John “Mac” McDonnell
Mac started his professional career 1 month after graduating from college. It was a case of being in the right place at the right time. He went to work for Stanal Sound, Ltd in Kearney, Nebraska. His first tour was with Johnny Cash. At Stanal he also toured with John Denver, Olivia Newton John, Paul Simon, Donavan, and many others. He left Stanal Sound as Vice President of the Touring Division to go to work for himself. This found him in Austin, TX.
3 months after moving to Austin, he met Kirk Whalum, 11-time Grammy Nominated and Grammy winning Saxophonist. Kirk had just released his first Vinyl record on Columbia Jazz and was at the very beginning of his career. Again, Mac was in the right place at the right time. After a few months of mixing miscellaneous shows for Kirk, he hired Mac as his Tour Manager and Front of House Engineer. This relationship with Kirk has led to many other tours with jazz artists like Larry Carlton, Bob James, Fourplay, 8 Guitars and Sax’s tours, Wayman Tisdale, Warren Hill, Jeff Golub, BWB, Philippe Saisse, plus many production management gigs and has toured the world with these artist’s several times. Mac was also an On-Call audio person for One World Theatre for 15 years.
Mac is a voting member of NARAS (The Grammy’s), and a member of the Audio Engineering Society.
In 2003, Mac received a call to teach a Live Sound and Production Class at Mediatech Institute in Austin. Having never taught, Mac was quite apprehensive about facing young inquiring minds. After the first session, Mac found he really enjoyed watching the “bulb come on” as the young students understood various audio principles. He taught Live Sound and Production and was the Career Services person for the Austin Campus.
Dan Childers
Throughout his audio career, Dan has been committed to educating budding young (and not so young) audio professionals. He’s been involved with Austin Community College since 1995 and has taught there since 2001. At ACC, he teaches Audio 2 and Audio 3, and teaches Acoustics / Studio Design with the esteemed Julienne Lemond, PhD. In addition, he spent 14 years teaching audio classes at MediaTech Institute’s Austin campus from its opening day to its recent untimely closure.
In Austin, Dan continues to work as a freelance engineer and producer working out of some of the best studios in Austin including Ohm Recording Facility, Pedernales Studios, Arlyn Studios, Bismaeux Studios, and Cedar Creek Studios, recording a wide variety of music and artists.
He especially enjoys live recording and has engineered events for the Austin City Limits Music Festival, Wide Spread Panic, Leo Kottke, The Allman Brothers, The Black Crowes, Buddy Guy, The Robert Randolph Family Band, Guv’t Mule, Lyle Lovett, Los Lobos, The Gypsy Kings, The Arc Angels, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and Franz Ferdinand.
He has spent many years working for the reknown Andy Murphy and Frank Simon at what is now known as The Butler School of Music recording studios. There he recorded various local artists and ensembles including The Austin Symphony, The Austin Lyric Opera, and various university ensembles including The UT Jazz Orchestra and UT Symphony. He has also recorded visiting artists including The Turtle Island String Quartet.
In Atlanta, GA, he spent many enjoyable days and nights at Chuck Jopski’s Summerhouse Sound studios, and was staff engineer for Rising Star Records and mastering engineer for New Age Voice.
Dan holds a BA in Music from the University of Texas at Arlington where he studied among other things, classical guitar with the great Charles Postlewate.