Old Blue Sound – The Best in the West

By Chris Stuart for Bluegrass Unlimited 2008

  visit www.chrisstuart.com

For Dick Pierle, it’s about people—people who have the passion to get involved—and stay involved—in bluegrass music. That includes people he hires to be part of his sound reinforcement company, Old Blue Sound. “You’ve got to have good people. You have to have people who first of all know what the music is supposed to sound like, who are properly trained and who have a passion for making bluegrass music sound the way it should.”

Good sound reinforcement is essential for any public performance and yet it is probably the most underappreciated aspect of bluegrass music. A good sound crew is almost invisible to the audience. When the sound is good, the audience and the musicians enjoy the show. It is usually only when the sound is bad that anyone focuses on the sound crew.

By all accounts—from musicians, promoters and fans—the most respected and in-demand sound company west of the Mississippi River is Old Blue Sound, owned and operated by Dick Pierle of Grand Junction, Col. This year marks the company’s tenth anniversary and while they have kept the organization small and efficient with five employees and an intern, Old Blue has succeeded in filling a niche of supplying sound reinforcement specifically for bluegrass and acoustic events throughout the western United States. It is a niche that Dick Pierle recognized needed filling in the mid-1990s.

Pierle has been involved in bluegrass, however, since the 1960s. He attended the University of Tennessee and was visiting Nashville in 1965 when he ran into Bill Monroe heading into Linebaugh’s Restaurant and introduced himself. Pierle had heard about the first bluegrass festival scheduled for Fincastle, VA, later that year and he brought it up. Monroe asked him if he liked bluegrass music and when he got a positive response, said that Pierle needed to be there. Dick went to Fincastle that year and began a lifelong involvement in bluegrass as a fan, festival promoter, guitar player, and most notably, as the owner of Old Blue sound.

Because of early childhood polio, contracted when he was nine years old, Pierle has only the use of his left arm. He says of his limitation, “It’s not something that has stopped me from building my life. I just took the tools that I had and did what I could. I wanted to play the guitar and found an unusual way of playing it.” Dick plays guitar by both strumming and chording with his left hand.

After graduating with a degree in Animal Husbandry from the University of Tennessee, Dick began work in the grain industry, eventually moving to Scotts Bluff, NE, and then to Ft. Collins, CO, where he worked for Continental Grain Co., before starting his own company whose success enabled him to devote more time to a second career, supplying sound reinforcement. Dick says, “I was able to do my day-job and secure my living and then do what I wanted to do in the music business and not go through the somewhat awful price you have to pay to be in the music business to pursue your passion.”

Becoming involved in the Grand Western Bluegrass Festival in Fruita, CO, in 1984, Pierle recalls the situation of sound reinforcement in the 1990s. “There wasn’t really good sound available for the festivals that were trying to get established out here in the West. There were sound people with good equipment, but they didn’t know what bluegrass sounded like.”

One particular event near Los Angeles drove the point home to him when a promoter asked him to help out the sound person who was apparently working his first acoustic show. When he asked Dick which instrument was the fiddle, Pierle knew that there might be a need for a sound company that actually knew and respected bluegrass music.

The dry, Southern California desert setting of the Blythe Bluegrass Festival in 1998 was the site of the first official gig for Old Blue Sound. While Pierle was the owner of the company, he knew that he needed a great chief engineer and he found one in Art Kershaw who worked with Dick until 2004. Dick says, “Art had the ability to perceive what might go wrong, for example feedback, and he could know that it was coming on and could do something about it before it happened.” Like any good businessman, Pierle understands that it’s not just the equipment and technical expertise that makes a company successful. It’s about the people he hires and the people he serves.

Pierle’s current A-team consists of Kirk Brown (Chief Engineer), Alvin Segler (Engineer) and Cate Plante (Logistics/Technician). He also has another engineer, Ron Dropcho from Colorado, and an intern program which is currently filled by Mike Wolking, guitar and dobro player with the band Sons & Brothers. With two different teams, Old Blue can supply sound for two separate festivals and three different stages on any one weekend.

For the past several years, Old Blue has done 35 to 40 events a year. Their typical festival weekend starts by getting to the site a full day in advance of when the music starts. This gives the crew enough time to set up, test the equipment, make any necessary adjustments, get a feel for the location and its specific sound characteristics, and prepare for any weather emergencies that might arise.

In some respects, they run their business like any top-notch act in bluegrass. They book gigs, arrange travel, create a name for themselves and maintain that name recognition through good work. The difference is that while a band can show up at a festival and play two to four sets, Old Blue is on stage, so to speak, for the entire weekend. It appears to be an exhausting schedule, beginning early in the morning and not ending until well after the last act is off stage and then breaking down after the final show of the weekend. With travel, it can mean five or six days of work for one weekend festival. Don Tucker, long-time promoter of the Huck Finn Jubilee in Victorville, CA, has hired Old Blue Sound for eight years. He has nothing but praise: “What I like best is that as our show grew Old Blue was able to grow with us and meet our increasing needs for sound. They made a commitment to the Jubilee and honored that commitment. The sound company for your festival is your partner. Without good sound, you don’t go anywhere.”

Old Blue has also done sound reinforcement for the IBMA Convention and Fan Fest, working with Steve Chandler in Nashville. Dick says, “Steve Chandler is the best engineer in bluegrass. He and I established a relationship way back when IBMA started in Owensboro and just built a rapport over a period of time. Our involvement with IBMA is to work as a support team for Steve.”

Other events and festivals that Old Blue has been associated with over the years are notably Larry and Sondra Baker’s festivals on the Colorado River and High Mt. Hay Fever festival in West Cliff, Col., which Ron Thomason of the Dry Branch Fire Squad is involved in. Ron says, “We run into them [Old Blue] about half the time we play west of the Mississippi. I know this sounds kind of corny, but I like the fact that they’re mature!” When Dry Branch Fire Squad was first thinking of going to a one microphone set-up, Ron says, “Dick found a microphone for us and gave me the confidence I needed to use it.”

With JBL and EV speaker systems, SoundCraft and Midas consoles, and mostly Shure microphones, Old Blue uses equipment that is made for acoustic music. But more importantly, they know how to use the equipment to maximum benefit.

Kirk Brown, Old Blue’s chief engineer, lives in Edgewood, New Mexico, near Alburquerque, where, when he’s not engineering for Old Blue, he runs his own studio, Oasis Sound Studio. Kirk started with Old Blue in 2003 and worked with Art Kershaw for a year and a half before Art left the company. Kirk says that one of the nicest compliments he’s gotten as an engineer is when Doc Watson told him, “You know how to make a guitar sound like a guitar.”

A challenging aspect of sound reinforcement is being able to ensure the sound on stage is to the liking of the musicians. It’s one thing to be out in the audience and hear the main speakers, but another to be able to know what the musicians on-stage are hearing. As Kirk says, “We come in a day before the festival and I spend several hours just getting the stage sound right.” And when the show starts, Kirk says, “Dick’s always there as another set of ears. He knows the music as well as anybody and what it should sound like.”

Bluegrass music is primarily about the tones of the instruments and voices and, in this respect, to amplify those tones and retain their intimate and unique properties is an incredibly subtle and difficult challenge. Old Blue Sound is one of the few sound reinforcement companies that understands those tones and constantly tries to give the audience exactly what is happening on stage. That they are able to do this so consistently is a large reason for their success.

As a writer, I rarely intrude into one of my own articles, but I want to say that when our band shows up at a festival and we see Dick, Kirk, Alvin and Cate and the Old Blue t-shirts, we know that the sound is going to be great. It takes away that little piece of anxiety about dealing with the unknown. And in the rare occasion when something negative does start to happen, they seem to know it before I do and are already correcting it. The only complaint I’ve ever had is that they can’t do every show we do.

Sound reinforcement is one of the most challenging jobs in bluegrass, not just for technical reasons, but for the logistics of concerts and festivals, dealing with promoters, fans and musicians, and staying busy enough to make a career out of it. Old Blue Sound does all these things right and has built a brand that people feel they can put their trust in. It’s a business model that can be applied to other jobs in bluegrass as well. As a fan, you might hear an artist thank the sound people for a job well done. In the case of Old Blue, those thanks are always heartfelt.