Signal To Noise Podcast
The Signal to Noise podcast features conversations with people from all corners of the live sound industry, from FOH and monitor engineers, tour managers, Broadway sound designers, broadcast mixers, system engineers, and more.
Signal To Noise Podcast
250. The Early Days Of Grunge With FOH Engineer Craig Montgomery
In Episode 250, Sean and Andy take it back to the early days of grunge when they talk to Craig Montgomery, the front of house engineer for Nirvana. He details mixing and managing small tours and festivals in a van with Kurt, Dave, and Krist from 1989 to 1993 as well as going on to tour manage for Hole, and mix and tour manage other well-known artists including TAD, Mudhoney, Weezer, and The Presidents of the United States. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.
After getting off the road, Craig settled back home in Seattle, where he had a nearly 15-year tenure as the house sound engineer for famed venue The Triple Door, which he’s only recently retired from. And, as always, there are lots of useful tips and tricks scattered in with all the amazing history Craig has to share, so you’ll definitely want to give this one a listen!
Episode Links:
Craig Montgomery Reddit AMA
Photos From The Nirvana Days
99 Percent Invisible: “Whomst Amongst Us Let The Dogs Out”
American Songwriter: Nirvana Sound Engineer Craig Montgomery Shares Stories About the Band
Episode 250 Transcript
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Signal To Noise, Episode 250: The Early Days Of Grunge With FOH Engineer Craig Montgomery
Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!
Voiceover: 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.
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. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and uh, with me, uh, one virtual microphone over is the peanut butter to my jelly, the crust to my Uncrustables, Mr. Sean Walker.
Sean Walker: Sup, y'all?
Andy Leviss: How you doing, Sean?
Sean Walker: I love peanut butter. That's perfect, actually. I'm awesome, dude. How are you?
Andy Leviss: I'm, I'm, I'm getting, now I'm wishing I'd pulled an Uncrustables out of the
Sean Walker: Yeah,
Andy Leviss: freezer to be ready by the time we're done with this episode. That's been my, like, I thought they were weird for the longest time and they started showing up a lot on craft services at gigs because they can take a case out of them out of the freezer and leave them out all day.
And like they've, I pun unintended as I'm about to say it, they've become my new jam. But uh,
Sean Walker: that's awesome. Well, it's a beautiful day here in Seattle, so, you know, shop doors open, people making cables and labeling stuff and getting ready for corporate shows and we're just ripping around here, so we're all happy and, you know, just about ready to go get some lunch in a bit when this is over, so
Andy Leviss: yeah, and we're, we're Doing what we can to keep you inside on a beautiful day. So
Sean Walker: son of a bitch.
Andy Leviss: I just, I just let the dogs out before we started recording. I was like, Oh, I want to sit outside with, with you, with you two all day. But, uh, let's, uh, we're, we're here for everybody out there listening. And, uh, we've actually got
Sean Walker: Now, that song will come ahead.
Andy Leviss: which one?
Sean Walker: Who let the dogs out?
Andy Leviss: Oh. There is, there is a great, I'm trying to remember which, which podcast, it's either 90, it might have been 99 percent Invisible or Radiolab. One of them did an episode digging into where that song actually came from, that if you've never heard it is like a wild deep dive of, of song history, so maybe I'll, I'll link to that in the show notes if I remember.
Sean Walker: Okay.
Andy Leviss: But, uh, well, I mean, speaking, speaking of the weather there in Seattle, our guest this week is, is a neighbor of yours in Seattle, uh, Craig Montgomery, who's, uh, has been, uh, a house engineer, a bunch of things, but what he is perhaps most known for and what makes him one of the few guests, if not the only guest we've had, who has his own brief Wikipedia entry, uh, Craig Montgomery was the longtime front of house engineer for Nirvana back in the day.
How you doing, Craig?
Craig Montgomery: I'm doing great. It is a beautiful day. I just got in from walking my dog as well.
Andy Leviss: So, uh, yeah, I mean, why don't we, why don't we dive right in? I mean, I know folks are going to want to hear the, about your whole journey with Nirvana, but like, where, where did you start? How, how did you end up there?
Craig Montgomery: Uh, well, I, uh, started doing sound when my own little band needed a PA system. So, uh, my dad helped me borrow the money to get one. This is like being 19, 20 years old. It was just a big old mixer amp and a couple of big old speakers and a few mics and a couple of wedges. And so we did that, and I put an ad in the little music paper in town called The Rocket saying I could do sound for your band.
And so, uh, luckily enough, The phone rang and I would load my stuff in the van and go out and do sound for some other bands. And, uh, they were pretty popular bands around town. And they started having me go with them, even if they were doing a show at a club on an installed system as well. And, uh, what I thought was going to be my career was radio broadcasting.
That's what my dad did. But, uh, this hobby started taking up more and more of my time. And, uh, after a couple of years of community college and being busy doing that, and, you know, I had some entry level jobs in radio, but, uh, I was having more fun doing this. And I got a job at the Muzak Corporation where a lot of the sub pop guys were working.
The guys who ran the sub pop label and the early bands on the sub pop label were working there. Mudhoney was one of them, and another one was called Tad, and The Walkabouts. And so they knew me from being around town as a sound engineer, so, and they were starting to play a lot of gigs. And I don't think Mudhoney really cared that much, but I started showing up at their gigs and mixing sound for them.
And, uh, Nirvana was a band that was opening for those guys. But, uh, people generally liked having me around, you know, I was easy, easygoing, and, you know. Fun to have around, never caused too much trouble and kept my shit together. So, uh, the guys who ran SubPop would start asking me to take care of Nirvana 2, and then eventually it became time to quit our day jobs and get in the van.
So that's what we did. And, uh, I just, I ended up kind of. sticking with Nirvana. I mean, I will admit that there was some calculation on my part in that because you could see very early on that there was something special about Nirvana. Like, their songs and their music was really connecting with people.
And uh, so yeah, for, for a year or two it was just the four of us in a smelly van driving around the country doing punk rock clubs and uh, things just You know, as, as everybody knows, things blew up from there. And I was lucky enough that they let me hang around. So at the same time, I was serious, sorry.
Sean Walker: experience.
Craig Montgomery: it was. I mean, I was, I was serious about what I was doing though. I mean, I really, I want, I wanted people to hear the music of it, you know, I w and I wanted people to hear his voice and have and connect people with that. Cause you know, so much club sound back then to me was just wrong, you know, like I, I mean, it still happens to me, not just at club shows, but big shows.
Like you go there and it's like, You know, there's a person up there singing. I shouldn't have to strain to hear them. It should sound like what I'm looking at, you know, that was always my goal with them. So, uh, yeah, it worked out, but it was just a thrill to be able to see the world, you know, and be, be riding this, you know, tornado.
So,
Andy Leviss: I was going to ask what it was like, but then you got right in there with Tornado, which seems, yeah, I mean, that's like, how, how rapid an ascent was it from like those van tours to like larger shows and like, in like festivals and that sort of thing? Like, what was that trajectory like?
Craig Montgomery: well, the whole time of it was surprisingly short. I mean, it was only from 89 to 93. Um, I should have prepared and had the calendar with me, but, uh, you know, we do clubs for a while, headlining, and then. We get put on, uh, opening slots for bands like Sonic Youth. So then we're doing, you know, theater size rooms and we're thinking, wow, if we could be as big as Sonic Youth someday and headline our own theater gigs, that would be really cool.
Uh, and, uh, we start doing bigger clubs. Um, we do the big European festival runs. Those were really influential as far as, uh, you know, getting exposed to bigger and bigger venues, learning for all of us, including me. Um, And then, uh, we did an arena run of the West Coast with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dave Ratt.
Uh, and, uh, we did, we did one, we did a headlining show at Seattle Center Coliseum, which was the big basketball arena in town where we got to pick all our own production. We did, we did a run in Europe headlining. Which was really interesting venues, some of them, we did a bullring in Spain, we did kinda mid sized things, we got to carry our own production in those.
The time when Nevermind, we were out with, I think, the Chili Peppers, or maybe it was some Sonic Youth shows, big shows. That was the time when the Nevermind album went number one on the charts. They came and told us and we were like, whoa, what's this going to mean? For me, I'm like I said, I'm serious about what I'm doing.
I want to have. By now I've decided that I want this to be my career. Like I feel like I'm okay at it and, uh, I want to keep doing this. So I want, my motivation is that I want Nirvana to play a lot and do big shows. So we've got the number one album in the world, the management and the label is thinking, okay, now it's time for us to tour the hockey rinks in the US.
You know, we haven't really done it yet. And so. You know, they tell me, all right, figure out what you want to do for PA system. And, uh, you know, we're going to start designing how this is all going to work. So at this time, like I start, uh, getting calls from like Showco and audio analysts and sound image.
They're like, come out and hear our PA. So I get flown down to Dallas and meet ML Pro Size. And he takes me to a show where. You know, they've got the show co system. It's all secret and proprietary. It's like, well, we can't tell you what's in it, but, uh, you know, what do you think? And so I listened to that, I listened to that, but the bummer of this is that this is right when our singer is having all of his personal problems and issues.
So for, so this tour never happens. Basically there isn't a big headlining tour on Nevermind in the States. Um, it was a real bummer for me, but obviously for the band, it's, you know, the least of their worries, but, uh, yeah, so there was a period of several months where Nirvana was not active. And, but anyway, uh, during that time, I kept busy touring with some other bands.
I mean, none of them as big as Nirvana. There was one from Seattle called The Posies that I was really close to also on, uh, Geffen, the same label, and so I'm doing club tours with them, you know, just the same van and trailer club tours I'd already been on, so I did a lot of that. Nirvana would continue doing a few sporadic things, a festival here and there, uh, TV show here and there.
And then, uh, what do we do? We go to South America a couple of times. Those were fun stories. Uh, we spent a couple of weeks in Brazil and in the meantime, I got to record some demos with them in a studio down there.
Sean Walker: Dude,
Craig Montgomery: Um, yeah, you can, uh, but still, you know, Kurt's going through all of his stuff. So it's never easy.
And, uh, Then they go and record the In Utero album in Minnesota. And as we're getting ready to do the tour for that, where, again, I've chosen the PA and we're putting it all together, that's when I find out, right before the In Utero tour, that I'm being let go from Nirvana. And, yeah, I mean, at the time it was devastating.
I still don't really know exactly why. Uh, I can think of a few reasons, but I don't know. I mean, we always got compliments on what we were doing from knowledgeable people and from fans and stuff, but, um, anyway, I moved on pretty quickly. I went back right back out on tour with other people and, and they did the in utero tour, which in retrospect doesn't sound like it was much fun. Uh, yeah. And then, uh, the rest of my career, such as it was just kept going and I mostly fell into a, sorry, go ahead.
Sean Walker: No, no, no. Finish. I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm sorry. Go
Craig Montgomery: That's okay. What I mostly fell into the niche of was, uh, I did, well, I, I could run down some of the other artists I did after that. It was, uh, Juliana Hatfield and I did a tour with Weezer and then I did a lot of stuff with the presidents of the United States of America.
Sean Walker: dudes are so cool.
Craig Montgomery: yeah, I did, so, a lot of live stuff, and I also got the gig engineering their second record for Columbia, Presidents II. I was a recording engineer on that.
Sean Walker: dude.
Craig Montgomery: Uh, and, what else after that? Uh, a singer and guitar player named Meredith Brooks. And, uh, she had that song, I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, blah, blah, blah.
And, uh,
Andy Leviss: all day.
Craig Montgomery: She, she's a great guitar player. Um, then I did a tour with Eve Six and I did some gigs with the Gugu dolls.
Sean Walker: You're just listing the who's who of my childhood right now, bro. Like
Craig Montgomery: took, that took me up to about the Gugu dolls. I, I did some big gigs. Uh, I wasn't their main guy. The, their main guy at the time was a guy named Quake.
He was a friend of mine just that I'd met on tour and there were some shows he couldn't do. So like one offs, so I would fly over and do, uh, you know, they, they did a couple of these big festivals. One was RFK Stadium and one was at Madison Square Garden. These were events that were post 9 11. So that was pretty weird.
Oh, I'm flying in to mix a band I've never mixed before. And it's at RFK Stadium. on a Showco show console that I've never seen, like, but uh, so that, that was fun times. Um, but there were, there were huge artists on these shows. Uh, we walked into Madison Square Garden, we're wheeling our gear up onto the stage.
And as I'm wheeling the gear up onto the stage, just cause, you know, just go in where the stage manager pointed us, there's 10 feet away from me is Paul McCartney sitting at a piano playing, Let It Be and singing it just kind of, I don't know what he's working on, but like, wow, my life is weird. Uh,
Sean Walker: Dude. How cool.
Craig Montgomery: yeah, so,
Sean Walker: 13 year old me is super jealous of your career.
Craig Montgomery: oh, well, I mean, it
Sean Walker: those were all the, those were all the artists in my childhood, dude. That's awesome.
Craig Montgomery: yeah, I was very lucky and fortunate. I mean. You know, I read the trade. I don't feel like I, I, I never had like big chair of, uh, major sustained arena tour, you know, I got close to it and I saw how that life would be, and To be honest, for me, like, once I saw it, I kind of stopped aspiring to it. Because on an arena tour, you never see anything but the bus and the basement of the hockey arena.
And it's the same gig every day and the same PA every day. And what was fun for me was kind of like the variety of putting a new gig together in a new place. Maybe on a new system, figuring out rooms that are completely different. Um, and for me, the mental health aspect of touring was really hard. And that was why at a pretty young age, I think I was, you know, only 34, 35.
I figured out that for my personal mental health and life, I was like, I, I have to get off this because it's not going to go well for me if I keep doing it.
Sean Walker: I would imagine Nirvana was a pretty, uh, interesting camp to be a part of for those
Craig Montgomery: It was, it was,
Sean Walker: you said it was,
Craig Montgomery: yeah, it was. Sometimes it was the most fun you could ever have, just the biggest laughs. I mean, those guys love to laugh. I mean, people forget that, but if you were there, like, what was mostly on their mind was what could we do that would be funny? I mean, they were constantly just taking the piss out of rock and roll.
Um, so,
like, if you were a serious band coming on after Nirvana, I kind of felt sorry for you. It's kind of hard to be serious after them, but, uh. It could be fun, but it could also be the biggest drag sometimes. Um, if we have to cancel a show, cause somebody's lost their voice or they're having other problems, health problems.
Oh, the other thing I should add about my career is that I spent. Right after Kurt died, I spent nine months being the tour manager for Hole. I didn't even get to do sound. I was just the tour manager. So that means you get all of the nightmare parts of the day and you don't even get the fun part of the day, which for me is doing the sound, but, uh, she hired me because I was like, family tour, you know, she liked having me around.
Um, and what I was going to say earlier was that after Nirvana, I sort of fell into a niche of tours where it's a bus with the band gear on a trailer. And you're doing theaters, you know, between one and 3000 and you're the combo front of house and tour manager. That was, that was kind of the, uh, the league that I was playing in with all those bands.
So
everybody wants, you know, to be just front of house or just monitors and not have to be tour manager and have somebody else be the TM and PM. But, and I don't really know how it is out there now. Yeah. At the mid level. Well, I would see it at the venue I worked at. So, um, yeah, it's pretty grueling. Those years were pretty grueling
Sean Walker: But what a cool thing to be a part of, dude, like. You know, where I was asking earlier was like, I bet that's like some super high highs and some super low lows during that tenure, but what a fucking cool thing to be a part of, to have as your career and legacy to been a, been a part of that coming up.
Cause that was one of the most influential bands of all time, dude. You know?
Craig Montgomery: it's a, yeah, I appreciate that. It's a pretty unique spot to have been in for sure. And you know, nobody else can say that. It's weird.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. And I mean, you, you mentioned being out, like when, like, you know, the record started hitting number one, like how, I mean, I imagine at that point you have to kind of, like, it becomes very obvious, like, oh, this is a thing. And we're like, dude, but like how in the lead up to like, how were y'all aware of like, oh, this is like, we've, we've got a thing here.
That's like big. Or was it a thing you kind of realized more in hindsight? Right.
Craig Montgomery: Well, no, by that time, I mean, it wasn't a surprise. Uh, the, uh,
the whole, it was, it was hard to catch up to what the record sales were doing because it happened so quickly. Um, the record comes out and it's released. They, nobody knew it was going to sell like that. They didn't. They had to do a second pressing really quickly. I think they pressed like 50, 000 to start with and then that sold out immediately and they had to, and we're booked into, we're booked on a club tour basically, you know, 300, 500, maybe up to a thousand.
It's the same clubs they had already been through the last time when they were still on an indie label, right? Sub Pop, of course, and, uh, they're all just selling out. instantly. And, uh, and the, they're so packed that I think sometimes it's, it's a problem. It's not, but I mean, it's fun and everything, but I felt like, you know, if the label always thinks, Oh, we can come back another time and do the big one.
You know, we're generating buzz here You know, underplaying. But to me, I kind of thought it was a waste of time. We're spinning our wheels. We're slogging around the country for two months doing this club tour while the record's blowing up, you know, and everybody who wants to see the band can't see them because you're booked into a 300 seat club in Dallas, you know?
Um,
Sean Walker: And at that time it probably needed to be a 30, 000 seat arena.
Craig Montgomery: maybe not 30, 000, but maybe 3000. Even, which, which some people still think is a small gig, but to us back then, that would be a huge gig, a 3000, you know, uh, so it was finally. You know, we finished this US club tour. Then we go to Europe where we're booked on, you know, big festivals. And we're still, you know, in the middle of the day on these big festivals, but at least, you know, lots of people can see the band and, and, uh, and then, like I said, when it was time to go back and really play the venues worthy of a band that has the number one fricking record on the charts, we couldn't do it.
And so that was. Like the big missed opportunity there.
Sean Walker: Dude, how frustrating.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's a lot.
Craig Montgomery: At the time it was, yeah. Like it's, it's weird to talk about it now, but, uh, I mean, I had, I mean, when, when they weren't playing, I don't get paid. So my only option was to find other stuff to do. So that's the funny Nirvana in that period. They were never a band that, you know, was solidly on the road for nine months a year.
It wasn't their style. So it was all pretty sporadic.
Andy Leviss: My computer just froze up for a second
Craig Montgomery: Oh,
Sean Walker: Same.
Andy Leviss: in and I'm like, it won't go. Um, yeah. So like at what point in all that, like when do you, when did you reach the point where you're like, okay, uh, either, either touring isn't fulfilling anymore or, or just the, I'm getting too old for this shit and kind of settle into, to like more of a house gig
Craig Montgomery: uh, well, I toured off and on pretty steadily until about 98 or 99.
I was able to keep getting gigs basically just through connections and word of mouth. I got pretty lucky a lot of the time, like another tour would come up right when the last one ended, like I was able to string it together for quite a while. But then, one time I was in a dry spell, and I got a call from EVE6's management, and they were not people that I knew at all, but their manager said, Their manager just found my resume in a stack, you know, and he said what impressed me about your resume was that you actually put phone numbers on it of people I could contact, and I guess not a lot of people had, but anyway, so
Sean Walker: where the bar was, huh?
Craig Montgomery: Yeah, well, I guess it also had a pretty good list of bands on it, but, um, at the, so yeah, they called me out of the blue.
And I was like, Oh, they have a hit on the radio. Uh, they're 20 year old kids and I'm in my mid thirties, but we actually had some fun. That was really grueling though. That was, That schedule was part of what turned me off because their management and label was just putting these guys through the freaking ringer.
Man, it was relentless. Uh, it was, every day was gig, morning radio show, gig, morning radio show, in store. Uh, and it was just like, you, these guys are getting worn down like
Andy Leviss: It almost feels like that's like the over correction to the other extreme from what you were talking about with Nirvana, not doing large enough
Craig Montgomery: Yeah, and, uh, being, being TM and front of house for a tour like that, having to manage all their media requirements. Plus, you know, every day you got to figure out where are you going to park the bus, get the driver his hotel room, you know, just that sort of mid level niche of a tour manager, front of house, doing theater gigs.
Um, I learned to delegate a lot of it, like, You know, you get to town, you get to frickin Cleveland or whatever, and the label rep has all this promo they want them to do. I would, it wasn't too long before I just said, fine, you take them. I'm not going, you know, have them back at the venue by 3 p. m. Make sure they get some food.
So, um,
Sean Walker: Food and a cup of coffee or twelve.
Craig Montgomery: those, those are the kinds of things that, People on the road go through that maybe aren't talked about as much in the trades that are focused on audio. Like when you're the, a lot of times you have to combine audio with another job and how do you manage that? And, um,
Sean Walker: Well, how did you manage that?
Craig Montgomery: uh, well, delegation, I suppose, ends up being a big part of it.
Um, you have to really make sure you're taking care of yourself, really make sure that you're. Getting your sleep and you're not cheating yourself out of that. Um, you can't do it and party with the band. If you do that, you're going to pay. Um, which I, you know, you learn that the hard way a few times, enough times.
And then you say, okay, I'm not doing that anymore. But even the band has to be careful too, because they. You know, they have to take care of themselves too. And these guys at the time were, you know, I think they turned 21 while we're out on tour. So imagine newly 21 year
Sean Walker: shit.
Craig Montgomery: rock stars with,
Sean Walker: And at that time, E6 was rockstar. I mean, still are, but like, they were freaking kicking ass at that time, right?
Craig Montgomery: they were kicking ass and they were good and everything was being thrown at them.
And, uh, you know, they had some hiccups. They. Right after our U. S. tour, immediately after this was a European tour and I was so burned out I had to tell them I can't do the European tour, man. I need a break. And in all honesty, in all honesty, they need a break, a break too. And they went over there and it did not work out.
They had to bail out of the tour because they were, they ran out of steam on that particular tour. Uh, and I think Europe was not as good of a market for them either. So there were problems there. But anyway, after that, uh, I got home and I really didn't have anything else. going on and I was, I would take freelance gigs in town for, you know, the regional sound companies.
I did work for Carlson Audio, uh, but it was hard to string together enough income from that. So a friend told me about some corporate AV houses that also needed people, um, which I had never done before, but fortunately my Background by this time was solid enough to figure it out. And I was doing work for this one AV house, and I became their de facto main audio guy.
And I went to, not that I loved it, but it wasn't bad and it was a way to stay home. So I went to the owners of the company and suggested to him, I'm doing all your gigs anyway, why don't you take me on full time so I can get in here and take ownership of all this equipment and, you know, make sure things are right and it'll make things a lot more seamless.
So we did that. And so for the next, uh, Four or five years, like from 2000 to 2005, I was, uh, in house at this place called ProLine AV, and we weren't a huge house. We did a few traveling shows, but we mostly just did local events. We were in the convention center a lot, out at Microsoft, Starbucks, Boeing. Um, I learned a lot on that gig, learned a lot about system design and I learned how to draw up, uh, Rooms in CAD and, uh, you know, all the comms and interfacing with video.
Uh, I became not a bad little projectionist. Uh,
Sean Walker: Totally.
Craig Montgomery: and it was okay. So able to stay home, uh, during this time I'm playing in bands in Seattle for fun. And that's when I met my wife and, uh, we didn't have a kid yet. Uh, so I'm doing that. There's a little bit of travel, but not too much. Um, But the travel was pretty, you know, you'd go to Vegas for a week once we went to Miami Beach for a week, you know, doing, you know, nothing major, but some, some traveling corporate AV shows.
But then I get a call from my friend, uh, who's a booking agent at the Triple Door, um, which if you're not familiar, it's a really classy, uh, theater. It holds 300, but that's because most of it is seated booths. If it wasn't. It's a bigger room than that, but at the time they put in a really nice rig there.
It was a PM1D, which at the time was the big daddy, you know, uh, it had Vertec 48, 88, it had really nice microphone selection, you know, the stage was just built and installed really beautifully. The room sounds really great. But anyway, they, they needed a new, uh, head audio person. So this friend of mine that I knew from being a musician was the booking agent.
And he called me and said, Hey, this place could really use your vibe. You should come and check it out. So I went down and saw it and thought about it. And, uh, talked it over with my wife, cause it would mean going back to working nights all the time, but also it was a chance to get back to doing music every day, which was really attractive to me instead of dealing with corporate.
Um,
Sean Walker: Triple door is a killer little venue here in town, dude.
Craig Montgomery: it really is. Um,
Sean Walker: a great place.
Craig Montgomery: yeah. And so I ended up taking the job and it was a, for, I did it for 14 years, which is a really long time, but it was a perfect little laboratory for me to You know, instead of me having to go out and travel with a band, like all the bands come to me and it's a small enough room where you get to mix a lot of the shows yourself.
A lot of the artists that come through there aren't carrying anybody, even though some of them are pretty high profile people, you know, a lot of jazz artists don't carry engineers. Um, a lot of what you would call like. Legacy people who had big hits back in the seventies. They might be touring solo with an acoustic guitar.
I got to mix Nick Lowe playing, you know, what's so funny about peace, love and understanding. It's like, wow. You know, just, that's just what the first example I can think of, but it was full of just amazing moments like that. Uh, John Anderson from Yes comes through there on a solo acoustic tour, uh, Um, so, it was a really fun and neat laboratory for me to just do what I do in the way that I want to do it.
We also did a lot of theatrical productions in there, so I learned a lot about that working with, you know, having a whole cast of eight singers on headset wireless mics, all kinds of RF issues, but It was, it was cool for them to have somebody who had the experience that I had, wasn't just a kid at their first.
So it was, it was a really special thing for a long time.
Sean Walker: Yeah, dude, that's cool. And what a cool thing to have unique, different things coming through, like some theater, some, you know, jazz, some rocks and whatever, you know, like that's, that's super cool. 14 years is a long run, man.
Craig Montgomery: it is a long run. Um, what. Yeah, it, like, I was never burnt out or unhappy there, but, uh, you know, we would get the emails, okay, here's the calendar, a rough calendar for the next year. And, you know, we tend, there are a few things we do that are recurring every year, a few big theatrical shows that have become sort of tent poles.
And it was like, Okay, I've seen this movie enough times now, it's time to let somebody else do it. So that was when I made a decision to kind of step away.
Sean Walker: Fair enough. And what are you doing now?
Craig Montgomery: I'm pretty much semi retired, uh, friends call me and have me come out and do a show here and there, uh, but I'm taking care of, we're, I have two kids that are pretty much teenagers, so that takes a lot of time and we're.
Sean Walker: Yeah, it does.
Craig Montgomery: remodeling a house. We're remodeling a house while we stay in another house. Um, so, uh, yeah, that's why I'm sort of an odd duck.
I'm sort of semi retired. Um, but, uh, I still I still get to dabble and dip my toes back in once in a while. Sometimes, you know, a bunch of my musician friends will play some kind of big charity benefit at the Moore Theatre, and they'll have me come down and do that, or basic things like that.
Sean Walker: Dude. Awesome.
Craig Montgomery: I'm sort of conscious of not taking up space. Like, there's a whole wave of younger engineers coming up, and like, I want to let them do it. Because That's what I used to be, you know, like I don't want to be in the way
Sean Walker: Yeah. All
Craig Montgomery: that makes any sense.
Sean Walker: I see what you're saying. I gotcha. But at the same time, it's cool to like, you know, go rock sometimes.
Craig Montgomery: Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely. For sure. But,
Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. We're like, we're doing Mudhoney this year at one of the shows. You should come fricking rock with us for that. That'd be super fun.
Craig Montgomery: oh, well, they have guys. I'm not the mud honey guy, but, uh,
Andy Leviss: Sean just wants you to come hang out, is what he's saying.
Craig Montgomery: I, I'll, I love to come out. I love to come out and hang out. Although, I will say it is weird for me to be at a gig where I don't have something to do. You can probably
Sean Walker: I think that's all of
Craig Montgomery: what do I do with. What do I do with my
Sean Walker: I was just gonna say, what do I do with my hands?
Craig Montgomery: Yeah, like, I, it's, it's hard for me to just stand around at a club and watch a band play.
Andy Leviss: it's funny. I originally coming from a theater background, those who mix theater will know like you very often have like the band in particular on your right pinky finger. And you're like constantly riding that band DCA all the time. And I like, I, it is a rare concert or show I go to where if you didn't know me, you'd be like, what's with that weird pinky twitches going on?
Cause I'm just sitting there on my lap, just like riding the band bumps the whole time.
Craig Montgomery: If it's, it's easier for me if it's a seated concert at a theater or a seated theater show, but like going to a club, which is really. You know, where I did almost all of my work and standing around while the band plays is pretty hard for me.
Sean Walker: Yeah, something.
Craig Montgomery: It's yeah, it's awkward.
Andy Leviss: So, like, what was it, like, you said, like, when you started at, at the triple door, you know, it was like that era of, like, the, the height of the PM1D and you were there 14 years. Like, was it, like, were you rocking the same rig that whole time or were there, like, shifts over time in that? Because that's a pretty, pretty long tenure.
Craig Montgomery: was. And, uh, RPM1D was rock solid. We never had a single problem with it really, other than having to, once in a while, a fader would have a mechanical problem just with the little belt and pulley. I would have to fix that. But, um, we made some upgrades on our mics and we had to change our monitor amplification, but I was not able, I wanted to, but I was not able to get a new console.
Um, after I left, they finally had to. Um, and they got the RIVAGE PM5. And I was like, if you had done this when I wanted to, I would probably still be there.
Sean Walker: Right, you heard that and you're like, you son of a bitch.
Craig Montgomery: Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thanks a lot. I mean, they were, I mean, they, they really missed me when I left. I really tried to set them up for success. Like I don't want to be getting calls every day. How do you do this? What's going on? We got a problem. Um, there was a little bit of that, but I wanted to set them up so they don't need me anymore, you know, that's, and they finally got a guy in there now who I think is really good.
You know, he, he's got it under control, but yeah, so they did. Eventually they had to put in a whole new package. Uh, the RIVAGE, uh, they got all new amps. They still have the same Virtek 4888s, but they have the latest preset now. Um, I don't care what anybody says. I think they still sound pretty good. Um,
Andy Leviss: I, I was, I mean, I was only doing ComTech, but I just did a gig at Radio City and they're rock, they're still rocking Vertec arrays there and they sound
Craig Montgomery: yeah.
Andy Leviss: That's one of the highest profile venues
Sean Walker: V5 that's a killer rig. Yeah,
Craig Montgomery: We're among friends then. Um, but, uh, uh, the 1D was great. Um, one story I like to tell once in a while, a touring guy would come in. Well, when, when I first got there in 2005, a, a 1D was still really current, right? And it was still, wow, I can't believe you guys have a PM1D in a room this small, but I loved it.
It was, it was my first time on anything digital, but, uh, I loved it. Just the fact that you could recall anything. I love the way the surface is laid out with the EQ and the compressor on the big channel strip, everything about it. You also have an output strip, which not a lot of people did. Um, I liked it and I would, uh, I would multitrack a lot of shows digitally straight onto some, uh, Tascam hard disk multitrack recorders that we had.
And then bands would take those and go to a studio and the studio guys would call or email me, man, what did you track these with? It sounds great. I'm like, yeah. It's Yamaha, man. It wasn't fancy, you know, character preamps. It was the, the Yamaha front end, you know? And so that it would always be funny to me when somebody snobby would, would come through and want to turn up their nose at the Yamaha, Oh, Yamaha preamps.
They sound like this and that, like they sound fine to me, you know, they don't distort, but so, um, but yeah, that thing was rock solid for a long time. So it, it went from, wow, you guys have a PM1D. And then it, after a while it became, oh, you still have a PM1D.
Andy Leviss: And then eventually it comes back around to, wow, you guys still have a PM1 too?
Craig Montgomery: Uh huh. Whoa, you still have a PM1D? And then it's like, you guys really need to get rid of the PM1D, even though it was still working fine and still sounded just as good as it did, but eventually, you know, things did start to fail pretty catastrophically and, uh, That was when they finally went to their audio dealer and said, okay, it's time.
And, and they got a RIVAGE, which I love. I love that system. If I was a touring guy now, that's what I would take. And I wouldn't even have any racks of analog outboard. It would just be me and my little old RIVAGE taking up, taking up no space at front of house, doing everything in the box.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. It's, it's a,
Craig Montgomery: Cause I don't care.
You're putting it through a giant PA system.
Andy Leviss: yeah. And it's, there's some astoundingly good plug at both unique plugins and emulations of stuff in there. Like they've done a really good good job. Like no, no knocking on folks that like need to either have racks of outboard or have You know, outboard plugins for consoles that don't have it built in, but, you know, the, the selection they've put on there.
Like, I mean, the RIVAGE has, like, an Eventide H3000 emulation built in that sounds pretty darn like an actual H3000.
Craig Montgomery: Yeah, and
Sean Walker: Does it magic air in mic
Andy Leviss: Absolutely.
Sean Walker: Fuck
Craig Montgomery: I find it really easy to put a show together. I mean, I'm not married to any particular brand though. I would, I've been on all of them. I, I could, I could live on, on any of them, but, uh, I like that one.
Sean Walker: Yeah, dude, you're amongst friends. He lives on a are you a five or seven every day?
Andy Leviss: Uh, when, when I'm at that venue, it's a 5. So yeah, I know the 5s super, super well.
Sean Walker: totally. Yeah, that, it's a great rig. And I'm, I'm actually stoked for our little, our, uh, our company. They've, Now came out with the DM7, which is like a half a RIVAGE. You know what I mean? Like a huge step up from the QLCL and a huge price jump from the RIVAGE. So we're halfway there with half the toys that we were hoping for, for a fraction of the price.
So we're going to get a pile of those
Craig Montgomery: look, those look really cool. And if, if I was at the triple door now, I don't know that I could honestly say to them, you need a RIVAGE instead of a DM7, right? Like,
Sean Walker: out DM, the little expander thing would just last you forever with a pile of Rios. You know what I mean?
Craig Montgomery: as bang for the buck, yeah, I mean, I don't know how I could make the business case that you need something more than that.
Sean Walker: Yeah, totally. Andy, have you spent much time on a DM7?
Andy Leviss: I have not yet. I've been on a couple gigs that have had them, but I haven't been the one driving. Um, but yeah, I mean, like, they've got a lot
Sean Walker: cute,
Andy Leviss: yeah, I mean, they're way smaller than, like, if you've never seen one in person, they look gigantic in the photos, and then you see them in person, you're like, it's adorable.
Sean Walker: small. QL5. I was like, holy crap, that thing is awesome. I gotta have a bunch.
Craig Montgomery: Another thing in that price range that I've been really impressed with, because I did a theater production for a friend, was the Allen and Heath SQ series. It's super powerful for what you're paying. Like, you can do You can do everything you want for a big show in this really little package.
Sean Walker: Totally.
Craig Montgomery: you gotta, sometimes you have to go through menus to get to it at least, but like, if you can conceive it in your mind, you can do it.
And, uh, but even their bigger stuff too, I really like, I really like the Avanis and the D Live. I would be happy on all of that. When we were,
Sean Walker: dude.
Craig Montgomery: when I was shopping for a PM1D replacement at the Triple Door, um, Matt Lawrence, who was working for Allen and Heath at the time, he brought in a D Live rig for me.
Just to play with and look at. We didn't even hook it up to the PA or anything. And I was really impressed with it. And he was saying, you know, Oh, you could save money by going to the smaller surface and, you know, this compact one and this engine that's not as big. And I was like, no, no, no. Max me out. Give me the biggest surface and the biggest engine.
What does that all come out to? And he told me the price, you know, and it was like less than what you would think. Like, 40k for their biggest setup. I was like sold, you know, when that was, you know, at the time, the only Ravage you could get was the PM 10, you know, the biggest one, which seemed pretty out of our league for the triple door.
I was like, I can't go to them with this. They're going to just laugh me out of the room.
Sean Walker: Yeah, but 64 inputs and 32 outputs and a big ass surface for, like you said, 40, 50k, whatever it is right now, is a killer deal. On a desk, dude, those, those DLAVs are freaking awesome desks.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, I mean, the, the era we live in with consoles, it's like, it's an embarrassment of riches these days. There's just so many options at every price point. It's,
Sean Walker: Dude,
Andy Leviss: crazy.
Craig Montgomery: We're, we're spoiled. Like as a mixer, you used to be limited by space and weight, you know, and cabling. Okay. You've got eight compressors. Where are you going to put them? And then you're looking over the rack. Okay. Which one was the floor tom gate? You know, but, and then when I got to the PM1D, it's like, everything's right in front of you, anything you can think of in your mind, you can do, and now we're even more spoiled by.
You know, the latest generation of consoles, anything you can conceive of, you can do, and that's a lot to manage. You see a lot of people get into the weeds because they've programmed these shows in really complicated ways and it takes them out of the moment of the mix. But, uh,
Sean Walker: Man, when I made that transition, and I'll ask you your experience too, but like when I made that transition from having those confines of X amount of rack space and X amount of compressors or gates or whatever, and having to very seriously prioritize where they were going and what I was going to use them for, to having them.
Comps and gates and everything on every single channel. I Absolutely took it too far. I was like I can compress everything like you know what I mean? I I fucked it up for the first time however many shows right until I was like wait a minute Why is this not sounding as kick ass as I'm used to this sounding and you had to start peeling it back and going oh fuck Maybe I don't need to squash everything 2, 000 DB In game reduction at all times.
You know what I mean? Did you
Craig Montgomery: read my mind. Yeah. Um, yeah, it, you can do too much and it might sound okay in a moment in the room, but The big thing for me was, I always try to make good two track recordings along with my show. Like I would have a separate record mix that would be, have a room mic matrixed in with it. And because I had a lot of time to sit there and listen to stuff, I would, you know, try to give people these amazing, you know, show recordings when they leave their room.
And, uh, at first, because you could do everything, um, you could compress everything basically. It ends up, it ends up having too much power. It becomes fatiguing to listen to. And so you would have to learn to not compress everything, do less, do less EQ. Um. I was never a big gate user anyway, but yeah, it, it's easy to get, and it's the same as the loudness wars in recording too.
Like you get, I forget the term, it's just too much power, too much loudness. And so to, to take it easy and I'm learning that in my. You know, mixing of recordings as well. You know, you have to be careful with that. So yeah, it's, it's an exhilarating amount of processing and power and creativity, but you have to, uh, so the difference is learning how to use it.
Right. Cause everybody has all the tools now.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, it's once you have all the tools, knowing when you actually need to use them is, is The lesson to learn.
Craig Montgomery: Mm
Andy Leviss: And yeah, I mean, it's,
Sean Walker: Totally, dude.
Andy Leviss: thinking that it was only like 15, 20 years ago that like, yeah, it was like an H4000, like how, yeah. Okay. How many comps and gates can you fit into the 216 space racks underneath it?
And that's kind of what you got. And then I remember like the first time I worked for a shop that had like a, uh, an ATI Paragon where it's like, wait, there's a gate and comp on every channel. That's crazy. And like now,
Craig Montgomery: Uh
Andy Leviss: now it's not crazy. It's also nowhere near as heavy. Thank. God. But,
Craig Montgomery: Mm hmm. Well, and if. If you're in combat audio, like doing a new band every day, coming into your venue, the, the constraint that hasn't gone away is time, right? So I'm setting up a band. I have an hour and a half from load in to doors. You know, you don't have time to go through all the options on every one of your inputs.
You know, you have to have sort of a template or a plan. It's like, okay, turn that up. It sounds fine. It's fine. We're not gonna, you know, explore every. Color of compressor we could insert on it. We're not going to, when it, one funny thing is when they first were bringing Ravages out for a demo, I went to the demo and they were talking about the silk, their silk red, their silk blue, and me being a smart ass, I said, now do I have to sit for five minutes while the touring guy Plays around with silk on every channel.
Oh, do I like the red? Do I like the blue? How much? Blah, blah, blah. Um, what I did learn after having some time on them was like, once you obviously learn what it's going to give you, then you know, and Oh, some, a bunch of silk red would be good on this vocal right now, you know, but if you don't know that and you have to explore it, like, you know, well, we've got an hour, man.
You've just spent. 40 minutes on the kick drum. So,
Andy Leviss: but it is so close to being the perfect kick drum.
Craig Montgomery: yeah. Oh, don't get me started on kick drums, man. Um, it's a big peeve of mine. I, I, I still go to shows where everything is, it's pristine. All the tones are perfect. But, uh, you know, there's a singer up there and I can't hear him through the frickin drum mix you've done. Um, so, and I don't care what kind of music it is.
Like, so when I, when I teach younger people, that's what I tell them. Like the vocal is job one. Like, yeah, you can have great drums, but, and I used to do my sound checks in reverse too, if they would let me get away with it, like, I would say, have, put this, I would get the singer and they, their eyes would light up.
Oh, you want me to check first? Like just play me a song with your guitar and we'll do that for a while. And then we'll do the drums.
Andy Leviss: was literally, as you were saying that with drums, I was gonna say like, I've seen a shift in more folks going that way and acknowledging that like, we don't have to go in input list order. And you've got to build the mix around the singer. Otherwise, you're building a band mix and then having to like, carve it back out to make space for what is in most bands, the most important thing.
Craig Montgomery: Another big tip for a combat audio situation like that is to get all the vocal mics working first so people can talk. It sounds comfortable,
Sean Walker: I was going to say, then you got calm basically up, right? So you can, now you can all communicate.
Andy Leviss: And plus, that way you've dealt with your your eight downstage drum overheads already.
Craig Montgomery: Yeah, that's true.
Sean Walker: Totally. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, is there anything we should have asked you that we didn't or that you were hoping we were going to ask you?
Craig Montgomery: Ah,
I'm no, I wasn't that prepared.
Andy Leviss: Sean's got that face that says, neither were we.
Sean Walker: Yeah, totally. Well, that seems like we're go ahead.
Craig Montgomery: I hope you can cut this up into something that would be interesting for somebody to listen
Andy Leviss: I certainly think it was, like, I mean, yeah, some great history, some practical stuff we've gotten around to. Um, I mean, I'll throw it out because I keep, I keep threatening that I got to come back out to Seattle whether for a gig and play and hang with Sean. So. You've been out there too. Why don't we go back to a classic question of the podcast to wrap it up and say, I'm coming to hang with you and Sean in the Seattle area.
Where are we going to eat?
Craig Montgomery: Eat food in Seattle. Oh boy. So many great options. Uh, it really just depends what part of town we're in. Um, if there was a good show at the triple door, we could go there. I can pretty much walk in there anytime. That would be fun. Um, otherwise I would probably take us to Chinatown maybe, or
Sean Walker: percent dude. Down to
Craig Montgomery: down on the water,
Sean Walker: Sun Yat
Craig Montgomery: down on the waterfront or, yeah, yeah.
Sean Walker: Totally.
Craig Montgomery: hot pot place I really like. Um, yeah, it's, it's like, it's kind of, I mean, it's not quite the same scale, but it's like asking where are you going to eat in New York? I mean, there's, so there's, but I know lots of great places that would be fun, fun hangs though. Oh, Slim's, have you ever been to Slim's Last Chance?
Andy Leviss: I have not. Sean's nodding.
Craig Montgomery: That's a, that's a fun hang, music, good food, place like that.
Sean Walker: Yeah, we're for sure going to Slim's when you come here, dude.
Craig Montgomery: All right.
Andy Leviss: Sounds good.
Sean Walker: All right, cool. Well, Craig, thank you for hanging out with us and,
Craig Montgomery: Thank you.
Sean Walker: you know, walk back through my freaking Childhood of all the coolest bands ever. I'm pretty jealous of your career. That's super cool. And thanks to, go
Craig Montgomery: I'll have to check out ProSoundWeb more. Is there still a
Andy Leviss: There is a forum and then we, and like, I mean, like you've happened in the Discord, which is where like we tend to hang the most. Um, and yeah, well, definitely I suspect when we do post this episode, folks will, you know, probably have questions or, you know, want more stories there. So we'll make sure we. We ping you there when we do.
And, uh, in fact, on, on that note for folks who are listening, who don't play in the discord, it's in the show notes every week, come, you know, check it out and hang, uh, you can kind of drop in and out as you want, and there's a cool mix of listeners, past guests, hopefully future guests hanging out there. So we'd, we'd love to have
Craig Montgomery: Cool. And if, if people have more questions about Nirvana, I did a Reddit AMA a few years ago...
Andy Leviss: Cool! We'll make sure to link that in the show notes!
Sean Walker: I was going to say, I am web searching now. And thank you to Allen and Heath for, you know, having us and letting us, you know, chat and yap with friends. And thanks to everybody who's listening, man. That's the pod. See you next week.
Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green
