SUMMER OF SOUNDS
A new podcast series from Mike Graff of Coresound Pads
Recently I ’ ve had the joy of hosting the Summer Of Sounds series on The Worship & Technology Podcast from MultiTracks . com . Over the course of the summer , I ’ ve had the privilege of talking with some incredible minds in the world of worship sound design . Plenty of time was spent talking about gear , technique , and best practices , but even more compelling was the heart for God of each of these leaders have , and for what ’ s happening in the local and worldwide Church . There are a bunch of amazing moments that have happened along the way , but here are a few of my absolute favorites :
JIM DANEKER
[ Mike Graff ] I am honored and privileged to be sitting here with none other than the legendary Jim Danker . Jim , thank you so much for being on the podcast . You have such a storied career . There are so many different lanes that we could talk about that you ’ ve been involved in . And I know that we ’ ll get to a lot of it throughout the conversation , but man , I just love to start at the beginning , like just some of the early moments where you started realizing that music was gonna be a big part of life or even sound .
[ Jim Daneker ] Very early on I knew like , you know what , I just gotta move to Nashville . Nothing ’ s gonna happen until I get there . So I went to a travel agent one day and bought a plane ticket and got a rental car . That was it . After I did that , it felt like , you know , the scene in Indiana Jones , three where Indy steps out into the chasm and it looks like he ’ s gonna fall into the abyss , but when the camera pans , you , you see that there was a path laid out for him the whole time ?
Yeah . I feel like that ’ s my life story , you know ? I took that leap of faith to buy the plane ticket , not knowing anybody in Nashville or what I was gonna do or how I was gonna do it . So 10 minutes after I bought that plane ticket , I get home and the phone rings and the guy on the other end is a guy named Denny Keitzman , who was tour manager for dcTalk at the time .
And I would call him every three months or so just to keep my name in his memory . But this was the first time he had been the one to call me . And the way I got to know him was volunteering at a Christian music festival on stage , just changing guitar strings and , you know , drum heads and setting up gear . So he calls me and he said , “ Jim , I , I know you wanna move to Nashville and I know that you wanna play , but you gotta start somewhere and I ’ ve got a job for you if you want it . It ’ s driving a truck around the country for dcTalk this summer setting up band gear .” And I said , “ Denny , I just bought a plane ticket 10 minutes ago .” So it ’ s crazy .
I came down for a week , found an apartment and interviewed for that job and he gave me the job , but that wasn ’ t gonna be enough to , you know , pay the bills .
So I walked into a music store in Nashville and said , “ Hey , here ’ s what I ’ m gonna be doing . Any chance you would hire me to , to work at the music store during the week ?” And when