When we catch up with Jim Yakabuski, he’s just finishing a Rob Thomas tour pre-Christmas 2009.

Technically today is a day off, the perfect time to take in some football on TV and relax. But then there’s this interview, and the fact that he’s also engaged in a delicate technical project – converting
files for his 14-year-old daughter’s high school project.

Strictly speaking, this still qualifies as downtime. Not something he gets too much of with four children back home in Orlando.

While his three girls are getting to the age where hanging with Dad is less high-priority than it once was, his 6-year-old son is another matter. “He’s all about it. We go to the park. He’s in his Spidey outfit. I gotta be the Green Goblin. He’s full on,” Yakabuski says, laughing.

He isn’t complaining though. Over nearly 30 years in the business he’s spent an inordinate amount of time on tour, and only in the past decade has he been able to spend more time at home.

From The Beginning
Born and raised in British Columbia, Yakabuski studied audio recording at Vancouver’s Columbia School of Broadcasting. After that he cut his teeth touring western Canada’s thriving club circuit in the 1980s. “Part of the success in the touring side is that I really try to make every seat in the house sound good. I’ve always been from the school of loving to tune the room and the PA and make sure everyone in the house is hearing what I’m hearing.

“The whole corporate side of things helps,” he continues. It’s a marriage of technical skill and diplomacy, with little or no latitude for error. “You’ve got to be willing to solve any problem.” Regardless of the need, “You just figure it out.”

But Yakabuski’s success also stems from a continuing desire to expand on what he does.

His first gig was with a band a former high school buddy had just joined, and who also needed an engineer. Ditching his day job to tour meant taking a pretty deep cut in pay.

“I left my Safeway grocery gig and went out on the road making a sweet 20-50 bucks a week,” he says, laughing. Still, it wasn’t long before Yakabuski found himself with better paying gigs and plenty of them – enough to work six nights a week, 50 weeks a year if he wanted to. Soon, however, he wanted more.

“The story starts as most good ones do,” he says. “I met a waitress in a bar…”

She was wearing a dB Sound T-shirt, a US company he was familiar with but hadn’t approached yet. That was enough to prompt him to start up a conversation.

Initially she completely blew him off, before coming back to apologize, and telling him sound guys were always trying to get the shirt from her.

“I said, I don’t want your shirt, I want a job.” After explaining that she was dating one of the company’s owners, the waitress gave Yakabuski her number to follow up. And follow up he did, repeatedly; “I called three or four times a month about passing on my resume. I just kept bugging her.”

Finally Yakabuski got a call from dB to work Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s 1986 Summerfest. The chance meeting, and the path it set him on involved a bit of luck, he says, but that luck came on the heels of a fair bit of perseverance.

Already, he explains, he’d sent feelers out to every Canadian-based audio concern, with no response.

That initial gig with dB soon led to more festival work and a tour with John Waite. Still, for the next four years he continued to return to Canada to fill in his schedule between US gigs. After getting his big break as monitor tech for Aerosmith in 1990, however, he never left.

“I got on a good roll,” he says, a roll that led first to shows with Poison, through TASCTASCO, and soon after to the gig Yakabuski is most often associated with, Van Halen. “I did one tour on monitors. The next tour, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, I did Front of House.”

Since then, he has worked for some of the biggest names in music across a wide variety of genres; Jon Secada, Ted Nugent and Extreme between Van Halen tours in 1994 alone; as well as the likes of Gin Blossoms, Paul Anka, Whitesnake, Julio Iglesias, Matchbox Twenty, and many others.

A long time association with Nettwerk Management’s Dan Fraser – who he’d met during his days touring the BC club scene – led to one of his later, equally high profile gigs. For years the two had discussed Yakabuski coming on to work a Nettwerk act.

“It was just a matter of finding the right artist,” he says. The opportunity finally came along in 2003, with the right artist turning out to be Avril Lavigne.

Beyond the high profile nature of Lavigne’s tour, the gig had personal perks for the 45-year-old engineer. “It’s not easy for children to see their parents as being particularly hip. Working with Avril, I had a fighting chance of being cool.”

It was also on the first Lavigne tour that he had his first experience with a full digital rig, headed by a Yamaha PMPM1D digital console. Initially unsure if he preferred digital, now he wouldn’t go any other way unless the gig truly demanded an analog treatment.

These days he’s a big fan of the Digidesign Profile – with two out on the current Rob Thomas tour for monitors and front of house.

Experience Brings Gigs
The association with Nettwerk also led to one of his personal career high points – filling in on some 2008 Sarah McLachlan promo shows. “I’m a massive fan,” he states.

But Yakabuski’s success extends well beyond the road. With Professional Sound Reinforcement Techniques, a compendium of pro audio tips and tricks gathered over his many years on the road, he became a published author.

Since 1992 he’s also been a frequent lecturer at Orlando’s Full Sail University, and, more recently, he took the position of Senior Touring Engineer at LMG, starting up the company’s increasingly successful touring division.

Taking the position was an attempt to retire from the road and spend more time with his family – his second attempt, in fact. When LMG offered him the staff position in 2005, complete with a more normal work schedule and benefits, “That’s when I really though I might be done.” He wasn’t.

Although firmly ensconced in his house gig when Lavigne came back to him for another tour in 2007, he saw an opportunity. “I didn’t want to leave, but I said if you’re interested in using LMG as a provider, we could work this out.” That’s how the LMG touring division was born.

Since then, the division has continued to expand in terms of both high profile tours and a growing amount of product to send out on them. “As our touring division has grown, I’ve been looking towards what’s the next system on the horizon. We’d heard a lot of buzz about the new d&b audiotechnik J System, and it’s an absolutely fantastic rig, so we bought a whole bunch of that for this tour.”

It’s the best of both worlds. While working out of the LMG office in Orlando keeps him close to family, it also allows him to take advantage of plenty of corporate work between touring seasons and facilitates plenty of access to the golf course.

“Growing up in Canada, I didn’t play as much hockey as golf,” he says. “I started playing when I was three years old and always said if I can ever live in a place I can play year round, I want to do it.”

And busy he is, Yakabuski’s still looking forward to the next challenge, still looking to take his career to yet another level. Further involvement in the education of another generation of pro audio professionals is a logical next step – a continuation of both his work as an author and his ongoing involvement with Full Sail.

“The thing I would love to transition into is education.” For now, however, it’s only an idea. Taking the leap, he says – actually starting a school, for instance – is a prospect he finds a bit unnerving.

That may be, but “nerves” haven’t stopped him before. “The last time I felt nervous before a gig was at the UK’s Castle Donington Festival in 1994,” he says. “I was mixing Extreme, who were opening for Aerosmith.”

Just prior to Extreme’s set, absolute mayhem broke out on stage. “It went crazy. I barked into the talkback for someone to check the lead vocal mic, managed to hear kick and snare, and they said, ‘You’re on.’ Ninety-thousand people – the biggest show I’d ever done, and I didn’t have a line check, but within a third of the first song” – with the help of an Audio-Rent system technician – “we had it sounding pretty good.”

Momentary uncertainty aside, Yakabuski seems relaxed and optimistic about future possibilities. Given the right circumstances and partners, chances are, if he wants it, just as he has before, he’ll find the way forward.

Based in Toronto, Kevin Young is a freelance music and tech writer, professional musician and composer.