The Lighting Department

Greetings!

My name is  Al Williams, and i have 21 years experience with concert lighting. I got my start in the music business on Christmas Day 1984 with a band named WWIII. After that band's untimely demise, I joined the staff of Houston's most respected nightclub, Cardi's (RIP).  I worked there as the house lighting technician. While there, I worked with acts booked by Pace Concerts, including Megadeth, BTO, Uriah Heep, Helstar, Johnny Winter, Zebra, Alcatrazz, Dwight Yoakum, Black Flag, The Lords Of The New Church, Celtic Frost, and many others. Also, Pantera and Lillian Axe were two of the 'weekly' acts on the Cardi's stage (RIP, Dime).

After Cardi's closed its doors, I hooked up with regional favorite Oz Knozz and their parent company, Amphion Sound and Light. When the opportunity came to tour nationally, I took it, spending two years on the road with Wurx on their '87-'88 American Tour. While with Wurx, I did concerts with bands like Nuclear Assault, Roxx Gang, Dirty Looks, TNT, Nitro, Zebra (again) and Accept. When the market for glam-metal music died in with the advent of grunge music from Seattle (along with a huge economic crash here in Houston), I moped around for a few years, languishing away doing menial day jobs. I made my return in April of '95 with Tim Nichols and Common Cents, a country band, pictured below:

I then became a freelance LD, doing large and small concerts and corporate theater with artists like Petra, Doug Supernaw, Willie Nelson, Five Time Grammy Winner B.J. Thomas, Rickey Van Shelton, David Allan Coe, Clay Blaker, The Oak Ridge Boys, Gary Stewart, Lee Roy Parnell, Little Feat, Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The Isley Brothers, Lou Rawls,  Maze, featuring Frankie Beverly, and many more whose names slip my mind.
The shows done with Dough Supernaw were concerts in which footage was used to make his CMT Video of the Year nominated video for '97

In '97, I toured America and Canada with4ad recording artist Gusgus, with opening acts Lamb (Mercury Records at that time), and Vuca.

This next photo is the my only full shot of the infamous, innovative Wurx show, taken August 6, 1988, at Backstage in Houston, Tx.

I am a master with Avolite's Pearl and Sapphire Lighting Controllers, I like the ETC Expression controllers, and I have basic knowledge of the Whole Hog 2 controller. I am an expert High End Systems IntellaBeam/Cyber Light and Martin Mac programmer who will travel to your location to program your fixtures for your tour, night club, concert, ballet, theatrical production, rave, corporate function, anything you need, and at very reasonable rates! My satisfied clients include Thunder and Lightning Sound, LD Systems, Stage Directions, Independent A/V, International Sound And Light, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Edward Albee, Paul Mitchell Products, Stewart Title/Baca-Landata, Coopers and Lybrand, Rick's Cabaret, AT&T, Cleveland, Ohio's Hanna Theater, the UNCF, the DuPage County (Illinois) Bar Association, The Kingwood Dance Theater, Morpheus Lights (Santa Clara, CA), Mo's Place (Katy, TX), Wispers (Galveston, TX), and many others.