String Cheese Incident Celebrates 30th Anniversary with Series of New Year’s Eve Concerts Powered by Martin

OAKLAND, Calif.—String Cheese Incident recently rang in 2024 with a series of 30th anniversary New Year’s Eve concerts that were also notable as being the very first live events in the world to feature brand new Martin MAC One compact moving head fixtures provided by Christie Lites.
Formed in Colorado in 1993, String Cheese Incident (SCI) is an iconic American jam band whose concerts regularly draw thousands of fans across the country to listen to their unique and unpredictable live shows that seamlessly blend bluegrass, rock, electronica, calypso, country, funk, jazz, Latin, progressive rock, reggae and psychedelia. SCI is known for pulling out all the stops for their annual New Year's Eve Incident concerts, and with 2023 marking their 30th anniversary, the band really wanted to make this year’s edition feel special.
The band once again turned to veteran lighting designers Michael Smalley and Chris Ruppel to design and implement a rig that could not only support multiple sets worth of eclectic live performances but also bring fresh lighting effects to heighten the impact of the momentous occasion. Smalley and Ruppel designed and specified a versatile and powerful lighting rig exclusively featuring cutting-edge Martin instruments provided by Christie Lites, including a world premiere appearance from brand new Martin MAC One compact moving head fixtures.
“Doing lights for SCI is drastically different from mainstream concerts,” said Smalley. “With SCI, I need every light to be able to accomplish a lot of different things. I need a single fixture to be a spot, a hard edge, a soft edge, zoom really wide, and be able to get funky and weird. I ask for a lot of versatility out of the fixtures. They need to bring a lot to the table. On top of that, we want to use the nicest gear possible. That’s why we use Martin.”
Smalley and Ruppel’s SCI New Years Eve rig included 26 MAC Ultra Performance fixtures, six MAC Ultra Wash fixtures, 24 ERA 800 Performance fixtures, 14 MAC Aura PXL fixtures and eight MAC Aura XB fixtures. Because the team designed the rig for maximum flexibility, each fixture was selected for its ability to perform a wide range of roles and provide a variety of special effects and output levels to create a natural texture between the different fixtures used. According to Smalley, the Martin rig fulfilled every need perfectly.
“For New Year’s Eve we used both MAC Ultra Performances and ERA 800s as profiles, because they have different outputs and layer together nicely. We used the MAC Ultra Washes doing wide angle supportive stuff, Ultra has become a big part of how we present the show. We have to have those now since we started using them. The Aura PXLs give us individual pixel control that pairs nicely with our P3 control system, which allows us to implement video effects and crossfade that with the lighting.”
In addition to the aforementioned Martin fixtures, Smalley and Ruppel’s rig featured 32 brand new MAC One compact moving head fixtures, making SCI’s 2023 New Year’s Eve concerts notable for being the first live event in the world to feature them.
“The MAC One is wonderful,” said Smalley. “The Fresnel lens allows you to have a traditional par can output, it doesn’t feel like an LED. It feels organic. Then it has the Aura technology to give the face a prismatic effect. You get the awesomeness out of an eye candy LED fixture and not always have to use actual beam output. It fulfills this role that used to be part of our stage lighting lexicon but it fell by the wayside when the new LED stuff came out. Now we can bring it back to that organic feel while still having cool and funky modern effects. I used just the Aura Fresnel lens for about 80 to 90% of the show, while I pushed light out of the beam a lot less. It gave me the opportunity to have the face of the MAC One fill up the negative space without sending photon torpedoes of light down onto the band. It gave me a dynamic range of looks I can be in. I can have them at 10% or 50% output and get that range, while never losing the body of the rig.”
MAC One is a revolutionary beam, wash and eye-candy fixture, featuring a captivating Fresnel lens that transforms any stage or event into an extraordinary visual spectacle. Smalley and Ruppel utilized the Fresnel lens to deliver eye-candy and depth that translated both in person and on camera.
“These fixtures look really nice on camera in the background,” said Ruppel. “You can aim them directly at the camera and they don’t blow out the camera lens. They fill in the dark spaces between their shoulders and over their head, which gives a sense of depth. I think we’re going to see a lot more comedy specials and television shoots using these MAC Ones as that corner light. I would put it on any presentation or talking head scenario. It’s such a versatile fixture, you can use it for rock shows or anything else. It’s this ideal small frame fixture that’s easy to work with, easy to program, and fits into a tiny space that bigger lights don’t fit into.”
Smalley and Ruppel’s design also utilized a computer-based Martin P3 control system that unlocked the potential of every P3-compatible fixture in the rig while saving hours of time programming or tweaking show files.
“With MVR support now implemented in P3, we were able to go from our design in the drafting software to a usable show file in 15 minutes,” said Ruppel. “I’m not exaggerating. I put a flash drive in, loaded it, clicked a few buttons, it was super intuitive and user-friendly. MVR was done in a way that it goes from console to P3, running the media server on a combined laptop which supports a minimum amount of computers and cabling at front-of-house. It’s cool that you can have P3 on your own machine, you don’t have to bring an entire piece of hardware for it. It runs on the same network of the lights themselves, which maximizes our ability to get into the rig and use it quickly without spending hours pulling your hair out in tech support.”
Smalley emphasized the importance of his long-standing relationship with Martin over the years, and the confidence gained when he has Martin fixtures in the rig.
“I’ve been a huge Martin lighting fan for the entirety of my career,” said Smalley. “It’s always been the aspirational gear out there. When Martin stuff comes out it’s really exciting. Martin supports real artists. They make lights geared towards artists and creators to do their best work. There’s a lot of back and forth love and help and generosity and support with Martin. It puts me in a real positive place to be a creator. This New Year's Eve run of shows was the best I’ve ever felt about running lights in my entire career. There was a sense of calm, ease and stability that allowed me to be right in the moment. I knew every piece of gear was going to work. Nothing had to be changed or teched over the three days. With the Martin rig, I have the confidence to just do my job and everything is awesome.”