Building a touring sound company

In 1970, Showco entered a new phase. Jack Calmes, Rusty Brutsche, and Jack Maxson established a touring sound business in Dallas, building on the earlier Showco promotion years. David Alley joined the company’s early leadership; a 1973 Billboard profile identified all four men as its principals.

Their challenge was practical. A system had to reproduce a band clearly, provide sound the musicians could use onstage, withstand transportation, and be assembled repeatedly in unfamiliar venues.

From components to a complete system

Showco’s engineers used professional audio components while developing the cabinets, electronics, connections, and packaging around them. The system’s organization mattered as much as the power of any individual amplifier or speaker.

Equipment and skilled people traveled together. Each tour gave the company new information about what needed to be improved. Relationships with artists including Three Dog Night, James Taylor, and Led Zeppelin helped the operation grow.

The people behind the early equipment

Chuck Conrad joined during Showco’s earliest sound-company years and developed the modular Yellow Mixer. He also built a desk-style console associated with Jack Maxson and Three Dog Night.

Jim Bornhorst joined in January 1972. His early electronics work led to a central role in the Superboard project. In his account, Maxson defined its specifications, Brutsche handled the mechanical design, and Bornhorst designed the electronics and circuit boards.

These were successive developments, with different contributors and different purposes. Together, they show Showco learning how to design equipment specifically around touring work.

Sound grows into total production

Showco also began developing lighting and other production capabilities. John Tedesco’s self-contained airlift lighting tower addressed the same touring concerns as the sound equipment: packaging, transport, and quick setup.

Billboard’s September 8, 1973 profile captured how far Showco had moved beyond its earliest sound systems. The company was operating from an expanding 33,000-square-foot Dallas facility, employing about 70 people and sending ten complete sound units and four lighting-and-staging units onto the road, including work in Europe.

The operation extended across sets, special effects, large outdoor systems, equipment manufacturing, instruments and amplifiers, custom vehicles, and early video work. Affiliated companies also handled artist management, booking, publishing, and record production. Artists connected to this wider network included Bloodrock, Freddie King, Leon Russell, Thunder, John Nitzinger, and others.

At Willie Nelson’s Dripping Springs Picnic, Showco’s system reportedly served a crowd of roughly 60,000. Billboard also described massive bass horns designed for stadium audiences and noted that Showco’s recording work was done at January Sound Studios in Dallas. The article shows that by 1973, Showco was already operating as an integrated production organization—not simply a sound company.

The materials below document those formative years: the equipment, the tours, and the people turning a small Dallas operation into an international touring company.

Sources and related pages: Jim Bornhorst’s 2018 presentation; Chuck Conrad’s equipment history; the 1973 Billboard profile on David Alley’s page. Explore the earlier promotion years.