About me
I started my career in lighting as a student at Florida State University in the mid 1960s. While in school, I got a job at the school’s professional stage, Wescott Auditorium (now Ruby Diamond Auditorium). I ran a carbon arc Trouper at first, and learned every job in the theatre from electrician to rigger etc.. With a few of my fellow stagehands, we formed a sound and lighting company called Wednesday Sound. We did professional lighting and sound and travelled in a 500 mile radius from Tallahassee doing festivals and rock shows. At that time, most bands didn’t bring their own sound and lighting and we were on the approved list so we had a busy schedule traveling in the Southeast. I left to do a Leon Russell tour with Theatrical Equipment Rental (TERI) and did tours with The James Gang, Charley Daniels, Marshall Tucker, Olivia Newton John, ZZ Top, Elvis Presley and others.
I moved to LA in 1975 to work with Jim Moody at Sundance Lighting and lit many rock shows including REO Speedwagon and John Denver and more. I left Sundance and went to work for See Factor”s LA office and kept very busy doing shows for Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow, Angel, Gino Vanelli and many more. I did a Reggae Festival in Africa with TFA in large stadiums in Sierra Leone, Dakar, Abidjan and Nigeria. I will NEVER do that again. Then I went to work full-time for REO Speedwagon at the apex of their career as their lighting designer and also their production manager. In 1980, I got married to my wife Lisa (with whom I am still married) and wanted to get off the road. We did very large productions for bands such as Queen, Rod Stewart, Cory Hart, Air Supply, Foreigner, Yes, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks and the list goes on and on. We even did the first Rock in Rio. The next stage of my career was in sales. Joe Tawil at Great American Market hired me to be his sales manager. I learned about all of the production companies and dealers in the US, Asia and Europe and in approximately 2.5 years, I tripled their sales. I launched several products such as ColorMax, the first scrolling color changer, the Access computer lighting control console and GAM Color. As a commissioned salesman, I ended up earning too much money so when Joe asked to re-visit my deal, I left to be Vice-President at Wybron. In a similar way, even though I had no salary, only a commission, I more than tripled their sales in under three years.
The next move was to start my own company. David Leggett, the MD of AC Lighting in England wanted to partner with me in forming AC Lighting, Inc. in the US. We started this together and hit the ground running with European and British products. We had Jands from Australia and launched the Whole Hog in the US. We also launched wysiwyg at that time. After High End Systems bought Flying Pig Systems, we lost the Whole Hog even though we sold more in the US than the rest of the world combined. I searched for something to take advantage of the expertise that we developed with Hog and found the grandMA which was not ready yet but close enough to allow me to see the future. In 1999, I bought out my partners in the UK and two years later changed the company name to ACT Lighting. In 2014, I sold ACT to a private equity group called BASE Equity Partners. Ben Saltzman became part of that company and now runs ACT Entertainment and I am happily free to do whatever I want to.
