SF’s Zach Rodell Is a Go-To Artist for Tripped-Out Concert Visuals

Moments before Panchiko takes the stage at their sold-out UC Theatre show in April, Zach Rodell is plotting a visual projection display he’s never done before. He’s just gotten back from doing visuals at Coachella with LA psych rockers Jjuujjuu. And while Panchiko’s Berkeley tour stop might be Rodell’s first time working with the British indie band, he’s doing anything but playing it safe.

“You always want to envelop the audience so there’s visuals in your peripheral,” Rodell says as he juggles software platforms on his computer, which is connected to different MIDI controllers and analog hardware. “Lose your senses. Get lost in a show. … So I’m gonna try something really risky.”

The show is about to start, yet Rodell — who lives in San Francisco’s Sunset district — is still downloading new digital art code packets from his command center next to the sound booth. He wants to project a deep-cut Sega Saturn warning graphic to make it look like the band is playing inside of an old video game — a fitting decision given that Panchiko’s young, internet-obsessed fanbase unearthed their music online almost 20 years after it was first released.

Rodell typically begins his process by recording a band on stage, then projecting that footage live onto a venue’s walls while layering it with fuzzed-out graphics and trippy, distorted colors. It creates a kind of living, breathing visual companion to the music, whose metamorphosis unfolds before the audience.

Panchiko’s performance feels like a full-on audiovisual ecosystem. The band plays in front of a live superimposition of themselves soaked in Rodell’s digital watercolors, layered atop anime and gaming graphics. At the end of the night, Rodell is pleased with himself, even though he says wi-fi issues prevented him from executing all the “risks” he wanted to take, including a live AI art projection.

Regardless, the band is stoked, and Rodell gets confirmed to work with Panchiko for their next seven tour dates. Not to mention, he still has the second weekend of Coachella to head down to.

Elevating the concert experience

Coupled with his regular lighting and visual technician gigs at San Francisco rooms like Rickshaw Stop, Great American Music Hall and The Chapel, Rodell’s work is in demand. He was in talks to do visuals for André 3000’s Big Sur show this past April at Henry Miller Library, before road closures on Highway 1 forced a postponement.

When Oakland band Fake Fruit headlined a bill at Rickshaw Stop earlier this year, Rodell wrapped a canvas around the entire room to create 360-degree projections. At one point, it felt like the band and audience were inside a psychedelic aquarium. It was sick.

“Every show that Zach works, he elevates,” says Rickshaw Stop Head of Operations Dan Strachota.

Rodell’s rise comes at a fortuitous time in the live music industry, where promoters and consumers are swarming over the idea of concerts that are visually enhanced. Look no further than the Sphere in Las Vegas for the alpha example of this: It’s an immersive, 18,600-person concert hall where attendees are inside of a live music snow globe of sorts, featuring a 360-degree 16K LED visual display, spatial audio and 4D effects. U2 and Phish played widely publicized residencies since it opened last September, and Dead & Company have a 24-show run starting this month.

Continuing a psychedelic SF legacy

When it comes to Dead & Co especially, it’s hard to not think about how this represents an evolution of the ’60s Grateful Dead shows in SF venues like the Avalon and Carousel Ballroom. Visual artists like Bill Ham and Glenn McKay created psychedelic, oil-spinning light shows, making venues feel like the inside of a lava lamp — a perfect place to indulge in hallucinogens. Rodell is friends with the 92-year old Ham, and his work builds upon that ’60s San Francisco tradition. Even if it happened by accident.

Rodell grew up in the Inland Empire city of Rancho Cucamonga. “I love that it’s my hometown. Frank Zappa got arrested here,” he says with a smile.

He went to school for airplane mechanics and made a move to East Palo Alto in 2012 to live with a girl he met on a Coachella message board. (“I ran into Mark Zuckerberg once, and he wouldn’t let me pet his dog,” he quips.) He was working at a startup that made oil-less generators, and immersed himself in live music and festival culture.

While volunteering at Sonoma County’s psych-rock staple, Huichica Festival, in 2015, Rodell found himself backstage talking to — of all people — Dead Kennedys frontman and SF political jester Jello Biafra.

“We were talking about how Bernie [Sanders] just lost the primary, and Jello was like, ‘I can’t talk about this stuff ’cause the Green Party will be all up on me,’” Rodell recalls. “So he changes the subject and was like, ‘Look at all this lighting stuff!’”

Biafra was referencing the spinning platters adorned with oils, dyes and inks that Mad Alchemy Liquid Light Show’s Lance Gordon began making in the ’70s and revived in the late aughts after a decades-long hiatus.

Gordon was inspired by the likes of Ham, McKay and Brotherhood of Light, artists who helped cement the live legacies of the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company and The Allman Brothers Band. These acts were seen as truly psychedelic performers. Today, Mad Alchemy is, by all accounts, the modern day benchmark for psychedelic light shows.

Intrigued, Rodell got Gordon’s card, followed up and was soon working with him as an assistant. He broke up with the girl and dove deeper into his work with Mad Alchemy, including a yearly stint at Desert Daze festival in Joshua Tree, which has grown into the nation’s premier psych music fest. (He’s worked Desert Daze seven times, creating visuals for over 100 artists in the process.) Rodell gleaned much from Gordon, but the pair had a falling out in 2018. They briefly came back together during the pandemic in 2020, and Rodell set off on his own for good in 2021.

“Mad Alchemy is only liquids — it’s beautiful — but I want to do all types of visuals. I’m not trying to copy his stuff,” Rodell says. “I like cam footage and repurposing the footage of the band into art, and it’s mostly improv. The more I have to put thought into something or worry about it, I find myself not having as much fun.”

He learns new techniques online, watching YouTube videos, staying active on forums, always looking for new modes to add to his arsenal. Over the years, he’s worked with bands from all over the world, in all edges of psychedelia, pushing the envelope of the complete experience. Australia’s Surprise Chef, Afro-soul collective Budos Band, New Zealand psych-folk singer Aldous Harding, LA dreamy indie outfit The Marías, Bronx funk legends ESG, Zamrock pioneers W.I.T.C.H., local luminary Shannon Shaw, Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier and so forth.

Trippy visuals for a new generation

Fast forward to a recent Friday night at The Chapel in San Francisco’s Mission District, and Rodell is erecting scaffolding to mount his enormous, 65-pound projector to do visuals for SF shoegaze band LSD and the Search For God, along with Jjuujjuu and Chokecherry. Jjuujjuu is bringing Rodell to Coachella with them later that weekend. Bandleader Phil Pirrone — who also happens to have founded the Desert Daze festival — knows exactly why Rodell is the artist he wants to accompany the band on music’s biggest stage at Coachella.

“Our show is less about us and more about you,” Pirrone says. “He helps facilitate that. For our kind of band, and for Zach as the kind of projection artist he is, it always feels like it completes the intention of it to be an out-of-body experience.”

With Rodell’s help, a band can have this living organism behind them, almost like a kinetic, phonetic embodiment of the music. Just as Bill Ham and Glenn McKay intended in the ’60s, the visuals help audiences let go of their inhibitions and feel more alive. For Rodell — who enjoys his morning coffee while looking out at Ocean Beach, and drives his gear solo to gigs, even Coachella — his art is an extension of a deeply personal connection to live music. One that he hopes to pass on to others.

“I’m just hoping down the line I’m gonna meet some kid who was like, ‘I tripped balls to your shows in high school!’” he exclaims. “I wanna hear that, that someone had an amazing time at a show, and the visuals helped it out and made the band look cool.”