Was It The Water?
Getting to the roots of a pro audio hotbed

Editor’s Note: A photo appearing in Live Sound January “Road Cases” generated the following impromptu e-mail exchange revolving around the audio scene in north suburban Chicago and fledgling audio company Steamer Sound. I was fortunate enough to be included in this exchange. My thanks to both of these gentlemen for the fascinating discussion and for allowing me to share it with you. - Keith Clark


Gary on top of a Steamer Sound “pile” of PA. Horns were Altec 511’s. This was load-out, not gig stacking.

Gary Gand: Loved that “Total Gear-Head” photo on page 94 of the January 2003 issue. “But wait there’s more,” as the V.J. would say. The console is a Peavey PA1200, the one with the really big “Flash Gordon” knobs. You can see the massive heat sink on the back because it was powered - I know this because it was my board! T.C. (Furlong) built the “Steamer” road case for it.

Tom Danley: Funny to think that that board was close to state of the art at that time; I remember being really pleased using it. Also, as I remember, Gary’s store was the first Peavey dealer in the Chicago area. I was amazed at how much you got for your dollar when I first saw the stuff.

That board was more powerful and lighter than the home-brew tube amps I was using in the pile on the side. For me that was a memorable day; I remember the “headliner” act was Ken Little and Solo (I think).

Gary: The PA boxes were designed by Tom, an audio genius in high school, for (Gary’s future wife) Joan’s electric piano and Moog synth rig. We’re talking pre- Mini-Moog, patch cables and drifting oscillators. We had a band called “Graced Lightning” playing original fusion instrumentals when everyone was yelling, “Play something we can dance to!“


Tom on the same Steamer PA stack, adjusting the “line source” (grin) high-frequency section.

Tom: Those were the days... The band was way ahead of its time. Many of the bands in the area (including several I was in) attempted to play some of those songs. It was sort of a fast fusion, kind of a Mahavishnu Orchestra/Captain Beyond type of rock, and just because you couldn’t dance to it, don’t get the idea it wasn’t fun to listen to.

One of my favorite memories was going into the music store basement to monkey around with Joan’s keyboards for hours of weird noises and cool sounds - “Wow, did you hear that?” Joan inadvertently sparked an interest in “space” music, which I still enjoy now and then.

Gary didn’t mention his light shows, but at a time when the Aragon Ballroom (the main concert venue in Chicago back then) had some theater lighting, a mirror ball and strobes that came on now and then, Gary had a full-blown light show. It was so wild that he ran it without the band a few times, at the store at night. Standing in a room packed with people just to see a light show sounds impossible now, but it happened. I was there.

Gary: All of us eventually found our way into the “real world” of pro concert audio. Tom of Servodrive/SPL fame, Gordon Kapes runs Studio Technologies, T.C. owns MacPherson, Chuck White built our first 16 by 8 onstage monitor console and went on to mix hundreds of national acts with our rental company, Gand Concert Sound. I put down my guitar, became a touring sound engineer for the next 12 years, and, with Joan, continue to run the Midwest’s most successful independent music retail operation.


Tom Danley with his first hand-built tube power amp, circa 1971. This was the first “slave” amp Gary had ever seen, about 100 watts total power, which was “ungodly” at the time. Note the EchoPlex tape unit in front of the two-track.


Graced Lighting with a Steamer 2X12 and 4X12 rig at the 1974 World’s Fair in Spokane, Washington. The other act was a group wearing make-up called “Kiss.”

Tom: You know, it’s funny, I never thought about it like that. Add in a few of the others in the area like Paul Hammer, Dean Zelinski and Harry Witz (of db Sound), and others, and it starts to look like something was happening around here. Heck, even Brad (Skuran), who runs Servodrive/SPL, was a guitar player I used to jam with him back then.

Funny...I remember sitting in mechanical drawing class, talking to T.C. about speakers and his intention to start Steamer Sound after high school, just like it was yesterday.

Gary: Maybe it was that mechanical drawing class that did it (although I still think it was the water). I spent most of my time in there, too. I used to get out of my regular study hall to go draw.

Tom: After a TV store job, I ended up working for T.C. at Steamer, and, in 1974 or so, I was also mixing bands part time at the Alley, a small club in Highwood, Illinois that T.C. was involved with. One night, I had a bunch of friends that were coming to see the show, and thinking it would be nice to capture the evening, I grabbed my reel-toreel tape deck. I plugged into the signal going to the crossover input (full range) and went on with mixing.


Another Tom creation, this time a ribbon speaker and current source amplifier that started life (like a lot of Tom's designs) on a coffee table. (This was 1975.)

The band was the John Burns Band, some relation to Jethro Burns (Beverly Hillbillies music or something like that), but definitely a fun rock band. The show was good and ended around 1:00 AM. I grabbed the deck and went home, ready for bed - I thought. But I was too awake to go to sleep immediately, so to calm down, I set up the tape deck and played the recording I had just made.

I was stunned with the fidelity of the recording - it was like “album quality”, or close, and electrifying to hear the same concert I had just mixed but now in hi-fi quality.

It was so cool that I listened to both sides of the tape. No kidding. This was a “makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up” kind of thing.

The stunning part was the vivid realization that the vast difference in sound quality could only be a result of the amplifier OR the speakers. My guess, being interested in speakers already, was that it was the speakers, although I didn’t know how or why.

Somewhere I have that tape; I should dig it out and find a reel-to-reel player that still works.

Gary: John Burns was the son of Jethro Burns. Jethro was the mandolin-playing partner of Homer and Jethro, a comedy guitar and mandolin duo from Chicago’s Barn Dance show. I think they may have appeared on the Beverly Hillbillies, but were not part of the regular crew. Jethro was actually one of the greatest living jazz mandolin players. I did many gigs with him sitting in with Steve Goodman, Doc Watson and many others. He could play any style with anybody. He passed away in the late 1990s.


Gary playing a Jimi Hendrix chord on his ever-more-valuable 1960 Les Paul custom guitar. (“You know, the one like Peter Frampton plays.”)

I’m afraid to listen to old tapes. I think they age better in your mind (like old girlfriends) than on the shelf. I remember some amazing tapes from gigs with my old band with Paul Hamer, Joel Dantzig, Mike Grohe and Rob Sibley. The first couple of Graced Lightning concert tapes also sounded like Mahavishnu Live, only more rockin’ like Cream. I think the freshness of hearing your work played back the first couple of times is really amazing. After you spend the next 10 years in the studio, the takes get better, your playing improves, but you become more critical and lose the ability to “hear” what it sounds like. I know we are all better technicians now, but that early stuff sure sounded incredible!

I mixed plenty of great gigs at the Alley. Remember when Harvey Mandel would do all that two-handed stuff, like 10 years before Eddie Van Halen smoked his first Marlboro?

On the subject of audio voodoo: I recently jammed at a buddy’s house through a “newish” Fender 4 by 10 Tweed Bassman (Jeff Beck’s favorite studio amp). I plug an Alesis drum machine into the second input to have some time to play along (my friend’s on bass).

I start playing, and the drum machine is not even turned on yet. And I hear the greatest blues tone coming at me from the guitar I’m using. I unplug the drum machine from the input; the tone disappears. I plug it back in, the tone comes back!

I know it’s an impedance “thang” with the drum machine’s output loading down the amp’s input. But try and explain it to some amp expert and make it into a feature article. “This formula will self-destruct in 15 seconds.”


Tom doing some system tweaking last fall at the King Biscuit Festival in Arkansas.


Still kickin’, still mixin’ - recent photo of Gary.

Tom: Thanks for adding the extra info Gary - just goes to show that when you send a picture in on the Internet, you never know where it will end up.

Gary: Fade into sunset, roll credits...

Gary Gand
Gand Music and Sound
Northfield, Illinois

Tom Danley
Director of Engineering
Servodrive/SPL
Glenview, Illinois



Send your pro audio history stories to Live Sound Editor Keith Clark, kclark@livesoundint.com.

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