232. TC Furlong, Sound Company Owner & Musician

Chicago-based live audio legend TC Furlong joins the show in Episode 232 and talks about his journey in founding a live audio company that just celebrated its 50th anniversary, his life as a pedal steel player in a one-hit wonder band, and the details of a tool he invented in the 1980s that many of us still use on every single music gig we do nearly 40 years later! This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath, RCF, and Rational Acoustics.

Episode Links:
TC Furlong — Live Sound Since 1973
Jump In The Saddle Band, “The Curly Shuffle”

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The Signal To Noise Podcast on ProSoundWeb is co-hosted by Live Sound/PSW and pro audio veterans Andy Leviss and Sean Walker.

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Transcript

Episode 232 - TC Furlong

Andy Leviss: You’re listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb podcast network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:

Allen & Heath, introducing their new CQ series, a trio of compact digital mixers for musicians, bands, audio engineers, home producers, small venues, and installers that puts ease of use and speed of setup at the heart of the user experience.

Rational Acoustics, makers of Smaart, the industry leading acoustical test and measurement software. Rational Acoustics, rational people, smart products.

RCF, who has just unveiled their new TT+ Audio brand, including the high performance GTX series line arrays and the GTS29 subwoofer. Be sure to check it out at rcf-usa.com. That's rcf-usa.com.


Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green


Andy Leviss: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise on the ProSoundWeb podcast network. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and uh, over there, you can't see him, but I can, my co host, Sean Walker. What's up, Sean? 

Sean Walker: What's up man? How you all doing? 

Andy Leviss: I'm, I'm doing, you know, enjoying my, my one day off this week. Took a, took a Day off from the arts center to go, uh, work outside in the rain, uh, doing a little bit of monitors on an SQ 7. 

Sean Walker: All right. Cool. 

 How'd that go?,  

Andy Leviss: it went pretty well, you know, it was cool. It's, you know, I've been hearing lots about it with Allen and Heath as one of our sponsors and, uh, I hadn't had my hands on it cause I've been living in Yamaha world for a while. And I dipped my toe back into the Allen and Heath pool, had a good time. 

Uh, 

Sean Walker: You're not too beat up. You're not crying. It must've gone fine. 

Andy Leviss: No, console wise it did. It was,  

It was cold and wet because it was, it was 50 degrees, but it was, it was raining outside on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, but a couple cool, cool jazz acts, uh, 

Sean Walker: Sweet, dude. How fun! 

Andy Leviss: lovely afternoon. Um, I, I, yeah, I did not have to live out the, the bad joke about, uh, about monitor engineers and proctologists. 

 Do you know that one?  

Sean Walker: Sure don't 

Andy Leviss: What's the difference between a monitor engineer and a proctologist? 

Sean Walker: I don't know, but I'm afraid you're gonna tell me. 

Andy Leviss: Proctologist only has to deal with one asshole at a time. And on that note, folks, um, enough. are you still working on the shop move or, uh, y'all settled in there? 

Sean Walker: We're settled in. It's never, it's never done. It just keeps getting cleaned and reclean and organized and reorganized and labeled and relabeled and, you know what I mean? We went and did a show last week at a, at the convention center here and came back and we're like, well, now it's all wrong. Now we gotta do it all Now we're gonna do it all again, like . But it was great. It was, it's fine. We're we're stoked to have a. You know, bigger space with room for more trucks and more gear and holy crap, it just never ends. Speaking of never ending gear, I'm sure our guest today understands completely 

Andy Leviss: I was gonna say, talking about, uh, growing shops from a small thing, it keeps going. Uh, we've got, uh, somebody here joining us who's been in the business for somewhere, was it 50 years? 

Sean Walker: I think 50 on the dot. 

TC Furlong: Yep, 5 0. 

Andy Leviss: uh, so uh, those of you who listened to our episode the other week with Joe Palermo will remember a passing mention, um, and also a friend that I was introduced to a couple weeks ago through Pete Wiejaczka, who was on a couple episodes ago. 

Uh, joining us today is the one and only TC Furlong out of Chicago. How you doing, TC? 

TC Furlong: I'm doing great. Hi, guys. Nice to meet you, uh, on the screen, love it! 

Sean Walker: Yeah, man. Thanks for coming to hang out. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, TC and I chatted on the phone the other week and then lost track of a good chunk of an afternoon hanging out the other day. Um, and, and I'm, I'm excited to bring him in to, to share that with you too. Um, 

 so TC, why don't you give us a quick like back cause I know you, did, did you start in music and then migrated into sound? 

Cause I know you've got sort of like a split career we were talking about the other day. You want to give us a little, little  

TC Furlong: I, I was, uh, let me tell you when it started. The whole thing started on February the 9th of 1963. I think that's the right date, when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show. And I saw that and I said, that's what I want to do. And sure, I saw it live. I remember it like it was yesterday. And I said, That is cool. 

And so from then on, I tried to figure out how I could be a musician and that type of thing. I was nine when that happened. I think I was eight or nine. And, uh, and I thought, music is a really cool thing. And then at the same time, I was fascinated by speakers, just, you know, raw frame drivers, just like, I said, how can you put a wire into this thing and a voice comes out of it? 

As a little kid, I was, you know, kind of really fascinated by it. So I'd get a radio and I'd take it apart. And I'd figure out, not when I was eight or nine, but a little later, I'd figure out that that speaker could also be a microphone. And I said, how does that work? And, you know, a young mind is fascinated by that kind of stuff. 

And to this day, I am still a loudspeaker nerd. I mean, I love everything there is to know about loudspeakers. Over the years, I've--certainly in '73, when I started the company, I started as a loudspeaker manufacturer. That's a fancy name for a couple of dudes building speakers in a shop. didn't have a proper shop. 

That was a house that was on a small bunker hill and underneath it was an air raid shelter. So there was a, there's a sheet metal company in the air raid shelter. And we were in this house on top of a hill, and I mean, we'd haul plywood in there and we had a saw and we'd make cabinets and. There was an album that came out in the 70s, I think, uh, it was by the Allman Brothers, and it was called Live at the Fillmore. 

And it had, they were set up in front of all their flight cases, the, the amp road cases for their amps. And I looked at that and I said, that's stupid. They're building cases around their speakers. Why don't you build Speakers into the cases. So I did, I started a brand called Steamer Sound and we built like a Marshall 412 cabinet into us, uh, what looked like a flight case and the lid came off it rather than having to store all those other cases, well, we, we actually sold a fair number of them then. 

And, uh, we went on, then we started building PA cabinets that had cases built on them and, you know. Aluminum edging and ball corners on speaker cabinets. We were the first to really do that. And, uh, then we start building PA systems because, you know, you need to build speakers that Do more than amplify guitars. 

So we did that and that was kind of fun. So we did some outdoor festival stuff and we started migrating into that. And all the while I started to play more, you know, we're doing gigs. And so I, I was, you know, unencumbered, not married. I didn't really have any responsibilities other than making speakers. 

So, and I was a young guy. So I started playing pedal steel guitar, and that was my instrument in the late 74, early 75, and I got a gig playing in a band three nights a week for more money than I was making building speakers. So I said, This doesn't suck. So I, so I went out and I'm playing in bars and some pretty funky bars, but I played in them anyway, and I learned a lot about how to be in a band and how to rehearse, and then, so at night I would go out and play gigs with the band, and then during the day it's build speakers, and eventually the band changed a little bit. 

Fast forward to 1984, the band had a big hit record, we toured, did all that stuff, and I kept the sound company going with, I had a couple guys who were helping me and, you know, so certainly when we were out of town, we wouldn't go out that long, maybe three weeks in, three weeks home, I'm sorry, three weeks out, three weeks home, and um, I learned a lot being on the road using other people's PAs. 

That's invaluable for, uh, for what, uh, what I would later do as my full time occupation. I still play, not as much, but I still play. Uh, anyway, so that was a good way to get into understanding how things are done in other regions. We went all over the country. I don't think we ever played in Seattle, Sean, but we did play in a lot of major cities.  

Sean Walker: What were some of the things you learned about other people's PA systems while you were out? Like what was different from what you were doing along the lines you were thinking at the time? What were some of the things you brought back goin', "Oh man, this is going to rock." 

TC Furlong: Yeah, uh, well, monitors was a major thing that I, we got, cause we got to experience those first hand, so I learned about higher quality drivers, we were using Eminence speakers, when we were building, I was the first music customer for Eminence in 1973, they were building like industrial speakers or car speakers or something, but the first, I think they told me anyway, that the first people that were using them for Sound systems and music was our little company. 

And then of course they became gigantic after that. But, uh, but I, you know, and Eminence were good. We'd have them made to our specs cause you couldn't buy a standard model. So we didn't know that much about how to design speakers, but then I heard like an EV 12L and I said, this thing sounds fantastic. So, so we started changing a little bit in that and. 

I found out we were Altec guys. We always, for whatever reason, we used Altec drivers. Uh, and then later on people introduced me to JBL drivers and then EV drivers. So as more offerings hit the market, because remember in those days, you couldn't buy a PA. You had to build it. I mean, for the most part, all the companies that had. 

You know, concert type PAs, they were built by the, the companies themselves. I mean, you can go, I mean, I think Clair is one of the few companies that still does that, but yeah. And then I saw a phase linear power amp and I said, what is that? You know, so we, you know, we were using, believe it or not tube amps that we built. Back in, the transformers weighed as much as a, a giant rock, you know, I think the amps weighed over a hundred pounds for these big 465 50s and  

Andy Leviss: Oh man, you're giving me Yamaha amplifier flashbacks right 

TC Furlong: Oh yeah, right. Yeah. The 2200s and yeah, those were wonderful amps.  

Andy Leviss: Particularly if you had a boat you needed to anchor. 

TC Furlong: there's that, I went into a, an arena. A few years ago, and I saw a giant rack full of Yamaha amplifiers that had been in there 35 years and they were  

Andy Leviss: And still kicking. Yeah, was it like H5000s? Was that the Yamaha? 

TC Furlong: I thought the P2200s and P2400s, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. 

TC Furlong: I'm having a hard time with some of those models. But yeah, but we did have some of those. So yeah, amps were a big thing. I mean everything was. And then of course we went from mixing consoles in the early days. My first mixer, are you ready? Wait for it. A Peavey nine-channel with rotary knobs. 

It was a big console mixer, and I tried to find a picture of one of those things. I couldn't find a picture anywhere on the internet. It was 10 knobs, 9 channels, and they were about 3 inches. These channels, they aren't faders, they're knobs, rotary knobs, were about 3 inches in diameter. They were huge. So it was a 9 into 1, and we thought we had arrived. 

Because, you know, before that you're using, oh, maybe Tapco mixers, that was a little bit. with the pots that would freeze up. You guys aren't old enough to remember those, but rotary pots, you know, so it was, 

Andy Leviss: I was gonna say, I'm just old enough to remember when Mackie decided they were gonna bring the Tapco brand back for a little while. Like in the 2000s. 

TC Furlong: Right. Yeah. So, and, uh, I, I do remember that. Yeah. Yeah. So we, you know, just the, the fact that you could start buying stuff, I have a, a good memory of, uh, We, we were going, my band in 77 was going to, uh, South Bend, Indiana, and we, in the, in 77, we didn't carry a front of house guy or a sound engineer at all. 

The clubs would usually have the guy and they were good enough. And, but we would always want to find somebody who wasn't the club guy. So we'd call the club sometimes and we'd say, who's, who's a good sound engineer in the, in the region. And they told me about this guy and I called him up and I said, would you come mix our band, here's what we're like, and he said, uh, what kind of mixer you have, because bands always took their own PAs back then. 

Clubs never had PAs. So, uh, I said, well, we have a Soundcraft Series 1S. "I'm in!" And, and I'm still friends with him today, and he's one of our reps now, and he's a wonderful guy. We've been friends for, since 1977, when we met, because he came, because he liked, we had, I think we had the first Series 1S in the country. 

I drove to Soundcraft's headquarters in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and bought it for cash, so. Yeah, 

Sean Walker: So nothing's changed then. You still gotta bribe sound guys with good consoles to show up and work. Okay, 

TC Furlong: you're exactly, you're exactly right, yeah. So that's funny. But, uh, yeah, so, uh, so then, so the music and the sound business, uh, did intersect a lot in the early days, and, uh, I get to go play every now and then, and I had a reasonably active studio career. So Chicago was jingle central, so I got to play on a lot of jingles, and, uh, I am now a life member. 

of the Musicians Union with I have a life member button, which is not easy to get. And it used to be that life member meant you didn't have to pay dues anymore. Now the union asks that you pay half of your dues, which, okay, I do. And then they just told me I would be better off if I reinstated my standard membership, because there's some life insurance that I would get that I didn't get, so I did, just because I like the union. But I get a pension. I'm a pensioneer now from the Musician's Union. It was a use it or lose it when I turned 65. You're gonna lose it if you don't take it, it's just not gonna go anywhere. Okay, I'll take it. 

Andy Leviss: Shut up and take their money. 

Sean Walker: Absolutely, of  

course  

you did... 

TC Furlong: so I can go out to lunch with three people in New York with my pension, with my monthly pension, just to tell you, right, so 

Andy Leviss: And that's probably at a McDonald's. It is  

New York  

Sean Walker: Right. You're not going to Eleven Madison Park. Is that what you're saying? 

TC Furlong: right, exactly. 

Andy Leviss: So I don't want to get us too far derailed off the tangent, but you just let slip in there the whole like hit song with the band thing. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta flag that and get the rest of the story. 

TC Furlong: Okay, well, the band that, I, I guess I'm still in the band. We started the band in 77, and it took till 84 to have it go into a hit record. So, the band's name is Jumpin the Saddle Band. Nobody knows what the, what the band did. But the song's name is The Curly Shuffle. It's a song about the Three Stooges, it's a novelty song. 

And we sold a lot of records and were signed to Atlantic. And went to New York and met with the president of Atlantic. And it was a, it was a whirlwind romance with the record company and the band. It didn't end well, right?  

Sean Walker: It 

didn't end well, as they said? 

TC Furlong: Pardon? 

Sean Walker: You said it did not end well? 

TC Furlong: Well, what one hit wonder ends up well with a record company? 

None. So, you gotta have a multiple number of hits to keep a record company being nice to you. So, we, I mean, we learned a lot about major labels having been on one. And, uh, I mean, it was fine. It was fine. I had some really good advice by some of the people at the record company who kind of took pity on these young dudes from Chicago who had no clue of how to deal with them. 

The, the record industry. And we did okay. We did fine. And I'm still managing the publishing, you know, after all these years, I still get  

Sean Walker: You still got the gold medal though. Like a hit song is a gold medal, man. You know what I mean? Don't, don't discount that there was one. There's a lot of people that will never get one. That was awesome. What a, what a cool accomplishment, man. 

TC Furlong: Well, thanks. Yeah. A lot, a lot of people. So I have one friend, you know, they'll say hits sound company. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. It hits on whatever. He said, but my friend says, do you know, he's the guy. that invented the Z bracket? And he said, what? That thing is so, yeah, Z bar is what it was. Yeah, so I invented that, sold it to Shure as model A45Z, and then licensed, um, Z rite stuff. 

To sell them and they just stopped selling them after 25 years, I think. 

Sean Walker: Oh  

my gosh. That's awesome, dude. 

Andy Leviss: I would have led with that if I'd  

known!  

Sean Walker: I wasn't trying to correct you. I was, I was trying to understand that we're talking about the same thing that I know Z bar, but the Z bracket thing, that's cool, 

TC Furlong: right. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, I wasn't trying to correct you about your own 

TC Furlong: Oh no, no, no, you're right. Z bar is what everybody calls it. Cause it kind of flows off the tongue better. But I think back in 1980 something, when I came up with that 88. Actually, it was probably earlier than that. Um, there was already a product called a Z bar, so I couldn't call it that. So I had to call it a Z bracket and I think they've now changed it to a Z bar. 

So there's another guy in, uh, in the South who's, uh, selling it now. So he's a, he's a real good guy and I wish him all the success. Wonderful guy. 

Andy Leviss: so for, for the folks out there listening who aren't familiar, I assume most listeners are, but what should we give the quick, like, what is a Z bar? 

TC Furlong: Yeah, sure. Uh, would you like to describe it or shall I? 

Andy Leviss: I'm gonna let you do it. . I know better than to put my foot in my mouth. 

TC Furlong: no, that's fine. So here's me. It's like looking at the Allman Brothers, uh, thing, you know. A mic stand weighs, what, 15 pounds or something? And I said, there's got to be a way that you can hang a microphone on the front of a guitar amp without taking up 15 pounds. 

And Oh, by the way, if it's a combo amp, you can slide it right in the back there. And then you've got a way to hold your microphone. So I got the idea because. The drummer in our band broke a drumstick and it was shattered into two pieces and it was kind of a wedge. And then we had these little, uh, Atlas parts that you put on the side of a, um, mic stand, like for an acoustic guitar or something that would hold a gooseneck. 

And then you'd, so, so I clamped that to that and I put a mic on that. So the first one was a drumstick and an Atlas side, uh, accessory. So I said, I can make that better than that. So I learned how to Have metal bent on a break, put a slot in it, put a knurled part, had the knurled parts made in an automatic screw machine. 

I learned all this stuff about plating and, and, uh, passivating metal to accept paint, and it was a deep dive to get it to work right, but I, I did. And, uh, so it holds a microphone in front of a combo amp or a 412 amp. And, uh, you see them all the time. Uh, I think Clair is a big user cause I know that they were, I see their shows and there's a lot of them on there. 

Um, I'm kind of embarrassed to say that until recently we didn't have any at our company. don't know  

Andy Leviss: Like, what, what, what they say about the, the coler, the cobblers children. Go Shoeless. 

TC Furlong: there's, there is an element of that. Yeah. Now people would ask us to buy them. And so I dropped by. It was Jack and Beverly Conney, who, who were the distributor. I drop by their house and I say, can I get a half a dozen of these? So-and-so's in town and they want to get 'em . So I, they said, yeah, be here at nine o'clock. 

So I'd go on my way to the gig, I'd pick up. So we were selling them, you know, just ad hoc like that. But, uh, yeah, it was a, it was a pretty cool little, uh, product and I got. I gotta tell you a funny story about the Z Bars, uh, we were selling them to Shure. I was, they were selling them and I said, you guys got to put them in a blister pack, which is a see through plastic pack. 

And they, uh, and they wouldn't do it. They put them in a box and labeled, it was like an SM58 box, only flat and labeled it A45. Well, they sat on a shelf and nobody knew what they were. But later on, they started to do blister packs for like foam windscreens and 58 replacement heads and stuff like that. So I said, you got to put it in, but they never would. 

So it didn't sell very many until one day I got a PO from them, PO came in and it was, it was supposed to be for 2000 pieces. And it was 200, 000 pieces. There was a typo and it was like 2, 500, 000 per PO. I was a guy building them in my garage. And I said, well, well, it clearly was a mistake, you know, because they, they, they, they weren't going to buy 200, 000 of these things. 

So I said, well, how's that going to work? Anyway, so they, uh. I called them and they said, Oh, thank you. Yeah. So they issued reissued the PO for 2000 pieces and I made those. And that took me, you know, the better part of a few weeks to make 2000 of them. They were pretty easy to make, but, uh, anyway, so that's the Z bar. 

Most people don't know that unless. My friends tell them about it, yeah. Fun product. 

Sean Walker: That's awesome. 

Andy Leviss: Well, and that's wild because it's. And it's such a ubiquitous piece that, like, you don't think it, like, you don't even think somebody invented it. It's just like, it's, it's always been there. That's awesome. 

TC Furlong: Right. Since the 80s. So, yeah, so, I'm, Andy, I'm not gonna ask if you were in the 80s when those were made, if you were born yet, but I, but I will ask you, were you in regular street clothes by then? Like. 

Andy Leviss: I was born in 81, 

TC Furlong: Okay, so you were not in street clothes, you were in special baby clothes then, okay, 

Andy Leviss: was, I was in footie pajamas. 

Sean Walker: Footie  

pajamas here, too 

TC Furlong: footie pajamas, right? 

Sean Walker: I'm one year older than Andy. 

TC Furlong: Okay, got it. Anyway, so yeah, so that's kind of how that went, and being a musician gives you, I think, In my experience, pretty good, different perspective. So I don't know your backgrounds about being, do you guys play music? 

Andy Leviss: Somewhat, I'm, I'm lapsed. I have two saxophones upstairs that I haven't touched in far too long and really shouldn't. Now I'm going to feel guilty about it again. 

TC Furlong: Right. 

Sean Walker: sang in rock bands as a you know, teenager in 20 something and pretty soon 

Andy Leviss: You know, learning you're a trumpet player makes so many things make sense. So I've just got a whole new understanding of genre right now. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, right? 

TC Furlong: Do you think that gives you an advantage when you're dealing with musicians? 

Sean Walker: Absolutely. 

Andy Leviss: for sure. 

TC Furlong: Yeah, first of all, it's a respect, right? You have a respect for the musicians and how hard it is to be a good musician. It's really hard. And then there's kind of a level of awe that when you're dealing with some of the upper level musicians that they've been able to forge a career in one that, in a life that's not easy a musician to make. 

And, uh, I mean, I always have the utmost respect for musicians. Even when they're not being nice to me, I still think, man, this guy is so good. I don't care if he's not being nice to me. He's awesome. So, 

Andy Leviss: yeah, and there's, and there's a shared language too, that like there's in, in, yeah, there's so often there's that it becomes an adversarial relationship between sound folk and music. And, and when you can, when you can bridge that and be like, no, no, I get it. Like I completely, Yeah. I'm like  

Sean Walker: You're like, I get it. I've just been here for 18 hours today and I'm burnt to the fricking ground. So I need a cup of coffee and a, you know, and a nap, but like, I understand. I just, 

TC Furlong: right, 

Sean Walker: I'm just exhausted, man. I'm not trying to be a jerk. 

TC Furlong: Okay. I have a story. So one of the things when, when you're old, like I am, you get a lot of stories. Um, and I will name, I don't usually name the artist, but I will name the artist because He's no longer with us, and so he's not here to call me out on this. We were doing, we do, we do a lot of broad, do, do and did a lot of broadcast origination over the years. 

And we were doing a TV show, a high def TV show with B. B. King, and it was I mean, I've, he was one of my first guitar heroes when I was a kid, seeing B. B. King live when I was like 11 backstage at an outdoor shed was like, this guy's, he's magic. So anyway, so he, he was 86 at the time and he comes on stage and I'm standing on stage and he makes a beeline for me, sticks out his hand and he says, how you feel it? 

And I said, Mr. King, I'm feeling great now that you're here. No, BB. He made me call him BB. Okay, Mr. King. BB. So I said, so he was so gracious and so nice. And I think he knew that, that I was kind of in awe. I don't get starstruck from people, but it was BB King. And I've done many other shows with him, but this was a special thing. 

So. He had a new drummer, and the drummer was the worst guy in the world to be around. Barking orders at us, uh, just demanding, telling us to do stuff just to see us fail, you know, and you're not working fast enough, just yelling at us, and my guys are, you know, they're just like that. They're like, okay, whatever. 

We're nice to them. What can we do to help you? So just faster next time. And then BB's on stage during the show. And he says, ladies and gentlemen, he says, I have a new drummer in the band. And I want to tell you, I observed some things about him during our afternoon here. And when I was a young coming up guy, we would carry a switch blade because we never knew what was going down. 

I look at that drummer. And I want to tell you, I'll cut a drummer just like that. He dressed him down  

Andy Leviss: Damn.  

TC Furlong: at the end of the gig for the way he, he treated us. So I was like, BB King couldn't get any more awesome. And he did. So it was, 

Sean Walker: awesome. That is awesome. What a cool story. 

I mean, not cool that you had to go through it, but cool at the end, 

TC Furlong: yeah. I mean, I mean, we're, we're good at it, so we, we can always, you know, feign that we're interested in helping somebody when we really aren't that interested in helping them, but we will, we'll always help. 

Yeah. It was a, it was a, it was a marvelous moment in my career and one that I'll never forget. So, 

Sean Walker: absolutely how cool, man, 

Andy Leviss: so yeah, so you were touring with the band, and I guess we sort of derailed into the music thing, but we were starting to go through like, how did TC Furlong, the person become TC Furlong, the company that, you know, Chicagoland knows and loves? I 

TC Furlong: uh, well, I always, like I said, I always played and did live sound. And I had, you know, in the, when the early days I'd have a couple of guys that were working with me, uh, and they would. Go do shows when I'd have a playing gig and, and, you know, I was doing a lot of gigs, I played in a band, but I'd also do, like I said, sessions and I'd do other things. 

So the musicians would, in town would go out at night and, uh, I'd show up on the gig as a music, as a steel guitar player. Oh, and they say, Hey man, how you doing? And that kind of thing. And then I'd be on another date with the same guys. And I'd be doing sound. And they'd say, I didn't think there was a steel guitar on this show. 

And I said, there isn't. What are you doing here? I said, I do sound. You do sound too. So it, so it flipped, you know, it was like, you know, one day I was the musician guy and then I was the sound guy. Now recently, they're all confused. Exactly. And I'd show up and I'd have my steel guitar. And they say, You play? 

I said, more recently, and I said, yeah, I do. Oh, okay, cool. So anyway, yeah, but I think it does give you a kind of a unique perspective into, you know, what people like, how to be professional. You know, I mean, a lot of musicians are really professional and, you know, I have a, I'll drop a little tidbit here and there, but I have a saying that I learned from Tom Snyder, the late night television show. 

You guys probably don't remember Tom Snyder, but he was this guy that was on 

Andy Leviss: do, in 

TC Furlong: Do you?  

Andy Leviss: I do just barely, but yeah, 

TC Furlong: Yeah. So Tom Snyder, I would watch him cause he's the guy that came on at midnight and we'd just be coming home from a gig. And, uh, he gave me the, the, uh, definition of a professional and I've never forgotten it. 

He said, a professional does his best even when he doesn't feel like it. And I said, right on, you know, that is totally, you know, professionalism, somebody who does it for money, professional is somebody who always does their best. And I mean, And we've seen, right, musicians, they're deathly ill. They go on stage, it's a great show, and then they barely make it off stage without collapsing. 

That's a professional. That's a real pro, you know. So I think we try to impart that in the guys and gals at our shop. Boy, does that sound old. Guys and gals. There's a, there's a term, but I always call it our guys. And we have two women who work at our company and both are sound engineers. And I just don't, I can't call them girls. 

I can't call them, are they guys? I can't call them dudes. I, what, what do you call them? What's the right word for a woman working in a sound company? 

Andy Leviss: yeah, I've, I've, I've been going sound humans a lot. Um, I will, I will say I actually, I, I tend to try and refer to sound humans more than ever sound people. Um, I will say the one thing I've taught is, is this is my weird, like tangential tip for the week is because I would find myself in groups and particularly in theater where we have, uh, a. 

I think because of the nature of theater, we have a much higher proportion of, uh, non males in the industry than, than necessarily, like, the rockin corporate worlds do yet. Um, so I've, it's been in my consciousness a lot more, and I know I tend to default to, hey guys, hey that, so I actually, in the autocorrect in my phone, taught my phone so that when I say guys, it will automatically change it to folks to remind 

me. So, like, if I, if I, if I specifically am referring to guys, I have to very, like, emphatically tell my phone, no, I actually mean guys this time. And it's, it's worked. It's over the course of a couple of years, it's made me think more about, you know, about more inclusive language, which is, is great. And like, it's, like, it's particularly cool to see somebody who's, who's been in the business as long as you have. 

And from the days when it was pretty much exclusively dudes to, to be conscious and aware of that. That's, 

TC Furlong: Yeah. And so I'll go out on a limb here and say, I think the women who mix live sound do a better job than many of the guys. I think women hear better, or they have a different sensitivity to how harmonic structures go together or something like that. But, oh, I got to tell you a woman sound folk story here. 

So it was in Chicago at Chicago. The Lyric Opera Theatre. We were doing a system for it, and I'll change the names of the local guys to protect the innocent. Um, 

Andy Leviss: I mean, in Chicago, you say, Mike, you've pretty much covered all of them and narrowed it down. Not at all. 

TC Furlong: right? Right? There is that, yeah. Um, I think this guy's name was Bob. So, Union Hall. And Bob was gonna mix, it was Kronos Quartet, and Bob was gonna mix Kronos. So, the traveling sound engineer was Barbara Higbee. I'll never forget her as long as I live. So, we, we set up the console in the balcony, cause that's the only place it could be. 

Um, and, She has a big book in her arm when she comes up there. So I'm up there with Bob and Bob said, just so you know, I'm mixing the show. She's great. Oh, I'm so happy. You're willing to mix the show. He says, here, let's go over it now. And she pulls this giant book out and she says, okay, measure three, bar 17, uh, minus two DB, and she starts going through the thing and she doesn't stop. 

And she's just doing all these sound cues. I don't know if they were real, they might have been, but he would have to follow the book and mix channels based on levels that she had marked down in this book, and the book was like 8 inches thick. It was this giant book. That is genius! 

Sean Walker: F U I've ever heard. That's awesome. I'm mixing this show. You're not mixing this show. All right, cool, man. Here's this encyclopedia of shit. You got to remember. Nevermind. You do it. 

TC Furlong: it took less than 30 seconds to say, hey, why don't you do it? 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Yeah, 

TC Furlong: Yeah, right? 

Sean Walker: that's awesome, 

TC Furlong: Yep, so. You know, it's fun remembering these stories because otherwise I wouldn't think of them. There's probably hundreds of those types of stories. You know, I'll cut a drummer, here, bar 17 minus 3db, right? There's a million stories like that, but that's what you  

get for being old. 

Yeah, 

Andy Leviss: So  

Sean Walker: like B. B. King's story, but I cut a bitch and I cut a drummer. 

TC Furlong: I got it. On the air, 

Sean Walker: you. He will get gangster apparently. 

TC Furlong: right? On the air! He didn't, it was a TV show. He didn't, he didn't  

care.  

Andy Leviss: man. See now, now we got us all, I'll throw it out there to listeners. If anybody can find video of this, 

TC Furlong: Uh, 

Sean Walker: Right. 

Andy Leviss: be out there somewhere. 

TC Furlong: well, I don't know if it made it through the edit, but I do know it made it onto tape and I don't remember, I never saw it on the air, but I didn't need to. So 

Andy Leviss: I'm trying, I'm trying to remember what that, what that legal department at, at broadcast networks is. That is, it's a something and something, but I can't think of what it is that is the, the department that's like, Nope, that's not going through. 

TC Furlong: yeah, yeah. 

Andy Leviss: It'll, it'll, it'll come to me like two weeks later. Two weeks from now we'll be recording an episode and I'll be like, that's what they're called. 

TC Furlong: right. 

Sean Walker: you just blurt it out. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, 

Sean Walker: I got a serious case of CRS and every once in a while you, you know, RS in that. And you're just like, what the, where did that come from, dude? 

TC Furlong: That totally happens to me too, Sean. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. 

TC Furlong: Where did that come from? 

Sean Walker: Yeah, totally. Cause most of the time I'm like, der, der, der, der. And then every once in a while, you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What am I talking about right now? Why did that, why did that come blurting out right now? Oh man. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Well, so yeah. So you, you started on the music side, you, you mentioned like the lyric opera and you've done like theater stuff. Um, is there. Like, does TC Furlong, the company, do you have a specialty? Have you, like, it feels like you've done, like, kind of a course of, like, different areas of specialty over the years. 

Like, how has that evolved or changed? 

TC Furlong: Well, so, I always thought it was a good idea to go after underserved markets, like we just talked about a minute ago, in the worship market. So we still Uh, have some, although it's gotten more competitive in worship markets, for sure, um, corporate has gotten way more competitive, uh, when corporate was starting out, we were, uh, so the AV companies, the AV staging companies, were, uh, huge V, tiny A. 

They didn't, I mean, they really didn't know audio. So we'd kind of partner with those companies to help them. And sometimes that was bring systems in some, sometimes it was rent them equipment when they were short, sometimes it was sell them equipment. Um, so we knew how to do that. Uh, so we would, you know, supplement whatever they needed, if it was gear or. 

Complete shows or whatever, design, whatever it was. And then they, they kind of got the hang of doing it, not just from watching us, but from finding the right kind of technicians to bring into their audio department. And, uh, and then slowly we would let them go, but we'd still sell them equipment. So we could support those markets and we have a lot of those relationships we still have today. 

We'll sell them, you know, some items that they can't really become a dealer for. And, you know, I think that they're mostly end users. Uh, so we sell them to them as an end user. Uh, some of the manufacturers don't consider an AV staging company an end user. Uh, we, we think that they should be. As, um, capable as a proper dealer. 

I think we've got, we've got a good service department and we've got the ability to, uh, implement the products correctly. Uh, we have, you know, a really good networking guy who helps people with network issues and, you know, and I mean, all this stuff that you need to do. You need some support. So we've, we put a really big value on, uh, support for our customers and high service. 

And, uh, that's kind of how we've built our branch on. I'm sure you have too, uh, you too, Andy, you've, you've certainly built high service into what you do on Broadway and corporate shows and mixing in the rain, whatever it is, you, you know, you, you do high service and not everybody does that. You know, there's, we, we compete when it comes to selling equipment with some of the. 

And, uh, it's been my experience that we are able to provide more support than some of those. So, wherever there's a need for high service audio is kind of where we go. And that's kind of what we like to do. And that just comes from, you know, years and years of doing it. And Having experiences, you know, I went to Nashville and I was helping a museum open there and I tried to rent something in Nashville. 

This is going back to 2005, I think. It was really hard to rent a powered speaker in Nashville. And I mean, everybody's so nice there. And, but I called everybody I knew, and I knew a lot of people in Nashville. And one guy finally said to me, well, I think we've got one up on the shelf. Why don't you come over to the house? 

We'll have some barbecue and we'll talk about that. I said, I need it tomorrow morning at eight o'clock for a press conference. He says, well, you know, I don't, I think he's gone home for the day. Well, in our business, the guy would have gone back from going home for the day. And we would have. You know, said, let me make sure you got it happened. 

So I couldn't, I couldn't find the level of, you know, Drop everything and take care of the client. We always laugh about it because it's normal, but sometimes we'll get a call for a rental and the driver is already in our dock and they'll call. Oh, I forgot to call you. Our driver should be there in 10 minutes. 

Too late. He's already here. Can you give him X, Y, and Z? So 

Sean Walker: like, absolutely. I will take your money. Of course I'll give him X, Y, and Z. 

TC Furlong: Yeah. The answer is yes. You know, of course.  

Sean Walker: of course  

TC Furlong: So yeah, so we do it. But, uh, you know, and the other guy has to find out if I have barbecue for, I'm not, you know, that's not how we're wired. We're hired for, you know, a different culture and it's, it's, it's worked out to take good care of people. 

Sean Walker: Absolutely. They can get black or brown or whatever color boxes anywhere in the world. They come to, you know, places like you for. The excellent service and to take those black boxes or brown boxes or whatever they are and make them make a lot more sense. You know what I mean? Having somebody that you can call and go, Hey man, so this thing I just got like, how do I optimize it? 

Or how do I make it work better or whatever, rather than just like read the manual is super helpful. You know, whether that's a beginner or even some of us pros, I won't say us, even some of the pros listening, you know what I mean? Where you're like, Hey man, how do I get to this super nerd level of whatever we're talking about right now to have somebody that they're in that can help is awesome. 

You know, 

TC Furlong: Yeah. It's, you know, I can't imagine doing it any differently. It, it kind of amazes me sometimes that people don't, you know, now, 11 Let me tell you some some of the things that we haven't really done. So we never got into touring. I did a couple tours, an East Coast leg and a West Coast leg at the same time of a dance company, an Argentine dance company. 

Which was a great show and, uh, the sound designer and engineer became a friend of mine, came to work at our company later. But that's really the only time that we did You know, real touring, you know, there's a lot of one offs where we'll go out of town maybe, but uh, you know, never did rock and roll touring, never liked it. 

Uh, I don't know if I didn't like it. I should say I never was attracted to the lifestyle and there's so many guys who are so good at it. I didn't think we could bring our extra finesse to that environment. So we didn't do that and I'm okay with that. You know, I think that's fine that, that we didn't. 

Invest heavily in touring stuff. Um, 

Sean Walker: Single me, would love touring. Married with kids me, does not want to be gone for that long. So, I'm kind of in the same shoes, you know what I mean? 

TC Furlong: you, you would love touring? 

Sean Walker: As a single man I would. As a 

married man with kids and responsibilities, I would not. Gone too long, you know what I mean? I'll let other people do that while we provide gear for it. 

TC Furlong: Yep. I have good friends who are, you know, top level touring guys. And I see that, man, those guys during COVID, my goodness, you know, it's what a harsh. Thing to do, you know, but my hat's off to anybody who does that. And some of our former employees have gone on to do big name touring and that kind of, and I, I tip my hat to you guys. 

It's hard and you got to know exactly what you're doing and I, I appreciate you. But at the same time, we bypassed that. So we were able to find probably not unlike you, Sean, that there's plenty of work locally. Uh, yeah. 

Sean Walker: Plenty of work. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and that's, I mean, that's a great thing. I like, I always like driving home when that comes up because, you know, like a lot of the guests we get on are like in that big touring 

world and like that's awesome and exciting and that is the dream for so many of us, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. 

And like the fact that like there are so many fulfilling things we can do and like all these other parts of live sound that both like pay the bills, you can still have fun. Like, you can still enjoy and love what you do and make a living and, yeah, if you want, go home every night. Uh, 

TC Furlong: Yep.  

Sean Walker: Or, or every morning. 

TC Furlong: you know, one of the things, it was, it's my most memorable gig and it's not unlike touring. Uh, so I loaded in at 7 a. m. at a TV station in Chicago and they had a crazy show that had five stages, five bands, and an aerialist and all this stuff. And they only had a budget for me, they didn't have a budget for any other helpers. 

So I had a full truck, and it was a union house, so the guys unloaded everything, but I said, I gotta have somebody for each stage to be able to pin it so we can, and the first guy I got was a cameraman who didn't know which end, I'm not exaggerating, he didn't know which end of an XLR to plug in. So I had to show him how to plug an XLR into a microphone, and it went downhill from there. 

But, so I basically did the whole thing. So, from 7am, I closed the door to the truck at 3. 05am, and I didn't stop the entire day because it had to get done. I was like, well, you got to do it. So that's like, that's like a tough touring day. Although no breaks, you know, they, and they, they had a show and everything was worked fine. 

And the head audio guy at this TV station, wonderful guy. He says, where have you been all my life? He said, no one will ever work in this TV station except you and your people. This is awesome. He said, I've tried them all. And you're, and I, I actually got that gig through a musician that I knew from playing. 

You know, he said, you know how to do live sound. They mess it up every year we do this show. And I did the show every year and then we've done over 250 music shows at that TV station over the years. So, yeah. And it's because, you know. You could now, I was pretty tired that I was probably in my forties when that happened, but I said, you know what? 

I can do this. I can do a tough day if I have to. And I'm not, I'm not bragging. I didn't think that was awesome of me, but you know, it's like, whatever you got to do, we'll do it. I didn't say, no, you got to hire four other guys. It's a union house. I wasn't going to, you know, upset the apple cart. So we did it. 

So anyway, that was, I forgot about that Wild Chicago. It 

Sean Walker: We've, we've all had shows like that, 

TC Furlong: Yeah, I'm sure. Yep. You go in and you say, why did I take this? But, and doesn't a day like 

Sean Walker: then you look at the relationship that was built over the time and you go, man, that was worth it. You know, we had the one tough day and now you got a client, 250 musicals, like that's great. That's a killer client. 

TC Furlong: right, yeah, oh yeah, that was a really good show, a good client to have, and they still are. They're still a great client. We do their gala every year, so, you know, it's just like, just one, like you said, one opportunity. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and, and you never know where it's gonna come from, like you said that came from like somebody you knew through music, and was just like, hey, come help out with this thing. And yeah, it's easy to, it's, it's really easy to like, think about the day you're having and like, write it off or not give it your best. 

And yeah, you never know what ripple effect any, any even small, like, I don't want to say stupid gig, but I'll say stupid gig has. 

Sean Walker: You cannot afford to not be always doing your best. 

TC Furlong: A hundred percent wisdom right there. Yep, you have to do your 

Andy Leviss: It's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason. You're only as good as your last gig. 

Sean Walker: I own an entire sound company, just like TC, because I'm not the grumpy sound guy. Because I work my frickin ass off, and I'm not the grumpy sound guy. I, personally, am an average ass sound guy. Half the people that I talk to are WAY better sound guys than me. But, the clients keep hiring me, because I'm not cranky and I'll work harder than anybody else, just like you were just saying. 

And, you know, like The people that don't have that won't be working, you know, 

TC Furlong: Right. I, uh, I was in our office with our general manager. We have a new general manager for about the last five months. And, uh, I heard him talk to a prospective, uh, freelancer and he's saying, he says, Oh, you know, I said, you've been a great company. I've rented stuff from you. I really enjoyed working with you and that kind of thing. 

And I said, and Ross is a freelancer too. He says, Oh yeah. He said, tell me about yourself. And he's a very nice guy, this guy, Ross. And he said, uh, He says, I'm always happy to be on a gig. And our general manager said, that's what we want. We want a guy who's always happy to be there. So he got, he got on our freelance roster because, and you know, you have to go through some other things and he has a lot of experience, but, uh, but yeah, I, I can't abide somebody who's, um, doesn't have the right attitude. 

I mean, they don't last long at our company. And over the, in 50 years, you've had some. You know, I call them well poisoners. There are people who poison the well, and I didn't use to be smart enough to break, give them another opportunity somewhere else, but I think through experience, we all get a little smarter and that's what we do. 

We just kind of help people make a better career decision than working with us. So yeah. Mm hmm. 

Sean Walker: totally, because they take the whole team down with them, man, like in a heartbeat, that like negativity or pessimism or whatever you want to call it, just it takes the whole thing down, you know, and it's, it makes the, what is already going to be a long day because everything we do is a long day, right? 

That much longer and that much. More challenging, you know, you're, you're a smart man, sir. You're a smart man. 

TC Furlong: well, I wish I was as smart as I am now when I was your age. Here's, 

Andy Leviss: I mean, that's, that's half the reason we do this show is, is to help, help everybody else learn from our stupidity,  

Sean Walker: Well, apparently, apparently I'm flying to Chicago and buying TC dinner so I can pick his brain and get smarter. So I don't 

TC Furlong: I don't know if I'm that smart, but I'm welcome, because I'll return the favor and pick your brain, 

Sean Walker: Love it. I love it. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Well, and I want to, on, on that subject, we were talking, I want to touch on it's. A thing that, a thing that happened to me in the last week or so on a job, because I've, uh, Sean knows and I, I think I sort of explained to TC a little bit when, when we were chatting the other week that I'm sort of in like a quasi house position right now a lot of the time at a, at an art center here in the city. 

And we, is the, I'm trying to think how to phrase this, we're not all going to be perfect all the time, and Well, ideally, never be a jerk. The second best thing you can do is to catch yourself when you realize you've been a jerk, and cop to it, and admit it and say like, look, I'm sorry, I'm being a jerk. It is not about you. 

This is due to whatever else is going on. Let's start over. And like, being able to admit that is a big thing, and like, that's a thing I had to do the other week, because we, there was a schedule on a show that just like, stuff was going crazy, and schedules kept slipping and sliding, and we were all getting kind of frustrated about stuff, and I, like, I ended up going up to somebody and saying, hey, look, I'm sorry, I'm being a bit of a dick today. 

It's not about you, it's, it's been a frustrating week for all of us, and that's coming out in a way it shouldn't, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna work on that, but I want to at least, if I can't not be a jerk right now, I want to at least acknowledge that I know I'm being a jerk, and, and I'm gonna try and dial that back in. 

TC Furlong: Interesting. Yeah. I think that's, that's wisdom. I also, you know, in preparation for this, I didn't know if you were going to ask me if there's some tidbits or advice that you could give the audience. 

Andy Leviss: Hey TC, are there some tidbits or advice you could give the audience? 

TC Furlong: I don't think so. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, none. 

TC Furlong: None. Uh, you know, I, so I, you know, I took about it, I always like to prepare for stuff. 

So, you know, I, I always have the phrase, luck favors the prepared mind. So I'd like to prepare for whatever I can.  

Andy Leviss: That's, that's tip number one right there. 

TC Furlong: Okay, right, well preparing, yeah, I got a few things, and I'll just rip into them if you don't mind, but one of them is exactly what you said, that's what made me think of it, and one of them is, uh, know when you have to be a grown up, and saying, I'm sorry, I wasn't acting the way I wanted to act, that type of thing, that's like, I didn't want to act like a kid. 

Don't have control of themselves sometimes and know how in in saying I'm sorry this happened. It's not your fault I'll I'll make sure that I work really hard the rest of the day to make sure we don't have any issues or whatever It is but uh, that was that was one of the things is, you know being be a grown up, you know, be smart beef Uh, funny when you have to be, be light, in a light mood when you can be, and knowing, being a grown up really knows about when it's time to get serious too. 

And sometimes you have to get, you can't be light when the client's got a problem. You gotta be dead serious in fixing their problem. So, and I think that with age and experience. We all get better at that. I can think of things that I said that were completely out of place and then I can think of things that I did. 

Being a complete weirdo was the only way out of it, you know, , so I, I, I was at 

Andy Leviss: point where you just gotta, the only thing we can do to fix this is get everybody laughing. 

TC Furlong: exactly, exactly right and some, for whatever reason, I was the guy. I can remember a corporate show that I was doing. Everybody was uptight. It was like the CEO was coming and they were afraid of losing their jobs. Well, I remember one specifically. So I said, what am I going to do? So it was my turn to check the lav mic. 

So I went up and checked the lav mic and I did Jerry Lewis impressions. They weren't, I wasn't pointing at anybody, but you know, I was doing, and this guy completely started smiling. Then he started laughing and then he completely forgot about the fact that he thought he was going to get fired for not having everything together for this meeting. 

And, uh, and so I just couldn't think of what else to do. So I did, would I do that now? Probably not. But you know, sometimes you just have to wing it and hope that you don't. And it was, thankfully I read the room, right. It was the right thing to do. But, um, Which brings me to my next piece of advice, uh, don't do Jerry Lewis impressions. 

Sean Walker: Totally, totally, 

TC Furlong: mic. No, uh, my second piece of advice comes from a newspaper article that I read, oh gosh, it's probably 30 years ago. And in the newspaper, I like to read a real paper, I read a paper every day. And, uh, and on the front page was, um, uh, an article about a 103 year old Civil engineer who was still working, that he goes to work every day and he works a 40 to 45 to 50 hour week even. 

And they asked him, what's the number one thing that's allowed you to work this long? And he said, no stress. I do not have stress in my job. They said, well, do you do the same work that everybody else at your company does? Oh yeah. And are they stressed? Yep. Why aren't you stressed? And he said, well, because I'm an expert. 

I know what I'm doing. And when I, when I'm an expert, I know what to do. Not knowing what to do is the biggest point of stress ever. And I, and so I really, I adopted that guy's philosophy very early on. You know, it was like, Yup, that's me, I want to get good at stuff, so I don't have to stress about it. And the more I learned, the less I stressed. 

So I, I mean, I run a company that just came through a pandemic, I mean it got a little stressful because I didn't know exactly what to do when the government shuts down our building. So that was a little stressful, but since then, I mean, honestly, I have a low stress life. We have really good people on our staff that I can rely on. 

I trust everybody, you know, all these other things. And I think I know enough about some things, most things to know if we're making the right decision. So as you know, I'm not, I'm not stressing a lot anymore. Whereas in the early days. in the live sound world knows stress. Andy, certainly, when something is not going well and there's an audience  

in your, in your art center, it's like, that's high stress. 

Andy Leviss: Yep.  

TC Furlong: So,  

Andy Leviss: Well, and that actually, that hits on specifically, uh, uh, Another way to phrase that, that, um, for, for those who don't know, we have a Facebook group for the Signal Noise podcast, which if you're on Facebook and you do that thing, search for Signal Noise podcast and join it. And one of the group members, uh, Sean Albert just posted the other day that something that, uh, he's run into lately in corporate work that he feels doesn't feel enough. 

People in this industry go by, which is that a problem isn't a problem until the client notices how you're reacting to it. 

TC Furlong: perfect. 

Andy Leviss: that's, that's very much like on the same lines of it's, yeah, if you're not stressing and you have that confidence that you're exuding, that everything's under control, everything's fine. 

When you start stressing and freaking out, that's when everybody else is going to get panicky too. 

TC Furlong: Right. And I've seen people stressing and freaking out when nothing's wrong. I mean, it's just, you know, they're, they're afraid of what might happen and, you know, just people who are keyed up or, or that type of thing. So yeah, I think that's a really good point, Andy. You know, you, you gotta be, you know, ready to put on your best game face no matter what is really what it boils down to. 

Yeah. 

Sean Walker: So I gotta stop drinking so much coffee. I got it. All right, check. 

TC Furlong: So here's one that I'm going to put on top of that, if I may, and that is, uh, I told you, I was at a show where he. University one time in the student union, I think it was. And there was a pretty well known artist that was coming in and we were waiting for the artists to get there and they were going to get there right before showtime. 

And I said, um, I said to my university helper, I said, did you check the monitors? Yeah, they work. I said. Did you check the connectors on the monitors? Uh, no. Go do it. And he said, did you ring out the monitors? Yeah, pretty good. Do it better. Cause we had downtime. He came back to me, gosh, 15 years later. He said, I got to tell you, that little gig we did in the student union, you changed my life. 

And I said, what do you mean? You taught me to always be doing something to prepare for something that's going to happen before it happens. And I said, I did. He said, he said, yeah, he said, my whole life got better just because I figured that out that that was a really good thing to do. So now we kind of, if you, if you can't tell already, I'm kind of a teacher at heart. 

I kind of like to help people have an easier time with their profession or whatever it is. And, uh, and I think that's really important, you know. And then let me allow, allow me, if you will, to present yet one last piece of advice. This is a hard one. This is the hardest thing I think that people can do. 

I'm guilty of it as much as anybody. If you're on the clock, you should not be socializing. It happens all the time that people, especially when you bring freelance togethers who don't work all the time together and they get to catch up and it's not because I want more value out of the money that I'm paying a freelancer. 

There's always stuff to do. I don't know of any live show that doesn't have something to do. And we often get to the point where we're not, we don't have enough time to do it. So there's a couple freelancers that I know who I can't hire because they don't get it. And I don't, well, I haven't hired a freelancer for 20 years, but who the company won't hire because of the fact that they talk too much and they distract other people. 

Great engineers, great guys. When you're on the clock, now, after the gig, 100%, spend as much time as you want. Before the gig, show up early, have a cup of coffee together, have a, whatever it is, that's fine, but while you're on the clock Think of stuff to make things better and, you know, get ahead, get ahead of things if you possibly can. 

So, you know, and sometimes, and we all know the stagehand who is the nicest guy in the world. And you're trying to get away from them to go do work, you know, and it's just, I mean, I love these guys like they're my brothers, but we gotta get, we got something to do here. So 

Andy Leviss: biting through my tongue because I can think of two or three people that exactly match that description. Yep, love him dearly. 

TC Furlong: love them, right? World's nicest people. So 

Andy Leviss: I think the southerners say bless his heart. 

TC Furlong: Life is hard, right? Right? 

Andy Leviss: Well, I gotta say like we could have TC on more only because like he just wrapped himself up with a bow almost exactly at an hour, which is the mark we never managed 

Sean Walker: Nailed it. And that's the pod. Cue music. 

Andy Leviss: No, I mean, I mean, we'll go, we'll go a couple more minutes. Um, I got us, I was going to ask you about food and then I'm like, as a New Yorker talking to Chicago and this is dangerous territory right 

Sean Walker: Don't do it. I don't want, I don't want any bloodshed. All right? 

Andy Leviss: No, I got to ask because I, I, I actually for the first time a few years ago spent three weeks in Chicago on a show and as a New Yorker who has strong opinions about pizza was gonna. 

You know, it was like, I'm going to give the fair shake and do the tour of all. So I got, I got to ask you as, as a native, where, where, where are you going for pizza? 

TC Furlong: Boy, am I boring on the pizza front. I am so boring. So uh, so Deep Dish, so I was just, we had a big party for the audio guys in Chicago A couple weeks ago and, uh, it was a birthday party for one guy and it was a, it was kind of a memorial for one of our sound brothers who had passed and it was, and we, uh, we went to Pequod's. 

So Pequod's in Morton 

Grove is, is considered the best deep dish pizza. 

Andy Leviss: I, I, I support that. I, that is, that is, that is where after, after touring as many places I could in that three weeks, that was, that was the one I landed on is the best. Although, they're the one that starts to tiptoe into almost Detroit style. 

TC Furlong: well, they do make a Detroit style pizza there, but the deep dish is in a round pan, and they put cheese on the pan, outside of the crust, to 

Andy Leviss: Well, that, that, yeah, that, that's what, that's what I mean by like, it starts to, cause like Detroit style is also where it's the thick, where half the crust is the caramelized cheese. 

TC Furlong: Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: but no, it is, it is worth, like, if you're staying in downtown Chicago, it is, it is worth the, the car ride out to, 

TC Furlong: to Morton Grove, did you go to Morton Grove for that one? 

Andy Leviss: I'm, I must have, it was definitely, it was a little bit of a, it was a, it was a lift ride, uh, it was a little bit of a journey, but it was, it was well recommended and well worth it. 

TC Furlong: Yeah, yeah, that's, locals will say that's the best in the country. So, my wife and I are thin crust lovers. We do not like the deep dish as much, although I gotta say They didn't overload, Pequest did not overload it with cheese, which is good, so, yep, 

Andy Leviss: I didn't say because it got to the point where I was like, other than that, if I'm going for like a fully like normal crust, it started to be like, well, I kind of want the crust and the sauce from this place, but the sausage from that place 

TC Furlong: Yep, it's, yeah, it's a deep dive going into the pizza wars, and uh, yeah, so, yeah, we like, so I like coal fired pizza. And the best that I've had was in Brooklyn. I did a whole bunch of shows at St. Anne's Warehouse, TV 

shows. And there was a place right down the block from St. Anne's that had the, and it's an old family, began with a D, 

Andy Leviss: DeFaras. 

TC Furlong: might, yeah, it might've been, maybe it's cause we were so hungry, but that 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, that's, that's definitely one of the best in the city for sure. 

TC Furlong: Right. And what's, what's your worst in the city? No, I'm just kidding. What's your 

Sean Walker: Don't you know Andy is a secret dominoes eater? 

Andy Leviss: we've talked about this on the podcast, not, not in town, but that is the, we've talked before. That is my, I'm doing a corporate gig out of town and I just, I, it's been a 15 hour day and I just need something that'll show up at the hotel, warm  

Sean Walker: got the app. They have a concierge that shows up and like, Hey, Andy, here's your pizza. Like they know just how he likes it. It's like norm at cheers. You know what I mean? 

TC Furlong: Right. That's 

Andy Leviss: Look man, 

when you when when you need a miza with three Z's in the za, you need a miza. 

Sean Walker: Oh my God. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: Well, that note, now that I've completely detoured us down that road and brought us back and, and conveniently found the Chicagoan that likes Brooklyn Pizza the best. I feel like that's the note to end on the high note. 

Love it. tc, it's been. 

Sean Walker: Thank you. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, 

Sean Walker: Thanks for hanging out, dude. This was awesome. 

TC Furlong: I really enjoyed getting to know you guys and sharing a little bit of the history of and the craziness that has been my 50 year career. And if you're serious about doing another one, At some far distant date, I would be happy to, uh, join you because you're a blast to 

Andy Leviss: we would definitely love to have you back. And I know, I know when, when Pete hooked us up, Pete was like, and if you need a guest host and, and he unfortunately couldn't make it work today to come on, but maybe we will get you and a couple of the other Chicagoland folks on and, and do a little, little Chicago Signal to Noise sound hang or something. 

TC Furlong: Right. Uh, and let me put in a little, uh, plug for Pete. He is an awesome guy to work with. So, before he went for the, uh, shop that he worked for, we used him as a freelancer and he was always just a delight to have on a show site. So, uh, he's great. So it was nice to, I did listen to his podcast. It was nice, nice to hear that one too. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, Pete's a good dude, and I say there are a few, like, great things that came out of the craziness of the pandemic. Meeting Pete was one, ending up together with my wife, uh, who had been a long time friend and the pandemic turned us into a couple was another, you know...finding those silver linings. 

TC Furlong: Yep. That's it. Exactly. Fantastic. Great. 

Andy Leviss: Well, yeah, TC, thanks for hanging with us again. You know, Sean, always good to see you, and  

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude!  

Andy Leviss: ...you know, and we'll, you know, say thanks to our sponsors, Rational Acoustics, RCF, Allen and Heath. Uh, who help, uh, keep the lights on, keep the, keep the virtual studio running. And uh, we'll catch y'all next time on another episode of Signal to Noise. 

Sean Walker: Bye y'all. 

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green

Andy Leviss: Now I just gotta find the stop button...