This Primetime Emmy nominated designer is always ready to acknowledge the industry legends who have helped him along the way. Among them is Joe Paradise, whose words years ago about showing restraint in lighting still ring in his head to this day. Happily though, there was one bit of advice from his early mentor that young Bobby did not follow: become a doctor or lawyer, not a lighting designer.

Offered, half in jest (perhaps?) when a teenage Grey approached the legendary rock LD at an INCUBUS concert FOH, it was advice that was impossible to follow. The passion for lighting has always run too deep in the heart and soul of this Kentucky-born and California-based designer for that!

Powered by this passion, along with a generous amount of natural talent and relentlessly hard work, Grey has built an outstanding career. Starting out as a stagehand and technician, he moved on to programming and ultimately lighting design, doing widely acclaimed work in broadcast and concert lighting.

Grey’s list of achievements is long and impressive: a designer for Spotify’s Billions Club Live series with the Weeknd and Miley Cyrus, and Jelly Roll’s homecoming show at Bridgestone Arena, as well as tours by the likes of Sam Hunt, Cage The Elephant, 311, Jennie, and Maren Morris to name a few. He’s also has four Primetime Emmy nominations, as a lighting director / programmer for other designers – including the one he shared for the 2025 SNL 50 The Homecoming Concert, in addition to working on live episodes of American Idol, The Apple TV Concerts In London with some of the industry’s top design teams.

The same passion that has guided Grey’s success drives him to delve deep into every aspect of design. This is evident in how he explores the subtlest variations in that mysterious space that lies between darkness and light, an interest that is reflected in his company’s intriguing name, Notan Creative. “We don’t have a moving light that can output black, or negative light, he told us. “So the only way to protect negative space is to specifically consider it in the design and programming process.”

Grey took time from his busy schedule to share insights with us about the power of passion in design.

It’s interesting that you named your company Notan (the Japanese concept of balancing light and darkness in design), because we have been impressed by the way you weave darkness and shadows in your shows. Why did you select that name for your studio?
“When I formed my company, I really struggled to find a name that would fit my identity. My wonderful wife Cristel actually found the name. At one point she asked me what I thought about the name Notan – pointing out that it referred to the ‘play and placement of light and dark areas in an artistic composition,’ and I almost spilled my coffee. THAT’S IT!

What do you feel darkness brings to a design?
“It’s hard to overstate how important negative space is within lighting and production design…First, everything has to be in balance – Effect lighting, such as beams, strobes; the video wall and other emissive elements on the stage, The artist, performers, dancers and their key light, lasers, pyro and other FX.

“I do a lot of festival style and turntable shows. This has afforded me the opportunity to work with a lot of different creative teams and see what works and what doesn’t. What I quickly realized is, that if it’s bad, you as an audience member or even as an artist, can tell really quickly. If the whole floor package is at eye level, and everything is aiming right down the lens (of your eye or the camera) and blasting to full every time there’s a snare. It’s impossible to see the artist or have any idea of what is going on stage.

“If the video wall is at 100-percent and blasting an absurd amount of nits all over the place – everything else on stage feels flat and then the key light starts piling on to cut out the artist from the wall. If adequate though, isn’t given to balance – even a design that’s brilliant technically, geometrically and programmed to perfection, will lack impact and proper composure

“Second, negative space leaves room for dynamics to let the important moments – and things on the stage like our artists – shine. We don’t have a moving light that can output black, or negative light (yet…?). So the only way to protect negative space is to specifically consider it in the design and programming process. A stage completely full of strobes, emissive sources, full wall video content at full brightness, then piled with layers of beams, can quickly turn from impactful to cluttered.

“Washes of light that fall off and gradient to darkness, cleverly framed video content to hide hard edges of the surface, set pieces lit from dynamic angles to preserve shadow and form, and even unique directional key light that can provide strategic modeling on an artist or performer — all help us paint that pretty balanced picture that make a show feel polished and elevated. I think the best renders – photos, videos, and captures of a show have a sort of nice vignette fall off to them. We have so many tools in our toolbox to carefully control and craft the light on our stages, that we can actually create this sort of vignette feeling in real life — and I think that’s amazing.”

Of course, there are different degrees of darkness – black, gray, shadows, etc. Can you tell us how you see these different levels affecting a design differently?
“I do a lot of work lighting multi camera broadcasts for TV and streaming, both on my own designs, and as a programmer and lighting director for larger teams. What you find really quickly doing TV is that if it isn’t lit, specifically, it’s black on the camera. Sometimes that really works to our advantage – parts of the stage/venue/audience may best be left to the darkness and not visible on the design software. We’re able to sort of pull what we want to be featured and where we want to draw our audience’s attention into the forefront with subtle and careful lighting level adjustments — and ultimately let something that’s not the feature fade into the background either as context, or total darkness. The lights can be anywhere between 0 and 100 for a reason. They don’t have to be going zero to full all the time.”

In many shows, such as your Sam Hunt tour, you transition from dark looks to very bright and colorful ones. How do you make the transition between bright colors and darkness, while still keeping the identity of your show?
“Ah yes! Sam! Sam’s Summer on the Outskirts tour was this fantastic collaboration between my longtime friend Darien Koop, who did the production design, myself who did the lighting design and collaborated with Darien on the creative direction and technical producer bits, and our friends at F9 who made stunning content for us.

“So Darien sits down with Sam and gets the story about this rusty train trestle bridge from where he grew up, and his signature song for that run was a song called ‘Water Under the Bridge.’ Darien literally found the bridge, and brilliantly adapted it into a set piece. He and I figured out during our design process that it could fly all the way out and be hidden until half way through the show, and then sort of land in, and we choreographed this great moment where Sam walked up there during an interlude, sat down on the edge, and sort of rode it up with his legs swinging off of it like a kid.

“So what does this have to do with light? Through this whole show’s concept was sort of just Sam, being raw and himself, up there telling us who he is through song and his performance. We used light to make this bridge feel like a Broadway set piece at times — like a huge rocking platform with modern lighting others…and darkness to make it totally disappear when we wanted.

“There were lots of raw, down, intimate moments, like his acapella, acoustic B stage moment, lit only by a couple of tubes and mainly by lights from the audience’s phones. We dimmed the stage as if it was sleeping and dormant, just enough of a glow to see that it was up there but almost like a dark town at night lit just by the streetlights.

“One of the opening songs was called ‘House Party.’ It was Darien’s idea to find the small house that Sam first lived in when he moved to Nashville. We had F9 model it, and had it set as a scene for the upstage wall that made it look like it was sitting right on the stage, and our staging decks were the sidewalk. When the chorus kicks off (describing someone having a house party at home) It wasn’t just our lighting at full blast getting the arena into party mode, but virtual lighting inside the house that continued the scene and reacted right along with our lights on stage.

“In a nutshell, we were really able to run the full range of what the lights could do, and be very surgical and careful to compose bespoke looks and feels for each song, mainly through the use of lighting and protecting dark areas and moments.”

How do you see the relationship between music and light?
“In general–for the most part, the music can dictate where we go. Often the ebbs, swells and flourishes in the music, big crashes, slow breakdowns, intimate solo and acapella moments, are low hanging fruit and it just makes sense where to go.

“That being said – one of the things that we pick up in TV, and I think to a quote from Tom Sutherland who’s one of the best lighting designers in the business, who I’ve learned so much from is ‘Find a base for everything, build your base as your safety net, and then layer from there.’

“Often, when we have something that looks great in previs and then get into the room on the real rig and it just feels cluttered or like something isn’t working – We will just turn everything off, and then one at a time bring in elements to compose the image and then surgically we are able to paint a pretty picture and complete a coherent and polished look. Sometimes, pulling back is important.

“My first real tour, I was working for my early mentor, and dear friend, legendary rock and roll designer Joe Paradise. Joe was a master at finding dynamics and the appropriate system for each moment in the music. Most of our rock clients at that time were not on timecode, and some had very deep catalogs of music. Joe taught me this craft by having me program everything for him on our rehearsal days in the shop, and then having me handle all the punt songs once we were out on the road. I, being an eager 20 year old, did what many of us do when we’re starting out and started ramming all the punt handles to full and slamming the strobes.

“Joe would be in my ear, through puffs on his cigarette, saying ‘Bobby, you’re in the verse here and everything’s at full, you have nowhere to go, what are you going to do when the music actually picks up?’ Or, ‘Bobby you have s**t chasing and strobing and moving everywhere and the band is literally just playing the bridge… Settle into a nice static scene and let the band do some of the work… they’re up there playing, their name is on the marquee… just give them a pretty space to work in. When the music really gets wild, when we’re ready to end the show and leave everyone wowed, then you can bring it back up… but you always have to leave yourself somewhere to go.’

“I hear both the quote from Tom and the one from Joe in the back of my head as I’m working almost every day.”

In your work for Jennie’s “The Ruby Experience” world tour, you kept lighting fixtures off the stage, preferring to rely on a giant video wall as well as top and side light that was very far from the center of the stage. Can you tell us a bit about why you went with this open-look?
“YES! – Working with Jennie was such a fun one this year. This one was a collaboration with my longtime friends, creative and business visionary in our industry Sooner Routhier and Production Designer Michael Apostolos, The three of us did this project as collaborators under the umbrella of The Playground, Sooner’s new design and creative collaboration outfit.

“We have really honed a process on these. First out was Michael’s brilliant design for the two hero walls, with 90 degree angled returns, along with an upstage entrance. Sooner added a fashion show style runway down the middle, and then I went to work adding lighting.

“Those video walls with the returns, let us go between traditional upstage wall content looks and looks utilizing the returns, giving us a rich 3D effect. It really felt like they were not just upstage walls, but monolithic 3D objects.

“Given the fashion show aesthetic we wanted, I felt it was important to keep as much of the lighting not just from interfering with the shapes of the design, but complementing it. So we lined all of our staging with pixels, and created an overhead “runway” system that followed the real runway below, also made of pixels with a line of profiles down the center. Upstage we had a hero wall behind an automated door that let us continue the runway system down to the deck for entrance and exit moments — clean groupings of like-styled fixtures.”

You followed a similar strategy for Jelly Roll at Bridgestone Arena. What was your vision for that show?
“Jelly’s show at Bridgestone was sort of his big coming out as an arena artist – at the same time it was his big homecoming to Nashville – A victory lap. His manager specifically put in the hero wall and brought in the fantastic team at Luz Studio to create these environmental scenes for the hero wall upstage, taking us from a rundown trailer park, to dive bars, to the glitzy neon signs of Broadway in Nashville, to a burned down church, telling Jelly’s story – From redemption to fame to his philanthropy.

“Just having the huge wall doesn’t mean that’s all there is to the show. We were able to get very creative with the blow through and continue the scenes off into infinity. Torms lined with strobes and profiles let us frame the stage, and we also had a grated decking system so we could blow light and fire from beneath the stage around Jelly as well.

“Again, we were telling Jelly’s story through light, visuals, and frankly just by having him up there – a heavyweight champion – having his big mainstream coming out, and homecoming moment – celebrated by tens of thousands of rabid fans. Within that story, there are bright moments, somber moments, and dim and dark moments, and we were able to bring all of them to life.”

Many of your shows have a large video element. We’ve been impressed by how you play off light and video to create greater depth on stage. Can you tell us a bit about how you see lighting and video working together?
“Sometimes this is born of necessity, sometimes it’s a choice. These days, video is such an important part of every show’s design. Video can be used as a backdrop, setting virtual scenes to extend our stages out into infinity, taking us into other worlds that couldn’t be otherwise created with traditional set pieces.

“It can be used to alter our perception of reality by taking feeds from the stage, warping them and treating them with notch, and then displaying them in artistic stylized ways.

It can also be used as light source itself. We have the ability to shape and mold it, and now with powerful products like Vanish we can even layer it to do amazing things. All of this finds a sweet spot when lighting and video play together to create a coherent scene.”

You’ve also done some impressive work with 360 stages as you did for the Spotify Weeknd project. What challenges does that kind of stage present and how do you meet them?
“Thanks! The project for Spotify and The Weekend was a fun one. We started with a staging concept designed by the brilliant Ceren Arslan – with Bureau Betak – that mirrored both the Spotify and Billions club logo.

“Luckily, The Weeknd’s production and lighting designer is the absolutely fantastic Jason Baeri – Also one of my dearest friends in the industry. What resulted was a perfect fusion between us as designers – Jason representing Abel and translating his beautiful show into this format – and me crafting the whole event for camera.

“I think what made this one really special goes back to light and dark, negative space. We were in Barker Hanger – this very industrial space. Our directive from the client was to lean into that industrial vibe, but keeping it modern, clean and edgy. I felt like we sort of created a feeling of a nightclub from Westworld’s future scenes or The Matrix.

“We had 5 main architectural elements

One: A large circle truss lined edge to edge seamlessly with motorized wash-strobes. This REALLY became a beautiful centerpiece. We had the dark void of the center of the circle framed with these clean modern lines created by our fixtures, either in color with soft blooms of light fading and graduating into darkness, or with the crisp, bright, clean white center of the fixture for pops, dynamics, and moments where clean white was the entire look of the song.
Two: A circular stage in the center of the audience mirroring our circle in the air, lined with JDC lines
Three: A beautiful runway lined with motorized battens
Four: A curved video ribbon – used only as a light source with vignetted color and texture.
Five: Audience trusses framing the hanger with profiles and strobe-washes.

“Our programmer and lighting directors on this show really were the key factor that made it possible on the timeline we had – Andre Petrus worked tirelessly including through a 20 hour day on site to deliver a show programmed to the same spec and caliber that a full touring stadium show that runs for months would be, and our gaffer / lighting director Jay Koch was the perfect clone of myself, leaving footprints everywhere, measuring and leveling things literally to laser precision, and balancing key light in this challenging 360 degree environment.

“What resulted was a stunning capture, with Abel performing smack in the middle of his own warehouse rave in a hanger – surrounded by quite literally his top fans.

“I sincerely hope we did justice to Jason’s amazing vision and attention to detail. He’s one of the best who has or ever will do this, and if you get a chance to see any of his shows you will not regret it.

Without mentioning brand names is there one type of fixture that you find indispensable? Is there a type of fixture that you tend to stay away from?
“These days, it’s all about things being cinematic. I absolutely love the world of remote controlled follow-spots that we live in, allowing us to find the PERFECT key light angle from anywhere in the rig. Also the large format LED source profiles on the market, that give us beautiful even fields, uniform outputs and massive amounts of firepower.”

Many of your designs are built around a distinct theme. Do you view your work as conveying a narrative in light? Do you like to unfold that narrative as a show progresses?
“I love cohesive design and when the production elements serve as the architecture for the stage. Even when the production dictates simple lines, easy to build systems or small floor packages, I love the challenges of making every design bespoke to that client or project, and trying to tell their story visually through both the shape and placement of the rig, and the implementation and programming.”

You’ve done some impressive tours with your client 311, and you’ve also did a residency in Las Vegas. How do the two differ in terms of how you design?
“The guys in 311 are such dear friends of mine and were the first tour I took out by myself. What is interesting about them is they have this massive cult following, much of which is underground without mainstream radio success. Their calling card is their amazing live show. They were known in the early days to play 120-plus shows a year, and since the early 90s, have an annual summer tour that packs amphitheaters across the country.

“I started on the road with them under Joe Paradise, who had down the line had inherited the gig from the legendary Nook Schonfeld and been with them for many years. My first couple of years on the road were as Joe’s tech – I would build the downstage truss and floor package and then head out front to assist Joe with console updates and spot calling, before jogging back to stage for load out.

“In 2017, Joe retired from the road to take a full time job at home in Florida, and I flew out to train the band’s new touring operator. While I was there, the band pulled me into the bus to talk about the future.

“They had a short residency coming up at the newly built Park Theater in Vegas – which had a HUGE upstage video wall, 200-foot wide stage with a 12k projection system on the proscenium. The band was set to play three nights for their “311 day” festival there… but with one problem… They had absolutely zero video content, and were about to play 100-plus songs of their deepest cuts, many of which they had not played in a decade or more.

“They knew that I had an intimate knowledge of their music – and tasked me with creating a Vegas-worthy production design and commissioning what content we could afford to be created, along with amassing a repository of stock content and notch effects to get a show together.

“I had just done the Apple Music festival in London with my friend Jack Banks, where we would build out entire shows for artists like Elton John within our eight-hour programming window before camera blocking, out of a collection of stock and notch effects, and knew he was the man.

“We stumbled through it, and actually ended up with a very good looking show. After that the band decided there was no going back and wanted to bring the touring show up to the same level of technology and spectacle, and brought me on as their overall live creative director and production designer. And we got the band to get their non-freeform-jam style songs onto timecode, a huge win!

“We built out a touring package that year and brought on Alex Parayelous as the band’s touring LD. Bonus was that Alex was a video expert. He spent two weeks at my home studio with me building out a touring server system on a budget, and we built a pretty good system of pulling stock content, compositing it, and programming the server like a lighting fixture so that for both the timecoded songs, as well as the punted songs from their 250+ song catalog, had video and IMAG effects to match. Since then, I’m so grateful to have had the band’s trust and we have created some really beautiful shows together.”

You’ve also done quite a bit of broadcast work like American Idol. Given that so many tours are filmed today from multi-camera angles. Do you draw on that experience when working on a tour?
“There are so many benefits to working in both touring and multi camera music for broadcast. One is speed. Usually, multi camera projects happen on extremely tight timelines given the huge amount of moving parts for something like that to come together.

“My first real work as an associate designer was with Sightline Design Group – under partners Stan Crocker and Seth Robinson. Stan and Seth were doing all of the Apple Music projects at the time, with a heavy focus on the annual Apple Music Festival in London. In addition to those, their calendar was filled with multi camera performance shows like CMT’s Crossroads.

“Both of them took me under their wing and really taught me about lighting for the camera and what a true art form it could be, including the entire path from the performer, to the atmosphere, to the lens, to compression all the way to playback.

“The last iteration of the Apple Music festival, I got to go to London for a month to be the lead programmer and lighting director for the festival, building shows from the ground up in a day for artists like Elton John, and working with the whole team. Paul Dugdale was the director, and with Stan’s leadership, Seth’s visionary and brilliant process and attention to detail, and all of our work as a team, I feel that year’s broadcast was really a masterclass in multi camera music for broadcast and some really beautiful work. I’m eternally grateful for Stan and Seth’s mentorship – They took me in as a programmer, and really molded me into a draftsman, render artist, lighting director and eventually designer.”