National TV: Secrets of Being Spotlighted
Gravitating your big decisions to always align with your passion is key to a happy and successful career and life. A lot of performers have asked why I decided to create Audio Ape Remotes. I mean, I have a very successful performing career, with a lot of good years left. My simple answer is that I am passionate about show control. It is my dream to see all artists embrace great technology and free themselves and their shows.
Ever since I was young I’ve been fascinated with technology. Opening electronics as soon as something went wrong, I wasn’t always incredibly successful. But I always did get better and better through trial and error. Here’s a picture of some of my custom gear I have made for my show.
Currently, I hire expert engineers and designers to bring my ideas to life. When I first started though I didn’t have the kind of money needed for good builders. So, at first, I had to design and build my own gear for my show.
I know now that this was a blessing. Working on my own for many years gave me a strong knowledge of electronics and circuitry. Now that I can hire people to build for me, I use the experience and insight I have learned. I can also dream up more possibilities and translate them better to my development team.
I have used every product on the market to run my sound cues. Like a lot of performers, I always saw a hole somewhere in the system. Sometimes it was in the hardware design, other times it was the software side, but they would always fall short in some way.
I am long time friends with Carl Andrews who created the top selling show app Show Cues. I was working with him on a gig and he was telling me about his trouble finding a reliable remote for his app. Bluetooth, wifi, and other controllers just weren’t cutting it for real stage work. I went through all the ideas I had to solve his problem. He stopped me about 4 mins in and asked, “Why aren’t you building this?” Me? I am a professional performer, not an inventor. He said, “you’ve been inventing electronics for well over a decade, you are an inventor.” Here’s a picture of us randomly running into each other at the LA airport.
Carl’s encouragement made me take up the helm and steer into this new world called Audio Ape Remotes. The truth is I love being here, helping performers and constantly inventing new ideas. Audio Ape is just starting, we have a lot of ideas that will be coming in the months and years ahead.