Professional Lighting & Production - Fall 2017 | Page 22

22 PL&P
Intense &
Impactful
A Hard-Hitting Design for
Rise Against’s 2017 Tour
By: Andrew King
Politically-charged punk rock outfit Rise
Against spent a lot of time on the road in 2017,
hitting multiple continents for everything from
club shows to top slots at major international
festivals and a lot in between.
As such, the band needed a hard-hitting
but versatile and adaptable production design
that could be scaled to suit a wide variety of
venues. For this, they tapped first-time collabo-
rator Mike Herkimer, known more commonly as
“Herk” – a Canadian lighting designer who also
stepped up to handle the video components
for this substantial series of dates supporting
the band’s 2017 release, Wolves.
Professional Lighting & Production caught
up with Herkimer in between tour legs to talk
about working with a new client, how certain
fixtures helped deliver his design while also
saving