“Somebody had to figure out the microphone thing. So that was the first thing I did.”
Jerry Pfeffer got into the PA business while playing in his first band. He was in grammar school. “Somebody had to figure out the microphone thing,” he recalls with a laugh. “So that was the first thing I did.” A handful of years later, Pfeffer was working at a hi-fi store in San Francisco when the phone rang and somebody needed a PA system. The owner let him borrow the van and he loaded up a couple of speakers with a handful of microphones. “It’s been one of those things where it’s one job to another to another,” he says of his company’s growth, “until it’s got to this point. It’s a little crazy now.”
A Little Crazy
A little crazy is a little bit of an understatement, considering that Sound on Stage is one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s preeminent regional com-panies. In fact, its gear and personnel can be found at venues like the Shoreline Amphitheatre, Concord Pavilion, Warfield and Bill Graham Civic, at corporate events for companies like Apple, Oracle and Adobe, and at civic happenings like the inaugurations for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. And that’s just a partial list.
“Last year we pushed in excess of 1,200 events,” reports General Manager George Edwards. “We were really flying. At one point last summer, we did 63 shows in nine days.”
Edwards points to a number of reasons why the company has excelled over the years, including low employee turnover, a good sense of camaraderie, an eye on technology and tight inventory control. “I would say that 90 percent of us that are here have been here 10 to 30 years,” Edwards says. “There is no hierarchy. You’ll see the owner of the company in his nice white tennis shoes and gold watch tipping trucks with the new 25-year-old kid.
“To coin one of Jerry’s phrases,” Edwards continues, “we’re all just here to refine our craft. We’re not trying to be millionaires or rocket scientists. We love what we do and we’re blessed enough to be able to continue to do it.”
Following the Pulse of Technology
On the technology front, Sound on Stage makes gear decisions based on rider requirements, Edwards explains. To that end, the company has re-cently added digital boards from Digidesign and Yamaha and Lab.gruppen amplification to its collection of L-ACOUSTICS V-DOSC boxes and analog boards. “We’re not being complacent,” he states. “We’re following the pulse of technology and staying as close as possible.”
All of the Sound on Stage gear is managed via a new bar code and inventory tracking system that boosts efficiency and practically ensures bidding and work flow success. “We’ve got multiple ways to tell if we’ve oversold,” Edwards says. “Red flags come up if something is in the back of a truck from the night before and it needs to go to another truck.”
And while Sound on Stage has flirted with staging, lighting and video over the years, the company remains an audio house. “We stick to what we know best,” Edwards says. “Every so often somebody kicks around the idea of buying some plasmas and a projector, but as soon as it comes up, it dies.”
Friendly Competition
While the Bay Area features a number of sound companies, Edwards points out that each has their own niche, and it’s rare that Sound on Stage will get a call from somebody else’s customer. “Once in a blue moon, maybe if there’s a new person in the picture checking out options, we’ll get a phone call,” he says. “But we talk to each other. If I get a call, I’ll call the other company and ask about it. There’s a lot of work out there and very rarely do our paths cross, so I like to believe that at a bare minimum it’s friendly competition. There’s a little honor amongst bidders.”
As far as competition from bigger companies coming into the area, Edwards says that the same philosophy applies. “At one point, we all have toured for the company, so consequently we developed relationships with [people from the national companies],” he reports. “When they have gigs out this way they’ll call and respectfully say, ‘Please take care of my customer.’ We look at those calls as welcoming and not threatening. I think the truth of the matter is they know that we’re the little engine that could. We’re not looking to conquer the world. We’re just looking to do well with what we have.”
The Times They Are A-Changin’
That said, Pfeffer marvels at the change in his business. “I never thought it would be like this,” he admits with a laugh. “I remember thinking that if I could ever have enough gear to do a show at the Cow Palace, that would be a big thing. Then you hit that goal and you think, ‘Wow, maybe I could do a stadium show like Day on the Green.’
“When you’re starting out, you never have an idea that it’s going to get this crazy,” he continues. “Having more than one system was something I couldn’t understand.” Then he pauses before adding, “I really find this a good time to be in the business. It’s changing and it’s a little scary at times, but everyone is trudging forward.”
