"I thought he was just cool-ass Jerry I had beers with every night."

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When Thomas was touring with Van Halen, he spent months hanging out with Jerry Harvey—grabbing beers, swapping road stories, and crashing bars after the show. What he didn’t realize? He was spending every night with one of the most influential minds in live sound history.

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This vignette captures the exact moment that realization hit. It’s funny, it’s casual, and it’s entirely on-brand for a man like Jerry—who never needed to tell you who he was. He just was.

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A love letter to backstage friendship, humility in plain sight, and the slow-burn realization that you’ve been in the presence of a legend all along.

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_{Full Video Transcript below:‍}

_{"First of all, he's a friend. Second of all, he's uh, he's an audio genius to me. I always call him that. I, I always say people, God gives everyone a gift. I mean, if it's athletics or you're a great singer, or you're just a gifted prodigy and musician. Jerry is just gifted with audio.}

_{Forward to 2012 — the Van Halen tour. Uh, we're, I'm on the bus and Jerry walks on and they're like, oh, is Jerry.... Jerry Harvey the monitor engineer. And I'm like, alright... I'm like, wait a minute, we met. And he's like, yeah, it was back with Scotty and blah, blah, blah.}

_{So as the tour's going on, the job I was doing on that tour, uh, I was done pretty much halfway through the show. And Jerry's well... He's Jerry Harvey. So when the show is done, Jerry's not loading, no cases out. So he's off to the bus and I'm on the bus and we have a couple beers and just talk. And then bus call was usually around one or two in the morning. So Jerry was like, Hey dude, let's go around the corner. I saw a bar around the corner, just go hang out over there and get some beers.}

_{So we'd go hang out at the bars. And, the job on I had on the Van Halen tour was I took care of all VIP guests. So they would be in the bars after the show, and they'd run up to me, oh my God, God, you were so great tonight. Let me buy you guys drinks.}

_{And so Jerry Lee's like, man, who are you? And you know..., I'm just a guy who... I don't know. And then forward six months into the tour, we are in Arizona. One night, same thing happens.}

_{Jerry and I go to a bar, all the guests are buying us drinks. And, and Jerry's like, man, you wanna get off the road? I'm like, yeah, yeah. Eventually. And He's like, well, if you do, I really want you to run LA for me. I'm like, LA what?}

_{And he's like, my in-ears. I'm like, wait a minute, J you are Jerry Harvey. Like THAT JERRY HARVEY?}

_{I was like, I didn't know. I was like, JH Audio. That's you. I thought you were just cool ass Jerry that I hung out with every night. And he's like, yeah.}

_{He's like, just, you know, the company's taking off and I would really love for you to, I think you could really handle LA."}

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