LIU016: Michael Keith Lewis: The Network Behind the Show
Michael Keith Lewis, a front-of-house audio engineer, tour manager, and co-founder of Truckpacker, joins the Life in Uptime podcast to discuss his career in live music production, the surprising overlap between audio engineering and network engineering, and his journey from church musician to touring professional. He also covers the founding of Truckpacker, a web-based truck packing planning software born from a real logistical crisis on tour, and reflects on balancing freelance life, marriage, and entrepreneurship.
Summary
In this episode of Life in Uptime, hosts Kevin and Alexis sit down with Michael Keith Lewis, a front-of-house (FOH) audio engineer, tour manager, production manager, and co-founder of Truckpacker. Mike begins by explaining the distinction between a front-of-house engineer, who manages what the audience hears, and a monitor engineer, who handles what musicians hear on stage through in-ear monitors and click tracks. He draws a direct parallel to network engineering: his job is invisible when working well, and only noticed when something goes wrong.
Mike describes how modern audio systems are IP-based, with audio transmitted over Cat5 networking using protocols like Dante. He manages a full network on every show, handling stage boxes, wireless RF devices, and playback systems, all of which require genuine IT knowledge to configure correctly. He notes that the lack of universal standards across manufacturers mirrors challenges in the broader networking world.
Mike's career began with forced piano lessons from age four through sixteen, which led to volunteer church work and eventually a paid technical role before he even finished high school. By college at UNT, he was already working professionally as a union technician and touring with the vocal jazz ensemble. He credits Craigslist gigs, stagehand work, and key personal connections—particularly meeting Colony House's lighting designer by chance—as the real launching pads for his touring career. He notes the industry is highly word-of-mouth driven, and getting that first professional-level tour gig is the hardest step.
A significant portion of the conversation covers Mike's decision to leave a stable dual-income situation in Dallas to join Colony House on tour in 2019, a band he had loved since seeing them play for 40 people in Houston years earlier. He describes it as a defining risk that paid off, opening doors to tours with artists like Jeremy Zucker and Matt Carney. He reflects that one strong performance for Matt Carney in 2022 led to a full tour booking two years later—illustrating how delayed payoffs work in his industry.
Mike discusses the challenges of being on the road roughly 50% of the year and how he and his wife Malia have adapted, including relocating from Dallas to Nashville to be closer to where most of his work originates. He describes their routine of scheduled FaceTime calls, flying her into shows when possible, and the potential future of working together on tour, with Malia beginning to take on tour manager one-off gigs.
The episode also explores Truckpacker, a startup Mike co-founded with college friend and software developer David Woodward. The idea emerged from a real crisis where gear didn't fit in a trailer on day one of a tour. Mike taught himself SketchUp to build 3D truck pack layouts and realized others in the industry had the same problem. Truckpacker is a web-based tool that simplifies the bin-packing logistics problem for touring crews, launched in May 2025, featuring an auto-pack function and crew distribution tools. Mike now handles customer onboarding and support, and sees Truckpacker as a potential future full-time pivot away from touring.
The conversation touches on AI's dual role in the music world: displacing sync licensing income for producers through generative tools, while simultaneously making Mike's multi-hat freelance workflow more efficient through tools like Claude and ChatGPT for email management and task automation. Mike also discusses content creation as another pillar of his work, making educational mixing videos that attract a surprisingly large overlap with the network engineering audience.
Mike closes with advice to his younger self: read more books earlier, and say yes to more opportunities even when not fully prepared—'fake it till you make it' as a legitimate career strategy that forces growth and opens unexpected branches in a career path.
Key Insights
- Mike Lewis argues that a front-of-house engineer's job is structurally identical to a network engineer's: the role is invisible when functioning correctly and only noticed during failure.
- Mike claims that modern live audio is almost entirely IP-based, requiring FOH engineers to manage actual network infrastructure including stage boxes, Dante protocols, and RF spectrum coordination—making IT knowledge a prerequisite for the job.
- Mike identifies that the lack of universal protocols across audio manufacturers mirrors fragmentation in the broader tech industry, and argues that Dante succeeded largely because it integrated easily with existing network infrastructure.
- Mike describes how the touring industry is entirely word-of-mouth based, where getting one professional-level tour gig is the critical threshold, after which opportunities self-perpetuate through the small community of touring engineers.
- Mike recounts that a single standout performance for artist Matt Carney in 2022 resulted in a full tour booking two years later, illustrating that ROI in relationship-based industries often has a multi-year lag.
- Mike argues that leaving a stable dual-income situation in Dallas to join Colony House was a defining career risk that only worked because he had already committed to chasing the opportunity over money.
- Mike frames Truckpacker as a case of solving a personally experienced problem—gear not fitting in a trailer on day one of a tour—and notes that the bin-packing logistics problem had already been solved in broader logistics, just not for the touring niche.
- Mike contends that AI is simultaneously damaging his producer friends' sync licensing income while making his own multi-role freelance workflow meaningfully more efficient, and he holds both truths without resolution.
- Mike states that in the music production world, no employer has ever asked where he went to school or what certifications he holds—only what he did last, reinforcing that experiential reputation outweighs credentials in this field.
- Mike suggests that having a partner who understood his career before they married was not a romantic choice but effectively his most important business decision, because misalignment on his unconventional income and travel schedule would have derailed his career.
- Mike describes the touring industry's scale as directly analogous to IT organizational scale: a one-bus-one-trailer tour has a crew of five with overlapping roles, while an arena tour has dedicated specialists for every technical domain including a dedicated RF technician managing hundreds of wireless channels.
- Mike argues that spending eight hours learning a tool to make a recurring task 50-75% more efficient is always worth the investment, and credits this mindset—not innate talent—as the reason he developed both his audio career and Truckpacker.
Topics
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