Hello! My name is Billy LaGuardia. You may know me as a comments section instigator on YouTube, a drummer, or your local sound engineer ranging from weddings to tours. My life has always revolved around the world of audio, visual production, and music — coincidentally both my career and my life’s passion. Outside of production, my only real hobby is cooking. I should probably diversify my interests a little more.

I was born into the business of show production. My parents founded LM Engineering Inc., better known today as LM Cases, in 1985. I was born a year later in 1986. My parents joke that they used to change my diapers at LM. Alas, a case man was born.

From a very young age, I was surrounded by touring productions, road cases, sound systems, lighting rigs, and the constant chaos of live entertainment. Like a lot of people in this business, I became obsessed with understanding what all the knobs, buttons, lights, and cables actually did. I credit LM’s long-standing relationship with the Billy Joel band as one of the biggest reasons I pursued production professionally.

My first concert was Billy Joel’s River of Dreams tour when I was in the third grade. My parents took me backstage to meet their friend David Rosenthal, who was playing keyboards in Billy’s band. While we were talking in catering, Mark Rivera came over and asked if I wanted to see the stage. My parents let Mark take me by the hand and walk me around the entire production. I collected autographs, guitar picks, Liberty DeVitto drumsticks, and memories that honestly shaped the rest of my life.

I still remember seeing moving lights for the very first time during “Pressure.” My dad was explaining to me that they were Vari-Lites and cutting-edge technology. At that age, it felt like science fiction.

Fast forward a few years later to another Billy Joel show. By then, I had been playing drums for about five years. Before the show, I was backstage during line check with my parents and David Rosenthal. David proudly told Liberty DeVitto that I was a drummer. Liberty looked at me, pointed at the western-style jacket I was wearing, and told me I could play his drum kit if I gave him the jacket.

Done deal.

I climbed onto Liberty’s massive drum kit while the sound crew used my “performance” for line check. The moment I heard the crack of the snare coming off the back wall of an empty arena — combined with the sheer force of the subs under the stage — I was completely hooked. Liberty kept yelling, “Hit ‘em harder!” while wearing a jacket that was about four sizes too small for him.

That moment permanently cemented my love for both drums and sound.

After years of seeing concerts and backstage production environments, I became fascinated by every aspect of live entertainment — not just the music, but the systems behind it. I wanted to know how everything worked, from the PA system to the lighting rig to catering logistics. Drums and audio engineering naturally became dual passions for me, which makes sense considering a drum set contains both the lowest and highest frequencies many mixers will encounter.

My first experience recording music came in high school when my band wanted to enter a Battle of the Bands at the House of Blues in Cleveland. We needed a demo recording, so naturally rehearsals happened in my parents’ basement because I was the drummer. We recorded everything onto a Yamaha 4-track cassette recorder using a single Shure SM57. Sometimes we hung the mic from the basement floor joists over the drums. Other times we pointed it toward the band from the back of the room. Entirely mono. No mixer. No interface. Just experimentation and enthusiasm.

My real introduction to recording and production came when I met my lifelong friend Michael Moritz. We were brought together through our high school drama teacher, who somehow knew we would immediately become friends. Mike and I were two of the only musicians graduating from a school system that cared far more about football than the arts.

Mike already had a recording studio, and I desperately wanted to be part of that world. Working alongside him completely changed my understanding of entertainment production. Mike was doing everything: live sound, DJ work, musicals, session recordings, commercial jingles — whatever came through the door.

That experience taught me one of the most important lessons of my career:
If you want to survive in entertainment, you need to be capable in multiple disciplines.

To this day, Mike and I are usually both the musicians and the tech troubleshooters on a gig. Most musicians are not technicians, and most technicians are not musicians. Living somewhere in the middle of those two worlds has shaped nearly every aspect of my career.

One of my favorite examples of that crossover happened while filming the series finale of Madame Secretary. Mike and I were hired to appear as the “wedding band” for a scene featuring actor and musician Erich Bergen, who we had worked with previously. It remains my one and only acting gig. (Thanks Erich!)

We spent most of the day eating craft services and waiting around between takes. Peter Frampton was also filming that day, and as a longtime fan I naturally ended up talking with his guitar tech. Peter insisted on performing live rather than lip-syncing, and his tech was working through some playback and recording issues involving an API lunchbox and a UAD Apollo interface. Mike and I immediately started troubleshooting routing solutions and interfacing options with the television audio crew.

Eventually word got back to Erich that his “wedding band” was off solving production problems behind the scenes, and everybody had a good laugh wondering who exactly these guys were.

That moment perfectly summed up my career:
equal parts musician, engineer, and problem solver.

In 2020, while the entertainment industry was effectively shut down, I decided I absolutely needed to own a large-format Midas Heritage analog console. I found one in Florida and had it shipped to Ohio. What started as a restoration project quickly became the beginning of my YouTube journey. I documented the process of completely disassembling, cleaning, repairing, and rebuilding the console — one knob at a time.

That same mindset still drives most of what I do today.

Currently, I split my time between drumming, mixing, live production, systems integration, building custom touring and AV systems for LM Cases, and documenting the entire process online through YouTube and social media. My work combines traditional audio engineering, modern systems design, live production infrastructure, networking, power distribution, and real-world problem solving. Whether I’m mixing a concert, tuning a PA, building an integrated workstation, troubleshooting backstage, or restoring vintage analog gear, I’m ultimately still chasing the same feeling I had hearing Liberty DeVitto’s snare drum crack across an empty arena.

Thanks for reading the long version. I’m looking forward to working with you.