Interview Index -> Part 3
WD: Do you follow online, do you follow any of the discussion boards?
Fenton: Not a whole lot I did last year I was doing it a couple of times. When you come across a bad thread, it can really get in your head a little. Its best to stay away from them.
WD: There are some good ones too though.
 Fenton: Oh ya, definitely, there are a lot of positive ones. But I kind o f got the impression from them, there’s a lot of negativity on them. It was hard to want to read them if it was just going to be negative, uh—you know they aren’t all negative there are some positive ones too. You know I don’t look at them all too often, I do once in a while.
WD: Do feel like the rest of the crew checks it out, or the band?
Fenton: You know I’m not sure. I’ve never actually asked who looks at them and that type of thing. I’m not real positive who has. You know everyone’s got their computers out here, I don’t know if people look at them or not, I just don’t know.
WD: Someone wanted to know what the process is for archiving video. Do you save all the video from all the cameras from all the shows?
Fenton: Yes. Who knows what we’ll do with any of them. Eventually, hopefully we’ll release some of it. They’re not twenty camera shoots. Its IMAG so you don’t have a lot of wide shots. You don’t have a whole lot of wides. I feel like they’re good enough for, marketed the right way and given the right price I feel like they’re good enough to use eventually. And with technology. I really think that people, instead of just having live CD’s released would like to have something with visuals as well. I think it’s a good direction to go in.
So we do isolate every camera every night and record it and put it in the vault. Same process pretty much as the audio.
WD: Do you store it on DVD’s?
Fenton: We actually just added this year a couple DVD burners so we can record the director’s cut twice right to DVD and have hard copies of that. But we use DV. [Digital Video] We actually use PDV-184’s. So you don’t have to change tapes, they’re three hour tapes.
And I think its great quality, its not high-def. I don’t think there’s such a need for it to be high-def every show. The price of it would be insane. We’re definitely doing more than most by just isolating every camera every night and a directors cut. Every night if you think about it, that’s between sixteen and twenty hours of footage.
WD: It’s a ton, that’s why I was curious how you’re storing it all.
 Fenton: Ya, they’re three hour tapes. You know we’re recording six of seven cameras, then a director’s cut. They each have their own tape and we are moving things over to DVD just for longer storage. But the tapes we use have a thirty year life on them. If it gets to the point where we start getting worried ten years out we would start heavy transfers to save everything.
WD: This girl Katelyn from Castle Rock wanted to know how you remained so faithful to Dave Matthews Band and asks if you ever wanted to explore other projects I know you did some work for John Mayer, and you did Phish recently.
Fenton: You know, its definitely a family. Other than my own--my wife and my family, her family and my family from home--this is my family. And I’ve never even had a quest of wanting to go and—I can’t even imagine doing it with someone else to be honest.
I loved working with Phish, I had a great time. John Mayer, that was fun. You know I just came in for a video shoot for that it was like one show. And I do other random stuff on the side. I was the assistant director for video on an Eric Clapton show that he did a couple nights at the Staple Center, that’s a DVD that’s out.
I’ve actually done some lighting design for Liza Minelli. Just kind of different, its kind of all over the board there. And I’ve done some things that I directed video and designed lighting. The Jingle Ball in New York which is mainly top fourty pop, you know like Britney. More like poppy type stuff like that.
I know they guy from New York who’s the promoter rep for whatever bands that come through the Garden for Clear Channel. I’ve known him for years and he’s just asked me to come up and do some things. And I’ve definitely done them I enjoy it.
WD: Do you do this off-season?
Fenton: Ya. When we’re not out I’ll go. You know I don’t do it a whole lot. Its rare that I do. I need to do it more, I should get out and do some more stuff. But really, [touring with DMB] is a year round job. When we’re off the road I’m probably busier. Once we’re on the road and in a groove, my life gets easier once we’re out here. Because the design’s done after the first six or seven shows your really into a groove. Once you’re off the road, the planning process is more intensive for me.
WD: What’s the hardest part of your job?
Fenton: The hardest part of my job is programming, and I have a programmer. I don’t want to mean myself because I don’t want to take the credit that I do it all myself.
What I do is sit there—what I do is sit there and listen to music and tell Aaron and he’s punching the buttons. And I’ll tell him what I want to see the timing on the moves that I want and the color fades and that type of thing.
When you sit in a dark arena after two weeks—after fourteen days of being in a dark arena for twelve hours a day and not really dealing with people at all besides the one person you’re working with—that’s got to be the hardest part. Its exhausting.
Trying to remain creative on Satellite and Jimi Thing that I’ve worked with for years. Trying to do something different. Because we do a different lighting rig every year. We start from the ground and go from there. We don’t repeat things, we try to make it different.
And obviously when I say that, there are points in songs where the audience lights are going to come on. You try to change the color schemes and one year I’ll try to accent Stefan’s base line in a song. The next year maybe I’ll try to accent the violin even more. And then there songs where I’m doing both and a couple things at once.
I like doing that, I like trying to covering more than one. And that’s, I guess that’s how I try to keep it different every night. Sometimes I won’t cover a drum roll of Carter’s that I would cover, sometimes I will, sometimes I won’t.
I’ll just try to pick someone--whatever I’m hearing at that point, whether it be guitar, sax, violin. And kind of go with tehm for a little while and then figure out as I’m going with them how to go from Sax to Bass and make it smooth. Work in some horn hits on Two Much then try to get back to the bass or the keyboard and do changes to that without making it look like—
WD: Its going all over?
Fenton: Yes, exactly.
 Continue to Part Four of The Fenton Williams Interview
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