FIRST COVID, THEN FIRE
“We were sitting around the conference table in mid-March 2020, soon after the news broke, and all of a sudden, we got a notice that we had to evacuate by 5 p.m.,” Betty recalls. “Then it moved up to 3 p.m. Everybody had to go home, and we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare.”
Manufacturing couldn’t simply stop—the demand for interfaces, and especially USB microphones, surged. Betty called close friends and family; Bob showed up assembling and testing products. Neighbors helped pack boxes.
To add insult to injury, six months after closing down the offices, the sole-source supplier of chips for the majority of Apogee products, the AKM factory in Japan, caught fire and burned for three days, disrupting supply chains for electronics worldwide.
Still, by mid-2024, business was getting back to normal, mostly. Bob had continued mixing throughout the shutdown, at first all alone and then later with an assistant and sometimes a client. Apogee had settled back in, releasing Symphony Desktop, the SoftLimit Plug-in, Duet 3 and Dock, Jam X, Symphony Studio and a number of other products, including Clearmountain’s Phases, 8068 and Let’s Dance plug-ins in the previous four years. Plans were taking shape for a year-long 40th anniversary celebration, scheduled to kick off on January 24, the night before NAMM, with a big party. Two weeks after that, they were booked for two weeks in Australia to celebrate the wedding of Betty’s daughter.
Then, on January 7, 2025, the Pacific Palisades Fire ignited and suddenly shifted direction without warning. Bob and Betty evacuated with their infant granddaughter.
They drove to their daughter Alex’s house in Venice to spend the night, expecting to return the next day. Then they watched through the Ring camera app on their phones as flames started climbing a neighbor’s fence across the street. A few minutes later, the camera went dark. The next day they found out that their house had burned to the ground. Nothing was left. No clothes, no furniture, no toothbrush. No SSL.
That night, they stayed in the apartment on the second floor of the house they own behind Apogee, where they already had a makeshift, yet professional, Atmos mix room. Three weeks later, Betty carried on with the anniversary party, though it was a bit more subdued. A week after that, Bob was in the mix chair for three straight 18-hour days mixing the FireAid Benefit Concert. Betty spent a lot of hours inside the remote recording truck, working from a director’s chair in the back. Then a week or so after that, they were on their way to Australia.
REBUILDING AND ACT III
Over the following 10 months, they began putting their personal lives back together while continuing to keep up the pace of their professional lives.
Friends and family and the pro audio industry at large lent their support, and Bob went to work on building a new mix studio, along with his longtime friend and former assistant, Brandon Duncan. Betty went to work on the upstairs apartment, a renovation of a small guest house in the back yard and a transformation of the neighboring lot, which she also owns, into a large urban outdoor living space and garden, designed and landscaped by her daughter Alex.
• Seen on the Scene: Bob Clearmountain Reopens Mix This! FTA
On September 6, MixThis! FTA (From the Ashes) debuted to the public at a party where guests were encouraged to bring a favorite vinyl record as a gift to Bob, who had lost his extensive collection. In mid-November, Betty announced the sale of the company to Dirk Ulrich and Rockforce. As part of the terms of the sale, Apogee will lease half of the building from Betty, who owns it, while the half that includes the Live Stage and Studio will remain with Bob and Betty.
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They haven’t decided what they want to do with the big, newly empty space to the rear of their half once Ulrich moves the warehouse inventory to Chino. There’s been talk of adding another, smaller live venue to accompany the 150-cap venue and stage up front. But who knows? Things may change. They now have the time and the space to look ahead, time to see a vision and make a plan for what Act III might look like as they open the curtain.
“Right now, we’d like to find a house,” Betty says. “Do we start the rebuilding process, or do we look for another house? Or do we make a change and move to Woodstock? That’s a big decision and somebody has to figure it out.”