The Man Behind the Sound

When Robin Abb ("Rockin' Robin") and the Niwot Business Association came up with the idea for Niwot's Rhythm on the Rails summer concert series in 2005 when the bandstand was built in Whistle Stop Park, she had already decided who should manage the sound.

Craig Cutcliff, the sound engineer, remembers that moment clearly. "I started the first year that they had it. Rockin' Robin called me up," he said. "I had mixed her band. So that's when I started. And I've been doing it ever since."

Cutcliff admits that 2023 has been an unusual season. "We've gotten wet pretty much every week. And in the 18 years or so I've been doing this we had one show that got rained out, that they never got to play at all. And that was Rebecca Folsom, probably 8 or 10 years ago. And strangely enough this year she got cut short after six tunes because of the storm. It was just so bad we couldn't continue. But otherwise, we have been able to do all of the weeks. We haven't stopped a show. We've gotten wet a few times but still managed to get through it."

Cutcliff, in his 18th year as the sound engineer for the free weekly concert series now known as Rock & Rails, has been impressed with the quality of the bands over the years, and he always looks forward to setting up in Whistle Stop Park on Thursdays.

"There's an opening band that runs from 5:00 to 6:00 [p.m.], and the main act runs from 6:30 to 9:00 [p.m.]," Cutcliff explained. "Ideally the band gets there early and sets up either before or while the opener's performing. But that doesn't always happen. So, we just do whatever we have to. Usually, we don't get a sound check. It would be nice, but we don't. They just start playing. I get a line level, make sure everybody's in the mix and the first song or two is the sound check."

When he was ten, Cutcliff, originally from Ohio, started playing saxophone. He played in the school band and formed a band with his brother.

"The Beatles came along, and all of the sudden we were interested in guitars and things like that, so we eventually put a band together. I started playing saxophone--because nobody was playing guitar solos at the age of 10."

It was that early experience that shaped his interest in sound production. "We bought a sound system when I was 13. A very antiquated system. I remember it was a Bogan Challenger, which nobody's ever heard of. And a couple of speaker columns. And that kept us from running the vocal mics through the amplifiers: guitar amps, bass amps. So, we started that and I'm just the one that started doing it."

Cutcliff played in bands throughout high school. Though he attended college for a short time, it did not suit him. "'Cause I was headstrong and stubborn. I just always played for a living for 27 years and during that time almost always ran sound from stage. And then we were doing original material, so we put a studio together and people liked what they heard, so I mixed other people. Just picked it up over the years and it's always been a love of mine, second probably to playing, but there seems to be more demand for me to mix than there is to play. Might say something about my talent, I don't know," he said with a wry smile.

In 1980 Cutcliff moved to Colorado after living in California, where he and a partner were trying to sell original songs. "I was actually on my way to California to become a rock 'n' roll star back in the late '70s and stopped in Denver for a week. And I spent a week here, but I was on my way to become a star, so I went out to California and after about four years, I just decided on a whim to move here. And fell in love with it."

During those early years, Cutcliff put together a band called Roadhouse, which would play at Eck's Saloon in Lakewood. "It was basically three of us with a singer. I played bass. I got into sequencing when it first came out. And drum machines, keyboards and everything. And we would sequence the parts we couldn't play live. If I was playing horns, and there were trumpet parts, we would sequence those parts, and I would sequence a bass line so I could play saxophone. While the music was still going on, my partner played guitar and keyboards and so everything we couldn't reproduce live we did on a sequencer. Except vocals. I never sequenced vocals. We had to do that live... and I did the same thing with the other band. It was guitar, bass and drums, and then we used the sequencer, and the guitar player was really good at sequencing and the drummer and I could both sequence... We got into doing lights and everything else."

As the sound engineer for Rock & Rails, Cutcliff is responsible for setting up the microphones for each individual instrument and the vocalists on stage. "There is the bass player, and usually there is a guitar player, maybe a keyboard player, whoever is singing. Sometimes I'll have horns. Each instrument or voice gets a microphone, and that gets sent to me and then I mix that out front."

But his job doesn't end there. Adjustments to the faders (the levers on the sound mixer) throughout the show control the volume of the instrument or voice assigned to that particular fader. "There are a lot of other processes that take place before you get to that. Everything from the signal coming in... I adjust the level of that. They call it EQ. Like bass and treble. We put effects a lot of times on the voice, so you'll hear a delay, which is that repeat sound, or reverb, like reflections. Like you have in a canyon or maybe a big room, a gymnasium is a good example."

Satir DeMarco, who has booked the bands for Niwot's summer concert series since its start in 2006, has a great admiration for what Cutcliff contributes to the music. "Craig is one of the most amazing men. An incredible sound person. Through thick and thin, and rain and sun, he's been devoted, and he's really good at what he does."

In addition to his work as a sound engineer, his studio work and his performance career, Cutcliff has held a variety of jobs to support his music. "Everything I've done in my life I've done to support my music habit. I've done all kinds of things. When I was in college, I got into fixing motorcycles. Of course, being poor all my life, I did my own mechanical work on things. When you're out of a gig you don't get unemployment, so I would do things. I fixed a lot of cars in my day, and trucks. Basically, anything. I have a small construction company. Construction work I do occasionally. But trying to temper that because I'm getting older. It's harder to do."

With the support of his wife, Suzanne Wolf, Cutcliff hopes to build another studio in the next few years. Cutcliff is in his sixth year of surviving stage four colon cancer. "I have to attribute a lot of that to my wife," he said. "She's been a big support for me and a big help, and I owe her a lot."

And he still plays bass guitar and tenor sax. Every once in awhile he sits in with the Niwot Community Semi-Marching Free Grange Band. And next time you see him, tell him thanks for supporting Niwot's music scene for so many years.