Up-Close with The Jersey Sound Man David Schnirman
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David Schnirman
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UP CLOSE ⭐️ David Schnirman ⭐️
Sure, he could tell you about the time Meryl Streep introduced him to Paul McCartney, but West Orange sound man David Schnirman would rather talk about the sound itself. Dude’s an artist. He manipulates the levers and knobs of his complex sound board to make other artists sound their best. Starting with blues legend Robert Junior Lockwood [1915-2006], and alt-folk hero Buzzy Linhart [1943-2020], on through Newark’s own Whitney Houston [1963-2012], Peter Wolf of The J. Geils Band, David Johansen, Ace Frehley of KISS, legendary New Jersey club band T Roth & Another Pretty Face and oh so many more, Schnirman has always twiddled knobs to elicit the exact kind of sound artists need to fulfill their creative ambitions.
As a singer, he had his own band when attending Irvington High School but, as he says, “I always liked playing with gadgets.” He first did so at an Ohio club called Swanky’s. One of the first bands who hired him was a trio with the cumbersome name of The New Vinton County Frog-Whompers Marching Singing Strumming & Plucking Society. “They used to do bluegrass versions of Beatle songs,” he remembers. He worked sound for them on weekends while attending classes at Ohio University as a Communications Major. When the sound man at Swanky’s got busted for selling pot, Schnirman took over the job—putting himself through school that way—while also serving as the university’s Theatrical Sound Designer where his love of sound effects kept him engaged.
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Sting and David Schnirman
But reality bites and he found himself back in Jersey working at a fruit market on Mulberry Street downtown Newark with his father. At night, he’d mix for local Jersey bands, making contacts in the free musician classifieds of the Aquarian Weekly. His girlfriend was going for her Masters Degree at Syracuse University in costuming when he said to her, “hey honey, if the sound designer there dies or leaves, let me know.” Six months later, he left. So in 1979, they up and moved to New York State where he got the job as Syracuse U’s Sound Designer. “I did a lot of concerts there. In ’82, after we got married, we moved back to Jersey again, and I started, with the help of my in-laws, my own sound company called Hear No Evil.”
Artists can be notoriously temperamental. Some can be downright nasty. Imagine putting your best touches on a project and having the artist say it sounds like crap? Such was the case with Lou Reed [1942-2013]. “I thought he was such a dick,” recounts Schnirman, “he kept rushing me along when I wasn’t even halfway home in getting the right sound. It takes time to set up sound! The funny thing is that, despite me thinking of him as the biggest asshole I ever worked with, we became very good friends for over 25 years.
(l-r) Opera singer George Steel, David Schnirman, and Lou Reed
“But, when I was working for him, he was definitely being a dick. I mean, he’d ask for something, I’d answer him honestly, and he’d say, ‘I don’t need your fucking answer. I just need you to do it.’ Lou was going through a lot of things back then in the early- to mid-‘80s. I was there the night he met and fell in love with [avant-garde musician/filmmaker/composer/author/sculptor] Laurie Anderson at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn. I had known Laurie for a long time. Our paths kept crossing because Lou was involved with a lot of artists whom I was involved with like singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, producer Hal Wilner [1956-2020] plus folksingers Kate & Anna McGarrigle. They were all Lou’s friends. I was also good friends with Hal. He was brilliant, had an ear, and a mind like no one else. And, in his own way, he was also very difficult to deal with because he was such a genius. I could only get certain information out of him at times. Yet we did over a hundred productions together.”
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David Schnirman and Rufus Wainwright
Then came Whitney. “I was working at Weisberg Sound in New York City when I met another sound engineer, Mike Malfesi. He had worked with Cyndi Lauper and the band Orleans. He told me he was working with a new rhythm’n’blues artist called Kashif and they needed someone to do stage work and would I be interested?” [Kashif is a producer-composer-arranger responsible for hits by Evelyn “Champagne” King, Stephanie Mills, Al Jarreau, Melba Moore and George Benson.]
Kashif was also sculpting the Whitney sound. “What was cool about Kashif,” explains Schnirman, “is that he was a technologist. He loved that funk tech stuff like the mini-moog. As soon as Yamaha created the DX7 synthesizer, he jumped on that. I ended up becoming the keyboard tech for the band backing Whitney. What was also cool is that Kashif did a lot of his digital sampling with a Synclavier which we traveled with. Whitney’s first record was actually recorded through a Synclavier. All the parts. This let them play back different parts of the recording to change things. I had the opportunity of going into the studio for a couple of sessions with Kashif and Whitney to set up the Synclavier. Then I got asked if I would mix her professional coming-out party at The Limelight in Manhattan. Basically, she performed to tracks. She did a duet with Jermaine Jackson called “Dynamite” that night. She was a lovely lovely person. A little lost but lovely.”
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Rosanne Cash and David Schnirman
Schnirman’s history with Peter Wolf is a lot more extensive. “I had always liked The J. Geils Band,” he says. “One of the bands that played at Swanky’s was Night Train, a blues band. The J. Geils Band was in town for an Ohio University gig in front of 15,000+ yet Peter Wolf and [blues-harp man] Magic Dick showed up to jam. I became really fascinated with Wolf despite hardly meeting him, certainly not getting to know him at that point. Thirty years later, honestly, completely out of the blue, I’m doing a fashion party at the top floor of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, in the Presidential Suite with Canadian singer-songwriter Grimes. It’s where FDR used to stay when he came to New York City. There was a train platform underneath that hotel from Penn Station so FDR could take a private elevator up to that suite. So I’m there and get a call.
“Hey David, this is Peter Wolf.”
I’m like, “not it’s not. Who is this?”
“No really, this is Peter Wolf.”
He had got my contact info from a few mutual acquaintances. He was doing a show at the City Winery. Apparently, his Boston sound guy couldn’t do it, and recommended me. I said I would do it. I was psyched! But it never happened. The Boston guy showed up. So he called me back to cancel me. I got a little upset at that. Over a year later, I got another phone call. It was the ex-manager of Dylan/Emmylou/Willie producer Daniel Lanois. He was now managing Peter Wolf who needed a sound guy and recommended me. So I did a few Peter Wolf shows and that turned into three years with him.”
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The Jersey Sound man (right), also did sound for the reunion after 54 years of Mike Greenblatt (left) and his 1960s high school cover band, The Rock Garden, on August 17, 2024, in Woodstock New York. And he actually made us sound good! Guy must be a genius. (We certainly had no sound man working a mixing board when we were teenagers in 1967 Newark/Hillside!)
Schnirman just finished up a run with classical pianist Lara Downes on a re-imagining of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue,” that she re-titled “Rhapsody For This Land.” The concert was held underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, for about 10,000 people, and was broadcast live on the radio with Montcclair bassist-composer-educator Christian McBride, country singer Rosanne Cash and pianist Arturo O’Farrill. (“Christian’s a sweetheart. Nicest guy in the world,” he says.)
At this juncture of his long career, The Jersey Sound Man has a bunch of projects in the works. The sky’s the limit for this scientist of sound.