For those of you that only know me as the guy obsessed with racing and riding bicycles, way way back before I rode my bike all the time, before I was married, back when I wasn't able to hang on to a girlfriend to save myself, before I had any days-off and before I became a Human Resources guy and when I had no time to do anything other than work - I was a full-time sound engineer.
There I said it....
I was the long haired guy in the back of the concert running that big mixing console with all the knobs, lights, buttons, faders and meters. I controlled the volume of each instrument on stage, each microphone, each nuance of what you heard. I controlled the blend of the band, what was loudest in the mix and tried to make the band sound like a recording or their recording at the time.
I did not control the air conditioning in the theater, the location of the bathrooms on the fairgrounds, who was playing next, or why it was so loud at your seats - right in front of the f'ing speaker stacks.
I was fortunate to run sound for some Presidents, Vice-Presidents, famous bands, not so famous bands, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Sesame Street stars, and the like over a 20 year span.
Before the Thanksgiving holiday, BWE and I made time to visit the LC concert venue for the Andymanathon.
The Toll was performing it's first concert in over 18-years for this event and I wanted to be there to see them perform.
Andy was a local well-known DJ here in Columbus on CD101 an alternative station that is locally run and owned. Andy was a great guy and did quite a bit for local music, breaking bands into national acts, owned a cool local bar (Andyman's Treehouse) and was just overall, a great guy. Each holiday he would spend hours upon hours on the air, staying up for several days, gibbering on into the wee hours, straight playing songs in exchange for dollar donations, people would donate towards "the kids". Local musicians and 'celebs' would go be on air with Andy to keep him awake, feed him coffee and assist in gathering funds for the cause. The money all went towards several local children charities. Sadly, our Andy passed away recently.
Yes I am getting to the point.
As we say, 'back in the day' I was fortunate to run sound for many many local acts, up and coming bands and bands that got signed to the majors (labels). My buddy Bill ran sound for the Toll at the time and was nice enough to show me the ropes early in my career. The Toll also let some friends of mine in another band travel around about a 4 state area to be an opening act many times over. It was great fun for awhile. The Toll was ahead of its time, in more ways than one. They were big, like stadium big, like bigger than u2 big. Their show was big, their lyrics, the guitar riffs, the driving rhythms, all huge. After my buddy Bill left his mixing duties to pursue other more profitable career opportunities, I was fortunate to stand in Bill's old mixing shoes for the Toll. They were still signed to Geffen records and they were still stadium big to me. Between shows, I would study their two recordings and listen for sounds of instruments, adjustments to guitar volumes, space between instruments and vocal effects. Yes this is an art. We still joke around, shit in, shit out, meaning if the band was crap, their instruments would sound like crap and then all you would be doing is amplifying crap. Never the case with The Toll, always in tune, always there, giving it 150% every show, no matter if there was 5000 people or 50.
I shot some HD hand held video at their show and thought I would tell a little story to go with the video to bring some history to their name and my history.
If you like rock music and have an open mind, check out their two Geffen releases, I am sure you can find them out there somewhere.
The Toll-Jonathan Toledo:
Highlights:
