Insights In Sound 182 – David Morgan, Live Sound Professional S19 E2

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I’m here with David Morgan. We have known each other for
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several decades now. So the conversation could could go anywhere at all. And so we’ve decided to discipline ourselves
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here and stick to a topic. Right. As best we can. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. As two as two
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neurodeivergent individuals. Uh that’s going to be a little bit of a challenge here, but we’re going to do our best
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here. And let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about Let’s talk about being
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um special. When I was young, I had uh
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a fair amount of darkness that I had to deal with in my character. And by the time I was 13, I had been
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labeled manic depressive. And I had was placed on lithium by the
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psychiatrist who diagnosed me. I took two pills. I said, “I’ll never take
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another one.” It’s like being labbotomized. Good call. Yeah. Exactly. And I didn’t know what to do, how to
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deal with the darkness. I didn’t know how to deal with the rage. Uh my teenage
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years were were were pretty turbulent. My saving grace was music. Uh, it
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allowed it gave me something to concentrate on that that took me out of the the world as it was and turned it
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into a world that could be. And so that was that was that was my salvation.
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Listen, you know, it’s interesting because so many musicians do have neurodeiversity traits and yet
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it be it’s it’s our salvation and at the same time it’s part of what makes us crazy, part what makes us who we are.
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Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, I have strong OCD
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and uh little did I know that that my own particular mental makeup was
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probably the perfect preparation for becoming a front of house engineer
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because I work by myself for the most part. I’m not I’m I’ve
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never been directed. Uh I’ve never had a producer or a band member or even a band
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wife stand over me and tell me how to mix a show. Mhm. First discovering uh the amount of
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mental quiet and uh emotional satisfaction that that music gave me
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was a a wonderful discovery. The fact that I really enjoyed performing live was another wonderful discovery. So, I
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started performing professionally when I was 13, 14 years old. And uh we got paid
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25 bucks to do a junior high school dance. And uh and that whole revelation, you may not
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get paid for this. Then then it later on in high school, I got into this jug band. And uh this is mid60s,
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you know, and so there was a a band in Boston called the Jim Queskin Jug Band. That was remember them well.
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Uh uh Maria Maldar. Yeah. Was was was one of the members of the band. She was Maria Damato back then. It
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was before she married a guy, one of the guitar players in the band named Jeff Maldar. And that doesn’t
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I guess she liked the Maldar after the divorce. She liked the Maldar and kept it. Uh and you know, Midnight at the
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Oasis was just a very cool song. Yeah. We played at high schools and churches all all around the Boston area and we
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had a great time doing it. And uh I ended up working at the uh the the
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Welssley Music Center, the the town I grew up in, a little music store we had in town. By my senior year in high
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school, I was teaching guitar there. And uh
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it was a very comfortable life for me. Uh it was a place where I felt uh that
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that I wasn’t overexposed, that I didn’t feel like I was in danger and I felt like, you know, it was it I
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had support there. Playing in a band is is very much the same as being on a road crew. You have
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to learn how to give and take. You have to learn about when to lead and one to follow. And it’s uh an amazing
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experience. It’s it’s it’s it’s like being on a sports team. Mhm.
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But uh I always I used to describe being on a road crew is is somewhere happy
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between being on a sports team and being in the army. Yes. The difference is being in a band,
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you also have to cope with the idea of being in front of people. And that can be difficult for someone with certain
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aspects of neurodeiversity. The the hutbah part which is what we’re
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talking about if I got the right. Right. Uh the that that’s never been a problem.
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Okay. Uh uh I don’t mind exposure if if uh if
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I choose it. Yeah. If you choose it. And the other thing about it is as a musician, you can sort of put on this sort of persona.
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Oh, exactly. You know. Exactly. But I want to go back to what you were saying about front of house because that I I really I love what you
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were talking about there because u as you put it to me earlier, you described it as putting things on top of each
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other, you know, and the thing about front of house with neurodeiversity is
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that it’s very methodical. It’s very organized. It’s very Oh, repetition.
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Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Repetition. And in my life, repetition is good. Oh, absolutely. It’s good for anyone
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with those kind of traits. I have some negative things that in my personality that that didn’t point to me
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becoming a a roie and and and and staying on on on a crew for as many
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years as I have. I I I don’t like crowds. No, I mean, I really get nervous in crowds.
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Uh I I’m terrified by loud noises and and I’m claustrophobic.
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So, I had to learn how to sleep on a bus. I had to talk myself into going to sleep every night. Uh I I I had to
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get over the anxiety when I would walk from the stage out to front of house, especially like during a festival, and
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I’d have to weave my way through all these people who I just would rather just float over or just
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have them disappear while But you had this protection of this gate, this fencing around you. It’s
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like, well, once you got there, but getting to getting to there was always, you know, getting through 50,000 people to get out
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to front of house. And uh it the there closeness it by the time
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I’d get to the to the the bike racks that were enclosing front of house. I was I was just about on at my limit.
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And you want them to just part for you and just you please just let me You don’t understand, right? You don’t understand. I’m
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important. I need to be over there. Not so much I’m important. I’m I’m terrified and I need I need to get out of here,
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you know. Uh that that that’s when that that the walls start closing in. But the OCD and and and the ability to
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work alone uh and and and produce decent results
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have been the cornerstone of my career basically because keeping track especially in the analog
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console days where I’d often have over a hundred inputs and shows with Paul Simon. Yeah. Uh it you have to have a strong streak
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of OCD to be able to keep all this together. Yeah. Uh and you know Yes. I have I have to
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have the cables have to run a certain way every night. They have the coil has to be here. It has to be a clockwise
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coil otherwise I’ll get nervous. uh you know there’s all these little things
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and uh and and my that fastidiousness
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makes it caused me to be the only person I allow to set up front a house.
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You know, I don’t have a system guy who does it for me because I have to do it. Yeah. Uh if if I
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first of all, if something’s wrong, I want it to be my fault. I don’t want it to be somebody else’s fault. And uh
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there’s a certain zen in setting up front a house every day. Yes, there is. And it it it’s your little spot.
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Yeah. And it gets you first of all, it’s it’s it’s your little home for the day and then and then you put
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all the all the furniture in order and and you know, arrange the flowers and it’s
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uh the orderliness of it gets reflected in the in in in what
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comes out of the speakers, right? Because if everything is is is correct
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in the setup, then that’s something I don’t ever have to think about. Right. Right. Right.
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And I I can spend my entire day once front of house is set up maximizing
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my contribution to the show. Yeah. Uh and I would much rather do it all at from
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the house, but if I have to go interact, I’m okay with it going to interact. And
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uh but you know this this this this whole business of how people cope with
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their jobs uh was was never a factor until until
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recently and during co I noticed that there was a marketked change in the way
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roies viewed themselves and viewed their uh place in the universe as far as
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family and uh obligations that have
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nothing to do with touring. Yeah. And it at first of all, you know, my
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first reaction as an old fogy was, “Ah, come on.” You know, you know,
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as you would. Yeah. But when I took a moment to think about it, it I I realized that I’d been
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through a tremendous amount of trauma in my life, and that the only thing that was keeping me together was the music.
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Yeah. And perhaps having a support system beyond the crew and the band was a good
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idea. It it is a good idea and and people are just now as you say in the last few
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years starting to become conscious of how much difference that makes having
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that support system especially because of all you have to give up. Yeah.
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To be a professional roadie. Yeah. I mean, you have to give up the idea of a
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normal home life. A normal life, period. A normal life at all. Yeah. And you you have to you have to make
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your peace with that. Yeah. And uh it’s hard. It’s really hard. And u we
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were blessed with one son and I missed so much of his his his childhood. And uh
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I would beat myself up about it. And uh as I related this story to you in the
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car when I was when he was about 12, he sent me a Father’s Day card on the road.
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And after the little, you know, the the Hallmark kind of greeting, you know,
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happy Father’s Day kind of thing. He wrote in his his own handwriting, “I
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just wanted you to know how grateful mom and I are for all the sacrifices you
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made to give us the life you’ve given us here in Thousand Oaks. Thank you, Dad. I love you so much.” And I just cried like
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a baby. And it was uh at that point that I realized he was okay.
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Okay. That I was beating myself up, but while I was beating myself up, he was becoming who he was.
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Yeah. and he’s become an incredible human being and he’s he’s the
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he’s everybody’s best friend. All of my worries were were were
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internalized and and and I realized that I was looking back at how I would re react, you know, to to growing up in a
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basically a fatherless house. Mhm. And it it also made me realize the
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tremendous debt that I owe to my wife and the incredibly good job that she did
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raising our kid. And uh from that day forward, I was a I I was a lot less hard
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on myself. But you know, you just pointed out something really important, which is that for those of us who have
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that kind of mindset, having a support system, you know, it’s the same thing like when
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you talk about front of house and arranging things a certain way, having a certain sense of stability and order,
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right, is so critical because in our heads, we’re always like way the hell out
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there. you know, we’re miles away from planet Earth. And so having those bits
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of stability, whether it’s knowing that you have a stable relationship, home life, whatever it is, or even just
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knowing that your cables are coiled the right way, your your gear is set up the right way, you know, all of these
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things. It’s like the input list is in the correct order. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and and the patches that I have on the reverb are
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exactly, you know, I mean, those are these kind of things that for us it’s it’s grounding. Yes,
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it really is. Yes. Yes. I I mean I I used to like doing my own maintenance as well because
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it it it kept me in touch with the gear. Yeah. Uh digital age has has changed all that.
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Yes. There’s very little electronics maintenance that you do in front of house. Yeah. Uh, I but you know in the older
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days I remember when I used to carry all the AMS stuff once a week you’d have to
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take the RMX16s and the 1580s out of your rack. Mhm.
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Open up the top, pull out all the cards, take a pencil eraser and clean it and clean the edge connector. Yes. Yes.
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Because it oxidized. I um I was a a tech at Cherokee Studios
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and we used to do that on those. We used to also um the modules on the Trident A-
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ranges, you had to recap them like once every six months. And we had this system where we had I
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think there were like 10 or 12 spare modules. We had four different consoles, but they all had interchangeable
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modules. At least three of them did. And we would do the same thing. It was like I had this very orderly list of okay
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this group of modules over here you know and then this group of and you know and this we have you have to do to this one
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and it was this it was this security of knowing that I had this routine
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that kept me sane. There was a certain calming influence that just the smell of
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soldering iron Yes. gave you that that you knew what you were doing and you were fixing something without anybody’s
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help. Yeah. Yeah. Uh that there there was definitely a a grounding aspect to that that it kept
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you in touch with the gear, you know. Yeah. And in the analog days, you really had to be
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very attentive to each individual piece of gear every day. Oh, absolutely. And you’d have to audition it and make
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sure everything was happening. Uh you also had to be unafraid of completely
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taking your console apart and taking all the modules out and putting it all back together. Yeah. Replacing IC’s, replacing uh whatever
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was your uh the bugaboo in your console. Uh we had a routine uh the house the house
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tape was Ampex 456. So had a routine where I would open a new box of 456 and
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I would align the MTR90. I would put the 456 on and then I was typically quite
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often the second engineer. So we had track sheets and I had a certain way that I would write in every you know you
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had the squares and the track sheets and you know I was like okay upper upper corner over here I would write you know
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this particular detail and down over here I would and all of these different things like okay upper right hand corner
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is going to be the microphone I used you know right and just all of these little things like that and it was this little
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code yes but it was this stability that kept you grounded in certain ways.
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Absolutely. Especially when you know in a studio when you don’t know if it’s light or dark outside. Yeah.
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And sessions can run 48 hours. Yes. I admire anyone who thrived in a studio.
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It wasn’t a very good environment for me. It was challenging. Definitely. I I I I tried it for about a year and a half and
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I realized that a I was a terrible studio engineer and b I wasn’t psychologically suited for it because
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I’m not very good at smiling and going, “Oh, I really love this project.” You know, this is some of the best stuff
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I’ve ever heard. I I wasn’t very good at that. I’m too honest, I guess. I you
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know there was one particular um producer who I worked with and he shall
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remain nameless but uh I remember we were listening to a take of a singer and
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the singer was very very flat and uh then he leaned into the
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microphone and says how was that and I was just
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biting on my fingers before Yeah. Exactly. and he just leaned into the mic and he said, “Well, you
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know, you really kind of nailed that one, but I think we should do that.” And and just completely changed the subject,
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moved to a different song, you know, and this was his way of doing things. And there were some producers, and I learned
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a lot from some of these guys. Uh well, one of the most brilliant producers was Phil Raone.
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Oh, and one of my favorite people in in all of show business. and Phil actually I was I
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was in the room when the tape opally punched through and erased a critical
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part of a critical track and it could have gone very very badly and Phil just
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was like yeah okay you just started telling jokes and just you know
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completely changed the mood right listening everybody up yes and that psychology was so important
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in terms of how you related to people. Well, Phil Phil was a shining example for all of us.
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Yes. Yes, he was. Uh he was uh a a great mentor to me
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because of my relationship with Paul Simon. Oh, I’ll bet. In the 21 years I worked for Paul, uh
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Phil was my greatest champion. And uh he
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taught me so much about dealing with the artistic personality.
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Yes. Uh, and he also taught me so much about
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magnanimity and being able to uh no matter he’s the most successful
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producer in in in in the music business. God, God bless his soul. Uh, and the most respected as well, he
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and Quincy, you know, uh, it was such a privilege to know him, but he made it
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seem like it was a privilege for him to know you. Yes. And that that was that was
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he was a humble man but an absolutely brilliant man. And uh he was everybody’s
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best friend. Yeah. I first got the job with James Taylor. One of the first things I did was the Academy Awards in in in I think it was
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the winter of 2005. And I’ve been with James only a few months. And we walked
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into Capitol Studios because the day before the show, you come in, you do a safety version of your song in case all
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hell breaks loose and right and they have to play it from from track. And we walk in the studio and I walk in
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with James and the first person we encounter, of course, is Phil because he he works the
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room, right? Yeah. And Phil greets James and then looks at me and
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just goes, “Morgan.” He shakes my hand, gives me a big hug, and he says to
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James, “So, is Morgan working for you now?” He said, James said, “Yes, he is.
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Uh, we we we’ve just started working together the last few months.” And Phil said, “Well, you know what? You just
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hired the very best in the business.” That’s how Phil was. That’s how Phil was. Now, doesn’t matter
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if it was true, even if anybody believed it was true. James believed it was true.
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Mhm. And Phil did that for me. And uh I was
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so grateful because James the everything about him, he was nervous, right, about
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doing the Academy Awards. Jim James still gets nervous on on big shows.
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Yeah. And uh he was he was a little tense when we walked in the studio. As soon as Phil’s complimented him on hiring me,
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his whole demeanor changed. He was relaxed. He was ready to go. Phil was a genius. I wish I had a genius gift. I
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really wish I had that gift. Well, there there are three producers that I I mean, I had the privilege of
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working at at studios like Cherokee to really look over the shoulders of some greats. Phil was one. Another was Peter
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Asher. Mhm. And uh Donwis. Mhm. The three of them I they had a certain
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gift and that gift has almost nothing to do with music and everything to do with
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people skills. It’s a psychology kind of a thing. It’s just understanding how to
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and this, you know, this comes full circle to our conversation about being neurode divergent because
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neurode divergent people are in certain ways we’re almost afraid of other
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people. You know, we we have we have trouble dealing with them. And those three guys, watching them work, I could
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see right away that this was what I learned more than anything else was the idea of you can completely change the
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mood, completely change the artist’s perspective just by opening yourself up
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to them and being a genuine mench, a genuine human being to somebody. And
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that for artists who are so insecure to begin with and the greatest
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artists are having that gift, having somebody give that gift to you of just being like,
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“Hey, man.” You know, it’s it changes everything. I owe so much to Phil uh in in terms of
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my definition of professionalism, he was the epitome of it. Yeah. And uh in terms
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of aspiration, if I could only be onetenth the person that Phil Ramon was, I’d be a successful human being. He did
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so much for Paul Simon’s confidence in me when I first got hired. I got hired
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when the Graceland record came out and that tour was one of the more
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amazing tours that’s ever been on the road and just by by virtue of instrumentation if
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nothing else. Yeah. And Uh,
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Phil was so supportive of me and uh was able to
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uh create an environment that for Roy Howie
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and and me to really get along. Roy is a
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genius engineer. He has Paul’s complete trust
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and I was so overjoyed
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uh at the prospect of working with Roy. The whole opportunity of of working for
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Paul Simon was opened the door to the rest of my career obviously and uh there was a little
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tension about where boundaries were. No. And uh you know has
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Roy and Phil have been friends since they were engineers together doing the the the two mic recordings for Columbia
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Red Label stuff. Yeah. You know, and Roy
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is as opinionated as I am, you know, and Phil was a great referee. And uh
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it was Phil who who who who who made the relationship between me and Roy work
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because uh I had to recreate from scratch a lot of
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the stuff that Roy did most of the stuff that Roy did on uh on on the Graceland
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record and there’s a lot of very complex sounds on that record. I had to find my
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way to the solution and because the studio way of getting to the solution wasn’t going to work.
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Absolutely right. I was doing it with live inputs and even just that bass sound and no rewind button. Yeah. Yeah.
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Well, the bass sound was an amazing thing. The because the bass sound came completely out of Piki Kamalo’s fingers,
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right? It had no he could he could be playing rubber bands and it would have sounded like Boy in the Bubble, right? Uh
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the first day of rehearsal uh in late 1986, I believe it was, Bikiniti walks
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into the rehearsal room with a a you know, a a cheap
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guitar case, you know, like those cheap paper cases, you know, like
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cardboard. and he pulls out this old Washburn fretless base that has the neck
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pickup held in with gaffer tape and we’re looking at it and we go, you
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know, being the snobs we were on the on the crew, we go, that’s his base. What’s
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that going to sound like? It’s falling apart, right? So, he starts to play Boy in the Bubble,
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and it sounded exactly like Boy in the Bubble. And this was the bass he played on the
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on the Graceline record. Yeah. And oh my god, just would listening to
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him talking on on the bass. The conversation he was having with the song on the bass was just absolutely
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remarkable. We knew right then and there that that Graceland was going to be a very special tour because it was and we
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opened the show with Boy in the Bubble and we had people eating out of our hands from the that next moment on. It
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was it was between Beijiti and Tony Cidros playing the accordion, blasting that accordion part on Boy in the
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Bubble. I mean, just everybody in the stadium was dancing within 30 seconds. It was
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just a wonderful way to start the show sonically. Yeah. I mean, that’s that was
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pretty amazing. No question about it. And you know they they those individual performances and those
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individually special moments those are things that keep you seen as well. That’s true. That’s true.
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You know it’s it’s the artistic gratification. It’s the this is why I’m here reinforcement.
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Absolutely. It makes you sacrifice that much more. And Graceline was a very difficult tour.
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Log logistically we were all over the map. stadiums, small rooms,
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big arenas, outdoor shows. We we did anything from uh
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3,000 to to to 50,000. The success of from from from that particular the
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shared success all of us down to the lighting as well. Jonathan Smeen did the most beautiful job lighting that show.
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It looked like a Rembrandt painting. He did it very minimalist way.
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a few pods of verily on each upstage corner just you know like a gang of
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eight and and then very little over the band itself and so he was able to isolate all
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the players so so perfectly. I mean one of the most poignant things in that
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show was when Lady Smith Block Mambazo was was performing uh because everybody had their own
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little little thing during the show. You know, Paul did the first three songs. Then Humasa did four songs. And then
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Paul did more songs. Then Mary and Maba came out and she did her her thing. Yeah. And then Paul and Miriam sang African
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Skies together. And then Mambazo came out and they did three of their songs. And but one of the
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coolest things was when they did the introduction to uh
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Homeless, the ac capella song on on Graceand, and they started out in in
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Zulu. And uh the lighting was you could barely see
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the guys in the in their line across the stage. 10 guys singing ac capella in
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their line across the stage. You could barely see them. And
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but the the sound of of of was all-encompassing because they had these
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six guys sick in bass and stuff. So I mean Mambazo has just such a unique sound. Oh yeah.
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And but when we got down to Paul’s intro,
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right? So they Mambazo finishes their intro,
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everything goes dead silent. The whole stage goes black. Pin spot opens on
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Simon’s face and he sings homeless
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homeless just chills ab chill of your whole body
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on ar hair on your arms standing up kind of moment. I mean and that happened every single night and there was this
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beautiful s symbiosis between staging, lighting and sound and and and and
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performers that is you know those are the moments we live for. Absolutely. These are the moments of artistic
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perfection that we strive for and to be part of that my younger self
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might have been crowing about it. my older self because I was in my 40s by by
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then uh was just happy to be part of the team, you know, late 20s Dave Morgan might
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have been a little more ostentatious about it. The 21 years with Paul were were were
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just magic, absolute magic, musical magic. It evolved in so many beautiful directions. Uh it was a very sad day
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when I had to say goodbye to Paul because uh in the fall of 2006
31:19
I had committed to James for a tour that we called one man band
31:24
and we James had taken the summer off and Paul had done a summer tour so I
31:31
could do both and at the time I was juggling Steely Dan, Paul Simon, Lionel Richie
31:39
and So there was a a lot of juggling going on
31:44
and and James Taylor and so I thought I was doing great because Paul’s tour
31:51
ended just in time for me to go back to James and I you know I didn’t have any commitments to Steelely Dan and uh
31:59
I’d done a this wonderful solo tour with with with Donald earlier in the year in the winter of 2006 and of all the tours
32:08
I did with Steelely Den that might have and the most fun. Mhm. Just just laidback
32:14
uh Donald Fagen blues artist. Yeah. You know, it was really cool. It was really cool. And we had both
32:20
Wayne CR and John Harrington playing guitar in that band. Oh my god, it was killer. Was absolutely killer. But at
32:27
the end of the Paul’s summer tour, uh Jeff Kramer, Paul’s manager, comes up to me and says, “Okay, we’re going to be
32:33
extending the tour and we’re going to go back to work at the end of September.” I said, “Oh, well, you’re going to have to go back to
32:38
work without me because I’m already committed to James Sailor. I’m I’m gone.” And sure enough,
32:46
the next very next week, Steelely Dan announces their fall dates. So, I lost
32:52
Paul Simon and Steelely Dan all within a week. So, I had Pab Booth go out and mix Paul Simon for me.
32:59
And I had uh Jr. from Claire go out and do uh Steelely Dan for for the shortfall
33:07
tour that they were doing. I ended up going back to Steelely in 2007. I went back to Paul briefly in 2007, but uh at
33:15
that point it was it was I I was really committed to sticking with James. Yeah. And you were with James for a long
33:21
long time, 21 years. I want to circle back on something because we were talking about
33:26
the whole idea of neurodiversity and what you called the darkness,
33:33
right? Those those dark moments and stuff. There’s an aspect of this that I think
33:40
impacts us all and you and I have never talked about it.
33:45
You’ve never mentioned it, but I know without even asking that you have experienced it and it’s called imposttor
33:51
syndrome. Oh, exactly. I mean that I mean here you are mixing some of the
33:57
biggest artists on the planet. How often do you say to yourself, “What
34:04
the hell am I doing here?” Self-confidence has has really never
34:12
been a problem for me. No. Uh I’ve I’ve I’ve always
34:18
enjoyed a challenge. Uh the other aspects about being on the
34:24
road were much more psychologically damaging for me than than than working
34:29
for incredibly successful artists. Uhhuh. Uh I don’t know why. Uh I’ve always
34:36
gotten along with the the bands that I’ve worked for extremely well. Mhm. And I’ve I’ve been treated as an equal,
34:45
which is incredibly uh gratifying in in in those quiet
34:51
moments in your hotel room when you’re wondering why the hell am I out here? Well, I’m out here because James Taylor tells me I’m essential to his show.
34:58
Yeah. And that I’m as much a member of the band as anybody else is in in his band.
35:03
you know, a band that includes Steve Gad and Michael Landau and Luis Ki and
35:08
the biggest names in in in in the country are are in that band. And you know, they accept me as an equal. Uh
35:16
that that hasn’t been the problem. The the the the problem for me has been the the the the other side of it uh is when
35:25
I’m alone at in in the hotel room or or trying to talk myself into going to sleep in my bunk. That’s the times when
35:32
it hits, isn’t it? That’s when it really hits. Yeah. And what’s that like for you? The road can do strange things to your
35:38
brain. I had this wonderful privilege of of of working for a major artist in France in in 1994. I I worked for three
35:46
months for Jean. Uhhuh. And when I got to Paris and we were in
35:54
rehearsal and look, thank God we were in rehearsal. I couldn’t adapt to the time
36:01
and uh I
36:06
didn’t sleep for the first seven nights I was there. Oh, and I was That’ll make you nuts.
36:12
I was on the verge of going to an insane asylum. Uh, luckily one of the guys on the on on
36:18
the CLA crew uh was fluent in in French and took me to a doctor and they hit me
36:24
with some sleeping pills. That triggered an era of insomnia in me that lasted
36:32
years. That’s one of the things that that that nobody really talks about is
36:38
sleep deprivation. Yeah, that’s a big one. And Oh, yeah. Living on a bus, it’s not
36:43
easy because you can’t you have trouble sleeping anyway. Yeah. And in an environment like that,
36:49
you know, even, you know, Yeah. feet towards the front and everything, but you’re still not really feeling secure
36:56
in that little cubby. Well, especially if you’re claustrophobic and you feel like the walls are closing in on you as soon as
37:01
you get in the bunk. You know what I have to do when I get in the bunk is I I have to turn the light
37:06
on. I I can’t start out with it dark in there. I have to turn the light on. And
37:12
I I’ll I’ll typically play some kind of game on on on my phone or iPad just to
37:19
get my mind somewhere else. I used to like to play solitire games or or chess is one of my favorites.
37:26
Chess you don’t really want to play before going to bed because it wakes you up. You have to think.
37:31
But in terms of concentrating, it gets you out of the world. a nice game of uh
37:37
internet cribage, you know, something mindless. Yeah. Learning how to sleep in that environment, but it took a while.
37:44
It really took a while to get good sleep on a bus. Yeah. And it’s an aspect of touring life that
37:50
that really isn’t given enough priority is is getting decent rest because you
37:57
become a danger to yourself when you’re tired. You you do and and not and to others. Yes. And but it also I think it messes
38:03
with your Maybe not necessarily your self-confidence in the in terms of you
38:09
know maybe you don’t call it imposter syndrome but I found that it disorients you to the point where you you start
38:16
making questionable judgments absolutely about things. Absolutely.
38:22
But you know the imposttor syndrome is is uh
38:27
I mean we all have to face it. Yes. It impacts us in different ways. That’s why I’m asking how it impacted
38:32
you because there there’s nobody in show business who didn’t who didn’t tell a little white lie to get their first job.
38:38
You know, every single person who got a job, you know. Absolutely. It you know, uh exaggerated
38:46
c certain aspects of their resume and then downplayed others. [ __ ] like crazy. Yeah. Absolutely.
38:52
Exactly. Mhm. Uh when I got my first studio job, when I when I when when I went to work at
38:57
ABC, it was uh that was that was nerve-wracking. That was really nerve-wracking. Yeah.
39:02
And then I got another job right after that. I got I got sent from ABC to a little studio called Alan Zens recording
39:09
that was on Sycamore. Oh yes. Down by uh in between Santa Monica and Norose on on
39:14
on Sycamore. And Allan was one of the top mastering engineers in the world. and he opened a
39:21
a studio that was a mastering and studio, but it also had one one studio room uh with with a nice Harrison
39:29
console and brick [ __ ] house telephoning 24 ter machine. Trivia point, that Harrison console
39:35
ended up in Paramount recording on Santa Mon the old 4824 that was Yep. that ended up
39:43
at um remember Naen’s music? Sure. So Paramount was right behind there, right? when I started working there that
39:49
Harrison was in there. Huh. Well, the the two greatest things that
39:54
happened out of that studio was uh the two mastering engineers that that that were working for Allen at the time was
40:01
Chris Bellman and Brian Gardner. Okay. And you know, they’re still
40:07
two of the biggest guys in the business today. Uh, and so it was a great privilege to work there, but I was
40:14
really really not ready to go to work in a studio control.
40:19
And that’s I I had a lot of anxiety. That’s an acquired skill. It really is. And I mean, that’s
40:24
I knew I I knew how to be on the other side of the glass as a guitar player. I didn’t know how to be on the inside of
40:30
the glass except, you know, when I used to be a whiny guitar player and say, “What do you mean I have to play it again?” That took a lot of getting used
40:37
to and that caused me a lot of anxiety. I did learn an important lesson working in studios that that if I don’t love the
40:44
music, I shouldn’t be there. Well, and that comes down to the psychology that we were talking about. Absolutely. But but I think you know
40:51
when you’re talking about the whole idea of how you adjust to various aspects of the
40:58
insecurities that are part of being an artist, let alone being a a neurode divergent
41:07
artist. I think a lot of that really comes down to finding ways to make [ __ ]
41:13
work, you know, because that that’s the thing I I think, you know, just bringing the whole conversation full circle here,
41:21
one of the things that we realize as we get a little bit older is that
41:28
there we’re not broken. There’s nothing wrong with us. It’s just that we need to find a different way to make things work
41:34
for us that doesn’t work for someone else. Absolutely. I I felt like a failure as a
41:41
studio engineer. I I just didn’t have the mentality for it. I didn’t have the personality for it. I didn’t have the
41:48
detachment that you really need to be a good studio engineer. Yeah. Yeah. And my salvation was
41:57
they used to pay us A2s dirt, you know, $400 a week, come in and work 80 hours,
42:03
you know. Yeah. Uh I was having trouble making ends meet
42:08
and one an acquaintance that I had made through the ABC connection was a guy who had a small sound company
42:15
out in Eagle Rock. and he called me and he said, “I’m doing an installation out at this club in in North Hollywood. Do
42:22
you want to help?” And I said, “What’s the club?” He said, “It’s the Palamino.” Oh, yeah.
42:28
Well, Palamino was was the mecca of country music in in Southern California. It was the only country and western club
42:35
in in Southern California for years and owned by the Thomas brothers out on Lankership.
42:42
Well, I ended up being one of the
42:47
front of house guys. Well, it wasn’t just front of house. It was we did monitors from from from from up there
42:53
and I just like the caricature in in in in in a in in a Bad Country and Western
42:59
movie. I’m holding holding the spotlight with my left hand. I’m mixing with my right hand. Right. Literally. Yeah.
43:05
Literally. And we had two monitor mixes. We had those uh community, you know, wash wash
43:14
tub. Uh Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uhuh. Uh wedges. Yes. Right. They were loud
43:19
and the and and horrible sound. Yes. And but loud. But loud as [ __ ] Yeah. And uh Thank
43:26
you, Bruce. House. Yes. Exactly. And uh but we what we hung for a PA was we we
43:33
hung individual 4320s. Wow. you know, single 15 studio models.
43:39
So, I can’t remember there were eight or 10 of them that we had spread all because it was low ceiling place. Yeah.
43:45
And we couldn’t put them really big. You couldn’t stack a big PA because there wasn’t enough room, right?
43:50
The stage was only smaller than the living room here. That’s where I found me. Was it a filthy beer soaked,
44:03
sometimes genuinely disgusting Palamino out on Lancerin Boulevard in North Hollywood
44:08
because you figured out how to relate to other humans in a way that you could. Exactly. I found me there and I didn’t have to
44:15
tell lies because people knew who I was and knew what I was doing and
44:20
appreciated what I was doing. I think that’s the big part right there. You just put your finger on it because that
44:25
was the thing that always, not just for myself, but for so many other people,
44:31
what resonated with me was when I realized that people appreciated what I did and appreciated my talents. Because
44:40
when you talk about the whole imposttor syndrome thing, it’s really like if you don’t get that acknowledgement, you’re
44:46
always questioning your own abilities. When you get that acknowledgement, it changes everything. Sure. I had more
44:53
problems with Impostor as a guitar player actually. Uhhuh. Uh but uh trying to get into in into
45:01
other bands, I never thought I was good enough and but apparently I was but I never thought I was good enough. When I
45:08
telling you about the the the year we we got the gig playing back up for Toots and the Metals, I was terrified that we
45:14
were going to screw it up. And when we went and did the audition, we played Pressure Drop. You should have seen the
45:20
smile on Tootsz’s face. Oh my god. When he actually heard his song being played
45:25
correctly, everything went away. But the night before we we had the audition, I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I was
45:32
terrified. Absolutely terrified because here’s one of the the the the two guys who invented ragging. Yeah.
45:38
You know, and I I I have to bring my band in and and audition to become their band in
45:43
the United States. And that uh that was daunting. That was really daunting.
45:49
uh my first time in a studio being recorded as an artist was daunting because I made the transition into being
45:57
on the road crew at an older age. You know, I I didn’t start doing tours until I was like 28, 29.
46:04
Mhm. And uh until that time I I was still considering myself primarily as a guitar
46:10
player. I worked in studios, but I was just trying to make a living in between bands. But the uh the Palamino
46:16
experience which culminated in somebody handing me a business card and saying you know you’re a great mixer go see my
46:23
boss and ask for a job. Well, I look at the card and it said Also
46:28
and uh I had no idea who A1 Audio was. And uh
46:34
found out quickly enough. I went down to the the the the place was on the the old Columbia Pictures lot and I went and I I
46:41
I met Aliniscal, the owner, and I met Bobby Ross, the the head engineer. They were really interesting characters and
46:48
and and they were a little bit off just just like me. And I felt instantly at
46:55
home when I when when I walked in the door of A1 Audio. And so I I I stayed
47:02
there for a couple of years, but I got people found out that I could mix and I
47:08
I got offered a jobs and it made more sense to me to to go independent. But I
47:13
can’t thank Al enough for for for starting me out on the right path. And the uh the experience there
47:21
uh was total immersion. You know, put the guitar away,
47:27
we’re done with all this, we’re moving on. Yeah. And that was that was really the the the the demarcation line in my professional
47:33
life when I stopped being a guitar player and started being a sound guy. And part of that also, I think, was
47:41
discovering that, hey, I’m good at this. Luckily, yeah. Had I been told to go get
47:49
a job, work in the the tech technical aspects of the the the the live sound
47:56
industry, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Yeah. Uh or you wouldn’t have done it very well. Because I walked in with the table was
48:04
kind of set for me before I walked in because I had this person’s huge recommendation.
48:09
I came in as a mixer. Oh. Right. I didn’t come in as a like an apprentice or something. Yeah. I wasn’t pulling four.
48:15
Mhm. Uh, I was I was doing either system engine, what we call a system engineer
48:21
now. I was either doing system engineer or I was doing or I was mixing front of house.
48:26
I I mixed a couple of tours doing monitors, but I Here’s an imposttor.
48:31
Yeah, I was just going to ask you about that. Good timing there. I’m a terrible monitor engineer and I’m
48:37
the first one to tell you monitors is a completely different world and part of that is the fact that you
48:42
really do have this complete oneon-one with the artist in monitors, you know,
48:48
it’s like in monitors, nobody gives a [ __ ] about your mix except people on that stage, you know,
48:54
and people skills are more important than mixing skills. Exactly. Not just people skills, but reading people.
49:00
Communication skills. Yes. Yes. Communic. And not just communication skills, but nonverbal.
49:06
Yes. Communication skills. Because that’s just it. You are robbed of that verbal aspect of it. you know, the the
49:13
the the star on the stage is not going to say to you during the show, “Can I have a little more of this or that?”
49:19
They’re just going to expect you to be able to read their their gestures and their face and and hopefully, you know,
49:26
the best monitor engineers, they don’t even have to hear it. They just know just by looking at the guy. I have a a
49:32
friend uh you may know him, Luren White. He he mixes uh monitors for Lionel Richie these days. And he said to me,
49:37
you know, I just look at Lionel and I know what he needs. And there that is a gift in itself.
49:43
You know the monitor engineer who who I dearly miss because she’s just like my daughter
49:49
on James Taylor Rachel Atkins is Uhhuh. she is the most intuitive
49:54
so good at non-verbal communication. So good at anticipation
49:59
so good at at at reading cues. Whereas I kind of space through the world and you know every once in a while
50:06
I need people to kind of push me. you know, we’re going that way now, right? Uh that’s why, like I said, it’s I found
50:15
my niche out in front of house because they leave me alone out there, you know? Well, and that’s the weird thing about
50:21
front of house because, as you said, you’re in this you’re in this sea of people, but you’re completely alone in
50:26
so many ways. I did a panel at the NAM show recently, a couple of years ago, and I I I loved the concept so much that
50:34
I really wanted to do this. I got um I got Robert Scoville who was doing front of house for Chznney.
50:40
I got Chznney’s monitor engineer and I got Harmony Kelly, the bass player in the band.
50:46
Cool. And I put them all together because I felt like this was a situation and I I called the
50:52
panel, do you hear what I hear? Right? Because if you think about it, this was this is three completely different
51:00
positions in the same there. You’re all having exactly the same experience from
51:06
three completely different perspectives that are yet completely interdependent
51:11
on each other. We could do a wonderful thing with a similar makeup with Rachel,
51:17
Jimmy Johnson, musical director and bass player for James Taylor and me. We should do that.
51:23
It would be wonderful. Yeah, because the biggest problem with that is just getting everybody available at the same time. No band has been more accepting of
51:32
me as part of the band than the James Taylor band. Uhhuh. And that includes Paul Simon where I was
51:39
I was definitely part of the band with Paul Simon. But the relationship with Paul Paul
51:46
always had the last word. And we all knew that that no matter
51:53
uh whether our opinions were solicited, he was going to make his own decision. Sure.
51:58
With James, it’s always been different. We we we do a lot of decisions by committee out there and and it’s
52:05
it’s an incredibly gratifying conversation to have to to to you know to go through should where should this
52:13
song be in the set list? Should we do this song at all? That’s if we do this song at all,
52:19
uh are we going to have to take another song out out of the set because it sounds like it texturally? How does the
52:26
set flow? Yeah. Well, nobody knows better how the set flows than than me and Tom Wagstaff
52:31
with lighting design. You know, we’re the ones you’re out of front of house.
52:36
We see it. You hear it and see it as the audience. It unfolds every night to us. Yeah.
52:41
And the respect that James shows to to to me and and and to Tom Wagstaff and to
52:48
Rachel is it’s it’s there’s no division. There’s no division. We’re all we’re all
52:55
basically the same person. and appreciated as artists and encouraged as artists.
53:00
Yes. I wouldn’t want to work in an environment where I was told what to do
53:06
or if I wasn’t in control of the artistic aspects of audio. In other
53:13
words, if I were doing I would not do I would choose not to do a show that rely predominantly on
53:20
playback simply because it doesn’t work for my my own definition of myself as an artist. And we touched on this briefly
53:27
when we did the panel at at NAM. The overriding thing is if I don’t feel an
53:32
emotional, intellectual, and and and and musical connection to what’s being
53:38
performed on the stage, I should not be out there trying to mix it. Absolutely.
53:43
It’s I can’t possibly do my best job. Mhm. And that gives me anxiety, you know, if
53:49
if if I’ve chosen to work for the wrong band. Uh
53:54
that uh Oh, that could be tough. That starts to grade on you. Yeah. And uh I like things to be
54:04
smooth because of my own personal mental makeup. It I I don’t deal with change
54:09
very well, but I do like the the ocean to be smooth most of the time. Some of
54:15
the greatest bands in the world I wouldn’t feel comfortable mixing. Whereas other tours uh are are just the
54:23
opposite. They’re a total surprise. You know, uh I had the privilege of doing a
54:30
few tours with guitar in the 90s. Oh my. Uhhuh. And you know, you wouldn’t think that
54:36
that would be a lot of fun, right? It was tremendous fun. I don’t know. Well, I would I I I have I
54:43
have seen him perform live and there’s there is an there’s a certain approach a
54:51
very artistic creative approach there. Oh, he was so intense. Yeah. And but the music was beautiful and
54:58
there were no vocals. Yeah. No vocals. Yeah. Weird, huh? It was really cool.
55:05
And uh he was very popular in the 90s. We we we did shows all over the world.
55:11
Yes. And you know, people ask me, “What are your favorite tours?” I’ve always mentioned working for guitar was one of
55:17
the highlights of my life. Uh just because it opened so many other
55:22
doors of creativity, the various instruments that that the band would play, you know. Yeah. Some very exotic.
55:28
Oh, yeah. Unusual Asian instruments. And and and uh it was uh
55:35
those Tao drums must be Oh, the Tao drums are fantastic. That must be fun. Absolutely fantastic. Yeah, it just
55:41
thundering thundering through through through through the PA. It was uh and it was a
55:47
great band. It was really a great band. And things like that are are necessary to to to re remake
55:54
your connection with the business, right? Yeah. Yeah. You need you need you need to take
55:59
you need to break up your reality sometimes and do something completely different. Uh, and you know, when when I
56:06
first was getting the call to mix guitar, I didn’t know the music and that was that that that felt like a little
56:13
like imposttor syndrome and I I you know, I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to get a handle on it right
56:19
away. Well, silly me. It was just so much fun and then everything made sense
56:25
as soon as I heard it. Uh, but uh I had I had some some uh
56:31
anxiety about about taking on that job. I had some anxiety about taking on the
56:36
job with Whitney Houston because I I I had never done uh an R&B singer or or or a soul singer and
56:44
uh I was I was a little nervous about about taking that job, but that got
56:50
dispelled very quickly. The ve the very first shows I mixed for her were at Wembley Arena, old Wembley Arena when it
56:57
was the swimming pool. Notoriously bad sounding room. Who was in her band back then? Uh, let’s
57:03
see. Brian Break was the drummer. Ricky Miner was the bass player. Uh, Ricky ended up being musical
57:08
director. The musical director back then was a guy named John Simmons. He was Denise Williams musical director.
57:14
Uh, and so he did The Whiz with her on Broadway. John was a wonderful man. Uh, the first person I knew well who
57:22
passed away from AIDS. Uh, that was that was a big loss. And well, probably the
57:29
main reason I didn’t go back to Whitney was was was John was gone. And I I always felt that I worked for John.
57:35
He was a great mentor as well, you know, uh teaching me how to how how to mix R&B
57:40
music. You know, it’s interesting where we find our mentors, isn’t it? Yeah. A lot of times, most of the time,
57:47
they’re they’re really unexpected in a way. Oh, John was fantastic. I mean, he was so good working with the 23-year-old
57:54
Whitney Houston, keeping her grounded and focused and and and working with the various
57:59
aspects of the band because the band had some professional players in it. You know, Ricky and Brian were really good
58:05
players. Yeah. Uh but the rest of the band were friends from East Orange, New Jersey. Right. From the church.
58:11
Yeah. Two of the singers were from the choir in the church. uh the the the guitar
58:17
player made made dental prostheses on the side. Uh you know, they they were
58:23
they were just kids she grew up with. Yeah. And so we had a band that was half
58:29
professional and and and half neighborhood kids. Well, her whole thing was very impromptu. you know, her her first uh
58:37
her first recording was with um my friend Michael Binhorn uh had a band
58:44
called Material and they did this one album and it was I I I give Michael [ __ ] sometimes about it
58:50
because the album is so all over the map on the same album with Whitney Whitney
58:57
Houston’s debut as a vocalist was Azie Osborne’s version of Shake Your Head.
59:05
And and you know, again, it’s like she just came he told me she just came into the studio, you know, essentially nobody
59:11
really even knew who she was. Just, you know, this this little girl opens her mouth and this huge voice comes out.
59:17
Oh, yeah. You know. Oh, yeah. But I I think you know going back to your point of having these
59:23
mentors like that you learn so much from them because in in a way they give you
59:29
that that confidence of yes you can do it you know not not making you feel like you’re
59:37
on trial but like just instilling that certain confidence in you that here I’m handing you this gift. Oh yeah,
59:44
you can take it and you’re worthy of it. John gave John Simmons gave me a piece of advice when I first got the job with
59:50
Whitney was when you’re mixing the stuff, think about what’s the in
59:58
instrumentation at a typical black church. I said, “Well,
1:00:03
I know you have a piano and usually you have a bass player. Do you have a drummer?” He said, “Well,
1:00:10
not not usually a full drummer. Usually maybe a snare drum and a high hat.” Yeah. Yeah. So, start there.
1:00:17
Uhhuh. Piano, bass, snare, high hat.
1:00:22
Yeah. Yeah. Start there. Uhhuh. That was the best piece of advice I ever got. All of a sudden, every single song
1:00:29
fell into place. If I, you know, guitar comes later,
1:00:35
comes in and out. Yeah. I always wanted to be a guitar player in Al Greenspan because you played like two notes measure.
1:00:40
Yeah. You know, I It’s icing. It’s It’s frosting. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, too much is bad.
1:00:47
Exactly. You know. Yeah. And so that that that little piece of advice
1:00:53
I I credit with the with that with my success in mixing Whitney Houston because I I got it after that. I I
1:01:01
really got it. And uh the shows with Whitney in in
1:01:06
those first three years were absolute magic. What a singer. Yeah. No kidding. I mean, that’s
1:01:12
intimidating being in the room with someone who can sing like that. Yeah, I’ll bet. I’ll bet. It’s like, how
1:01:18
do you make enough space for that voice, you know? Absolutely. I
1:01:24
She was a total angel, you know. Uh that there’s never been a voice like that
1:01:30
before her and there and there ain’t going to be another one after her. Yeah. Through that association, I got to
1:01:36
meet her mom, [ __ ] you know, and and and we had people from the gospel world who
1:01:42
would come in and and and uh sit in with us all the time. Uh BB
1:01:48
and CC Wins would come and sing with us. Uh Tmaine Hawkins would talk about voices. Oh my god. If there’s
1:01:56
anybody close to Whitney, it was Tmaine Hawkins. But just mixing that music, that’s that’s a very very people don’t
1:02:03
really understand just how deceptively simple that music sounds and yet how
1:02:08
complicated it is to mix. Absolutely. Because you’re really making room for so much
1:02:14
the way you have to layer it. Yeah. It’s uh I I learned a lot about layers. I learned a lot about uh where vocals
1:02:21
belong. It was a spiritual occasion every night.
1:02:27
Uhhuh. you know. Yeah. And it was it was it was more than just
1:02:32
you were watching a woman who can sing really well. That was way more
1:02:37
inspirational than that. Oh, it’s not just the it’s not just the skill in that sense. It’s it’s bringing
1:02:44
someone into the experience. Exactly. Musically. Exactly. Yeah. And she was really good in those first
1:02:52
three years. I mean, surprisingly good for as young as she was. uh she had every man in at every show
1:03:00
leaning forward in his seat and by the end of the show panting, you know, I mean it it was uh we used to do the song
1:03:09
uh Good Love uh and uh Saving All My Love for You.
1:03:15
We do both of those as slowly as we possibly could and you could just see the sweat
1:03:21
bucketing down off of the men in the audience
1:03:26
as the sensuality poured off the stage. I mean, she’s singing to me.
1:03:32
We we we did a thing with a very 800 millisecond delay on the end of Good
1:03:38
Love where she’d sing Good Love and I’d sing it back to her on on the delay channel. Right. So, good love. Good
1:03:45
love. The interplay on that was just so cool.
1:03:50
And and I could look around me and see everybody’s just, you know, and it just and it went on for
1:03:57
like a minute of that of that that that call in response to to herself. And by when when the song ended, you
1:04:04
could see everybody just kind of melted to the floor. It was it was she was in total control. Total control. Yeah.
1:04:11
vocally and emotionally. Well, and that’s just it. She was the epitome of a great performer, not just a
1:04:17
vocalist, but really knew how to bring the audience in. I’m very pleased that I got to do those
1:04:24
first three years. Then she took off those two three years or so to do the Bodyguard movie and unfortunately
1:04:32
things started to happen badly for her after that. Yeah. Uh so I got to be involved with the
1:04:39
probably the three best years. uh of of her live performances and I was
1:04:45
extremely grateful for that. We had a day off in Miami. I’m walking through Coral Gables and uh
1:04:52
go past this women’s clothing store and I hear this booming voice yell, “Dave
1:04:59
Morgan, you get your ass in here right now.”
1:05:06
I walk into the women’s clothing store and I go, “Nippy, where are you?” And she’s in the dressing room. She was
1:05:12
trying on clothes and I guess she saw me walk past the the the thing. I love it.
1:05:17
Wow. Dave Morgan, why aren’t you mixing my shows anymore? I said, “Windy, I’m so
1:05:22
sorry. You know, I my dance card is full. I can’t I can’t do it.” Uh, this
1:05:29
was when Paul was doing the Born at the Right Time tour, and that tour lasted almost three years. Mhm.
1:05:34
And so I didn’t have room for anybody on my dance card that at that point. So that was another act that I had to, you
1:05:41
know, sadly say goodbye to. But that was you got to work, you know, not just that, but you know, in a
1:05:46
certain sense, you have to accept the fact that there’s this gradual sort of stepby-step development.
1:05:52
Yeah. And and you know, as an artist and you you know, you developed as an artist as
1:05:57
well by working with these different people in that successive order. My worst case of imposttor syndrome
1:06:04
didn’t come as a front of house engineer. It came as a sound company uh executive.
1:06:10
Ah uh I had done a lot with A1 as far as
1:06:16
revamping their monitor enclosures, their their their flying system. Well,
1:06:22
we we did a lot of ground up changes to the whole A1 system in the time that I
1:06:27
was there and I was one of the people who was ramming the changes through and
1:06:33
uh I just finished a long tour and uh in
1:06:40
the winter of 1981 and I was wondering what I was going to do next and my phone rang and this was
1:06:49
at my house. This is be, you know, it wasn’t cell phone time. This is 1980, early 1981.
1:06:54
Yeah. And on the other end of the phone, this guy introduced himself. He said, “Is this Dave Morgan?” I said, “Yes, it is.”
1:07:00
And he said, “This is Jim Gamble.” Now, I’d never met Jim Gamble before in my life. I’ve worked on a Taiger blueboard
1:07:08
and I’ve mixed on a Taiger system, but I never met Jim. Jim at the time was God
1:07:14
as far as West Coast sound goes. You know, he was Tiger. He was the engineer behind Tugbury. I liken it to Charlton H
1:07:22
talking to the B burning bush in the ten commandments. It’s, you know, this is this is basically God’s on the other end
1:07:29
of the phone. And he said, “My company is a mess. You have to go save it.”
1:07:35
And I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, uh, Tackleberry was sold to the a
1:07:41
man and his wife about a year and a half ago, and it’s not going well, and they’re hemorrhaging money, and the
1:07:49
husband and wife have now divorced, and now the the wife is running running the sound company.”
1:07:54
Uhhuh. And they changed the name of the sound company to Innovative Audio at the time.
1:07:59
And uh so Jim Gamble told me I had to go down and save Innovative Audio.
1:08:06
Well, I was panicstricken. I a I knew nothing about business, right? Dollars and cents. I didn’t know anything about
1:08:13
that. I knew how to make money. I didn’t didn’t know how to manage money, right?
1:08:18
Uh I didn’t know anything about employees. I didn’t know anything about
1:08:23
business rules and regulations. Uh, and I didn’t know how much money,
1:08:29
uh, this business had or or or how badly in debt they were. Mhm.
1:08:34
Well, uh, I was supposed to go down for two weeks
1:08:39
and report back to Jim what I saw. So, I said, “Okay, I can go down and observe.”
1:08:46
Uh, and after those two weeks,
1:08:52
I call a gamble and he said, “You have to stay. He said, “I have to stay. I’m
1:08:58
I’m I’m a front of house guy. I have no idea how to do this job.” And
1:09:05
that caused me tremendous amount of anxiety because all of a sudden now I have employees.
1:09:10
Yeah. Now I have people’s lives that are in my hands uh where I’m having a hard enough
1:09:17
time dealing with my own. And that really really caused me serious anxiety.
1:09:22
Uh, and I had uh I had to find
1:09:30
people who could guide me through it. Mhm. Thank you, Mark Gander.
1:09:35
Thank you, Bob. A lot of people. Thank you, Bob Bogdanovich, former owner of Tiger Pray. He used to come in and sit sit with me
1:09:41
in the front office and and and guide me through a lot of stuff, even though he’d sold the business two years before.
1:09:46
He said, “I like you, Morgan. I’ve got to help you with all this.” This is before he moved to Costa Rica. and
1:09:53
uh uh Jim Chase who used to be the general manager at Tiger, he helped me a lot and
1:09:59
so I really had to lean on people which isn’t really my way. Uh I’m much more of
1:10:05
a loner and so for me to have to reach out to people. Well, Mark Gander made it his his his
1:10:11
personal mission to teach me electronics. Uhhuh. He gave me a whole stack of books and
1:10:16
said, “Read these.” And uh then then but
1:10:22
what I did find out was eventually I found out that the company was close to a half a million dollars in debt.
1:10:27
Ouch. And that was that that really kept me up at night.
1:10:33
Because I did every get every single day I was coming in with the idea that I was going to have to close the business and
1:10:39
send everybody home. And so that uh that created a lot of performance
1:10:46
anxiety because I had no expertise in that at all. I majored in American history in college. You know, I had no
1:10:52
business expertise at all. And what I learned in the five years
1:10:59
that I spent there was uh that you can teach yourself anything if
1:11:05
you work hard enough. This is the truth. And one of my greatest victories was
1:11:11
Dirk Schubert and his dad b buying the the company from from from Lynn big Lynn
1:11:17
Perier is the woman who owned it. Soon after that we had our first month in the black.
1:11:25
And so I took a company that was a half a million dollars in debt and turned it
1:11:31
into a profitable company. And I have no idea to this day how I did that. And I
1:11:37
couldn’t have done it without Ken Lopez and Mark Ander being on my side because we owe JBL half of that money, about a
1:11:43
quarter million dollars. We owed over $100,000 to Gene Sinsky out of Serent
1:11:49
Bay because he built all of our amplifiers and plus everybody else a company in uh in in Orange, California
1:11:56
that built all our cabinets company called Flag Systems. Mhm. They did all the woodwork and we owed them $100,000
1:12:04
and uh we managed to be a break even company
1:12:09
uh in about the middle of 1983 and
1:12:14
uh at that point I started sleeping at night again. So uh that uh imposter syndrome is real.
1:12:23
I mean, and it’s and it’s something we all have to overcome, especially in this business because your
1:12:29
individual performance is so spotlighted. You can’t you can’t there’s nowhere to hide. Yeah.
1:12:34
You know, it’s especially if you’re in a prominent position on a crew, you know, if you’re if you’re a a mix engineer or
1:12:40
a lighting designer or a stage manager or production manager, everybody sees everything you do.
1:12:45
Yeah. And so it’s uh you got to believe in yourself. Exactly. Exactly. So it was uh
1:12:55
becoming a businessman was the furthest thing from my mind. Uh making it work uh
1:13:03
to the point where where where my two partners felt it was okay to buy me out
1:13:08
uh was uh I guess it became inevitable. you
1:13:15
know, I it once once we got over the hump and started making money and having
1:13:20
fun, I was able to provide health insurance for our employees, uh, you know, c
1:13:27
guarantees, salaries, and things like that. And so that that that stability
1:13:32
uh was certainly not part of my world before I I I answered the call to go to
1:13:37
go down to to the South Bay and try and and try to make something happen. And it
1:13:43
uh I the self-doubt was uh was was definitely the the the predominant
1:13:49
emotion at the time and you have to either decide that you’re going to stare
1:13:55
down the the problem or you’re going to let the problem stare you down. Yeah. So I had to completely reinvent myself
1:14:02
as a businessman. And then once I had become comfortable
1:14:07
with a businessman, I had to re equate myself with being an engineer when I was
1:14:12
bought out of my business. Yeah. And it made sense. I mean, I I was there was a problem solver. My my time
1:14:19
was through. Uh Durk and his dad had their own vision of where they wanted to take the company and and they did a
1:14:25
great job. Six months after I left Shubert Systems, I was mixing Whitney in Houston. So, I I think I ended up right.
1:14:33
Yeah. You know, I think I think I ended up in a far better place because uh I didn’t have that day-to-day anxiety
1:14:39
and, you know, other people’s lives in my hands. Yeah. And so I became a a happier
1:14:45
person. Sometimes it turns out that the that the the parts that look the worst
1:14:51
end up being the best, you know. Well, you know, you the other thing that you did, the other thing that you accomplished and that this will bring it
1:14:58
all full circle because I also promised we would keep this to an hour. So, uh, we’ve already gone over that. But but
1:15:05
what brought you full circle there was the idea that you proved to yourself
1:15:12
that you could do something you didn’t think you could do. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that is that is the gift that we as
1:15:21
autodidacts have. The ability to teach ourselves something. And that I think is one of
1:15:28
the gifts of neurodeiversity and not being attached to a particular definition of ourselves.
1:15:33
Yes. Exactly what I’m saying. Being mutable. Yeah. And somebody some people look at that as
1:15:39
being erratic. I look at it as as as being
1:15:46
uh it’s a little of both. Multi-talented. It’s a little of both. It it is erratic, but that erraticism is actually
1:15:54
a superpower in a way. because it enables us to be able to shift gears
1:16:00
and do something that we didn’t have. You know, a lot of normal quote unquote people would be like, I can’t do that. I
1:16:07
don’t know how to, you know, that’s not in my skill set. So, to be able to to make that leap of faith in yourself,
1:16:14
that’s that’s a talent. I realized that music performed live
1:16:22
and the appreciation shown by the audience was a far better drug in dealing with mental disorders than any
1:16:30
chemical ever would be. The experience that I had from playing in bands and having an audience just
1:16:38
dancing and and grooving with everything that we’re doing and and and moving with us as we move through the
1:16:45
set. That gave me a whole different version of definition of reality. Yeah. And that became my reality. And when I
1:16:53
left the stage and moved out front, the same thing, you know, seeing the
1:17:00
audience all fixated, their attention just totally riveted on
1:17:06
the performance. and you know 50,000 people dancing to you can call me Al you
1:17:12
know uh that is this that that’s validation that’s my drug
1:17:17
yeah that’s validation that that is that keeps me focused
1:17:23
keeps me calm and keeps me satisfied
1:17:28
in that way I can keep the uh the mental demons in the background
1:17:35
and there have been dark times Mhm. There have been times where I I I was
1:17:40
going to walk away, but how can you walk away from it? It’s totally addictive.
1:17:47
And that is who we are. Walk away. That’s who we are, man. Yeah. I I I have the privilege of doing a job that
1:17:54
makes people happy. Nothing is greater than seeing everybody walking out of a show smiling or singing
1:18:02
the songs from the show, you know? Yeah. the thanks I get in front of house
1:18:07
after a show, people have no idea how much that means to us. Exactly. You know,
1:18:12
yeah, it even if it’s just a hey, good show, buddy. You know,
1:18:18
just keep it coming. Keep it coming. As as much as good karma as I get from
1:18:24
you guys, I’ll give it back at the next show. And it’s uh it’s not ego. It it it’s
1:18:32
it’s inclusion. Yeah. It’s uh it’s what we’re there for.
1:18:37
It’s the definition of a path. Yeah. And it
1:18:44
gives a sense of purpose that’s greater than I need money.
1:18:50
Yeah. You know, I’m bringing people a little bit of a
1:18:56
break from their everyday life and just allowing some people to
1:19:04
experience pure joy for a couple three hours. And pure joy is probably the best
1:19:11
uh medicine or palotative that that that has ever been devised. happy people
1:19:20
uh can overcome and that’s why we do music. It’s it’s it’s it’s a uh it’s a calling.
1:19:27
Mhm. But for me it’s a necessity as well and it’s my way of of of
1:19:35
defining my place in the world and and and creating a safe space in in which I
1:19:40
feel comfortable and and and secure. And uh God knows I have enough anxieties
1:19:47
already uh I don’t need anymore. And to have a job that removes anxiety,
1:19:54
you know, you go from that imposttor syndrome to when you get
1:20:00
comfortable with what you’re doing, then it becomes like a lifespan.
1:20:06
Yeah. You know, it’s a renewal. Every every show is a renewal. Yeah. And uh it was it was so
1:20:14
uh nurturing for me that I was able to keep at it for almost 50 years in mixing
1:20:19
front of the house. Would I have traded my life for anybody else’s at this point? No.
1:20:26
I had one of the most amazing adventures ever. And uh I don’t I don’t I don’t
1:20:32
think I’d be able to replicate it doing anything else. And I I think
1:20:38
getting off the stage wasn’t wasn’t even traumatic. Uh because I found the exact
1:20:45
same satisfaction playing my instrument. Yeah. That as I did when I was playing the
1:20:51
guitar in in you know in other bands and if not more so. Exactly. Yeah. It’s my email address is
1:20:58
Morgan Mix, right? And that came from uh years ago. Somebody walked in a room and came out
1:21:05
to front of house to visit me and said, “Morgan, I knew that was you. I could tell a Morgan mix as soon as I walked in the room.”
1:21:13
That’s pretty cool, isn’t it? Yes. That’s wonderful. So, there there’s a signature there somewhere.
1:21:19
It’s good to know that my labor and and and my love for what I do might have brought our business to a little higher
1:21:25
place, you know. On that note, David Morgan, thank you for being my guest.
1:21:31
Thank you, my friend. And it’s always good to talk to you. Absolutely, man. We’re going to do this again very soon. Absolutely.
1:21:37
In fact, we’re going to do this again at the AES show in October. Yeah.
1:21:42
So, well, tune in live.
1:21:48
Hey, I’m Daniel Keller. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and join us each week for Insights and Sound.