Professional Lighting & Production - Summer 2019

18 PL&P A COMPELLING & EARTH-CONSCIOUS DESIGN FOR MOTHER MOTHER By Andrew King | Photos by Laura Harvey A lready a household name in their home and native land, quirky Canadian indie-pop quintet Mother Mother have seen their profile swell significantly south of the border in recent years. Look no further for proof than the extensive routing of their Dance and Cry Tour, which took the band throughout North Ameri- ca in the first quarter of 2019 in support of their latest and seventh studio album of the same name. The trek hit iconic venues of vary- ing sizes on both sides of the 49 th parallel, including the Gramercy Theatre in NYC, Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, Burton Cummings Theatre in Winnipeg, and The Orpheum in their home- town of Vancouver. As such, the band – frontman, guitarist, and principal songwrit- er Ryan Guldemond; keyboardist/vocalists Molly Guldemond and Jasmin Parkin; drummer Ali Siadat; and bassist Mike Young – set out with a scalable production package that included a unique set design anchored by custom-milled pieces of B.C. alder harvested from Vancouver Island that aligned perfectly with the band’s various visual motifs. Lighting, video, and set designer George Gorton recently sat down with Professional Lighting & Production to talk about the run and how everything came together leading up to the first date in Phoenix, AZ, in mid-January. “Mother Mother has been a bastion of the west coast music landscape for some time, and as I’m also based on the west coast, we’ve had the opportunity to work together on a bunch of tours, so it was a natural fit to continue that evolution,” Gorton explains about how he was initially tapped to take part in the Dance and Cry Tour. “I find it rewarding to contribute to a group that plays such an important role in cultivating and inspiring artists in my own community.” Indeed, the band has always been proud of its west-coast ori- gins and done their share of inspiring and scene-building. Still, their signature brand of bouncy power pop and impactful rock has been imitated but never (successfully) duplicated in the years since they stormed onto Canada’s cred-soaked indie scene in 2007 with the wide release of their unconventional and uncompromising debut, Touch Up. As such, with each new tour, the band aims to match the one-of-a-kind sonic identity of the album they’re supporting with an equally impactful and compelling live show.

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