A finishing of a story:

I August I started a history, and then events got in the way, and I did not finish. There is new post in between this on and that one, but I thought since I was moved to write today, I had better get it together and finish a coherent thought that I was having in August.

The problem that I have is that I can't remember the motivation which got me going on the story. I know that Amy and I were having a discussion about fulfillment and I was not feeling fulfilled at the time, probable because I had not done anything with music in a very long time. As mentioned in my last post, I did a show with the band Sugarland which was one of the highlights of my career, but right afterwards I put music in a box and wrapped it with a bow and put it on the shelf.

Ok, now I am in the mindset of this history again... As we left off in the prior post, I had sold my gear and gotten away from doing sound for a short while. At the time I was working at Lowe's home improvement as a store manager (having realized that I could not make a full time salary working in the music industry). For fun in the summer I was going down and helping out at Michigan International Speedway. My friend Keith had taken a position there after honing his marketing chops in Grand Rapids. Keith was the guy who hired me for the block parties with the sports team...

As I wandered around at the large speedway, I began helping out wherever needed which included a new concert concept which one of their large sponsors had implemented. The concert was huge expense for the Speedway, and Keith asked me my opinion on it. After we looked over what he paid for production and the band, I made a fateful statement: "I could do a show like this and save you half your money"...

Having seen me doing production on a small scale, Keith thought that I must know what I was doing and promptly turned the show over to me for 2004. I took a chance and booked comedian Cledus T Judd for the big show. Some people at the Speedway thought I was crazy, but the artist had just put out a CD with a song called I love NASCAR, and it hit the charts right before the race. We ended up with a crowd of 25,000 people, and I pulled the whole thing together by myself. It was a crazy success, and amazing fun.

A couple of months after the concert my buddy had an opening in his staff and asked me to come down and live in Jackson. This led me to a couple of years working for the NASCAR and ISC companies. I was in charge of concerts as well as the display area at the Speedway. I also negotiated contracts with national and regional companies as a corporate partnerships exec. This was pretty fun work and allowed me to travel and have a pass into the biggest and best NASCAR events of the year. I traveled to Daytona for the 500, as well as Phoenix and Taladega. Not a bad deal to be able to walk into almost any suite and watch the race with somebody that you knew. Clients tend to be at several races each year, so it was easy to get a free lunch and a place to watch, as well as access to the pits while the race was going on.

The finale and turning point of this history was me booking Sugarland right before they took off in 2005. We got then to play the post race concert, and their Cd went number one that week. The little band that we got a $15,000 quote on had become a headliner, and drew a crowd of 35,000 people that day. As all stories go, change was in the air... My wife and I were planning to get married that fall, and neither of us saw NASCAR or Jackson MI as the place to be for the long term. So I was once again looking for the right place to be...

That fall my wife (Blanco De Sinki) and I were married. The right position did not appear until that spring, but right before the birth of our daughter, I found myself working in the non profit sector, in Grand Rapids MI. My concert days were over for a bit due to my boss not being too pleased at my leaving the Speedway just as thing were getting settled into a routine. (He was just about to see much change as well, but that is not my story.)

As I got into my new role of husband/father/non profit community leader, I found that the lack of a musical outlet was getting to me. Change is never easy, and this was the biggest year of change in my life.

At this time, I have decided that I need to put musical production back in my life. As I find time I will let you into the process that I am going through. I have been studying up, as the last couple of years have brought amazing change to the live production industry. Digital technology has taken over the industry like no one could predict event three years ago. This old school engineer, is learning some new tricks every day. But a good microphone is still a good mic, this technology has not changed, and I still have a few good old microphone up my sleeve!