Don Gehman is an American record producer, engineer, and executive, best known for his work with John Mellencamp and Hootie & the Blowfish. He was one of "the most successful producers of the 1980s and 1990s." As a sound engineer, he also helped invent the modern rock P.A. and monitor systems.
Early life
Gehman was born in Blue Ball, Pennsylvania. As a child, he was interested in science and his parents' Magnavox stereo. His interests evolved from a photography dark room in the basement to chemistry to physics to electronics.
He played bass guitar in a rock band when he was fourteen years old. He became interested in music technology after learning how to set up the band's P.A. sound system. He started building his amplifiers. Soon, he was building P.A. systems for events and local bands. He met Gene Clair at a local electronics store in 1964; Clair was also assembling P.A. systems in his basement. Clair invited the teenaged Gehman to join his new business, Clair Brothers Sound.
Career
Clair Brothers
In 1969, Gehman became a sound engineer with Clair Brothers Sound, a position he kept for seven years. Together, Clair and Gehman "virtually invented the modern rock band P.A. system and were the first people to create functional P.A. systems that bands could bring on the road with them." They also allowed bands to hear themselves on stage for the first time with their invention of the stage monitor system. As one writer notes, Clair Brothers "was the Apple of live performance and sound equipment. …This is Edison level shit we are talking about."
Soon, Gehman began traveling with bands and their equipment, doing as many as 300 one-night shows a year. He worked with various well-known acts of the era, including James Brown; Blood, Sweat & Tears; Chicago; Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young; The Four Seasons; the Four Tops; the James Gang, Loggins & Messina; The Supremes; The Temptations; and Yes. Although he still found time to work in the studio; in 1975, he was the engineer for Eric Clapton's There's One in Every Crowd and Stephen Stills' album Stills.
Stephen Stills
Gehman said, "I had been on the road for about seven years—off and on. Well, actually, quite consistently for about three years, I was getting pretty burned out. The conditions working on the road in the seventies were really horrible. Nothing like it is today. I just felt that if I was going to live, I'd better find myself another job. I started asking around. Stephen mentioned he was working at Caribou Studios in Colorado on a new solo album and needed some help." After spending a week locked in the studio with Stills in 1973, Gehman earned his first production credit on Stills' 1976 solo album Illegal Stills.
That same year, he produced Long May You Run for The Stills-Young Band, a collaboration of Neil Young with Stephen Stills.
Criteria Studios
With Stills' help, Gehman became an engineer at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida. He says, "Quite frankly, the quality of that record [Illegal Stills] was so poor that it scared me right out of the producing business, and into the engineering business. The engineering thing was actually something that was pretty easy for me, because that's what I had been doing for years. I didn't know how to make a record, but I knew how to run that equipment from being on the road." His stable of clients that he brought with him as well as his experience as a live show engineer let him enter work as a studio engineer at better than entry-level, despite not knowing the recording industry. However, he learned from the producers who came to Criteria, including Tom Dowd, Phil Ramone, and Bill Sczymczyk.
At Criteria, he was the engineer for recordings for the Bee Gees, Eric Clapton, Firefall, Robin Trower, Barbra Streisand, and Jesse Colin Young. In 1978, he was the engineer for Back to Earth by Cat Stevens, Hot Streets by Chicago, and Double Dose by Hot Tuna. He was also the engineer of Pure Prairie League's Can't Hold Back which was released in 1979. He also mixed Joy Division's single "Love Will Tear Us Apart" which was released 1980.
John Mellencamp
In 1979 and 1980, Gehman first began working with John Mellencamp who was then known as John Cougar, engineering the self-titled album John Cougar. Mellencamp came to Criteria to work with Tom Dowd; when Dowd was not available and Gehman did much of the work on the project. Mellencamp returned to Gehman to co-produce his 1982 release, American Fool.