This small town A/V company started with local church gigs and eventually landed one of the largest college concerts in the country.
The e-mail was unusual in that it came from an unexpected source. I get notes all the time looking for coverage of some show or another, but 80% come from the PR department of some audio manufacturer, while the rest come from someone at one of the big touring companies. Occasionally, I’ll get a call from a church or performing arts center looking for coverage of an install.
“I am very proud to announce that the small AV company I work for will be putting on this year's largest college concert in the country,” wrote Production Manager Rob Abercrombie. Had to be an overstatement, but he got my attention through a combination of humility (“how can we get a snippet in FOH?” he asked) and gonads (“or a cover story?”). I e-mailed back and told Rob how to send us info for a Showtime listing or perhaps a small news story. Then, as more of an afterthought than anything, he added that I could cover it myself if someone else were to foot the travel expenses. Small company, small town — I figured it would never happen and that I was safe.
So about six weeks later, there I was standing in the Johnson City, Tenn., airport waiting for my ride to the venue to cover Audio Video Integration’s work on a Carrie Underwood show at East Tennessee State University. Yes, I was surprised to be there, but that was just one of a series of surprises.
Non-Arrogance of Youth
I was met at the very small airport by Chris, who looked to be about 20 years old. He said he would get me to my hotel, and I would meet the rest of the crew in the morning. After an hour or so of driving around lost (by myself — I had to go back to the airport to retrieve a forgotten piece of luggage) and calling Chris to guide me back, he had me meet him at the restaurant he was at with the rest of the AVI crew. Sure enough, there was Chris along with a couple of other kids. I was introduced, but the names really didn’t stick. It had been a long day and I just wanted to get some rest.
Fast-forward to late the next morning when I walked across the street from my hotel into the venue. I asked the first person I saw with a radio if he could direct me to Rob and he pointed toward the surfer-looking kid from the night before. When I started talking to Rob, he quickly steered me toward the other kid from the restaurant and the runner, Chris. It was only at that moment that I figured out that these two “kids” were Chris Taylor and Garrett Harris — co-owners of Audio Video Integration.
Friends from high school, Chris and Garrett went off to different colleges, but both eventually ended up working up the road a piece in Nashville. After nearly a decade of working for others, touring and working in town with a series of Nashville acts, they both decided that they wanted to get back to the small town where they grew up. So, they moved to Johnson City and started up AVI.
Today, AVI is well stocked and busy with a Renkus-Heinz PN102LA self-powered line array and subs along with industry standard dynamics and signal rocessors and a nice selection of mics. They even have their own stage and lighting. But it was not always thus.
“For two years, we didn’t do anything,” Garrett recalls. “And when we did work it meant going back to Nashville.” There was one AV company in the general area already and only so much business. But eventually the gigs started coming — slow and small but coming. And this being rural eastern Tennessee, it comes as no surprise that most of the gigs were in churches. They began acquiring more gear, but still making the trip to Nashville more often than either of them wanted to.
Sounds like the story of many a failed soundco, doesn’t it? So how, in just six years, did AVI go from scrambling for gigs to giving instructions to Carrie Underwood’s Clair Bros. touring crew? For that info we need to get “Ludacris.”
Banned In the Bible Belt
“The university here puts on a concert for the students every year,” explains Chris. “It’s a free show — If you have a student ID you can get a ticket — and the past few years, they have really been stepping up the level of acts they are bringing in.”
Not only are the shows free, but the university administration also lets students vote on who they want to bring in. Three years ago, the verdict was rapper Ludacris. “The shows used to be held in a smaller venue up the street called Freedom Hall Civic Center,” Chris continued. But all was not peaceful in Johnson City, and some members of the local religious community had issues with the rapper appearing in town. With so much of the local business being church-based, the established company in town made the safe call and backed out along with the venue.
“They moved the show into the field house here,” Garrett says, gesturing around the cavernous building that presently houses Underwood’s very large stage. “We got the call and came in and did the show.” Was there fallout from their church clients? “We did have some clients who had a problem with us doing the gig,” says Chris. “But,” interjects Garrett, “we just told them that he was a client like any other client. Just because we did his sound did not mean we approved of what he was saying.”
It seemed to work — the company lost none of its church business. Ironically (and this may have something do with AVI keeping its church business), some local churches set up a protest concert of sorts on the other side of campus. And the sound company was? Yep. AVI.
From that point, things kind of took off and the trips to Nashville became fewer and further between. The following year, the university brought in the Goo Goo Dolls, and AVI got the bid. The show went well enough that they now have a five-year contract with the university as its exclusive audio provider.
From New Kids To Big Kids
Soon there was more work than the duo could handle alone. Today, AVI has several full-time employees and are in the process of opening an office in North Carolina. But while their inventory has grown along with their business, they have taken an unusual stance of owning no large consoles. That’s right. Zero. None. Their console inventory consists of a Soundcraft GB8-40, 40-channel FOH console and an Allen & Heath GL2400, 32-channel monitor desk. Nothing fancy. Nothing digital.
“Nashville is still right up the road, and by renting what we need, we can always meet the rider. It keeps us flexible and has allowed us to grow other parts of our business,” says Chris.
But success has not been without its issues. “I had a heart attack two years ago,” says Garrett (who is 38). “Slowed me right down. We were doing a concert on Satuday until 3 a.m. and then had to be back out for a church gig at 5:30. I was catching a couple of hours of sleeping on a couch in the office.” AVI has dropped most of their club gigs, kept their church business, and added the university and a good deal of commercial install work. (While we were in countdown mode for the Underwood show, AVI’s Install Manager Chris Taylor was busy dealing with Fed Ex about a shipment of flat screen TVs for an install at a string of Chili’s restaurants that was scheduled to begin the next morning.)
Oh, that and supervising a full production crew from some of the biggest production companies in the world as they prepared for a show by an A-list country act. And they say you can’t go back home…
