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44
The Regional Anklebiters Slants
Cruisin’
with Jonny B
From Bass Player to Soundco Owner —
Growing Up Without Growing Old
By DavidJohnFarinella
Hundreds of bar bands around
the States are looking for a few
things — a singer that can captivate
an audience, a guitar player who
can play quieter than 110 dB and a
rhythm section that can hold the whole
thing together. Jon McDowell, known
to his friends around Rockford, Ill., as
Jonny B, could help with the rhythm
section bit, since he’s been playing bass
in local bands for over a decade. The
fact that he also owned a set of mains
and a lighting rig when he joined his
first band was a bonus.
“I went out and spent $300 on
eBay and got the job done.”
— Jonny B.
The father of the guitar player in Vision,
a progressive rock band that he
played in during the early to mid-90s,
owned a console, snake and a handful of
monitors, so the two came together and
formed Mr. G Productions. “When I joined
that band it was like a match made in
heaven,” McDowell says. “But then the
band broke up, and the sound company
kinda ended. I still have the cabinets laying
around,” he adds with a laugh, “if you
know somebody that wants ‘em.”
He moved from that band to another,
continuing to add P.A. and lighting gear,
and in 1999, launched Jonny B. Enterprises
Inc. (www.jbe-inc.com). McDowell started
out with a house gig at a local bar where
he did sound for bands like Saliva, Drowning
Pool, Soil and Stephen Pearcy from Ratt.
“It was the ‘80s bands, but it was good exposure,
and it was a semicontrolled environment
— unlike touring — where I knew
how everything should sound.”
From the club dates, which he still does
at a handful of venues around town, Mc-
Dowell expanded into servicing outdoor
events. It began with the Block 5 Party in
Rockford — he started on the side stage in
2001 and then took over the main stage in
2003. This past Labor Day, he worked at The
Iron Horse Bike & Music Festival just outside
of Sabula, Iowa.
Unlike many who own and operate
regional sound companies, McDowell
has kept his day job at Martin Automatic
Inc. in Rockford, Ill. He’s been there 17
years and is currently in charge of the
company’s electronics lab. “I get to work
with electronics, so it’s hand-in-hand with
the sound stuff I’m doing,” McDowell says.
“I make most of my own cabling, and a
handful of my cabinets I made myself. I also
have ultimate flexibility.”
As an example, he points to a recent
phone call he received from a former
brother-in-law who books the Badger
OCTOBER 2007
Music Theater in Reedsburg, Wisc. “He
called me up at 10:30 in the morning,
saying that he needed two mixing consoles
with at least 40 channels for a
Great White show that night,” McDowell
says. “So, I walked into my boss and
said, “I’ve got a chance to do sound for
Great White tonight. If I get the time off,
great; if you need me to be here, that’s
fine, too.’” After making sure his day gig
was covered, McDowell was off, and the
show went on as planned.
While he’s proud of the steps the
company has taken over the past eight
years, McDowell is the first
to admit that Jonny B.
Enterprises Inc. is
the newcomer in
town. “I handle
the overflows — the
little stuff that nobody
wants to do,” he says.
For instance, he recently did a show
that featured a handful of second-stage
Ozzfest bands. “We brought in a 10-box
P.A., two monitor boards and a lighting
package for $500. Nobody would have
touched that.” Yet, he did, after talking
to the show’s promoter and finding out
that only a small amount of tickets had
been sold. “I gave him my minimum operating
cost, but it’s one of those things
that I’ll help you out now, you help me
out later. I’ve got a monitor guy who is
kind of green, so it was a perfect chance
for him to get a bunch of experience on
a 40-channel front of house console. I
showed up just in case, but it was a nice
little test for the guy.”
At the same time, there are the jobs
that he gets from referrals. One example
is work at this year’s Iron Horse
Combined Driving Event in Caledonia,
Ill. The job came to McDowell from a
guy who manages a band that he does
sound for occasionally. He went out,
met with the event planner and then
got to work, putting together a system
that would work on the 400-acre property.
In fact, this was the type of gig that
combined his experience with electronics
and pro audio.
McDowell had to set up a P.A. inside a
tent where a horse-and-buggy competition
was planned and then set up another
pair of speakers about a quarter of a mile
away so that fans could keep up on the
action. He found a half-dozen FM radios,
went on eBay and purchased an FM transmitter.
Then, he set up the distant system
with a couple of Yamaha CM15Vs on a stick,
a Crown XTI-4000 amplifier and a noise
gate. “Anybody else would have been looking
for multithousand-dollar professional
links,” he says. “I went out and spent $300
on eBay and got the job done.”
That’s not the first time he’s used his
electronics knowledge to build gear. In ad-
dition to the company’s
cabling, McDowell
built the eight
Labhorn subs he uses.
“I refer to them as my
children,” he says with
a laugh, “because it
took me nine months
to build the eight of
them.” The Labhorns are
part of the company’s
“A” system, which also includes
eight Electro-Voice
MTH-1 mains, powered by
QSC amps. The company
also has a smaller 10-box
“B” system (four MTH-1Xs
and six MTH-1s) and an
eight-box “C” system (four
Peavey DTH Concert Sub
Is and four Peavey DTH-
S4s) that are used for
club dates.
For consoles, Mc-
Dowell uses a Ramsa
WRS-852 together
with a Soundcraft
Spirit Monitor II as the
company’s main rig.
The 10-box rig has a
Soundcraft Series 2
board for FOH and
a Behringer MX-
8000 for monitors,
while the eight-box
setup gets a Mackie
1604VLZ. McDowell
will be looking under
the Christmas tree for
a digital board this
year. “Maybe something
Yamaha,” he says.
“Depends on whether
Santa thinks I’ve been
good or bad.”
McDowell’s looking
to add one more small
rig before the season
changes. “In the winter,
it boils down to bars and
bowling alleys around
here,” he reports. The “D”
rig currently includes a
pair of JTR Growler subs
and Yamaha CM15Vs with
Crown XTI-4000 power,
but McDowell is looking
to add and subtract some
things. He’ll also use that
smaller rig for sidefill on
his bigger gigs.
For a monitor rig to
go out with the “A” system,
McDowell supplies
eight CGM 212s
(although he specifies
Baltic birch and
different horns); EV
www.fohonline.com
FOH @ The Iron Horse Bike & Music festival, Labor Day weekend 2007
Downtown Rockford at Davis Park
Stage left for Kottonmouth Kings.
Left stack — DJ;
right stack — everything else.
Monitor world for Static X