I started my sound career working in pubs and clubs, doing the sound for live bands. Within a few months, I was working at almost every venue in the city. Not many sound engineers get 7 nights work a week in their own city.
Within a year, I had moved on, and became the sound engineer for Showaddywaddy!
I heard the band were looking for an engineer, and I was bold as brass, and I just went for it. I was used to 300 capacity venues at most, and my first gig with them was to 8,000 people at an open air event. I was a bit daunted, but when you’re young and trying to make something of yourself, you have to push it. I never lied to get the job, I just talked generally about experience I’d had – which was not much, compared to other engineers I was working alongside.
In the months that followed, I travelled all over Europe with the band, gaining experience at large festivals. 70’s bands are really popular in Europe, Germany arguably being the mecca for that breed of band.
By this point, I had only been an engineer for 18 months, and embarked upon a UK Arena tour, touring with some real heavy duty names in the sound world.
The front of house tech was an outstanding engineer, and taught me so much within a short space of time. He’d been on tour with Metallica as the monitor engineer for 2 years. The gear we were using was far and away the best I’d ever seen – the desk alone was worth about £100k!
Working with some ‘old school’ bands… and some crew hasn’t done me any harm. The working ethic of these bands comes from 30 years of being in the business.
They’ve learnt that to stay relatively successful, you need to put the hours in, act like a pro, and get your act together. Touring is fun, but you need to get the job done first, and if you’ve got to do it all again tomorrow, then you’re not staying up all night drinking!
In 2008, I moved on to focus on studio based work, something I’d been pining to do for years. I’ve recently set up EdgeTracks – a music production and composition company.
