TN and Main Light West in Las Vegas, NV.

0:58 They combine the resources of a national company with the personal touch of a local provider. Main Light consistently updates its inventory with the latest in lighting technology, trust solutions and controls. Learnmore@mainlight.com today and today's podcast is also brought to you by Elation Professional creating unforgettable aerial shows with the Proteus Excalibur. Elation's Excalibur Beam Moving Head has been exceptionally popular with LD since launching 2 short years ago, and can regularly be experienced worldwide on all types of outdoor events, tours and spectaculars. With its extreme power, a super narrow .8° beam, and wide front aperture, it excels at creating aerial light beams and air effects that rival Xenon searchlights.

1:52 Full color mixing, beam and prism control and an array of Gobos allow for a variety of dynamic sky animations, and it even includes an automated Searchlight mode that allows a group of fixtures to create the famous Sky Tracker Searchlight look. The Proteus Excalibur uses a highly efficient 500 flex lamp from Phillips for long lamp life, low power consumption and reboot reduced fixture maintenance. Check out more on the Proteus Excalibur at www.elation.com Hello again, And yeah, thanks for coming. I'm exhausted.

3:11 Why? Because Sarah has me working like a monkey here. She's she's got me booked solid on on lots and lots of great podcast episodes. And yeah, I mean, things are just zooming right now. We're we're seeing a lot of forward momentum. Lots more traffic, lots more views, lots more downloads of the podcast. We appreciate everyone paying attention right now. I know we've been accused of over posting and that's great. I'm glad you're seeing our posts. Thank God because for a long time you didn't. And so yeah, things are going really, really well at Geezers. We're we're super happy to to be experiencing the growth that we're experiencing right now and we're getting a lot of ideas thrown at us for new podcast guests. We've got some new sponsors coming on board, which is amazing in addition to the ones that we already have who we love and appreciate very much of course. And so it's a good time.

4:09 It's, it's been a really, really positive time for Gears of Gear. And so, yeah, I, you know, I'm grateful and really happy. And so with that, I'm going to bring you today's guest who is someone who I admire very much, I think most of you do as well. And he's built an incredible business for himself and for his team, both as Nick Whitehouse but also Fireplay as well. So along with some other things that I think he's going to talk with us about a bit today. So without delay, let's bring on Nick Whitehouse. Hey Nick, how are you today?

4:54 Hi, how are you doing? Fantastic. I hope you don't mind but I stole a picture from your Facebook as you can see on the background here. I mean some beautiful shots. I forget who the photographer was, but really great shot. Jeff Johnson. OK, yeah, now really, really nice. And this one just kind of fit. You got Carrie right in between 2 funny looking dudes, so nothing wrong with that. What could be better? Exactly. A a Carrie Underwood sandwich. I She'd probably pick two different men than us. Maybe. But, you know, who cares? We're here. I'm sure she'll be fine. Exactly.

5:35 So a lot of things I actually want to catch up with you on and and learn about and talk about, but one thing in particular is that I know you've you've started to rebrand your business, your fire play business. Tell tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, we have. It's exciting actually, and we'll be announcing a lot more over the next few months. But kind of coming out of the COVID era, I realized that what we were working for wasn't the right thing. You know, we were trying to build a really big brand. We were trying to build as many creatives in one place as we could. And I felt that we were kind of losing our creativity a little bit doing that because we were taking a lot of work that just to pay the bills and to cover salaries and to kind of do that and to keep people employed.

6:26 And I think we lost something and I would discovered that I lost something. The bit that I enjoyed and the bit that I enjoyed is trying to find innovation, trying to find cool new things to do and try to bring that to live events. So instead of just going and seeing the same old thing that we've kind of just tweaked a little bit, you now go and you see something that's like, how did they do that? And that's what I always used to like. And I think that's what was missing when we kind of all rushed to come out of, you know, two years of not doing anything, we all just took everything. So I took a year to kind of think about what was really important and for me, what's really important in my work and in the work that that the company that I have does is being wildly creative and pushing innovation. So it's not just another show.

7:14 It's a show that's exactly tailored and and created specifically for the artists that we're working for through collaboration. And not just there's some cool Instagram moments. Just create a bunch of those. You know. It's like, well, let's tell you a story. It's so interesting because I actually just had a very similar conversation with another British guy this morning and it's it's when you're looking to scale a business, it's very difficult to remove things. It's easy to add things, but it's difficult to remove things and grow the business. In other words, you know not to become quote the Walmart of whatever business you are, right? And just try to be everything to everyone and take anything, even if it doesn't match what you love or what you believe in or your character or whatever.

8:05 And I've certainly been guilty of much of the same many times in my career, to be honest, because it's just sometimes it's it's very alluring, you know, It's like, hey, look over here a pile of really easy cash, you know, and you've, like you said, you've just gone two years without work and without much cash coming in and with lots of cash going out. And so I could see how you could fall into that situation. But it's amazing that you not only had the vision but the discipline to say, hang on, time out, stop. Let's do something a little different here, cuz I ain't digging this. Yeah.

8:46 And and I also found there are people I really like to work with. You know, the creatives that we work with, the artists we work with. And I really enjoy that and I enjoy those people. And I think just surrounding myself with great people. The team we have that's coming out into the new company, it's fantastic. Like all of them are incredible and they're also great people. Like they care about what we're doing. They want to learn. They want to grow. Like some of them are new US. In fact, most of them are new US. So it's really cool to be at, bring that into the, you know, into the world that we live in, where it's time to let the new generation kind of come through and learn from us. Yeah, really, really cool. That's exciting.

9:28 And so the new business is called Live Redesigned. Correct. So is there meaning behind that or is there an attitude behind that or? No, not really. I just think that we've also kind of, you know, we've got to do business differently in this world too because everything is more expensive. The cost of doing shows, it's pushing ticket prices way up. So I think we're gonna, we have found we've great some great partners that ways to do it where we can help the artist make the most out of the shows that they're doing while we're not kind of you know, creating ticket prices so high that people can only go and see one show a year. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's. Really we're trying to not just redesigning the creative side of it and bringing that back, but also trying to have some economics that match.

10:16 You know, I listened to something yesterday. It might have been a podcast or something where they were talking about this like they were basically talking about quit trying to fit a show into a budget. Whereas instead you're basically creating a show and you know it. It's not so much of, well, we've got $1,000,000 to spend. Let's go spend it, you know and and fill it with as many moving lights as we possibly can. Instead, start with the creative process in the show that you need to design for that artist based on the artist's vision or needs or wants or whatever. It's a very different approach, you know and and I think everyone's so focused on a transactional way of doing business as opposed to a more emotional and more visionary way of doing business perhaps and. I think that's exactly what I'm saying is we got to the point where you just put 300 moving lights on a on a design so when you turned up a rehearsal you could program something cool because you turn 300 lights on.

11:17 It looks good. And as I was thinking about what was really creative, some of the best shows I've ever done in my career with those Coldplay shows in ballrooms with six moving lights. You. Know, you have to be really creative with the programming. You have to figure out how to get the emotion into those six lights and that teaches you a lot. And I think sometimes for me that is way better than 1000 lights all flashing and strobing at the same time. You know, it's funny, I I, I had Mark Brickman on at one point and asked him about, you know, one of his favorite recent shows that he did or whatever. And he talked about I think it was Neil Young with 16 follow spots at Coachella and that was the show, 16 follow spots. And he said it.

12:03 I loved it. It was amazing. People loved it and. Our market is a genius, so like 16 photo spots there probably look better than anything else. Well exactly. You know, I know front of house guys too that you, you know you ask them do you like this line array versus this line array or whatever. And the bottom line is a good good front of house guy can make garbage sound really great, you know. And you know I remember Butch Allen one time did a a show for the band garbage and I never forgot it because there were these these floor lights that we're just like I was like what are those things? And he goes, I bought them at Home Depot. They're they're like some kind of work lights or something and they were like a real yellowy kind of color like a 2000 Kelvin or something and they just looked incredible on the band, right.

12:54 And I mean, that's taking an idea, and he didn't do it because of the cost. I don't think it wasn't like, hey, we need the best light we can get for 40 bucks, you know, It was just something entirely unusual. Well, you know, I think that's what that's it, right? It's creativity. Sometimes when we have all this technology and we do have the budgets and we have a ton of lights and a ton of video, it's really easy to just turn it on and make it look cool. Like, yeah, I think back in my early days working back in London, one of the most creative things I ever saw, it was a lighting designer called Nick Jevons. I don't know if you know him, but he came in with The Soupy Furry Animals, which was a British band, and he basically just, it looked like the trust had fallen down. And he put a hundred single park hands in a random focus and the whole show in white.

13:43 And the whole show was just that really just used in time to the music. And I was like, whoa. That's so cool. I mean, I I just love unusual, different things like that. I'm I'm honestly getting bored by the fact that a all moving lights are amazing. You know, they're all freaking good and it's hard to tell whether is that a clay paki or a Roby or a elation or an Ayrton fixture up there. I don't really know because they're all so damn good now and they all kind of look the same and even in the air, you know, you like you used to go, oh, it's got a fat beam, it's a whatever. Right now they all look the same. They're all really good. Every rig kind of is starting to look the same with the video elements in the 300, moving lights and whatever. It is getting a little boring like you like when somebody sends a unique element into it.

14:34 And I think that's my plan for this year is to try and figure out how we do things differently and we don't do the same look. And to persuade artists that it's OK not to have a show that looks like everyone else's. Yeah. In fact, it's probably better. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so you're seeing some unique uses of towers, you know, some different. Ways. Maybe. I'll Maybe I'll go to Home Depot tonight and see what. I can find you never know. I mean, The thing is, you, you just never know where that inspiration is going to come from, right? Exactly. And I think using that stuff, that's different and people are like, what is that? Where did that come from? Yeah, is what makes things different. And it keeps audiences entertained. Yeah, obviously you've got to have still have some musicality and some creativity of course into the content and musicality is really important.

15:22 But sometimes I've said it doesn't matter what you've got, it's if it's in time it looks great. Yeah, I mean, you know, even down to like you used to be able to tell that's a country band, that's a rock band. You know, the rock band had a bunch of Vera lights. The country band had a dozen Intelli beams and or 24 Intelli beams, right. And now it's like, I mean, they all look like rock shows, whether it's a jazz artist or a country artist or a pop artist or a rock artist. And I don't know, it's, you know, this isn't me being a bitter old guy. It's just I'm kind of getting bored. Like I you're flipping through pictures on Instagram or whatever, and concert shots are looking very, very similar these days, you know, I liked.

16:10 I liked what I liked what Rob did on Metallica with the Towers. Again, a very unique and different way of doing things. I don't know if it was Rob or Dan Brown or but but or a combination probably thought that was cool. You know, I I like some of the Coldplay stuff that I've seen. You know, I mean, there's definitely unique things still happening, but I don't know. And it it is hard, it is harder to go and do that stuff because you know you have you have to fight the business managers and the managers are just like what are we doing? Yeah, so. And why can't it just? Look like re owner. Yeah.

16:51 And you know, one of the terms I've heard a lot recently is we're not so much lighting for the people in the room anymore. We're lighting for the Instagram audience at home. And I'm like, well, I don't think that's true. Like, I want to go to a concert and enjoy the concert just as much as trying to look at the pictures later. Yeah, so. There's an argument. To that, though, what the essence of it? There's an argument of that you know, like and and I keep going back to this, this Rapinoe from Live Nation. I don't know if you saw the article that he did where where he said, you know, something like, you know, the typical artist has 10 million followers on social media. My job is easy. All I have to do is sell tickets to 5% of them. And so when you're thinking 5% of that artist's audience are actually physically in the audience. The other 95% are viewing on a on an iPhone. And so there is some logic to that that you have to design shows that look good on a, on a on a six inch screen or five inch or whatever the hell the size of an iPhone is these days. But it's an interesting concept.

18:01 I mean, I'm glad guys like you were thinking through this. You know what I mean? So. Well, I mean that that's my easy way to do it is you put, you know, 1015 Instagram moments in a show where you know that's the bit that everyone's gonna post, and then the rest of it, you can toast, still be creative, tell the story, have the UPS and the downs. It doesn't have to be full on flashing all the time, so it looks good on a 22nd post, you know. Yeah, yeah, I know it's it's a very good point. It's yeah, I mean it's an interesting thing again, like because I I've been one of these guys who keep saying how can this keep growing, you know how like coming out of COVID, it's just been gangbusters and average artists doing stadium tours and stuff like that.

18:43 But, but according to according to Live Nation, at least it is going to keep growing because we still have to get to those 95% of their other audience. You know, like if these guys have 10 million followers, all of them, you know we're missing a lot of opportunities and and the appetite to see them live is is bigger than ever. It's why? It is. I think. I think we just have to all try and help with the price point of tickets because that's the complaint I hear from a lot of people is now I've got to pick two or three shows I want to see in a year rather than 10. Yeah, yeah. And or you end up going and seeing Styx and REO Speedwagon 20 * a year or whatever, you know what I mean?

19:24 Like if you want to go see the the big A tours that are out and stuff, everything's three $400.00 a ticket and up, you know, to thousands of dollars, Which to me is is making it an elitist kind of event as opposed to the average person, obviously. I think it's just the cost of everything right now stacking up. So you know, right, you go to the grocery store, things are more expensive than they were a couple of years ago, so. True. So true. No and. Happens to us when designing a show too. Well, and the reality of like, I don't know if you're following this thing with the the hootie's in the hootie rebels who are like hijacking ships and blowing up ships and stuff going into the Suez Canal.

20:09 And causing freight already to go like 3 or 4X in cost between Asia specifically between Asia and Europe, but it's also impacting freight everywhere else also. So you know it's the last thing we needed right now is another freight problem especially expanding costs. So you know, I like, I'm starting to hear tours are are starting to employ like these logistics experts and stuff on staff, you know, who are constantly paying attention to these things. It's the new reality. Yeah, especially if you're moving around the world. I think it is a new reality to try and do that and find the most cost effective way to do it. Yeah, well, one of the things I learned in this paying attention to some of this sort of global geopolitics or whatever, and specifically this hootie's problem is so a lot of people think, OK, if there's a problem where they're starting to attack these, these freight ships and you know, we can't ship stuff by sea container anymore, it's OK, we'll just move it on to airplanes. But one of the things that I didn't know, besides the cost difference, which is quite massive. Well, actually there was one point during COVID where it cost more money to ship via sea than it was by air, which was crazy. But what I what I found out is a 747 fits 7C containers the the average large freight ship.

21:37 Can you think of how many containers fit on a freight ship? Couple of thousand I think. 10,010 thousand containers versus 7. So you know, I mean it's obviously not something where you can just say, OK, we'll send it all by air because then you run out of space on airplanes too pretty quickly. Crazy stuff. Yeah. I mean, luckily, I think that we're getting past the supply chain issue of the chips and the things like that and our lights and consoles and things like that. So we are being able to get new products. Yeah. Yeah, back. So I think we will see a lot of innovation there with the new lights and the new things that are coming out. There's a lot of cool technology from a lot of different manufacturers. So, yeah, yeah, I think that's also good to embrace. Yeah, no, obviously you know we're a technology driven industry and and so seeing innovation is a great thing and I think we're going to see it on the control side as well. Although you know, I know we you were at LDI. Yeah, I wasn't.

22:36 I didn't go second time in the history of LDI that I wasn't at a show. But I guess one company put up some sign that said you don't need lighting programmers or whatever, just use our new AI lighting control. And they've been slaughtered on social media over that. I mean, I guess, I guess it works for a small act, yeah. And that's not a bad thing. You know, like one of the when you've got these starting out musicians, Nashville bands that try and elevate their show a little bit and they just can't afford anything, it might work. Yeah. I wouldn't ever rule it out, but, you know, as soon as you get into a decent size, I I I still think AI has a long way to go to. Of course, yeah.

23:21 Fill in that creativity because I don't think you can learn that. I don't think the machine learning can get that because sometimes it's a feeling, sometimes it's repeating what you've done. Yeah. So I think that's a really hard thing, but I. Think it will get awfully close. The problem is we're still a small, a small market in the grand scheme of things. So to say, hey, drop all that stuff you're doing where you're programming, you know, code or doing all these massive opportunities and come over here and let's make lighting consoles program themselves in a really, really smart and and innovative way. I just don't see that happening anytime soon. We're probably still a couple years on it.

24:03 There is software out there that can, you can put a track into it and it will tell you where to put the hits. But it's very mechanic mechanical of where it figures out, you know it's very based on maths and you know, just like a good musician. Yes, it's all about being in time but also learning how to stretch that time and to play it is what makes some of the best music. So I think in lighting that's also the case. You have to figure out, you know, when you take the hit and when you don't is or just as important. And I think that's something that I've done quite well and some people are like why don't you do that one. So it doesn't make sense because then you can take this. Yeah, I did see a couple of years ago there were some guys that were working with Pioneer. They were they were like Dutch I think and they created some software, some lighting software that it was, it was for EDM music specifically.

24:54 And what it would do is it would listen to the entire track and analyze the entire track. And then it knew where all the bass drops were and where all the little nuances were and all of those things. And it would put in certain things for all of those. Like a bass drop would be big white in your face kind of stuff. And you know, and it just knew the types of things to match with those emotions or those, you know, whatever. And so that was kind of cool. I mean, I guess it works in that kind of a situation, But when you're talking about a live artist who might change things up, who, you know, might move differently, do something differently, whatever, it's a little bit different than that, yeah.

25:38 I mean, I mean, I think it's yeah, but if you put that five different tracks into that software, it's gonna make them all look the same when the bass drops, you know, or similar. Well, what you have to do in a in a 90 minute show is figure out how you do all those things differently, you know? Yeah. No, that's that's a good point. I think we're still a ways out. Like I was actually going to that was one of the topics I wanted to talk to you about because I've always seen you as kind of an innovator. Like, you know, I know during COVID you were one of the guys that was really doing some of this. You know, this, this. Virtual stuff. Yeah, virtual crowd stuff where other people were just, you know, kind of going, OK, let's put lots of video screens and whatever. But you were actually turning those video screens into something and having audience feedback and stuff like that, which I thought was so cool.

26:25 But you know, so your thoughts on like artificial general intelligence, artificial intelligence as it relates to our business, it really has no impact at this time and not for the. Foreseeable. No, I I think, I think it definitely has some impact like you know I use the in Photoshop, they've got that great new AI tool that can fill in gaps and help you do renders. I use that all the time. So I think there's a lot of things places we can use it. And I think, you know, but just in in what I do, I'm still pretty old school. Like I listen to a track and I'll program it in one go and, you know, in the dark, put the lights on, put the previous on or something like that. And it's for me, it's more about feeling it and making people feel what I feel in the music.

27:10 Yeah. And I don't think there's anything that's there right now that can come close to that. Yeah, yeah, I. Guess maybe in the future. Yeah, I don't know. I listened to Joe Rogan this morning at 5:00 in the morning or something, and he had some sex expert on there and they were talking about like AI robots, sex doll things or whatever. And they're getting to a point where they're messing with your emotions and stuff, sort of like, what was that movie called? El El Makina or whatever. Yes, Machina. Yeah. So, you know, I think, I think we're, we're a few years away from where, you know, weird guys who sit in their rooms playing video games all day and stuff, They have girlfriends that are that are, you know, robots, you know?

27:56 Isn't that a scary thought? It really is a scary thought, you know? And Rogan took it a step further and said he thinks that babies being born today are sort of the last of the the, you know, human existence as a as a, you know, as a majority, I guess, of existence on this planet. Because after that we're gonna be virtually replaced by by AI and by robots and by fake people, basically. I mean, it's a definite possibility. There is a lot of cool technology coming out very fast. Yeah, that's the thing. Just the speed. Like, you know, one minute you got Siri arguing with you, you know, because she's saying it wrong or something, and then the next minute, all of a sudden we've got these things writing code by themselves and getting smarter as they're doing it, very rapidly. I mean, you can have an intelligent conversation with ChatGPT right now.

28:54 It's crazy. It is wild. It is. It amazes me. Some of the things that you can get out of ChatGPT and and you know what's the new one? I think 5 is the one that's coming now and it's supposed to be like you know just leaps and bounds better. So I don't know. I'm somewhere between being excited and being scared to death. Me too. But I think any of those things that can help us do our jobs better without sacrificing, you know, like the creativity or the end result or the innovation, yeah, I think we should use them. Like, I always like new technology. I've always been a fan of it, and I've always been the one that's put my ass on the line to put it on the show. When Yeah, you get a lot of blue screens of death in my time, so. Yeah, yeah, it's.

29:37 But I've heard it compared to a gun, like where in the right hands it saves you and your family from a bad situation, In the wrong hands it kills people. And AI and AGI specifically is sort of we're in that same loop right now. You know, like they can make it a really bad thing. They can make it a really good thing. And I've talked to both sides of this, like where some people say it's just not going there. You know, I see us, you know, going back to sort of square one and we're going to be normal human beings. I don't know. You can't kind of put that back in the. Bottom I don't think so. I don't think you ever go backwards, right? There's always going to be someone that pushes it forwards. Yeah, yeah, I think so too.

30:19 I mean. Like I said, I think there's lots of places that it makes it better, makes our lives better, makes it easier, can help things, can make it more productive and give us more time to actually do business and pleasure. Well, that too. But I mean like, the speed at which it can accomplish tedious, lengthy, boring, brutally painful tasks is is unbelievable. You know, like you've got to create a list of something that's 10,000 pages long and it's a repetitive task that goes, looks for this, finds it, grabs it, puts it over here, adds this thing to it, goes to the next line, does it again. You can do that in a few minutes with AI, where it could take you days to do it by yourself, right? I know, exactly.

31:04 Yeah, it's crazy. So you've had, you've had a pretty successful and interesting and fun couple of years, it seems, you know, since COVID. But most recently, I think, is the Carrie Underwood residency right at at Resorts World. Yeah, that's been our big kind of flagship show for a while. It's, yeah, it's a pretty huge undertaking. Yeah. So you've worked with her a long time, right? It would be like the 6th or 7th year now, yeah? Wow. Wow. So is it still running or is is that done already? It is. It's.

31:45 It runs for weeks all the way through This year. I think there's two to three weeks at a time. And so do you have people on it still or is it just her, her team now and you guys? It's her team. I still tend to show up at the start of a new run and in case we need to add anything, tweak anything, just make sure it's all good. But she's got a great team and she's got some, you know, the operators out there are awesome. So yeah, and the theatre is fantastic. I don't know if you've been there. No, I haven't yet. I haven't. How many seats is it? They did a great job, 5000. Oh, OK. Yeah. No, I haven't been there yet. I stayed. I stayed. I've stayed different places every time I go there. I usually stay at the Wynn, but I meant to stay there last year and I for some reason didn't.

32:31 But yeah, I gotta go check it out. Like you said, for for what started as a country artist, I think we have more axis of motion from Tate on this show than they've ever put on a show. Yeah, well I've only seen pictures and a a couple of videos of it and it looks unbelievable. Huge, Really cool. I mean, the stage is 2 is 200 feet wide. It's, you know, 50 feet tall. It's it's a massive stage. You also, I don't know if you collaborated or you did the the whole thing or whatever, but you did the Vegas Aerosmith residency too, right? Yeah, we did. Yeah, So is there something different about doing these residency designs and shows than doing a normal touring show?

33:16 I mean, obvious. The obvious thing is it doesn't have to strike and pack up and everything else but. It still does have to strike and pack up because the residency model isn't. We'll sit here until we load it out. Most of these residencies are two, 3-4 weeks at a time, so they'll still load in and load out in a couple of days to allow like the casinos to turn over the people. So I think in result in results world it was Carrie, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and they would rotate and I like do 2-3 weeks at a time and do that. So you still have to figure out how to get it in and out. The good news with these residences is there's a lot of technology in the buildings you can use that you couldn't actually do in a tour. So you know, for example, on the carry show there's an incredibly there's a 30 foot long lift that goes three stories down, which allows us to do this 200,000 LB.

34:11 Waterfall prop which fills the entire lift that she stands in the middle of. And there's just no way we could ever do that on a tour. So we can do things in these residences that you can't do when you have to like rig into an arena that's made for sports. You know, this is purpose made. It's got the fly tower, it's got the weight capacity like it's got everything we need. What about sound? Do they sound good these theaters? This theater has like, I think they call it the Lisa system. It sounds incredible. It's like surround sound. There's so much PA, which sounds fantastic. Yeah. Well, I know you know Vegas, old school Vegas theaters used to be. So the sound was, it was almost like Branson, MO, where it was super quiet and hardly any bass because it was all old people going to these shows. And you know, obviously that's changed a huge amount since that.

35:04 Time. The opposite of that now. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think it's better than any arena that we've kind of played in with that. With a show like that, it sounds fantastic in there. Huh. Did you go to the sphere? Not yet. I want to. Yeah, I don't know. I got mixed, mixed feelings on it. Like to me, the first time I saw video of the U2 show, it took me 30 seconds to to find Bono. And I was like, I hear him, you know, I can't find him anywhere in this video. Where the hell is he? It was just so distracting, you know? But isn't this going back to doing something different and creative that we were talking about earlier? It certainly doesn't look like anything else. It's a destination to go and see something incredible. It's true and and you know, so if if you're really into the technology and stuff, that's what you think. But at the end of the day, you know, again a Mark Brickman quote that he did on my podcast was he went and saw the Stones with the, you know, the the four iPhone looking screens that they had.

36:09 And and he said, you know, they were beautiful and they looked amazing and stuff, but and they made Mick Jagger look small, like he got lost on stage. You know, unless you were looking at the screens, you lost him. And that was what happened to me with Bono. I couldn't literally find Bono. Yeah, I but I think that wasn't the goal. I think the building overshadows the band. In this case, even you too. Like who? Who would ever think that? But. But I think they did a fantastic job of it. It's a, you know, it's it's everything I've seen. I haven't been and everyone I've talked to has said that the experience is incredible. Yeah, same, same here. I mean, you know, people have just said it's mind blowing, you know, the technology's unbelievable. You're just sitting there in awe, going wow, like it's the biggest video screen you've ever seen and and then some, right? And I'm excited to see what other people do with it too. Because yeah, you know, there's there's got to be there. From what I've heard, there's a lot of tech built into the Dome where you can do different things and you can move. You know, you can actually be creative in there. I think this was the show they wanted to do. Because you know, once you've done that full video show with all those gags that you 2 did, no one can really do anything different because they're all the same gags. You can change what it looks like, but. Well, some of the things that are going to be interesting are like the sporting events, you know, like Dana White putting a AUFC fight in there, which is going to be wacky like that. I can't even imagine what that's going to look like, so. I don't know what you know, but

37:41 it's not going to look like anything else, anywhere else. So it's a reason for people to tune in, right? And a reason to take pictures and post on Instagram. Even F1, like you know some of the stuff they did on the outside of the Dome where you know the the happy faced guy or whatever, the eyes would follow the cars down the track and stuff, you know, just crazy things like that. It's just, it's cool, it's cool, different, unique. I don't know how long. It'll be exciting. Like maybe, you know, I remember when the Stratosphere was first built in in Vegas, it was like, whoa, that's cool, you know, a a tower. And now it just kind of looks like an old artifact and nobody really goes there and stuff. I don't know if that's going to happen to the spear, especially when you know panels start failing and things happen, but.

38:30 I'm sure it's a full time job to keep up with all those panels, but. Yeah, it's. But it's almost like politics where you're either on this side or this side. Like I I've talked to even people who live in Vegas who either love it or hate it, you know, I can't stand driving down the road and look in that thing every day. It drives me crazy. And then other people are just like, I can't wait to see what's on it today, you know? So yeah, yeah. I think it's mainly positive from everything I've seen out there. Yeah. Do you have an apartment in Vegas or something? Because you seem to be spending a ton of time there. No. No. The results world staff know me pretty well. Well, you did that rock star thing too, right? The with the girls, the girl band.

39:13 What was that about it? Was just a opportunity to try and do something different again, you know, saw a gap in the market for shows in Vegas a lot. Were closing the crowd and the demographics in Vegas have actually changed substantially recently over the last few years. And I had a few conversations with some promoters about it. And that's, you know, it's down to this, the new stadium, it's down to, you know, this. It's a lot more sporting teams. It's a lot more Americans coming than international now. So you know what? What do Americans like? Rock music and country music? Yeah. And our, you know, so I think that there was an opportunity there and there still is an opportunity there. We're still in talks with a few people to see what we could do. But I thought it would be fun to create a show. Yeah, with a couple of friends.

39:56 And, you know, I think it worked out really good. I got some great creative people. We got some incredible talent and singers and cast. Yeah, and. Yeah, I watched some. Videos. There's something fun there. Yeah, it was. It was definitely very Vegas, very rock'n'roll, cool looking show. Looked like you put a lot of, a lot of effort and money and energy into it and and the band was good. So yeah, you know, it's just, you know, again in Vegas, you never really know. It's a fickle audience in a sense, right? Like, obviously for big, big acts like, you know, like Carrie or whatever, that's going to sell no matter what, right? The audience is there.

40:38 They're going to be there, but but when you get into, you know, smaller theaters and stuff, it's it's a very fickle hit or miss audience well. What we realized trying to do this is there aren't that many small theaters anymore. They've turned them all into food and beverage outlets. It's true. Because there's more money there. Yeah, I have a friend. Who so all those? I have a friend who was a was a hypnotist and was there very successfully I think for like 20 years and they just started putting so much pressure on him for the room, you know cuz he had a four wall deal and they started putting so much pressure on him and he just finally said fuck it, I'm out, I'm tapping out you know I'm not gonna do this anymore and and he retired so.

41:27 But I I think still think there's good opportunity for that show there. I think it may work. There's definitely some people interested in seeing it work. Yeah, it's just timing. You know, Vegas has been through F1, It's got Super Bowl. A lot of those spaces are tied up in what's happening for those events. So I think once we get through that, we might see something happen. Get them opening for get them opening for Carrie for few weeks. I mean, she she does love rock and rock. Yeah, that'll sell some tickets. Exactly. So what else did I want to ask you about? What else? You've had some other big stuff recently, right? Billie Eilish?

42:11 Billie was the original tour, it's not a recent one. We did the Coachella performance. OK, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you just seem like you've been doing huge stuff ever since since coming out of COVID. And oh, one thing I was going to ask you, I touched on the fact that you did some innovative things during COVID with the the virtual stuff. Did any of that carry forward or or like most ideas that happened in COVID, it died as soon as we got back to being busy? No, it still does exist. The technology though however is kind of interesting because the real time technology from people's phones into us being able to do it in a show.

42:55 I really think you know when you talk about what's coming next in the industry, interactivity is going to be something that we can integrate into you know people in a room show now. So what we learned from all of that kind of thing and the way that the servers work and how we could connect with those people and literally have real time interaction from the phones is something that I think we can bring into the next, you know, life of the things we do. Do you know a guy in Vegas, James Brett? Do you? Know Apex or Apex is his company. Yeah, it's that's what they do. They it's that interactive phone thing where you know they can control your phone and make them all go blue or whatever they can control.

43:38 Oh yeah, yes, I do know. Yes. And might be a different name back then. Yeah, but they can do messaging to your phone. They can all kinds of interactivity with your phone, whether it's things like announcements or safety or whatever, but also just audience interaction, you know, they can flash your your lights, they can all kinds of things. But we're also, you know, what about the other way around where the audience can affect the show. So that's kind of things that I think could be, you know, because that's why people like the Tik toks, the Instagrams and stuff like that. They get an instant content that can react with it. They can say that thing, they can do the comments like, how do we do that in real time? Yeah, that's that's a good idea. Even, you know, having like comments scrolls somewhere on a video screen.

44:26 You know where the comments are all coming down. But choosing the next song you know. What's that list? Yeah, exactly. Vote Vote on what song's next. Yeah, exactly. How about changing the lighting I mean. Yeah, exactly. You could do all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, this, you know today we want, you know, so and so song to be primarily red instead of blue, you know, or whatever. I don't know. Maybe that's just. Corny. But there is technology out there that can analyze the mood of a crowd and tell you what color it should be. Yeah, like I think they use that on a few projects, like architectural projects that I've seen.

45:06 Like it take. It figures out the mood of the city and changes like a landmark to that color, which is interesting because that could also work in a show. Yeah. So, like, yeah, go on. Sorry. I I do think there's a place for all that technology and, you know, figuring out how to use it. The more you can do to make someone's show more, more different. Yeah. Like, it doesn't always have to be about how it looks. Yeah, it can be how it's done too. Yeah, no, it's totally true. So you, I know you're sitting at home in in Vermont right now in the snow. And what's next? Like what's What's the next big thing on your calendar?

45:50 We have a couple of really big stadium shows, actually mainly in Asia. So that's the next few months for us. It's, it's been like an interesting start to the year because you know, when they say things come in threes, everything came in threes for like some massive acts in the Asian side. So yeah, that'll be interesting for us and keep and talk China forever actually Chinese. Oh, really? So yeah. Very cool. It's one of them's an artist I've worked with in the past, wanted to do a new tour and the other one's a new artist for us. So and they're the same over there. They're doing, yes, a year of stadiums.

46:30 That's wild. Totally wild. Yeah, I love it. That's that's my next challenge along with you know, Carrie will go back into Vegas. That'll be fun. We'll we'll go make sure that looks cool. Yeah. And a few other things that just starting to talk about. Yeah. I think it's going to be a really busy year for everyone. Yeah. You know, one of the reasons I can tell the industry's getting so much bigger right now is the number of collaboratives that seem to be falling together. You know, where a single designer on their own is, is more challenged to do the size and scope and scale of these projects.

47:11 So you know, more and more people seem to be putting together these collaborative or or collectives or whatever they're called and you know, you were one of the early ones on that too. Yeah, and I I think there's always a place for that. What I actually like at the moment is changing up who you collaborate with. You know, collaboration is always cool. Like a different team will get you a totally different result. Yeah. So you know what A, it does keep it fun and being out of bounce ideas off people and to be like, hey, what if we did this and then coming back with, well, what if we did this, you know? Yeah, I think that's always great. And you know, I think we're in a a place where people want to do cool stuff and I'm as bothered about making, you know, the the single name for themselves that people like to do stuff together.

47:58 Yeah, give me a, give me a couple of predictions for, for this year as far as like you know, whether it's challenges or innovation or changes or whatever, like how do you see this year shaping up? I think the challenge is always the same. Right now is finding great people. Everyone's busy. There's so much stuff out there that finding the right people and the and good people is hard. So getting new talent, getting new blood into this industry I think is something super important so that we can continue to do great work and like they can learn and go out on these tours and you know learn from the people that are doing it great right now so.

48:40 How do you do that? Challenge. What are what are some of the things, the initiatives that you guys go through to to find those people who you want to raise their hand and say, yeah, I want to be a touring guy? We do it less on the touring side and more on the creative side. So like, but I have done that where I've advertised in places I've tried to be like, hey, I want someone to come and work for me and learn from me, submit a really creative application and see what happens. And I found an incredible person there. Now who's like, she was my associate for a while and now she's doing stuff on her own because she grew so quickly. But she's out there. She just was the creative director for Romeo Santos Stadium tour.

49:20 And these are these. Are awesome job. No. She was younger like excited to get into it. Not much experience came from like the VIP world of touring. So she would do like VIP Nation. She was like, I want to be a creative. I want to be a creative director. So I've helped to get there. Wow. And we're also about to take on a new lighting designer who you know, has done a few acts on his own but now wants to grow. So he's going to come in and help us and learn from us and learn from Brian, learn from me like and go there. So we're always looking for people. And I do really like the young kind of eager people that want to learn and are open to learn and and want to come in and be like, well, this is what I've got now, what can I learn from you? You know, it's also a good point because I know, like, I'm probably considerably older than you at this point. But as we get older, it's easy to complain about young people, you know, Because when when it comes to things like work ethic or, you know, just the desire to work long, painful hours and do things that aren't on your job description or whatever, some of those things are a bit frustrating. But when you look at sort of young people today, like I ask my son things all the time, he's 19 because I want his viewpoint, because he's got such a more creative way of thinking and they think like the audiences think these days, right? And so you know, you almost have

50:54 to have a good sprinkling of those people among your your crew, or else you're going to miss great ideas. I think that, you know, like you said, there's the work ethic and things like that. I still think there are people out there that will just do whatever it takes to make it. And, you know, they know what they want and they're just going to do what it takes to get it. And they're the people that we tend to find. Yeah, Which is it's it's incredibly difficult to find. But when you find them, you're like, OK, can work for us. Yeah. Is your team completely, completely remote or? Yeah. Yeah. Do you have an office? Like, do you have a physical space somewhere? No. Not we used to have New York and Nashville and a space in LA and none of them anymore. Yeah, I have a really cool piece of software that I've been using for the last eight or nine months and people think I own a piece of it cuz I'm always talking about it. But it's called Rome RO dot AM and it sort of bridges the gap between being in a real office and being completely remote and jumping on to zoom calls at different points of the day. So you have, like, on your screen, you've got a virtual office, you've got, you can see people in their offices, and you've got conference rooms, you've got a theater where if you want to do, you know, a presentation for a group of students or something, it's in this theater. And there's all kinds of cool features in that, like it's webinar, basically.

52:18 But instead of just being like a normal webinar, you can invite people onto the stage. There's a microphone at the front of the room, so people can go up to the microphone and ask questions. People can talk to other people in their row. They can whisper so nobody else can hear them. But the people in that row can hear things like that. It's and. And so I can go knock on your door. If I see you in your office, I just go knock on your door and you let me in and we have a conversation and I leave your office and I'm out, right? So you don't have to schedule Zoom calls and stuff. And there's there's all kinds of video chatting and recording and blah blah, blah. You can do whiteboards and all kinds of collab stuff and it's really cheap. So for us, for my company, it's replaced Slack, it's replaced Zoom, it's replaced all kinds of other cuz it's got a messaging system that's not quite as powerful as Slack, but it's pretty cool.

53:11 But you should check it out. Anybody I know who's virtual, I'm constantly telling them about it. Rome It's super, super cool and it's. Cheap. Yeah, we just found it it you know, it was easier. Now we're used to working remotely. It works great if we need to go meet some wave like to them. Yeah, yeah. No, that's, I mean I've I was my company was was remote before it was cool. Like we've been remote for, I don't know, eight or nine years. So it was funny because when COVID happened, I was coaching companies of friends of mine on how to like move all of their information to the cloud or how to use zoom or how to whatever, because they didn't know how, right? Like they were just a physical office with a server over there in the corner and had no idea how to go remote. So.

53:59 I mean, we were All you'd really need is a decent Internet connection and a cell phone these days, and you can work from anywhere. 100% no. And I love that by the way. But I mean you do miss some of the I I really like this software product just because I see everyone on my staff pretty much every day and and whether it's a meeting or I just go knock on their office door and I go hey Bob how you doing You know it's it's just it's cool it's kind of a cool reconnection to people. But anyways. And we, you know, we are always on a show, so we always, you know, there's always a bunch of us out there and we get to see each other there, so. Yeah. Yeah, I think we appreciate the break. Being remote now and not having to be there every day because you know, there's when you are on a project site or you are trying to deliver a show, there's some long hours and some stressful times. So yeah, it's nice to well, for me, escape to the lake and do nothing.

54:50 Yeah. When do you When do you take off to China? In the next couple of weeks. Yeah, fun. Cool. I'll. Be there. Anything else I? Hopefully get some previous, No, I don't think so. No, I just feel like I haven't heard anything from you in a while. You've been so busy and stuff, so I thought it was a good time to catch up. Well, thank you. I look forward. I look forward to hearing. I look forward to hearing more about live, redesigned and and I'll be paying lots of attention. I follow you on all the social media stuff, so I'll be watching and paying attention. And if I know young designers who are looking to step up, I'll send them your direction.

55:34 Absolutely. Always looking. Yeah, cool. Thanks so much, man. Thank you. Always a pleasure to chat. Yeah, likewise later. Thanks None.