The Sound of Music (and other things)
If you’ve ever been to a concert, conference, or play, you’ve got the sound person to thank for a big part of the experience.
After all, were it not for him or her, it would be difficult to hear the performance from farther away than the first dozen rows.
Joe Anderson, who discovered his penchant for sound production by accident, understands this. He’s the founder, owner, and operator of Spanish Fork-based AnderSound, LLC.
“I remember in high school choir,” he recalled, “seeing some guy carrying around microphones. I was really intrigued by what he was doing, but what I really wanted then was to be on stage. I wanted to be a performer.” Anderson’s desire to perform led him to audition for a touring performance group at then-Ricks College. Thirty seconds into the audition was all it took to realize singing as a performer wasn’t in his future. He did, however, get to help behind the scenes with the group as a member of its technical crew, changing costumes, loading equipment trucks, among other duties.
After transferring to Brigham Young University, Anderson started working with theater students who asked him to do sound for their individual performances. In those days, he had to borrow equipment to do the jobs, which he did for free.
“After a while, they started paying me for it,” he laughed. “Next thing I knew, people started calling me to do bigger and bigger things. That’s the way it’s been for the last 30 years.”
Officially a company since 1998, AnderSound got its name as the result of a public relations class Anderson took at BYU. As part of a class assignment, he had to come up with a name for a fictitious company. AnderSound was what he chose.
The name became a joke and play on words amongst his friends, then became reality when a client wrote a check to “AnderSound” for his services.
“I had no way to cash it, so I actually had to form a business to be able to cash that $200 check,” he said.
As his sound gigs increased, friends at
Deseret Book hooked Anderson up with local musician Michael McLean to do sound for the popular The Forgotten Carols production, a show for which he continues to do sound.
This show alone has given Anderson the freedom to grow his business.
Anderson has done sound for a variety of local groups, including Ryan Shupe & The RubberBand. He also did sound for a women’s conference that took him all over the country and into Canada, and for a band that performed in the British Isles.
One of the biggest benefits of Anderson’s career was that he met his wife, accomplished singer/songwriter Cherie Call, at some of his early gigs.
“We figured out that
the first interaction we ever had was when I, as a student, was doing sound for her songwriting class at BYU,” he said.
Over the next several years, the two saw each other at various shows that involved them both—he as a sound guy, she as a performer. Eventually, Call opened for and toured with boy band Jericho Road, for whom Anderson was doing sound.
“For some reason,” he recalled, “they didn’t have a seat for her in the van that was carrying the boy band. So, she had to ride in the equipment truck with me and the lighting guy.” The rest, as they say, is history.
It took eight years after that for them to marry, but Anderson got a business partner out of the deal – in more ways than one.