How We Got Loud

When Bonnie Raitt’s road manager agreed to hire Silverfish Audio, Joel Silverman and Ross Ritto had not finished building the PA. Joel takes us from his first “Silverfish Presents” concerts at Clarkson to a basement in Rochester, where he and Ross built the four-way system that went on the road with Raitt in 1975. He shares how they worked with Bill Thompson on custom Ashly consoles, designed gear a small crew could set up and repair, and grew Silverfish into the company that would become Sou...

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...