ADJ Fixtures Create The Atmosphere For Nashville’s Kinda Party At Jason Aldean’s New Las Vegas Bar

Country music star Jason Aldean is bringing his signature Nashville-style hospitality to the Las Vegas Strip with the grand opening of his newest and largest Kitchen + Rooftop Bar. The two-story venue features a state-of-the-art lighting system which utilizes ADJ’s versatile Focus Hybrid as its central automated fixture, complemented by Focus Flex L7 wash-zooms and Jolt Panel FX2 wash/strobe fixtures.

With established locations in Nashville and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, as well as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Rooftop Bar in Las Vegas is the country musician’s first West Coast venue. Located within the Aria Resort and Casino, it features two stages that host non-stop live music from morning until evening. Downstairs is a restaurant, and upstairs is a rooftop bar featuring an outdoor terrace with views looking over the iconic Las Vegas Strip.

To deliver a first-class bar and restaurant experience, Jason partnered with TC Restaurant Group, which has a rich heritage of developing and managing hospitality businesses. Together, they have built Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Bar into a thriving brand that was prime for expansion. TC Restaurant Group had recently worked with Nashville-based JAG Warner Productions, which supplied the audio system for Morgan Wallen’s This Bar & Tennessee Kitchen. Pleased with the team’s work, TC Restaurant Group contracted JAG Warner Productions to supply both audio and lighting for Jason Aldean’s new Las Vegas location.

“The concept for Aldean’s,” explains Jake, “is that at its core it’s a country bar, but it also has a restaurant area, and at night the bar turns into a high-impact nightclub. It’s a concept that’s worked well for their other locations, and so they wanted more of the same, but on a bigger scale, since this place is 20,000 square feet and it’s in Las Vegas! From a lighting perspective, that means an unobtrusive rig which can generate background color washes and GOBO projections and then dial up the intensity later in the evening. Since they would be running all day every day, we needed reliable fixtures, and because we were working with 14’ ceiling height we needed compact units that still pack a punch.”

Entertainment lighting is used extensively throughout the venue to illuminate performers and enhance the atmosphere created by the music – whether laid-back acoustic covers during the day, energetic country rock in the evening, or high-octane dance beats at night. Color washes are utilized to extend the ambiance of each stage throughout the surrounding space, while GOBO projections are used to add interest. When the intensity of the music is dialed up, the lighting follows suit through the use of aerial beam effects, pixel mapped chase patterns and strobe hits.

“My first call when we got the green light on the project was to Chuck [Dillingham, Product Specialist for Freed Sales, ADJ’s Rep Firm covering Nashville]”, states Jake. “I asked, ‘what does ADJ have that's short, has a 150-Watt-plus LED and a good lens?’ That's how we landed on the Focus Hybrid. He had a demo unit in our office the next day — I love Chuck, he always gets things done straight away! We looked at it, A-B tested in against a couple of other options, and were quickly convinced it was the perfect light for this project. It serves that beautiful dual purpose of a nice, wide spot with its pretty GOBOs for when they've got bands playing during the day, but at night, when you take it down into beam mode, you can get some fantastic aerial effects. Our clients really value this kind of multitasking from a fixture, they don’t like to be paying for something that won’t be in use most of the time, they’re looking for more bang for their buck.”

Offering an efficient 200W LED light source combined with an extensive feature set, the ADJ Focus Hybrid is a versatile moving head luminaire. It can function interchangeably as a spot, wash or beam fixture, and features motorized zoom and focus, two GOBO wheels, an independent color wheel, two rotating prisms and a replaceable frost filter. At Jason Aldean’s in Las Vegas, 18 units are deployed in the downstairs restaurant and live music space. Twelve fixtures hang above the main seating area, split across two lighting bars, while the remaining six are split between two vertical pipes positioned at either side of the video wall that provides a backdrop to the stage.

These fixtures are complemented by twelve of ADJ’s Focus Flex L7 LED wash-zoom luminaires, which are interspersed between the Focus Hybrids on both the side-stage and overhead lighting bars. Compact yet powerful, these fixtures each feature seven independently controllable lime-infused color mixing LEDs that can be used to generate a huge gamut of wash colors or eye-catching pixel-mapped effects. The LEDs are mounted to a motorized zoom assembly which allows for a variable beam angle of 4 ~ 35°.

“For our wash lights downstairs we needed something small, but that still had a full set of features, and very nice diodes that would allow us to get exactly the colors that we wanted. And I have to say, there are very few fixtures at that size profile which meet those criteria. I know, because we’ve spent a lot of time looking and it is the Focus Flex L7 that ticks all the boxes. For Aldean’s, they provide a mighty fine front wash but then, since the whole head’s pixel mappable, we can also get some great eye candy out of them. Again, it’s that dual purpose which delivers value to the client.”

The upstairs space is split between an open-air terrace and a covered bar area that hosts live music throughout the day and dancing later at night. The DJ booth takes center stage, surrounded by raised VIP tables with steps on either side leading down to a platform that serves as a stage during the day and extra dance space at night. A circular truss hangs above the main dance floor, which supports a further eight Focus Hybrid moving heads. Additional Focus Hybrids also surround the DJ booth and stage area, four along the front and one at either side. ADJ’s Jolt Panel FX2 zone controllable wash panel and strobe fixtures are also utilized in this space. Six fixtures surround the dance floor, while an additional six surround the DJ booth / stage.

“As this is a nightclub, we knew we needed to include strobes in the rig,” explains Jake. “Over the years we’ve used all the options out there and, when it comes to performance per dollar, we think the Jolt Panel is the best LED plate strobe on the market. I’d describe it as a pro-tier light at a mid-tier price! We have them surrounding both the dance floor and stage, which allowed us to program some nice circular chases that kind of make the room spin. We’ve got them in their highest channel mode and have made full use of the zone control to create chases both for the colored LEDs and central strobe sections.”

JAG Warner Productions has used the NETRON line of EtherDMX nodes from ADJ’s sister company Obsidian Control systems to distribute control signals throughout the venue. Each lighting pipe has either a two-output NETRON EP2 or four-output NETRON EP4, allowing the control signal to be delivered via Ethernet and distributed to the fixtures on each bar via standard 5-pin DMX. The nodes’ remote web interface for configuration gives maximum flexibility to Jake and his team.

The whole installation also uses cables from ADJ’s Accu-Cable line, both for DMX and power. In the majority of cases, combo cables - which combine power and DMX into a single cable – are used to daisy chain adjacent fixtures. This not only made life easier for the installation team, but ensured a neat finish, which was particularly important for a venue that operates as a restaurant during the daytime.

“We use the Accu-Cable combo cables on almost every job we do now,” confirms Jake. “It’s just so much easier to keep things clean and tidy when we're just dealing with one loom. We can make one very nice coil, and there's no chance of errant edges of a DMX cable popping out. That was particularly important for most of this job where most of the time we didn’t have full trusses to hide those cables in.”

By seamlessly integrating ADJ’s versatile lighting solutions, Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Rooftop Bar in Las Vegas offers an immersive entertainment experience that evolves throughout the day. From vibrant color washes that enhance live performances to dynamic effects that transform the space into a high-energy nightclub, the carefully curated lighting design balances functionality with spectacle. JAG Warner Productions' expertise, combined with ADJ’s reliable and feature-rich fixtures, ensures that the venue meets the demands of an all-day, every-day operation. With this expansion, Aldean’s brand brings its signature ‘Nashville kinda party’ to the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, creating an experience that seamlessly blends live music, dining, and nightlife.”

Venue
Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Rooftop Bar
63 City Center, 3716 S. Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89109
www.jasonaldeansbar.com/las-vegas/

Audiovisual Supplier
JAG Warner Productions LLC
www.jagwproductions.com

Lighting Designer / Project Manager
Jake Warner

Photography
Eddie Short / Brian Dowdle

ADJ Gear List
32 x Focus Hybrid
12 x Focus Flex L7
12 x Jolt Panel FX2
14 x Obsidian NETRON EP2
2 x Obsidian NETRON EP4
Accu-Cable power/signal cables