PROFILE
Paul Caccamo
By Andrew King
W
hen a young Paul Cac-
camo rigged up a car
tape deck to a speaker
system in his elemen-
tary school gymnasi-
um, he wouldn’t have
imagined it being his
first step on a career path that now finds him
as the go-to monitor engineer for one of
Canada’s best-known musicians.
Caccamo has been touring with music
icon Burton Cummings for over a decade in
addition to designing and operating audio
systems for a slew of major artists and events
through his company, Paul Caccamo Produc-
tions Inc. He spoke with Professional Sound
shortly after returning home from a short
fall tour of the West Coast with the beloved
Guess Who frontman.
Caccamo was born and raised in Burl-
ington, ON, growing up in the country along
the Niagara Escarpment. His father owned
a stereo shop while his mother and sisters
sang in the church choir, “So I was always
surrounded by music,” he shares.
That pedigree may very well have been
the reason he was called upon to set up the
jury-rigged PA system for the school talent
show so many years ago. “That was the first
time I did live sound,” he says with a chuckle,
“and once I made it work, I was then deemed
the ‘sound person’ by the teachers and stu-
dents, so I ended up running the levels on the
three microphones and playing the music for
the talent show. That got me hooked.”
He embraced the “AV nerd” label as the
student that fixed electronics and helped
teachers get the AV carts working in their
classrooms. “I liked it more and more because
I realized I could get out of class,” he jokes.
He continued in this same capacity into
high school and onwards, going on to work
at Canada’s Wonderland in Vaughan, ON as a
technician and, eventually, a sound engineer.
His next move was to enroll at Toronto’s
Harris Institute to bolster his skill set and
expand his industry network. While there, he
met Mark Scola, who brought him onboard
at Toronto sound company BCB Pro Audio.
Caccamo's first tour came as a PA technician
when BCB was tapped for a national Blue
Rodeo tour. After that, he continued to take
jobs with a number of artists and production
companies in and around Toronto, and has
been freelancing on the production circuit
20 PROFESSIONAL SOUND
in various capacities ever since.
Caccamo enjoys the ever-changing na-
ture of the industry, having kept pace with
incoming technologies and workflows as his
projects grow in scale and scope. “Over the
last five years … I’ve been working on some
of the largest shows of my career,” he shares.
“I like the challenge of these shows because
it pushes you to the limit of your skill set and
challenges you to think outside of the box.
You have to get out of your comfort zone to
successfully execute the gig.”
His grade school curiosity hasn’t waned,
either, keeping him interested in the latest
technologies and innovations to hit the
market. “You have to constantly be learning
to keep yourself relevant,” he says of what’s
simultaneously one of his favourite aspects
of the industry, and also a major ongoing
challenge. “It’s exciting to be able to do
something so easily today that would’ve
taken hours a few years ago. I think that the
technology has made the business easier in
many ways, but more difficult in others.”
Outside of work, Caccamo and his wife,
Sarah, are raising their two young boys –
Alex, who’s four, and Benjamin, who’s just
six months – at home in Hamilton, ON. “It’s
a busy life,” he admits. “Without Sarah, I’d be
in big trouble. I have to travel quite a bit and
she manages to raise the boys and take good
care of things. I honestly don’t know how she
does it sometimes.”
When he’s home, he enjoys cooking for
the family and, when the weather permits,
heading to their cottage in Parry Sound or
out on the sailboat with his young crew-
mates. “I’m actually building a wooden kit
sailboat in my basement with any free time
I have,” he adds, though the fact the project
has been underway for the past six years
offers an idea of how limited that free time
actually is.
Since the West Coast trek with Burton
Cummings in October, Caccamo has been
working on some corporate gigs closer to
home, including a system design for a major
company Christmas party in the coming
weeks. He plans to be back out on the road
with some new and returning clients come
the New Year.
“I have to say, my favourite part about
working in this industry is the people – there
are so many supportive and helpful people
who care about doing a perfect job every
time while still having fun doing it,” he shares.
“I always feel like you plant little seeds with
each and every new job or new contact, and
I’m looking forward to seeing some of those
seeds grow into new opportunities.”
Andrew King is the Editor-in-Chief of
Professional Sound.