DULUTH — Unlike the musicians she amplifies, audio engineer Kristi Olson isn't used to being photographed and interviewed. Typically in her line of work, Olson explained, "When you get noticed, something's going wrong." For anyone paying attention to Duluth's music scene over the past year, though, it's been increasingly hard not to notice Olson and the work she's done to support local artists.
In addition to running live sound at venues across the Twin Ports, Olson publishes a zine called On the Record. "There's like five of us that run around town every other Tuesday and drop them off" at dozens of local businesses, said Olson about copies of the free zine. ("Zine," abbreviated from "magazine," is a colloquial word describing a self-published periodical.
) "The folks that have been helping me with this," Olson said, "I'm so grateful for them for just volunteering out of the kindness of their hearts. The goal is to be able to pay these people, maybe eventually pay myself." In addition to the 20-plus hours each week that Olson puts into On the Record as a "labor of love," she keeps a busy schedule running sound at venues including Bent Paddle Brewing, where she was recently named audio engineer and booking manager.
ADVERTISEMENT Olson's Instagram moniker is "That Sound Lady," a play on an all-too-common assumption musicians make when arriving at a venue. "People always, if they don't know me, they'll show up and ask, 'Where's the sound guy?' That's just the standard term, a .
