Monday, March 07, 2011
In Profile: Ted Leamy - System Engineer & Businessman
On the edge of the audience experience.“You know,” Ted Leamy says, “I’m always troubled when people ask me to write or be on panels, telling me, ‘we want to hear what you have to say,’ because I don’t know much of the math.”
“I just know you’re supposed to point the loud part toward the audience and turn it up.”
As understatements go, that’s a big one. Over the course of his career Leamy has optimized sound systems for a who’s who of important acts and venues of the past 30 years.
In every case, however, the experience of both those aiming the “loud part” and those on the receiving end of it have always been a major preoccupation for him; guiding his hand as both a systems engineer and businessman.
Consequently, when he talks about career highlights, he often focuses on people - the mentors, friends and acquaintances who have challenged him to excel and shown a path forward in good times and bad.
His experiences with Robert Scovill on the Rush and Def Leppard tours serve as a prime example.
“They were a technical highlight and a triumph,” he says. “Robert and I found a way to work together taking advantage of each other’s skills to blend the science of system design/optimization with the art of mixing. I learned to listen critically during those shows and rely little on instrumentation once the performance began.”
Born and raised in Union, NJ, Leamy started working in audio as a teenager. And while he cites a love of music as a major factor in his choice to do so, underlying that was a childhood attraction to science and technology.
“I was a geeky little kid. I had all my amateur radio licenses when I was seven or eight years old.”
Once he began working he saw no reason to interrupt his busy schedule by going to college. “While everybody else was attending shows, I was unloading trucks and rigging loudspeakers. Everything for me was practical. I think I was a bright young man; it’s just that liquor, women and music seemed a far better choice than an electrical engineering degree.”
By age 20, however, after a two-year stint with Teddy Pendergrass in the mid 1970s, Leamy began questioning his career choice. At the time he’d landed a regular gig at NYC’s infamous Great Gildersleeves, occasionally working at nearby CBGB to augment his pay.
“It sounds romantic, but those were terrible times. I wasn’t making any money. I was sleeping in a flophouse. It was dreadful.
“Still, there’s something to be said for keeping at it,” he continues, adding that if he’s remembered for any single trait in his career it would be perseverance, a “stick-at-it-untilit’s- done-right” theme driven, in part, by some of the more difficult experiences in his personal life. Experiences, by the way, he wouldn’t trade away for an easier journey.
Audience Experience
His perseverance paid off when Electrosound’s Mick Whelan came through Great Gildersleeves on an Elvis Costello tour in 1977. Whelan, who would become one of Leamy’s earliest mentors, was impressed the young house tech.
“He said, ‘I gotta take you with me’,” Leamy laughs. “And I said, ‘sure, sure, now get the hell out of the club and don’t steal anything’.” But less than a week later, Leamy was working a Cheap Trick tour with Whelan.
“In the late 1970s, if you were sober, had a strong back and showed up on time; those were pretty good qualifications for a starting position.”
But Leamy brought far more to the table than that. Fascinated by music and how it could sound so different from venue to venue, he consumed technical information voraciously, taking full advantage of his senior compatriots’ willingness to share their knowledge.
“I gotta tell you, after I was at Electrosound for about six months I thought to myself; if I stay sober, if I don’t do drugs, if I pay attention and learn, I could run this place.”
And he did just that, working his way up from “just a guy slinging loudspeakers” to become the company’s president. “Now some people would say, that’s not something to be proud of, it took you 23 years!”
Throughout his career, Leamy’s approach to system optimization has always centered on the audience experience. “That’s the ultimate arbiter of whether you’ve succeeded or not. I may not have time to be a civilian, but I am able to turn off my technical side and just listen, and I think that’s brought me a lot of success. But paranoia helps, too,” he adds, “and a certain level of low self esteem.”
Clearly, beyond versatile critical listening abilities, he also possesses an often self-deprecating sense of humor, which he says is integral to his leadership style.
“It can be disarming in difficult situations. Laughing while pushing a ‘giant boulder up a hill’ is a good way to motivate others to join in and help.”
That, and his fanatical dedication to getting things done on time and correctly won him the respect of his peers on high profile outings like the Bob Dylan/Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Grateful Dead stadium tours in the mid 80s. His work ethic also earned him the nickname of “sergeant major” from Electrosound’s owners.
Practical Things
When it comes to system optimization, Leamy cautions against being overly reliant on instrumentation. “It can be hypnotizing,” he offers, and can distract from serving up what both the audience and the crew want and expect – namely, a great show.
“A bad design is a bad design,” he adds, with the mastery of the mandatory keystrokes of any given technical platform only part of the equation. “That’s why it’s important to look at the practical things. When you’re optimizing a system a lot of people look at the instrumentation and say, ‘well, it tells us this, so that’s the answer.”
“And I reply, ‘well, that doesn’t make any sense. So let’s look at what we did wrong with the test rig.’ I joked earlier that it’s good to be paranoid, to have low selfesteem, but I’m always questioning if it’s really the answer, or if it’s just the first answer that came by.”
To Leamy, good sound is about exceeding expectations, a passion that enabled him to develop leadership qualities that the shy little kid with the amateur radio licenses couldn’t have imagined possessing. These qualities informed his role on many tours, including 1995’s Nine Inch Nails/David Bowie “During the Dissonance” tour.
“It was a great tour, but both acts were on at the same time during the set change - a unique and exciting challenge. So two mixing consoles were live at the same time and they thought for sure there was going to be fistfights among the band’s mixers. So I would go out on the tour as something of a statesmen to keep ‘the peace’ - there were no fistfights on my watch.”
Leamy refers to the leadership roles he’s played at Electrosound, JBL and now Pro Media/UltraSound as “a set of overalls” he puts on, but adds, “I think I have a way of breaking a problem down to its base parts; developing a plan, helping everyone involved understand where the finish line is, and never being afraid to roll up my sleeves and push to get there.”
This also requires an abiding patience - “patience for people,” as he puts it. “Everybody’s got something to offer, and you’ve got to listen as much as you talk.”
Moving Farther Away
That said, Leamy also admits to “an impatience for incompetence and crappy sound” that has played a key part in his professional advancement.
The ethic served him well when he departed Electrosound in 2000 to work with JBL Professional, where he held a number of positions - some he was instrumental in creating - before becoming vice president of installed sound.
During his tenure at JBL, he added some impressive projects to his portfolio, among them a system retrofit of the Grand Ole Opry, as well as installations like the Walt Disney Concert Hall and dozens of high-profile sporting venues, including Chicago’s iconic Soldier Field. Working on permanent installations for very large venues was a logical next step in his career.
“The whole nature of modern music has matured, so the whole concept of installations has matured,” he explains.
“There’s good audio all around us - in our cars, in our homes. People’s expectations, whether they’re going to a cinema, a sporting event, or to worship, are higher than ever.”
Ultimately, however, he felt he was moving farther away from the front line of the audience experience, and, frankly, missed it. Not that the front line had always been pleasant: “The cold showers, the crappy food; you’re not living the life of glamour.”
Another complication, he says, was one of the personal experiences he spoke of earlier - the ongoing effects of a childhood illness that had once evolved into a life-threatening situation in the early 1980s.
“Still, the problem is that getting off the road was the first step away from where the excitement is. A concert, or a sporting event is a tribal experience.
“To go to the new Meadowlands and stand in the middle of that crowd and do some critical listening is incredible in the context of the event. What you’ve done is an additive element to that tribal experience.
That’s excitement. That’s a measure of success. To be able to affect a change on that front line and see a positive difference, it’s awesome.”
Coming Back Home
Inevitably, that conviction prompted his move to Pro Media/UltraSound in 2007. A homecoming, he says, both professionally and personally. “At JBL I didn’t do the installations, but here I do, and I’m running a business that I absolutely adore.”
“When I was with Electrosound and we did the Grateful Dead, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan stadium tours, Don Pearson (co-founder of UltraSound) and I became such good friends. And UltraSound and Electrosound, gosh, you could hardly tell the companies apart, we worked so well together.”
Leamy also counts Pro Media founder Drew Serb and Pro Media/UltraSound’s Derek Featherstone among his close friends and business associates. “These are folks that have known me for ages. It was just a good life decision for me.”
“About every three or four years, even during my tenure at JBL, they’d call me up and say, ‘c’mon, come and work here.’ My only regret is that I come here after my dear friend Don passed away and that he and I never had the opportunity to sit in the building together as comrades in arms.”
In Leamy’s world, it comes down to the people - “Mick Whelan, Jim Douglas, Sam Berkow, Mark Gander at JBL, and many others,” he says, that informs his enduring conviction that, as an audio professional, businessman, and human, it’s important to look ahead as well as behind you.
“A lot of people have helped me, which is why I say that if you achieve some level of success, you’ve got to turn around, see who’s behind you and help them.”
Coolest Place To Be
It’s a philosophy he puts in practice by sharing his own perspective and experiences with others. He’s a contributing editor and writer for various pro audio publications, and also serves as associate director of the Zappa Institute of Technology - now an officially accredited academy in the Los Angeles Unified School District that teaches at-risk students about job opportunities in production.
Looking behind him and lending a hand to help others move forward is something Leamy intends to continue to do as long as he continues to work at making good sound, which he intends to keep doing. Period.
“For me there’s something about audio that inspires the concepts of God and creation. These are the laws of physics, the laws of the universe, the foundation underlying what music and audio technology are.”
“It’s really the optimization of a loudspeaker system that has inspired and excited me the most, and continues to. And now I’m back to the edge of the audience experience, to the nexus of art and science, and it’s the coolest place in the universe to be.”
Fast Facts
Job Title: Chief operating officer at Pro Media/UltraSound
Location: Hercules, CA
Years in the Business: 30-plus
Favorite Tools: Practical common sense
Worked With: Pro Media/UltraSound with various touring artists and on installs including Dallas Cowboys and New Meadowlands Stadiums, JBL Professional on installations including Walt Disney Concert Hall, Soldier Field, the Grand Ole Opry and multiple NBA, NFL and major league baseball venues; and Electrosound as system engineer for Rod Stewart, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bob Dylan, Rush, Lenny Kravitz, Def Leppard, Foreigner, Cheap Trick, Billy Idol, Bob Marley, Ted Nugent and others
Based in Toronto, Kevin Young is a freelance music and tech writer, professional musician and composer.
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