Breaking Down Career Paths in Pro Audio

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to ProAV today. Look, we'll just get right to it. A lot of folks in the ProAV industry have gotten into the industry through live sound and pro audio vehicles. And and it's so incredible to see how so many folks have found their way to our industry And I was having a conversation with a gentleman out at infocom this year and and and said, you know, we needed to push record on this. So we're doing that right now. And that leads me to my next point, which we've we've got a great guest on. That's Matt Lawrence over from Avid Live Sound. Matt, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Appreciate you having me. Thanks, Ben. Well, look, Matt, I you know, you and I had a chance to talk on a Vixa TV. It was a great conversation. It was a little bit more formal probably than our conversation today will be But for those of you who don't know, Matt, Matt, you've had a chance to tour with feels like everybody, everybody from Lauren Hill, Fifth, Harmony, You said snoop dogg, ride it. And and a lot of folks in the industry, whether it's people that are still in the industry, people that have found their way to different places in the world, would look at a career like yours and say, that's what I want to emulate. But I think a lot of times people don't really understand the true career paths in AV. Right? They they see this golden goose of, I want to be a tour touring a one or front of house engineer. And don't always see what happens beyond that, what happens before that. So I wanted to really ask some questions today about some of the ways not only that you got into the industry, but some of the ways folks around the the pro audio world can get in as well. So Matt, that was the longest intro ever. Thanks for coming on the show. Absolutely. Glad. Thanks for having me and looking forward to your questions. Well, yes. I first of all, I gotta point out Matt is doing a million different things at a million different places right now. So Matt is I don't know, Matt. What's your official title across the world at this point? You're at a church. You're obviously crushing it at Evan. What are we allowed to call you? Sound ambassador? No, I don't know. Nobody knows. I know. You know, I - this is the perfect spot, right, for this for what you're trying trying to talk about. There's I think that, you know, my whole goal when I was eighteen was just to be a sound guy. I don't even know what it looked like. I I was enamored by there was a guy that can control the sound. And that's how I started. So what where I am now, we can, you know, you'll take it and ask the questions, but, you know, I look over the production aspects of my church when I have the time, And I also in the, you know, I'd I'd take care of sales for Avid. In the live sound sector, Yeah. Well, no, casual. I mean, you just, you know, you get to help folks all around the world accomplish the same career path. But No. I love the conversation that we're gonna be able to have today because it's one that that you hear from a lot of different people. Right? Whether it's from people who volunteer at church or in technical theater applications or folks who are at home producers and things like that. People find their ways into the pro audio world in in so many different places. But, you know, we I wanna start with you. Right? I wanna hear a little bit more of your story and talk a little bit more about how you got into the industry then we'll kind of make some parallels maybe about how you got in and how other folks could do it. So kick us off, Matt. How'd you break into it? Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it then. And, you know, there was a time when I was eighteen and I was in my fourth band or something like that, playing I started off by playing a rhythm guitar and backup vocals in a punk band with three chords. And then I played bass and a backup singer, and then I played drums and backup singer, then played, you know, base and lead vocals. There was a few beans where and they all were, I think towards the end, they were good, but they weren't great. But the end, we started playing some decent shows and, you know, playing around town, and, you know, that's when you start going into a venue with an actual system. And like I was talking to you about, that venue happened to be a one hundred and twenty five cap room Hills angels Club. And that was where I started. So, you know, seeing that there was this little analog mackey desk behind a chain link fence, and we played there. And it was one of those things where I was so young that it was, hey, you can play but you gotta leave type of thing. And then it was, you know, not too long after that, I went to the engineer and just said, hey, I wanna learn. And he said no. And he said no quite a few times. And then eventually, I was like, I wanna do this. What do I have to do? And he said, pick up the trash, right? So, then it was pick up the trash, into roll with some cables, and then, okay, finally get behind the desk and learn some things And I was actually just telling one of my, at church we call them change makers, but volunteers And I was just telling her that she started probably eight months ago with the same thing. She came up to me at church on a Sunday and said, hey, I want to learn sound. And I said, great. And literally, what's a four band, like all the things we were talking about on the show, just how do you start from scratch? And I was telling her a story recently about, you know, like you said in the beginning of this this whole idea of what I've accomplished I've told her, I'm like, so it's not always like that. And we went over a story recently where the sound guy, his name is Steve McDonald that taught me in the beginning, and he had like this local PA that he would roll around in his point source PA with an analog desk everything was super heavy. And he's like, hey, you're my intern now. Come with me. And I remember I'm driving my eighty seven maroon Mercury Sable to go to this gig. And I run out of gas on the freeway. And I remember my I remember going, oh my gosh, I have to make it here. Like, no matter what I gotta make it to this gig, It was free, it was hard work, it was all the things that are not glamorous, but I remember running as fast as I can to a gas station pulling out the little change that I had in order to buy a gas tank, a gas can, and some gas to run back to my car to go do this gig for free with my mentor, right? So it's those kind of things that that I You're right. People don't understand, right? And even now, you know, I have gold and platinum records and cover of magazines and all this stuff at my house. And people come over and go, oh, well that's what I wanna do. Great. I've been at this thing for twenty two some years. And it started with running down the freeway and picking up trash and stuff like that. So that turned into working as a backup guy at a bigger club, about five hundred capacity called the clubhouse, and then I got the head guy, the head position there. Which was it was great, but it was the same thing. It was, you know, point source EAW, everything was held together with duct tape and spit and you're trying to figure out how do I make this thing work every week? And then my favorite band's strung out like I said on the show. Pick me up and we started touring. But that even then was touring around in a van, staying in hotel room sharing a room, you know, everything that you could possibly think of that was fun, but it wasn't glamorous. And I started touring with a band called the dirty heads for years. And again, we started in a van. And then even in that, we started sleeping on Motel six. We'd get one room. We'd share Motel six. We'd fight for the couch cushions. In order to possibly lay your head down, and then go to the next show that might have five people there. Right? And now they're very successful and they're selling out theaters and stuff like that. But finding that rhythm of where you're at with your career, what you know, what your experiences with what level of what your direction is. Mine was always, I wanted to tour forever, and then later on, it turned out, you know, elsewhere. So I'll let you That's a lot to swallow as usual. That's how I started last time. But, you know, after I got into touring the bigger bands, there was another path. But I'll let you go from here. Well, no. I I that's that's a great point. Right? And and even folks like myself who've who've found different paths in the industry, I I feel like there's this glamorization of man, I would love to go be an LD or or a front of house engineer or a video tech for a lot of these tours because you go to concerts and you think that that that is the pinnacle. And for a lot of people, it is. Right? If you're mixing Taylor Swift, say, you're playing on stage on retainer, that is that is really the the the pinnacle of of the live sound side. But those jobs are are kind of few and far between. Right? And you had the chance to meet and work with some incredible artists. But, you know, starting with that in mind, right, once you kind of hit that point of, hey, this is great. I'm working with the Fifth harmonies. I'm working with the Lauren Hills of this world. How did maybe some of those new career paths open up, especially once you got to the point that you had made it? Yeah. Quote unquote making it. So I started with It's a touring sucks, by the way. If anybody's watching this, like, it's cool for about an hour a day. It's miserable. Well, and I had -- so I had a list. I remember when I was working at these clubs and I was like, I just want a tour. And then I started having a list, like, if I could just ride in a van, if I could just mix, you know, a theater. If I could just be in a bus. If I could just mix an arena, if I could just fly in a private jet, if I could just start mixing stadiums, if I could write all these things. And by the time I was in my early thirties, I had scratched all those off, right? I've toured fifty different countries. I private jets, and buses, and all this fun stuff. And I remember, specifically, I was at I was mixing SnoopDOG, on one of my favorite consoles, on one of my favorite PAs, and it's mixing, you know, one of the coolest rap artists out there. And I just remember, and we had the nice catering, right, in the back, we had all the things that you could possibly want in a in a quote unquote fun environment or or you made it if you will. And I just remember sitting back and going, this is not where I wanna be. Like this is kinda ran its course. Which sucks. I mean, you have these aspirations as a kid where man, if I could do this, this would be the best thing ever. And I'm not taking away like, you know, mixing Madison Square Garden and Wimly Stadium. And like, there's pentacles of my career where I'm like, Holy smokes, I can't believe I'm doing this. But I think just like anything, it gets old, you know, and it sucks, but that's just the truth, you know, and you finally go, well, here I am again, leaving my family, Here I am at the same, you know, I've been to this particular venue ten times, and I've seen this same guy or same gal, and, you know, it's the same thing. So My transition was really really interesting, and I think that the the idea of what what you're bringing to the table and what we wanna talk about is the idea to keep your mind open. So, when I I was touring in two thousand sixteen, And then after sixteen, went to the Nam Show with a guy named Mike Bangs. He works for for Alan Heath. And he's like, hey, you know, come talk to the vice president, come talk to, you know, these people just you you're you're obviously mixing on the platform. Come see what's going on. The vice president and I mentioned him on the show is his name's Tim Shaffer. He was like, hey, have you ever thought about getting off the road? And that was at the point where my daughter was four ish, and I've been having these like, crap. I'm not I'm not as excited to go on the road. I'm not as excited to do the things that I've done for so all these years, is there something else, right? And I thought the goal was to be, you know, so Mike Banks is a I don't know his exact title, but call him the technical wizard, right? He does all of the trainings, he does all the stuff, he answers the phone for stuff. I mean, he's the Alan Heath brand ambassador. He's pretty amazing. But I think the goal at first was, hey, you might be the bangs two point zero or that technical guide two point zero. And I'm like, Okay. You know, like, I when I'm on the road, whatever console I've had, I'm showing the console and, you know, what's going on. And the vice president calls me and goes, You know, I think that you should become the Western regional sales manager. No, like, that doesn't work. Would I ever do that? That title doesn't jump off of the page quite like the three way through those. So, you know, I was just like, it doesn't make sense to me. Why would I want to do that? And what's interesting, and I would love whoever's watching to to think about this, is that some people can see things in you that you might not be able to see yourself. And my love for the live sound industry, my love for consoles, and what that looks like. He saw that. And he saw that, you know, in order to do sales, you have to have some sort of personality, and I love to talk to people. Pretty eccentric in how I do things. And he's like, okay, I can take that. And if I show you spreadsheets and email etiquette and being able to, you know, work with a pipeline and what those look like, I think you might be able to do something here. Right? And so having having somebody who sees something in you that you don't see and believes in you is really the I think that's the magic. That's where, you know, instead of if I would've just been very, like, I'm gonna tour forever. This is all I do, and and keep chasing that thing. I wouldn't be where I'm at today. And you bring up a really good point, right? And you and I have very similar stories in myself a little bit more on the video side. But, you know, you get so used to the, hey, here are the hard skills that I use every day. I could set up and tear down a system better than anybody that I know. But, like, you forget that you're one or two hard skills, whether it's email etiquette, whether it's you know, talking on the phone, being able to call people, like, these are skills that translate into I even hate to say the real world. That's not what I at all, but translate into different areas. Right? And those are some of the hard skills that help bring folks whether it's off the road or or out of the clubs into kind of other places in the AV industry and the pro audio industry, you know, you talk about a couple of them with the email etiquette and kind of best practices for communication and building pipelines and things like that. What would you say are some of the other hard skills that you think are really beneficial and necessary to kind of come out of that world and dive into the AV side? Yeah. You know, I I so I guess this would be a good time to put out there. Live sound, I felt like, man, I'm really clicking on all cylinders, right? And I wouldn't say, but I'm an expert by any means, but I had done enough things to spend some time, put some accolades, did some things. What I realized the first step was is when I needed to demo a console, and I realized that there's so much more to a let's just say console than what I was using it for. Right? And you're like, wait a second. Why would you use a mix minus? Or what what is a dougan? Right? Or what Right. Like, what is networking? You mean I need to network the console? Like, it's supposed to just hook up. Right? So, I mean, I was very, very analog minded for a very long time, but, you know, diving further into even just what you're trying to do. So like integrator. Right? If you're going down that world, you know, Dante or, you know, going down even into what's the QSC I can't think of it. I don't ever use it. What is the QSC? Tucis. Man, I'm Thank you. Jesus, Louise. I don't use it. So don't don't hate me on that. But, you know, these these different companies We're not cutting that out either that's staying. Digital signal processing stuff like that, right? So we have a Dante backbone at the church. So, that's what I use. But I think the idea of there's so many skills that you use, you know, either on the road or very singular And then when you branch out, it's what are you trying to do? Right? What is what is the goal? And, you know, even at our church, the goal at our church is to have as many changemakers or volunteers as humanly possible, right? And when I took over about a year and a half ago, as far as the production director, we had literally no volunteers. Right? The the two gentlemen or let's let's just go with the one gentleman, who is their phenomenal integrator mentality knew how to get from point a to point b, but communication skills and being able to to bring new people in was not his forte. And I went last night, we have rehearsals on Tuesday evenings, and I went last night just to see how everything's going. And in the sound booth, there's this, the Girl app, here's her name's Abdi. She was mixing, which again eight months ago, didn't know anything about sound. She's mixing. There's two guys who are a little bit older than her or about same age, behind her learning from her. And then there's a sixty five year old guy who knows a bunch about sound but not about digital. And then there's another kid back here. So there's four there's five people, and then the monitor guy comes up, there's six people. Who are all volunteers, who are all change makers. So I know I kind of went on a tangent, but the idea that when you're coming off the road, like, if I started learning my stepdad's a pilot, if he started teaching me about how to fly planes, it's not really gonna be applicable to what I'm trying to do, right? But there's so many other skill sets of getting off the road and I can't tell you how many people I know who are super successful engineers, who would love nothing more to get off the road, and don't know how to. Yeah. And and I I wanna call back to a point you made earlier. Right? Now you see you you live in a little bit more of a teaching and advisory role in you kind of now have an opportunity to be that person to somebody whether coming off the road, coming into the industry for the first time. Talk about that side a little bit. Right? What are some of the ways that that folks like you and I and people who have have done a lot in the industry who kind of exist in the enterprise now world. How can we do a better job of bringing folks into the industry and kind of giving them some of that mentorship? Yeah. I, you know, I look back frequently on what is the success of having multiple volunteers, multiple change makers, in our church, right? It really boils down to just being open. And I I look back at the people that were there last night, and I can think about there was a guy, the recent one, He came up on last two Sundays ago and said, hey, I think it sounds great in here. I'm come I'm new here. What can I do to help? And I think that right there is pretty much the meat and potatoes because this other girl, this other Abby, She came up to me, same thing. Hey, I want to learn sound. Bob, who's the older gentleman. He could've came up to me. He said, hey, you know, I've I'm new here, how do I become involved? And I think that right there is everything. Because in that instant, Making somebody feel welcome, making somebody feel like they're not inadequate, or they don't know enough, or, you know, all these things that we know can be super intimidating. I mean, I have a thirty two d s six l sitting at front of house with, you know, the screens and knobs and everything. Anybody who looks at that could be intimidated. But to feel whoever's asking let them feel like nothing's out of reach. Right, let them feel like no matter what they're trying to accomplish or or experience, maybe they know it or not, like we've been talking about, that there's somebody there who cares, and there's somebody there that can teach them. And I think that that is where there's a lot of I was a victim of this of that part of this success as well is where I thought. But again, when I got off the road, was like, look how cool I am. I've done so much. And then you start realizing all these other things that you can do inside of the ABL industry and realizing, oh man, if you just put me in integration, I suck. Or you take somebody who's in integration and tell them to, hey, go do a live show right now for a stadium. Maybe they might not be as good. Right? So I know there's some blending. I got it. The other project management real quick too. So the the idea, I think, your your question is how do we help? I think we'd be open minded for whoever's interested to feel welcome. And I think that's a great place for us really to to kinda land the plane and and we have to have more of these conversations anyway, Matt, because you know, they're one of the the biggest battles that we face as an industry is tribal knowledge and and there's nothing else that we can do at this point other than call it out. Right? We don't wanna share our secret sauce or historically haven't wanted to share a secret sauce whether that's on the hardware side, integration side. Application engineer side, and our industry cannot thrive like that. Right? We have to be training focused. We have to be education focused. Whether you're training volunteers at a house of worship, whether you're training new installers, integrators, designers, manufacturers, engineers, we have to have a more education focused mindset, not only to grow as an industry, but to continue to serve our end users, our audiences, our communities. And I think that out of the the the voices in the industry, yours yours kinda stands above. Right? Because you you've had you've had the chance to to really reach a lot of the pinnacles of of the the AV industry and yet you still are are a voice for community and change and and teaching in the industry. So I wanna commend you on that and also invite you back onto the show again because we didn't get to talk about everything today. There's always nuggets to pull from you. I appreciate it. Yeah. There's There's the thanks for the time on the show, and I yeah. I mean, anytime you want me on, we we just it seems like every time we we we get to chat, we we start dipping in and then all of a sudden it's like, well, time's up. Yeah. And that's the unfortunate reality of timed episodes. Even though we're not we're not on linear TV, so we could go for longer. But I don't think either of us has a ton of time to do that today because it's it's a it's it's we're just doing a lot of business. It's great. It's a testament to the reality of you you can have a successful career coming off the road and coming out of traditional AV applications. But Matt, Thanks so much for joining us today. Best of luck, not only at the church, but at Avid. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And thank you all for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe and join us next time here on Pro EV today.