Standing in the cramped confines of the sound booth inside the Great Northern Bar and Grill in Whitefish, Thomas Ducsak motions at the top-most of his monitors.

The screen is displaying a two-dimensional diagram of the lights above the stage. As he clicks through the options, the symbols flash and twirl. On the dance floor below, the lights rock back and forth, shifting between combinations of color.

On a Friday or Saturday night, beams of light would splash across the musicians on stage, illuminating the throngs of revelers below.

But on a Wednesday afternoon, the bright lights just dazzle a pair of men playing Ping-Pong on a table on the otherwise empty dance floor.

“I thought I just saw heaven,” cries one.

Ducsak, who is demonstrating how he spends weekends since becoming the Northern’s resident house technician for sound and lights in 2020, apologizes from his perch as orbs of bright white light play out over the men's faces. Then he turns back to his work, running through the custom setups for about 100 different musical acts preprogrammed into a console nestled below and to the side of the monitors.  

With some bands, particularly those he’s gotten familiar with over the years, Ducsak knows just how he wants things to look and sound. When Northwest Montana-based K’Niption Fit thumps into a cover of an AC/DC hit, Ducsak bathes the stage in red, accentuating the crimson with white lights.  

When fellow Northwest Montana act the Groove Riders start into Led Zeppelin, Ducsak has a color pattern in mind and knows to ratchet up the reverb on the snare drum.  

“If they’re having fun and the people are having fun, that’s what matters the most to me — that’s what my job really is about,” he says. 

A BASS player, Ducsak found out he had talent for sound engineering while recording an EP back in his home state of New Jersey. Through a chain of family connections and friends of friends, Ducsak and his bandmates ended up in a home studio run by musicians Damien Baldwin and Rob Lampe, then of the New Jersey-based band Friends of Bill Wilson and now of Lower the Veil.

“They could see that I had a mind for doing sound,” Ducsak said.

The pair referred him to Bill Bourke, an audio engineering instructor at Ocean County Vocational and Technical School in New Jersey. Enrolling in the nighttime adult audio program — a nine-month “crash course” — Ducsak graduated at the top of his class in 2010.  

But to pay the bills, he worked for low-voltage companies (think security systems) and held jobs in transportation and logistics.  

In March 2013, Ducsak found himself at a crossroads. Recently laid off, Ducsak’s lease was about to run out, and he had just broken up with his girlfriend. Seeing few reasons to stay in New Jersey, he remembered that a cousin — Vincent Rannazzisi of the bands 20 Grand, Pedacter Project and Moonshine Mountain — had invited him out west.  

“So, I called up my cousin and asked if the spare room in Olney was still available,” Ducsak said. 

Upon arriving in Flathead County, he put his “nose to the grindstone.” Sure, he did stints in kitchens, a plant nursery and as a liftie at Whitefish Mountain Resort, but on weekends he was a sound technician somewhere in the valley: Crush, the Craggy, the Remington, the Palace or Casey’s.

He got his start at the Northern by filling in for his predecessor. By December 2020, Ducsak had taken over as the venue’s resident house technician for lights and sound.  

“THERE’S SOMETHING very cathartic about doing this,” Ducsak says, sitting on the Northern’s back deck as a cool spring rain patters on the awning above. “There’s something about the mathematical side of doing sound that gives me focus.”

Ducsak’s blue eyes widen for emphasis beneath a newsboy cap as he discusses the finer points of running the sound at the storied Whitefish venue. Regulars likely have seen Ducsak, a slight man who usually dons a zip-up sweatshirt festooned with patches, including a silhouette of John Cusak holding a boombox above his head from 1989’s “Say Anything,” which serves as the logo for the twice-a-year Emo night he hosts, slip between revelers as he makes his way around the building during a show.

Whether in the sound booth or not, Ducsak always has his ears dialed into the performance. 

“I like to call it active listening,” he says. “It doesn’t matter where I am in the building ... I’m never not listening to what is happening with the band.” 

How he does it is a mystery, even to him. 

“It’s not an easy thing to do,” he says. “I don’t understand how my brain is able to differentiate hearing the band while having a conversation, but I can hear if something goes sideways anywhere in the building.”

When an act is coming in to perform at the Northern for the first time, Ducsak’s immediate jobs are developing a stage plot — how the band is organized on the stage — and building a scene for them, which is a layout of the soundboard on his console in the booth.

Knowing the room, meaning figuring out what frequencies work in the space, is another challenge.  

“Every room that you do sound in is going to be different: different frequencies to cut or boost, how you compress vocals, how you get the reverb and delay dialed in,” he says. “Understanding the dynamics of your room is very important.”

Depending on how full the dance floor gets, those dynamics change. 

“I’ll do a sound check and it’ll sound great. And all of the sudden there are 300 people in the room, and you’ll have to adjust to that,” Ducsak says.  

He also adjusts for the musicians. With some bands, he works to make sure the vocals are clear despite the pounding of the drums or roar of the guitars. Others want the vocals buried, preferring to keep the spotlight on the music. 

“I really do love what I do,” he says. “Yes, it does have its moments of frustration and stress, but I always manage to push through and get the job done.” 

Thinking on it, Ducsak reiterated how thankful he was for his friends in New Jersey who pushed him to get into the field as well as the team at the Northern that put him in the booth full-time: Doug Rommereim, Kathy McGrath, Scott Larkin and Katie Akey. 

Ducsak estimates there are fewer than a dozen people working in the profession in the Flathead Valley. He is happy to chat with anyone interested in the career, whether he’s out and about town or in the sound booth — the need is real, he says. Although recently married, he hasn’t been able to tear himself away for a honeymoon.  

“I could use a vacation,” he says with a laugh.

News Editor Derrick Perkins can be reached at 406-758-4430 or [email protected]. If you value local journalism, pledge your support at dailyinterlake.com/support.     Great Northern Bar and Grill resident house technician for lights and sound, Thomas Ducsak, on Wednesday, May 20. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)