Friends, today’s mini rant coming to you after a busy weekend of gigs. Let’s talk about soundmen and how they rule the world!

You practice your scales for 20 years, you learn the tunes and then you rehearse and hone the music to perfection. And now it’s time to present your art to the people and the last link in the chain is the avatar soundman. He can make you sound great, he can make you sound childish—it’s all right there in front of him on the mixing desk. Does he have the skills? Is he controlling? Will he proclaim, “that’s not possible Mr. Sprague ‘cuz we gotta follow protocol?” Urrrgghhh. So you work with him because your sonic fate is captive within his set of ears. And it doesn’t always work out. Front of house apocalypse! (Cool phrase courtesy of Geoffrey Keezer).

We had one such gig recently but really, I’m amping it up a little to jack the story. We survived, we had fun, but still, it’s a weird world we traverse as musos searching for truth within sound.

And lets not forget some of the great soundmen that we’ve worked with over the years. They understand what it’s like from the player’s point of view and work to make it a good moment. We love those folks!