Sound Checks Through the Ages:
Profile of Lee Brenkman
By Claudia Kienzle

Lee and Soundcraft K2

With over 30 years experience as a professional sound mixer, Lee Brenkman has been there…done it. He’s seen it all—the explosion of rock music; the evolution of concert mixing technology; and performers ranging from legendary to loser. He’s used everything from rudimentary, makeshift mixing equipment, to ultra-sophisticated consoles.

And, he’s mixed virtually every kind of music—rock, jazz, punk, folk, alternative, and classical—in every kind of venue.

But over the years, one thing’s remained constant—the sound mixer is always the one in the hot seat. “I’m the conduit between the artist’s performance and the audience’s experience. When I’m handling both monitor and FOH mixing, I’m part of both worlds,” says Brenkman. “By giving the artists what they need to hear on stage, and bringing out the subtleties in the music, I’m influencing the sound that the audience hears.”

A Total Gear-Head:

Lee Brenkman was the kind of kid who would take the radio apart while his parents were away, and put it back together before they got home. By junior high, he was the A/V nerd that the teachers relied on to thread the Bell & Howell film projector, or intervene when feedback from speakers filled the auditorium. By high school, he was going to dances and proms—at other schools to work as a sound technician.

While his plan was to become a journalist, oddly enough it was a job as associate editor at a weekly underground newspaper in Denver that launched his professional sound mixing career.

One day, while picking up a check for advertising from a music club called The Family Dog, “I was told that the sound man had disappeared. And, since one of The Family Dog staffers knew that I did sound, I was recruited to fill in,” says Brenkman. That year (1968), he mixed sound for Big Brother & The Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Byrds, Chuck Berry, and other big-name touring acts, until the police shut the place down to minimize the hippie element in town.

The Rise of Concert Culture:

1968 through 1970 were break-through years—crowds got bigger, venues got bigger, concert sound got bigger—and the pressure was on to advance live sound technology.

Brenkman witnessed these rapid-fire changes while mixing sound at The Avalon Ballroom, in San Francisco, which hosted such acts as Tim Buckley, Iron Butterfly, Janis Joplin, Velvet Underground, Muddy Waters, and It’s a Beautiful Day.

One major change was the introduction of stage monitoring-- initially a pair of speaker cabinets, stage left and stage right, carrying the same mix as FOH with separate volume controls. But, stage monitoring advanced rapidly, and by 1969, Brenkman says, “There were so many backline amps on stage that the singers couldn’t hear themselves. By 1970, we began to amplify the backline amps through the PA and monitors so that bands, the smarter ones anyway, could start using fewer and smaller amps.”

With demand for eight or more separate monitor mixes, sound companies began custom-building monitor mixers..

Research Fueled by Economics:

“We also learned a lot in the early 70’s about how multiple speakers interacted with each other. The problem was that no matter how loud you made it, the vocals were garbled and the sound was muddy. This was because sound from the high-frequency horns arrive several milliseconds before the mid- and low-range frequency horns,” says Brenkman. “People like John Meyer, Ed Long, and others began doing research on time alignment, and introducing solutions for delaying the sound so all elements reached the listener at the same time.”

In the employ of McCune Sound in San Francisco, John Meyer designed a replacement for their Altec Voice of the Theater boxes called the JM3—the first all in one box with dedicated electronic processing and amplifiers powering a full-range, time-aligned concert speaker enclosure. “The box worked well because people could no longer mis-match speakers or experiment with the adjustment of crossover points,” says Brenkman.

Spawned by the energy crisis and high union labor costs of the 1970’s, demand increased for concert systems that were easier to move and set-up reliably. And advances in solid-state amplifiers resulted in 2400-watt stereo amplifiers that weighed less than tube-based 80-watt mono amplifiers.

“We’ve now reached the point where the greatest limiting factor in terms of sound quality is the acoustics of the buildings themselves,” Brenkman said. “The acoustic at sports arenas, where many concerts are held, is reflective, which intensifies crowd noise, rather than absorptive - the exact opposite - which is ideal for music.”

Mixing with the In-Crowd:

“Sound mixing becomes really challenging when the show brings together musicians of varying technical experience and mindsets,” says Brenkman. For example, he’s had to mix between three jazz horn players: an older man who never used stage monitors; a younger one that heavily relied on stage monitors; and a revisionist performer that preferred light amplification.

In that case, Brenkman says the challenge is more diplomatic than technological. “All-star bands work better on paper than they do in reality.” In the 29 years that he’s been a sound mixer at The Great American Music Hall, in San Francisco, Brenkman’s been flabbergasted by the number of bands that have put out hit records but know nothing about live sound. “Their tour manager is a best friend with a calculator, and the guitar tech plays better than anyone on the stage,” he said.

In his experience, there were bands that rehearsed for hours, and then retreated to their dressing rooms to smoke some pot. When they came out on stage, their monitors sounded completely “different.”

There was a know-it-all artist that ordered Brenkman to bury the vocals under the horns and violin, leaving him to spend the evening explaining to disgruntled patrons why they couldn’t hear the vocals.

There’ve been the performers who whine, “I can’t hear enough of ME in MY monitor,” with no desire to hear what the rest of the band sounds like.

Perhaps the worst personal experience Brenkman had while mixing sound was Altamont, the free Rolling Stones concert, in Livermore, CA, where some people were beaten to death under the bleachers near where he was working. While the drug-tainted concert scene had been turning ugly for some time, Altamont was a defining moment after which Brenkman walked away from rock and roll for a while and focused on other kinds of music.

But, occasionally, Brenkman found musicians that knew enough about live sound to make reasonable and specific requests during sound checks.

“There are performers-- like David Lindley, John Hammond, and Doc Watson—that I’ve been sticking mics in front of for 30 years, and it’s still an absolute joy because they are true musicians,” says Brenkman.

“And when performers I’ve worked with arrive at my venue as part of a tour, they are happy to see me there. They’re relieved, ‘cause there’s a lot of stuff they won’t have to explain to me the way would with a novice or someone unfamiliar with their music,” he added. “They trust that I will respond quickly with the subtle monitor changes they need while doing my best with the sound for the audience.”
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Editor’s note:

Lee Brenkman is one of the most ethical people I have ever worked for. Experiences like I had under his tutelage are part of what kept me from going back to a life of crime.

I haven’t often seen, in my whole life, the kind of brotherhood and solidarity like he demonstrated to me when the going got tough. I am proud to be one of his “children.”

– C.K.