How We Got Loud

Lee Brenkman’s career connects the early psychedelic ballroom era with nearly five decades of sound at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. In 1968, Lee was working at the Denver Family Dog when he supplemented the touring vocal system for a Jimi Hendrix performance at Regis College with two Altec A7 cabinets. After the Denver venue closed, he arrived in San Francisco on July 4 and began working at the Avalon Ballroom the following weekend. He later worked for Bob Cohen’s Lumiere Produc...

Steve Nider entered the live sound business at sixteen, driving an equipment truck for Black Sheep, the Rochester band fronted by Lou Gramm before Foreigner. He later joined Silverfish Audio, helping build and tour the company’s early systems for artists including Bonnie Raitt, Jimmy Buffett, Jesse Colin Young, Warren Zevon, Emmylou Harris, and Pablo Cruise. Steve shares the story of Silverfish’s rare Ashly consoles, custom-built speaker systems, small touring crews, and the company’s move fr...

Greg Price has spent more than four decades moving between the recording studio and front of house at the highest levels of the industry. His career includes work with Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, KISS, Poison, The Cult, Steve Miller, Pablo Cruise, and many more. But Greg’s story is about more than an extraordinary list of artists. In this episode, Greg shares how he went from driving the truck and working as a roadie for Pablo Cruise to learn...

David Morgan spent five years behind the “wrong desk.” After coming up through A1 Audio and the early West Coast live sound scene, David was called by Jim Gamble in 1981 to help manage Innovative Audio, the company that grew out of Tycobrahe. What followed was a crash course in sound company life: gear, people, payroll, pressure, system design, client relationships, and the reality of supporting major tours from the other side of the desk. In this second conversation with David, we dig into A...

Greg Carttar of 3rd St. R&D Production Services joins me for a deep dive into the early days of live sound, regional sound companies, and the era when people were still building, modifying, and figuring out the tools of the trade in real time. Greg talks about getting his start in electronics, building amplifiers and mixers, and learning from Stanel Sound, where theory, field experience, and the Don Davis book all became part of his education. From there, we get into early country shows w...