Owner John “Klondike” Koehler’s passion for pro audio comes from a deeper level — the magic behind the music.
The question of what attracts people to a profession in pro audio elicits a wide variety of responses. John “Klondike” Koehler, owner/operator of Klondike Sound Co. in Greenfield, Massachusetts takes the answer to a whole other level.
“I’ve always been interested in energy transfer, whether it was turning the key on the dashboard and hearing an engine roar to life or putting your foot down to the floor and feeling energy applied to the rear wheels,” he says. “There was just something fascinating about the way that energy, and in this case specifically, electrical energy could move columns of air and bring people to share an emotional experience. It was really something close to Wizard of Oz magic.”
Koehler first experienced the limitations of that magic in 1966 when he saw The Beatles play D.C. Stadium in Washington, D.C. “A ring of Altec A7s on the running track around the baseball field were simply no match for the fans,” he recalls. “At that point, it became real obvious to me that if music was to be experienced in a large setting, the hardware had a long way to go. That put me on a path to find ways to make sound that came through a loudspeaker more representative of the source.”
Finding a Solution
So, during his college days, the “recovering” bass player started to put pieces of audio gear together while looking for a new loudspeaker recipe. The first rig that he came up with was a pair of 4 x 12” Kustom columns with some Altec 511B horns perched on top with hand wound LC cross-overs. His and the company’s selection of gear moved from there to hot-rodded EV Sentry IVs, a big pile of chopped up Klipsch La Scalas, Tur-bosound TMS-4s, EV MT enclosures and finally to a wide assortment of L-Acoustics V-DOSC rigs.
These days Klondike relies on a big inventory of V-DOSC arrays, QSC HPR loudspeakers, ARC and Meyer fills and EAW SB1000 subwoofers that are powered by QSC and Lab.gruppen FP 7000 power amps. The company also boasts a wide variety of consoles from Yamaha, Midas, Crest and Soundcraft. “The key thing is that we can deploy up to 1,000 inputs a night,” Koehler reports.
Of course, Klondike didn’t start out with all that technology at its disposal. Koehler recalls the first show he worked on in 1969 for B.B. King. “There were no monitors, only three microphones. There was 100 watts for the whole house speaker system. It’s interesting to note that that same show in that same venue now would involve 500 times that much power.”
Over the next couple of decades, Koehler moved from a college dormitory into a series of offices — and his client list grew accordingly. During the company’s early years, Koehler worked with jazz legends such as Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Tormé and Stan Getz in venues that ranged from Carnegie Hall to Kennedy Center to the Symphony Hall in Boston.
Finding the Sweet Spot
Working in those halls taught him valuable lessons. “Those are venues that are acoustically very challenging,” he says, “and if you’re careful not to overwrite the acoustic signature of the room, you can get great intelligibility and a very ambient and appropriate listening experience. Most of the time in those environments, you can over-amplify and very quickly lose the battle for a sweet sounding show.”
Klondike Sound has added an impressive list of clients and events to its list of gigs, In fact, the company has recently provided gear for Crosby & Nash, Emmylou Harris, Mavis Staples and Susan Tedeschi as the artists traveled through the Northeast.
The company has also provided tour support for Ani DiFranco for the past 12 years. “She’s been a very steady, very loyal and wonderful account for us,” Koehler says. “She is an example of an artist who places sound reinforcement quality very high on her priorities.”
Koehler first met DiFranco when Klondike provided sound for one of her shows in Maine. “We heard that she liked a lot of low end in her monitor speakers, and so we basically laid a couple of PA boxes on their sides and gave her what she wanted, which was an enormous amount of energy,” he says. “People were approaching her as a folkie, but here is a girl, barely five feet tall, with an acoustic guitar who can sound like an entire reggae band by herself.”
Beyond individual shows and tours, Klondike works on a number of music festivals. In fact, the list of festivals that the crew works at is impressive and runs from the Philadelphia Folk Fest to Michael Arnone’s Crawfish Fest, Rhythm and Roots Festival, the Hudson River Revival and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, where he’s worked as the audio director for the past 30 years. “We mix every conceivable style, from Bulgarian choirs to bluegrass to Zydeco,” Koehler reports.
Keeping It Real
So, how does that influence Koehler as a mixer? “It kept me honest. It wasn’t about subwoofers,” he answers with a laugh. “It was really about what can I do to be true to this source, to this music. It’s really, I think, about having the musical sensitivity to identify very quickly the lead me-lodic, the lead lyrical and the lead rhythmic components and use those as focal points in the mix, because that’s what the audience is there for.”
Klondike has now been in operation for 40 years, and Koehler has some definite ideas on how the company has survived. “Do very thorough advance work with everyone involved, always bring something extra to the show and get the equipment out of the way of the music. We also maintain a very deep and very flexible inventory to accommodate overlaying events,” he says.
The company’s experience, he believes, gives him a leg up on any local competition that has sprung up thanks to the boom in affordable equipment. “Of course, some pricing adjustment has been necessary, but we work harder than most to bring more value to the production before, during and after the event. The key is helping the promoters and, of course, the artists succeed in giving a great concert.” That said, there are some things that Koehler has done to differentiate the company from others, including keeping a deep stock of inventory that features a low-noise floor, a strong office staff and a roster of “technicians who consider their sound systems to be musical instruments and play them well.”{mosimage}
The future, Koehler reports, looks bright. Indeed, the company has already booked the spring and summer with more than 100 shows, and he’s al-ways looking towards bringing in new gear that improves the experience for audiences. “We love the opportunity to make something lighter and smaller and sound better,” he says. “That’s the key.”
