Don Bird - Music, Broadcast, Film, and More
Photos and narrative provided by Don Bird
Born and raised in Seattle, Don Bird started learning to read and write music before he learned English. Those lines, dots, and squiggles and the sounds they produced fascinated him. With a mother classically trained on piano and pipe organ, and an uncle who was a semi-professional trumpet player, Don grew up surrounded by a wide range of music and styles and learned to play numerous instruments including trumpet, fluegelhorn, guitar, bass, piano, and organ. He turned professional upon graduating high school and enrolled in UW School of Communications (Radio/TV). Working his way through college, he played for the Bellevue Symphony, various Seattle shows/musicals, and local acts like the New Deal Rhythm Band, Shots, Gabriel, and his own progressive rock band, Ears, voted Seattle’s best band in KZOK’s 1977 contest.
Composition was Don’s first love, and he spent his days in local studios composing and producing jingles and music beds. Some notable local projects included Wayne Cody’s KIRO Sports radio theme, a jingle package for KZOK-FM, and the locally produced (Kaye-Smith Studios) nationally syndicated “Fantastic Four Radio Program” starring a very young Bill Murray as the voice of Johnny Storm. His studio work and search for unique sounds led him to work with some of the first commercially available synthesizers – programming and playing ARP, MOOG, and OBERHEIM instruments which eventually opened a door to the technical side of the media and entertainment industry.
In the mid-’80s, Don left Seattle to work in LA for Roger Linn who designed and built the first sampled-sound drum machines (LinnDrum, used by artists like Phil Collins/Genesis and Stevie Wonder), then he entered the broadcast technology industry where he helped to design, develop and market the “DigiCart” for 360 Systems. This was the first commercially successful digital audio player utilized by every major network broadcaster for audio playback. The David Letterman show used them to fire off sound effects like breaking glass when Dave would randomly toss pencils from his desk!
After 12 years in broadcast, Don joined a startup company in the film/cinema industry and participated in the development and marketing of the first digital mastering and playback systems that enabled the movie industry’s transition from distribution of film prints to digital media. He spent several years running the cinema business for public company DTS (Digital Theater Systems) which was initially funded by Universal Studios to produce a more authentic sound experience for Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. (Remember those first T-Rex footfalls?) During his time in LA, he continued playing, mixing live sound, and developing his own musical projects.
After a decade in the film industry, he formed his own consulting company and returned to the Northwest and to broadcast, providing business development services for Lawo, (www.lawo.com) a German-owned company that provides large format mixing consoles, video routing, processing, and monitoring solutions used by a majority of global networks and content providers, and for major sports events like the Olympics, World Cup, NFL, MLB, PGA and more. If you are a late-night TV fan, you’ve experienced Lawo’s technologies in use for virtually all the late-night talk shows and Saturday Night Live, as well as providing the backbone for NPR, SiriusXM, local affiliate KIRO-TV, Root Sports, and many of the major tech companies’ production facilities in Seattle, Redmond, and Silicon Valley.
At the young age of 24, Don met and married Guemes artist Loalynda, who owns Paper Birds Studio and founded the Guemes Island Earth Day Luminary Parade. Loalynda introduced Don to her family cabin on west beach when they started dating as kids, and he fell in love with the island, returning with their family every year for vacations until they were finally able to realize their dream of moving full time to the island in 2014 where Don has continued his consulting business and now enjoys developing his various music projects alongside Loalynda’s many artistic creations, classes, and events. They’ve come full circle as a musician and artist who started out creating side-by-side in their own studios in Bellevue, to now supporting the local music and art scene on Guemes Island and throughout the Skagit Valley.
Don has recently released a solo album of new-age orchestral compositions, “Floating On Moonlight”, as well as forming his own original band, Children of the Blues, which released their first album “Space Lounge” in October and are now playing a psychedelic blend of jazz and blues in venues from Anacortes to Seattle. You can catch their next gig Saturday, March 26th at the Rockfish Bar and Grill. In Don’s own words, “I’m very grateful and blessed to be able to participate in and support the strong artistic and musical community on the island, grateful to Mark and Willie for giving us an awesome local ‘pub’ and bringing great music to the island, and now to have the addition of the new park stage venue to perform and mingle with neighbors, fellow artists, and musicians—not to mention the support of the AMP organization.”
You can find Don’s music on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube and other digital platforms. Just scan the QR code in the business card at the top of this post or search the online music streaming services for "Don Bird" and/or "Children Of The Blues".