I am NOT a sound engineer. I play one on TV. I can do the job. But I’m never investing in the BIG stuff to run BIG events as I’m simply not interested in doing that, owning that, or throwing my back out like that.
I often think the difference betwixt what I do and a “real” sound engineer is simple :
Subwoofers.
I never want to own, power, or most importantly TRANSPORT
SUBWOOFERS.
I shan’t.
And so, woe-is-me, I’ll be trapped doing sound for little rooms like the Doctor Bird Room at Sandy Spring Museum. A room for which I certainly have mixed feelings, but one of those mixed feelings is LOVE because if you’ve got people in it, and no-one argues with you about where you put your speakers, it’s a beautiful-sounding, gorgeous-looking, and frankly pretty easy room.
A room that definitely does NOT need subwoofers!
Sandy Spring Museum, though they were quite done with the open mic, is NOT done with me and hired me to come and run sound for their Montgomery County Apprenticeship Celebration – mostly a “check out what we’ve been doing” program coupled with a concert designed so that we can get a couple of sounds and faces and videos and recordings gathered to further their Digital Folklife Lab – which is a teaching / streaming / recording project that I’ll effectively be running for much of this year.
Though most of the time was given over to speaking about the program, awards won, awards given, etc – the musical portion of the night (MY problem!) was pretty amazing and gave me an opportunity to strut my (sound) stuff in front of a lot of locals who knew me from a lot of angles, but probably had never dealt with me as their sound person before.
Accolades were showered. The night was made louder. I even ALMOST got a compliment from someone who is notoriously non-complimentary.
But honestly, I wished, as I cautiously pressed-the-flesh and worked the room, that more of these people knew me as an artist //
