The Sonics – A Tacoma Band

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• Gordon....it looks like the album was released on vinyl and not CD. However KEXP has the video of the show free online. It would not be difficult to dub the audio. If you need anything else you can email me at
  ssmith@qzvx.com

  Here is the link to the show.

  https://www.kexp.org/read/2016/4/14/live-video-the-sonics-live-at-easy-street-records/

• Steve, is there any way I could acquire 1-3 copies of the Sonics soundtrack that was recorded and filmed at KEXP?

• When KTW switched from beautiful music after the sale in 1964 I was 18. Now I am 75 and I have lost some of the bits and pieces in my memory. I think they fall out every time I blow my nose.

• I was 18 when KTW switched from beautiful music/religion to top 40 and now I am 75. I still can remember my name. But it wasn't Tom, Dick, Harry or Sam. (wink)

• Thanks for thinking about it Brian. Lots of memories in our brains at this age. I still remember the first time I ever saw a live brontosaurus.

  • I was there when KTW switched from easy listening to top 40 in 1964. I was 18 and am now 75. I think I lose a bit of my memory every time I blow my nose.

• My memory has been jogged. The engineer for KTW AM-FM was an older gentleman named Jim Ross. He worked for Seattle City Light as well as helping out at KTW. I believe he must have been a member of the First Presbyterian Church.

• Jay...I was not implying the engineer received any royalties. I would expect an hourly or by session paycheck. I was implying, per Brian's remarks, that there probably was not much money in being a PNW sound enginer even though many of the songs are now highly regarded collector's items. I also was not surprised the engineer would moonlight in a related field like parttime jock as a way to supplement his income.

  • Oh, I guess I did misunderstand. I just figured that Kearney Barton must have made a pretty damn good living without a need for moonlighting. My understanding is he started out with a radio show on KTW-Seattle in the early 50s and then to KNBX-Seattle in 1958 as an engineer. By 1961 he opened his own recording studio (Audio Recording, Inc.) and then move it to a larger space by 1965. He spent decades recording the cream of the crop of Seattle recording artists. The Fleetwoods, Quincy Jones, The Wailers, The Frantics, Little Bill & The Bluenotes, The Kingsmen, Dave Lewis and so many other acts who only had minor success. It was basically his studio and I'm fairly sure he wasn't giving away studio time! Most studios charged by the hour with a fluctuating scale depending on the time of day. Ad Agencies also used his studios for recording commercials, etc. My guess would be he made a pretty good living. But, when you get right down to it, it's only a guess!

    • Jay...I had never heard of him until a year or so back you told me about him being at the Kathi McDonald and The Unusuals session. I will have to look him up again.

    • When I interviewed Kearney, he was situated in his final studio--which was the basement of his home over in the area of the University village in Seattle...wow, it was pretty disorganized!...lots of tapes and recording related gear all over the place...and Mr. Barton suggested that he had recorded the teenage Jimi Hendrix, when he was with one of his local groups...I was not about to contradict the man, but I knew he was mistaken...the only group that he played with that entered a studio, was his last group, called Tom and the Tomcats--they were likely the ones Kearney recorded--but Hendrix had already entered the Army (31May 1961) and therefor were without Jimi when they recorded a 45 during the summer of 1961. Mr. Barton was sure he had the tape--somewhere--but admitted that his archives were all scattered. Also, he was a little shaky with his memory--I could not get him to remember, that he had recorded a 45 featuring an aunt of mine, back in the mid-70s (it went nowhere!).

      • My understanding is that when the 80 yr. old Barton died in 2012 there were as many as 7,000 reel-to-reel tapes piled up in his house. The University of Washington carefully cataloged these tapes and Dan Trager, who had known Kearney and was a former Sub Pop Records (of Seattle) employee, listened to many hours of these tapes and with input from a team drawn from the University, headed by archivist John Vallier, put together a compilation album from those recordings.
        Here's a sample from that LP featuring Ann Wilson (later of Heart). "Through Eyes and Glass" by Ann Wilson & The Daybreaks:
        https://youtu.be/BhAzdajkAN8

• Brian....I imagine that back in those days moonlighting in similar fields made sense. There could not have been all that much money in being the recording engineer on PNW releases...although many of them became much more important to historians than might have been anticipated at the time.

  • I've never known of any recording studio engineer making any kind of royalty payment from record sales. They, under normal circumstances, would receive their money up front for the recording session .... from the record company or A&R producer. In reality, they are the only person (beyond the studio owner) making money off of every record ... regardless of sales.

• Steven, when I saw your reply, it jogged my now foggy memory. I have to retract that statement I made. Kearney worked on the weekends as a fill in dj occasionally and he engineered the Sunday broadcast that was at the First Presbyterian Church and carried on KTW. I started thinking and now I believe the engineer was a older gentleman with the first name Jim and his regular job had nothing to do with radio stations. Maybe Dave Hebert can remember the engineers last name.

• Brian....that is interesting because in my experience most recording engineers were sound guys with a discriminating ear...not RF and antenna guys.