Making triple-headline history at Red Rocks, with help from Disguise
Live Events
Music
Disguise Platform
In July 2025, Andrew McMahon became the first artist to triple-headline the iconic Red Rocks amphitheatre in Colorado with his three distinct projects, Something Corporate, Jack’s Mannequin, and Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. This one-time-only event, building on a scaled-back tour for Jack's Mannequin earlier in the year, brought McMahon’s three bands together to create a seamless, three-and-a-half-hour performance featuring forty-two songs from across their collected catalogues. Creative studio Eye Garden was instrumental in bringing this vision to life, utilising Disguise EX 3+ servers and Designer software to transform a touring setup of three displays into an expansive five-screen experience that would live up to the spectacular setting of Red Rocks.
The challenge
The sheer scale of intertwining three different bands into a cohesive yet distinct performance presented a significant challenge. Eye Garden’s objective was to make each band stand out while maintaining a unifying narrative throughout the show. With three bands and ten band members in total, the production needed to make each artist shine.
A key technical consideration the team faced was finding the right system. “We needed a system that would scale up for the Red Rocks performances, but scale down for the rest of the Jack’s Mannequin tour” explains Austion Woolfolk, Video Designer at Eye Garden. “We needed a mix of creative content pipelines and mapping modes to ensure seamless adaptation across different venues.”
The timeline was also demanding, with early prep starting in early 2025 ahead of a May launch for the tour, culminating with the Red Rocks gig at the end of July. The main objective was to deliver a show that felt intentional and surprising throughout its runtime. McMahon and the other artists also wanted the flexibility of working without a timecode, which meant any production would need to be operated on the night in order to deliver meaningful moments within the performance.
The solution
Eye Garden, in the driver's seat for both lighting and video, designed the entire show and turned to Disguise to help bring the vision to life. Pre-visualisation in Designer allowed even the earliest designs to be tested in a digital rendering of the locations the bands would perform in months later, with every aspect of the show able to be tested cohesively. Onstage video was designed to serve as both a narrative device and a lighting source at times, making the most of the Red Rocks screen septum which consisted of four 8x12 ROE CB5 screens and one 24x8 screen in the middle.
Mapping modes within Designer were particularly beneficial to the Eye Garden team, allowing them to take 16:9 content, IMAG, and other visuals, and switch between them to create diverse looks and creative moments. These modes also proved crucial in providing the team with the ability to remap the show to each individual venue on the Jack’s Mannequin tour that led up to the Red Rocks event, ensuring that each gig met the same visual standard.
Designer’s timeline editor was used to break down the production, with cue programming on the server managing the forty-two song setlist. This allowed for precise coordination of lighting and video, focusing on specific elements as the band performed. The flexibility of Disguise, further boosted by the team’s holistic approach to design, made it easy for operators to make on-the-fly tweaks mid-concert and enact them, confident of the desired effect.
All this ran through two Disguise EX 3+ servers, owned by Eye Garden, which Woolfolk credits as delivering a big impact.
We were able to get a lot of mileage out of the EX 3+. Disguise’s toolset is fantastic, I love it. I want to use it on every show I work on. It just makes a lot of sense - it’s the perfect tool for the job that we do.
Video Designer, Eye Garden
The results
The show was a resounding success, with the 10,000-capacity Red Rocks venue selling out in just 45 minutes. Standout looks utilised simple gradients built in Designer, as well as hand-drawn animations. The ability to manage a show that started in daylight and transitioned to night was also a key advantage.
From start to finish, Eye Garden had a clear vision for the project. Being able to sketch something up, visualise it far in advance, bring that vision to life, and finally see it culminate in a triumphant triple-headline show at Red Rocks was a feeling that the Eye Garden team describes as truly special.
