Any performer worth his salt has to carry a large bag of tricks. Mine were accumulated over a lifetime of theater, music, writing, and the variety of odd jobs I was called upon to perform at one time or another. For example, I am a pretty good bartender. I can design and execute stained glass items. I've restored or renovated both automobiles and houses. I was on a professional fireworks crew, did a lot of water sports, and did a bit of artwork and cartooning. Before discovering production, I was a professional musician and could, at one time,play more than a dozen different instruments, from brass to strings to keyboards. There is even an old folk music album from the 60s floating around somewhere with my chops on it! ...AND, I can rub my stomach and pat my head at the same time!

But I don't get to use many of those skills in my profession. There are, however, numerous other skills that I've picked up along the way that are quite relevant. I am an accomplished writer with numerous radio and TV commercials as well as industrial and broadcast documentary scripts to my credit. For a couple of years I wrote a weekly newspaper column for a small-town newspaper. I helped my father put together his college Geography textbook, Man's Physical World... typing most of the original drafts as well as the revisions. And I dabble in short stories and occasional magazine articles.

Not willing to be a one-trick pony, I am also a veteran audio engineer, expert with nonlinear digital editing, mixing, and processing, as well as SMPTE timecode technology in audio-for-video post production applications, and sound design. For those of you who care about such things, my in-home studio consists mostly of a pair ProTools MBox2 Pro digital recording/editing/mixing systems. These are paired with a dual-core MacPro, a dual-processor G4, a couple terabytes of hard drive space, and a rack full of DSP goodies. I also use a Telos Zephyr X-Stream codec for ISDN connections, Source Connect, and a Gentner Digital Hybrid phone patch for linking to clients. I keep a generous amount of web space with plenty of FTP bandwidth for delivering audio files to those who aren't ISDN or Source Connect equipped. The most critical pieces of equipment are the microphones and pre-amps. I use mostly Neumann mikes... a U-87 and a pair of TLM-103s... with Joe Meeks, Pro-Sonus, or Digidesign pre-amps. Good stuff!

I also have a couple of music libraries, sound effects collections, and a third, portable, ProTools system with a laptop for location recording and on site nat-sound, if necessary. It also lets me take an occasional vacation without leaving my clients in a bind if they have emergencies.

I've been known to produce entire commercial campaigns from a motel room with equipment propped up on ironing boards and empty drink cups!