22 Feature <strong>FOH</strong> Hometown Heroes Brantley Sound Associates Nashville, TN (L/R) Operations Manager Dario Ceragioli, Owner Bobby Brantley and General Manager Keith Beck of Brantley Sound Associates Bobby Brantley was born into the business, a business his father built out of the garage. At the age of nine, he found himself being the cue card boy for Porter Wagoner, and from there he found himself pitching in with dad doing sound for many Billy Graham Crusades. By 1983, Brantley Sounds Associates (BSA) was incorporated. The next year, Bobby graduated from high school and went to college to study radio/TV. He “Everyone here is a vital operations manager.” — Bobby Brantley hooked up with Amway and was suddenly doing 36 weeks a year in corporate shows; then he was on to the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Clients over the years have included Summer Lights of Nashville, Fair St. Louis, Ronnie Milsap, Tony Bennett, Amy Grant, Ray Charles, Tom Jones and many others, including Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to St. Louis. BMI, SESAC and ASCAP regularly turn to the company for its annual events. Brantley’s father passed away in 2000, and his mother was president of the company until he bought it outright in 2004. Since then, he’s continued to build and expand on the company’s good work. Despite it all, he has a favorite: “You set a goal, and when you hit it, you feel like you succeeded,” he says. “Mine was to mix a show for James Taylor.” In 1996, he mixed Taylor’s performance with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Today, Brantley has 26 employees, plus 45 freelancers. They “don’t have all our eggs in one basket.” They equally handle corporate, touring and local clients like Vanderbilt University, which can use up 16 rigs of equipment when all of its colleges have commencement services. Brantley’s future goal is not opening a new or even bigger office, but to “grow the business to the point that I can let it run itself.” To that end, he encourages everyone at Brantley to take ownership of the work: “Everyone here is a vital operations manager.” He gives credit to his upper management team, too: “My posse is Operations Manager Dario Ceragioli and General Manager Keith Beck.” Firehouse Productions New York, NY Sound Art Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada The cheerful Sound Art team Dave Cousins started what would become Sound Art out of his parent’s garage in 1981. “I was always the kid with the biggest stereo,” he says. After college, he recorded demos for bands and did some road work. When he made the leap into forming a company, three of his fellow sound engineers jumped in with him. “They are still with me 20 years later. “We all did it because we had the same kind of passion,” he continues. “We all like music so much…and we went from having the loudest stereo in our room to the biggest one in a theater!” he laughs. From Winnipeg, Sound Art has branched out with offices in Calgary, Toronto and, most recently, Las Vegas. Vancouver is penciled in for the Sound Art treatment in 2008. He has about 45 people working full time with another 20 added in the summer. They handle everything from small corporate work all the way up to international touring. “We’ve had systems around the world,” Cousins says. “Recently, we’ve worked with Jewel, Bryan Adams, Bare Naked Ladies, Dido and Sarah Mclaughlin.” But only call on them if you just want sound. “We’ve always been purely sound, and we’re kind of a dying breed. But we have some good partners, companies that are pure lighting. Anything that is not audio feels like work! Your heart is not in it.” They handled the infamous post-SARS event at the Skydome in Toronto, where numerous acts played to 70,000 people. “There was a lot of gear in there! We had 24 delay clusters thrown around the place: That was probably the largest single gig we’ve done.” Typically, he salutes his people when asked the reason for his success. “There’s a fair amount of ego in this business, and we try to avoid that,” Cousins says. “Going back and forth between the different areas of work is something we’re aware of. You get off a tour, and you need to be deprogrammed. Suddenly there’s no catering — you have to get your lunch yourself!” Bryan Olson started behind the controls as a monitor engineer. He mixed for Peter Gabriel, Tears for Fears and The Cure, among others. He also worked for other sound companies when he stared building his own monitor packages. “I was always looking for the perfect sound wedge,” Olson tells. “I never came across anything I was entirely satisfied with, so I decided to start experimenting in the wood shop. After making a lot of different-shaped boxes and trying every driver available at the time, I finally came up with and started using what is known today as the F-12 and F-15. With these OCTOBER 2007 www.fohonline.com Big House Sound Austin, TX At Big House Sound with Rod Nielsen (L) and Roy Kircher (R) Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of being in Austin knows great things happen on Sixth Street. You can add “Big House Sound” to that list. Roy Kircher spent 10 years with Asleep at the Wheel, and Rod Nielsen had worked with national Christian acts and had a recording studio. “We met on Sixth Street, both mixing for bands down there, and got to know each other,” Nielsen explains. “Then we started talking about buying a system together.” Big House Sound was launched in 1992. “For years we reinvested everything we made back into the company, expanding our inventory,” says Kircher. “We were gear junkies! [Laughs.] And that made us stick out in the Austin market because we always brought out the new technology and exceeded the standards of the other companies who weren’t reinvesting.” Today, the company boasts an 18,000-squarefoot warehouse it purchased five years ago. With 12 full-timers and 20 subcontractors, Big House Sound handles large-scale events, tours and Texas symphonies. Most recently, they were pushing faders for the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Nielsen considers Austin’s 1999 New Year’s Eve celebration as one of the company’s crowning achievements (memory jog — all the computers were going to crash, and the world was going to end, remember?). Around 260,000 partiers showed up, and they provided the audio support for the entire event. Kircher adds that they’ve also done a lot of state inaugurals, which are also important. “We try to treat every event, whatever the size, with the same amount of respect,” he says. “Of course the big ones stick out, but the smaller corporate events require as much effort as the big ones! You take pride in those as well.” “We’re still extremely interested in this work and still willing to put in a lot of energy and keep up with the new equipment,” Nielsen says. “We’re always figuring out how the new gear sounds — not just read about it in press releases.” Next up is a little more focus on the touring industry, which the company has dabbled in, but not explored completely. They are currently eqing for Blues Traveler. proprietary boxes, for years we specialized only in monitor systems.” Firehouse officially was founded in 1994, and today it is a large-format, fullservice sound company. “Not only do we have a fairly large P.A. inventory, we also have a full-scale communication and RF division.” Recent projects include Live Earth, CBS Fashion Rocks, Broadway on Broadway, 911 Memorial, among others. “Currently, we are gearing up for the VH1 Hip Hop Honors, BET Awards, and the Latin Video Music Awards,” he adds. And then there’s the touring: Nine Inch Nails, High School Musical, Interpol, Hall & Oates and Crowded House are among the current acts Firehouse is taking care of, and currently “The crew is hard at work getting Hannah Montana out the door.” His philosophy is simple: “Always plan ahead to avoid disappointment!”
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