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Jeremy Roth chooses Elation SOL Blinders for Nathaniel Rateliff tour

For their first major arena tour as headliners, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats hit the road this past spring on their “South of Here” tour with a vintage-inspired production design that reflected their signature blend of folk, Americana, and rhythm & blues. At the heart of the lighting design was the Elation SOL I Blinder, chosen by production and lighting designer Jeremy Roth, who specified 106 units as the core element of the visual aesthetic. Brown Note Productions delivered the full lighting, audio, and rigging systems for the tour.

Roth turned to the SOL Blinders for their blend of retro form factor and modern color capabilities. “I’m generally attracted to retro-looking fixtures”, he explains. “My preference is to utilize the best aspects of new technology, but ideally in a fixture that has a throwback feel to the earlier days of the lighting industry. I liked the feel of the SOL - the Fresnel lens, the high CRI, the roundness of the front bevel - it had a nice throwback feel. And you can mix some very convincing tungsten in them. A lot of Nathaniel’s songs fit in that tungsten color.”

Roth’s design approach for the tour emphasized emotion through simplicity, relying more on static positions, carefully tuned color temperatures, and intensity shifts rather than fast movement or effects. “The show is about simplicity and holding back. It often starts at low intensity and builds up”, he says. Although the show’s color palette remained intentionally limited, Roth used the SOL I Blinders to shift from a wide range of warm white hues for soul revival songs to CTB, steel, and dark blues for more intimate moments.

Roth says he also likes the fixture’s dimming behavior. His programming approach often involves syncing effects with the beat while also incorporating a manually controlled element - something that can be brought up or down on a fader to give the light a sense of pulse. “That ability to emulate the dimming response of a tungsten fixture is incredibly important”, he notes. “It creates the feel that the light isn’t reacting in a literal or immediate way but instead follows with a delayed dimming curve for a more natural feel.”

Then there are moments where Roth pushed the fixtures to full intensity. One standout moment came during the song “Survivor”, when the SOL Blinders transitioned from warm tungsten-style looks to a full-intensity cold white strobe to match a staccato horn line in the outro. “Up to that point, they’ve been doing mostly tungsten chases, and you don’t really know that they can do much more than that”, he says. “It’s a moment where this light that was seemingly innocuous, creating these nice warm looks, suddenly punishes you for a few seconds with 9000 lumens of bright white flashing. The show becomes all about the horns, and the punch from the lights is spectacular in that moment. It kind of bangs you over the head right at the end of the song and then ends with a blackout so you have an after image of all 106 blinders.”

Another technique Roth used to great effect was shifting into saturated colors, sometimes even unexpected ones like UV or teal, to create a look that stood apart from everything that came before. “When those colors are brought in during a song or a sequence of songs, the change has a striking impact as it creates a different look and vibe that the audience hadn’t seen up to that point”, he says.

The production also featured a large video component, with three main video screens behind the band plus IMAG screens. The SOL I Blinders were used to form a mid-stage frame of light with more fixtures mounted around three large video screens to create a picture frame effect. They were active for roughly ninety percent of the show, with Roth typically running them at 5-10 percent intensity.

Supporting the production was longtime partner Brown Note Productions, who has been Rateliff’s vendor since the start of his touring days. The company worked closely with Roth to bring his vision to life, including purchasing the SOL Blinders specifically for the tour. Brown Note also engineered a custom mounting system for the SOL fixtures to ensure precise alignment and consistent spacing between the fixtures and the video walls.

The “South of Here” tour kicked off in fall 2024 and wrapped in spring 2025, with a scaled-down version planned for the final leg this fall. According to Roth, the SOL I Blinders will remain an integral part of the show in the reduced setup. Working alongside Roth are Rick Procopio and David Gleeson (Production Managers), William Pepple (Tour Manager), Jamie Oebeles (Lighting Crew Chief), Kat Rodgers (Lighting Director/Assistant Video Director) and Michael John Grant (Video Director/Lighting Programmer), plus Marco Valdez, Nick Luecking, Ryan Key, Brady Coates and Hunter Davis (Lighting Crew).

(Photos: Jeremy Roth)

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