LightSoundJournal.com: Phish delivered a fantastic summer tour experience for fans in North America, uniting another highly talented collaborative lighting team of Chris Kuroda,longtime lighting designer for Phish, and associate designer Andrew “Gif” Giffin, who have created a dynamic and eye-catching design with the help of 72 x Robe Tetra2 moving LED bars and 60 x Robe Spiiders.
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Being a huge fan of Phish and former intern at one of their main venues The Capitol Theatre, it’s really cool to get insight into their lighting. I never got to learn specifically if they use their own technicians/designers and equipment, or if they rely on that of the venue. What I find so cool is that they have both their own designers and equipment. It is really nice that they do that as it creates this consistent aesthetic for their lighting design. They use 72 Robe Tetra2 moving LED bars and 60 Robe Spiiders. The designers said they chose these because they like to work with innovative, new, products and I think that is really out of the ordinary for a band that is very retro and band-jammy. Also, because one of the main aspects of Phish is that they never play the same setlist twice, they have to “evolve visually” with each show. This is really difficult to do while keeping the same idea of having to keep each show different enough, but also fits the same aesthetic.
Phish’s light bars have become a staple of their rig and lighting in the past decade. Helmed by lighting director Chris Kuroda who calls lighting cues on the fly as the band jams out songs into unique compositions, their current rig, which broadly the same as the one in this article, allows him the freedom to change looks on the fly and to follow along with the band’s myriad changes in tempo, mood, and instrumentals, even allowing quick changes between songs. The duo of Kuroda and Gif have done great work in creating such a flexible rig, one that can be scaled up and down depending on location (such as at their sphere shows in 2024). The company TAIT, which I am a big fan of, has had a hand to play in Phish’s lighting redesigns, and their warehouses are full of hardware used in Phish tours of the past (including the entire JEMP Truck from their New Years show in 2013. This level of fidelity to the history and outlook of the band in echoing the band’s continual music evolution in an evolution of the lighting present at their shows is nothing short of a perfect match. Phish’s rig lets Kuroda create different images and shapes as the show progresses, while also painting pictures of light on the crowd itself, giving even more interest to those in the nosebleeds at bigger venues such as Madison Square Garden. I look forward to seeing how their lighting system evolves as time goes on but I can’t say I see a single fault in it as it stands.
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