328. The Showco Archive Project

If you’ve been around the live sound industry for more than a few years, you’ve almost certainly heard of legendary sound company Showco. And if you’ve been active at all on LinkedIn or other social media lately, you’ve very likely seen a lot of activity from the Showco Archive Project. This online catalog of all sorts of amazing bits of Showco history caught our eyes, and we knew we had to get the rest of the story! This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.This week, Sean and Andy are joined by Indigo Kretzschmar-May, founder and curator of Showco Archives, an ongoing preservation project dedicated to documenting the people, stories, artifacts, and backstage culture behind one of the most influential live sound companies in music history. Indigo grew up in and around Showco alongside her father, Showco sound engineer (and Lynrd Skyndyrd plane crash survivor) Donnie “DK” Kretzschmar to share a look at Showco’s history, the archives, and more!Joining Indigo is Mike “Dr. Funk” Ponczek, also of Showco, whose career in live audio spans nearly five decades (and counting!), including mixing for The Who, The Kinks, Eric Claptop, and Paul McCartney, and continues today working at Dallas’s Kessler Theater.Episode Links:Showco Archives (here and here)Showco Swag ShopEpisode 328 TranscriptNOTE: Mike Green, the artist who performs “Break Free” that opens every episode, has released a new album — Hang The Moon: Part One — available on all streaming platforms as well as DSPs that support spatial audio. Mikegreenmusic.com will direct folks to the vinyl release or allow them to purchase digitally. And, Mike is hitting the road with Whitney Tai for “The Record Store Tour” starting May 23 in New Orleans. Find out more here.Connect with the community on the Signal To Noise Facebook Group and Discord Server. Both are spaces for listeners to create to generate conversations around the people and topics covered in the podcast — we want your questions and comments!Also please check out and support The Roadie Clinic, Their mission is simple. “We exist to empower & heal roadies and their families by providing resources & services tailored to the struggles of the touring lifestyle.”The Signal To Noise Podcast on ProSoundWeb is co-hosted by pro audio veterans Andy Leviss and Sean Walker.Want to be a part of the show? If you have a quick tip to share, or a question for the hosts, past or future guests, or listeners at home, we’d love to include it in a future episode. You can send it to us one of two ways:1) If you want to send it in as text and have us read it, or record your own short audio file, send it to [email protected] with the subject “Tips” or “Questions”2) If you want a quick easy way to do a short (90s or less) audio recording, go to https://www.speakpipe.com/S2N and leave us a voicemail there.