Dave Hamilton
- Podcast Host, Mac Geek Gab Podcast
- Podcast Host, Gig Gab Podcast
- Podcast Host, Business Brain
Durham, Finland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, United States
Podcaster @MacGeekGab @BizBrainShow @GigGabPodcast; drummer @BitterPillBand; @BackBeatMedia. Former: @MacObserver co-founder.
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Articles by Dave Hamilton
Don’t Compete with the Couch: How to Get People to Your Gigs, Bar Band to Theater Band & AI for Musicians with Paul Kent – Gig Gab 558
Gig Gab was Paul Kent’s idea, and he’s back in the co-host chair with 27 years of running the ten-piece Houserockers behind him. You’ll hear how Dave’s Underground band learns a whole new themed set every six weeks at the Seacoast Rep, why moving from bars to an 800-seat theater starts with deciding you are a theater band, and the frequency-versus-scarcity tension every local act wrestles with. Paul’s answer to the fan who says they’ll catch you next time is blunt: stop competing with the couch.
Seventeen Hours to Save Five Minutes – Mac Geek Gab 1166
Hold Option while you drag a window edge and your Mac resizes around its center, and that’s just the start of what the Option key unlocks, from hidden Wi-Fi diagnostics to extra Bluetooth details in your menu bar.
You’re Not Their Backup Plan: How to Market Your Band’s Shows with Pat Watters – Gig Gab 557
Twenty years ago, Pat Watters looked at Texas country’s self-sustaining scene, where bands lift each other up and fans proudly claim their own, and asked a simple question: why only Texas? He’s spent every year since 2008 answering it in Wisconsin, building the Pat Watters Band on unapologetic regional pride. As a marketing agency partner, he knows exactly how bands get found. Stop pitching your gig like a fallback.
Wake Up, It’s Time to Go to Sleep – Mac Geek Gab 1165
Kick off Mac Geek Gab 1165 with a stack of Quick Tips: find the four new options hiding in iOS 27’s jiggly-icon mode, see how Messages remembers where you were when you jump back through a thread, and control which direction Photos moves after you delete a shot. You’ll keep a stubborn printer visible just by leaving Print Center open, play your favorite podcasts through your Mac with iPhone Mirroring, and turn StandBy into a desk-side HomePod remote.
Don’t Step on the Applause: Listener Tips for Working Musicians – Gig Gab 556
Your fellow working musicians just handed you a year’s worth of gig hacks, and this week Gig Gab pulls the best listener tips from Instagram and Facebook into one episode. You’ll get a hand-raise monitor check that knocks out soundcheck in minutes, a dedicated soundcheck song for when the room’s already full, and the mixing moves pros swear by: high-pass the bass at 80 Hz, sidechain it to the kick, and carve 2.5 kHz out of everything else so the vocals cut through.
Cool Stuff Made for an Audience of One – Mac Geek Gab 1164
Mac Geek Gab 1164 is all about Cool Stuff Made, the apps you built and sent in, starting with Tap2Click, which finally gives your Magic Mouse a quiet tap-to-click. You’ll hear why rough-draft coding with AI is changing who gets to build Mac software, and how Dave’s own Ottograph fixed per-alias signatures in Apple Mail in a single evening.
Your Competition Is the Couch: Building Fans Through Theatrical Live Shows with Megan & Alan from Neonautica – Gig Gab 555
Megan Ihnen and Alan Theisen of Neonautica went from contemporary classical recitals to headlining dubstep parties in New Orleans, and they brought a theater kid’s discipline with them. You’ll hear how they split band duties so nobody has to wonder who’s handling what, why the only correct response to a note is thank you, and why there’s no such thing as a good or bad sound, only the sound you meant to make and the one you didn’t.
Emphatically Kind Requests – Mac Geek Gab 1163
Customize your Finder icons for instant recognition, stretch your Apple Watch battery on long workouts with Low Power Mode, and jump months back in your Messages history with a single tap. You’ll also learn how to force macOS 27 to download from Terminal when Software Update won’t show it, and how to run separate Claude Desktop apps for work and home.
Instagram Paid Him Tens of Dollars. It Also Got Him Into the Beach Boys: Social Media, Session Vocals, & Harmony Stacks with Chris Cron – Gig Gab 554
Chris Cron posted what he thought was a one-off video about how to sound like the Beach Boys, set his phone down, and came back to 10,000 views. A few days later it was near a million. A few years later, he’s a touring member of the actual Beach Boys.
Chromations or Aberrations or a Sheen – Mac Geek Gab 1162
Kick off Mac Geek Gab 1162 with a stack of quick tips. You’ll stop your iPhone’s Camera Control from firing on every accidental squeeze, flip the Mac app switcher into reverse without lifting a finger, and ask Safari to describe an extension and build it for you. You’ll snooze your alarm with S-Lady and get (a little) relief from macOS 27’s hybridsearchd CPU hog. You’ll also borrow a brilliant Shortcuts automation that swaps eSIMs the moment your plane leaves the gate.
How Every Club Sounds Great: Running SXSW Stages & Changeovers with Nate Cross – Gig Gab 553
Every club at SXSW sounds good, every night, all week, and we’ve often wondered how they maintain that consistency. This week Dave finally gets the answer from Nate Cross, SXSW’s Director of Production, who went from intern to Assistant Production Manager to running the whole show.
Naked In Public – Mac Geek Gab 1161
Kick off Mac Geek Gab 1161 with a round of Quick Tips: flip through browser tabs with Command-Shift-[ and ], kill your iPhone flashlight with one tap, and learn iOS 27’s new swipe-down layout, where notifications, Siri, and Control Center each get their own corner. You’ll also bring CarPlay widgets back into your life, compare the apps on all your Macs with one Terminal command (and a little AI help), and find the Identity Documents collection hiding in iOS 27 Photos.
The Opener Sets the Tone: Set List Strategy, AI vs. the Artist & The Craft of Fronting a Band – Gig Gab 552
Skylar Hamilton is back by popular demand for round two of your questions, recorded across an Airbnb kitchen table in New York City where a roll of paper towels doubles as a mic stand, because it’s the right height and it kills table rumble. Set lists first: your opener sets the tone, and the tone is yours to set.
Old Contact, Who Dis? – Mac Geek Gab 1160
You’ll learn how to ask S-Lady to find a family member through Find My so you don’t have to call them, and why Command-Backtick (one key up from Tab) cycles windows inside a single app while Command-1, 2, 3 hops tabs in Safari, Chrome, Comet, and even Mail. You’ll follow Dave down the iPhone system data rabbit hole, where 59GB of mystery storage led to a full wipe, a genuinely useful “keep eSIMs and erase data” option, and then 52GB creeping right back three days later.
Play the Fill: Stage Confidence, Filling an Empty Room & Booking Gigs – Gig Gab 551
You’ve earned your seat on that drum riser, even when four people in the crowd know the Bonham parts better than you do. Dave Hamilton and guest co-host Skylar Hamilton (his daughter) look back on Dave’s summer of gigs, starting with a Led Zeppelin and Heart tribute for about 600 people. A shaky moment in Heartbreaker turns into a drum solo nobody rehearsed, and a derailed Living Loving Maid turns a careful recital into a real rock show.
It’s Not a Crease, It’s a Wave – Mac Geek Gab 1159
Apple’s September 2026 keynote is in the books, and Pilot Pete, Adam Christianson, and Dave Hamilton are here to help you figure out what’s actually worth your money. You kick things off with the big question: what are your three favorite geeks gonna buy? They then dig into the reasons, starting with the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4: battery life, new health sensors, Live Rewind, Siri Recap, and an Audio Intelligence feature that really should’ve been called Audible Intelligence.
Maybe It’s “S-Bot” – Mac Geek Gab 1158
Start Mac Geek Gab 1158 with Quick Tips you’ll actually use: trigger your iPhone’s camera from your Apple Watch, pull a full-quality photo out of any video in iOS 27, and find out why hybridsearchd is quietly eating your CPU in macOS Golden Gate. You’ll also get the right way to set up Homebrew on a brand-new Mac, meet mackup for keeping your settings in sync across every Mac you own, and watch Siri AI turn a business card into a contact without you typing a thing.
Re-Impressing the Room All Night: The Realities of Nashville’s Lower Broadway with Tyson Hanes & Adam Barber – Gig Gab 550
Nashville’s Lower Broadway isn’t a gig, it’s a gauntlet, and Tyson Hanes and Adam Barber of The Tyson Hanes Band are here to show you how it actually works. You’ll hear why nobody’s from Nashville, why being the small fish in a giant pond forces you to level up fast, and what it takes to play four-hour shifts straight through with a thousand-song list, no set list, and no safety net.
Ask for the Gig You Want: Kevin Glendinning on SNL, Super Bowls, and 30 Years on the Road – Gig Gab 549
Monitor engineer Kevin “KG” Glendinning joins you live from a Roman amphitheater in Pula, Croatia: eight countries in seven days into the Lorde world tour…and he’s got the receipts. You’ll hear how fifteen trips through the SNL stage started with a Carson Daly taping, why the rooms that treat you well are the rooms you remember, and what happens when a 32-year veteran finally plugs in a source expander and realizes the “new guys” were right.
SneakerNet Is Real – Mac Geek Gab 1157
Kick off Mac Geek Gab 1157 with a rapid-fire round of Quick Tips: find the new Siri option hiding in your Camera app, tame Archive Utility’s settings to streamline your workflow, and turn your scanner and printer into a DIY copier over FTP.
From Broadway Swing to Principal: Eight Shows a Week – Gig Gab 548 with Victor Carrillo Tracey
Your voice is the most temperamental instrument you’ll ever own, and this week Victor Carrillo Tracey – original company member of Broadway’s The Outsiders – walks you through what it takes to keep one working eight shows a week. Hydration and sleep swap places at number one, alcohol and caffeine cost more than you think, and inspiration doesn’t get a vote when downbeat is 8pm.
Maslow vs. The Finder – Mac Geek Gab 1156
Ever fire off a text that never actually sent? You’ll learn how to clear those stale unsent iMessages out of the More menu, move your Dock between displays using nothing but your cursor, and set exactly how long you share your location with iOS 27 (anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 days), plus a quiet hide that doesn’t tip the other person off.
Matt Beck on Matchbox Twenty, The Outsiders, & Hot Cocoa and a Green Tartan Suit – Gig Gab 547
Matt Beck taught himself guitar strung upside down and backwards and has never once found a reason to stop. He joins you this week from the pit of The Outsiders, where he’s played since opening night three years ago, and from a July that had him running Jon Anderson, the B-52’s, and Matchbox Twenty in the same month: seventies, eighties, and nineties, back to back to back.
When Your Group Chat Tells You to Fork Off – Mac Geek Gab 1155
Command+Comma jumps you straight into any well-coded Mac app’s settings, no menu-hunting required, and Option+Return reveals the formula in any Numbers cell (Command+Return puts the result back). If your cross-platform Logitech keyboard has its Command and Option keys backwards, hold Fn+Shift+O for three seconds to flip the firmware into Mac mode — Fn+Shift+P sends it back to PC.
Hired From an 11-View Video: Sean Mullaney on Opportunity and Owning the Stage – Gig Gab 546
Guest co-host Sean Mullaney joins Dave Hamilton to prove that the gig you want is usually hiding inside the gig you almost skipped. A video with eleven views got Sean hired, the same way a YouTube clip landed Alexandra Mullaney in The Book of Mormon, so the lesson is simple: put the work out there, then be ready to say yes when someone finds it.
Don’t Start Half Fresh – Mac Geek Gab 1154
You’ll start with a travel charger that swallows 200-plus countries into one brick, then find out that macOS Tahoe 26.6 is quietly rebuilding your Spotlight index to get ready for macOS 27…and hear the theory on why Apple wants that churn finished before you upgrade.
Nobody Bought a Ticket to Watch Load-In – Gig Gab 545
It’s just you and Dave this week for a full mailbag episode, with road stories up front: Matt Musty behind the kit with Train at Great Woods, three nights of Phish and Rush at MSG, and the Rush policy worth stealing: when a mistake is a one-off, don’t talk about it. Then into your questions. Should the front-of-house feed live in your in-ears? Here’s pre-fader versus post-fader, and why the answer’s usually no unless you’re a drummer. Maybe. Bass distorting in your IEMs?
Take a Photo to Find Your Photos – Mac Geek Gab 1153
Your quick tips run deep this week. Learn why snapping a throwaway photo is the fastest route to every picture you’ve ever taken at that spot, then rediscover Libby for free ebooks and audiobooks from your public library. You’ll find the hidden Attachments Browser in Notes (Command-3) that filters your notes by scans, documents, maps, and websites — plus a reminder that tagging still beats foldering.
When Your Worlds Collide…and the Drummer Becomes the Sound Guy – Gig Gab 544 with Dan East
Daniel East is back for a no-agenda episode that turns into Gig Gab therapy. You’ll hear about Brit Drozda’s fifth record in pre-production, unannounced pop-up gigs built from cajon, guitar, and keys, and the Rayvel grand opening on Florida’s Space Coast, where a rocket went up over the stage during Starman. Then Daniel gets into those moments of bliss you can’t fish for…the ones that arrive because you prepared enough to stop thinking. If you’re feeling it, they’re feeling it.
A Wonderful Opportunity to Get Super Confused – Mac Geek Gab 1152
Your Quick Tip arsenal gets a serious upgrade this week: use the Live Text button to make scanning QR codes easier, resurrect Apple Mail’s Predicted Mailbox when it mysteriously grays out, and run softwareupdate –history in Terminal to see every macOS update your Mac has ever installed.
The Wrong Audience Is Still an Audience: Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe on the Gigging Life – Gig Gab 543
Episode 543 lands on National Fortune Cookie Day, and guest co-host Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe of NUGEN Audio opens by demystifying how your masters actually translate across streaming. You learn that MasterCheck lets you audition one master against every platform before release day blindsides you, because you should still submit a single master everywhere, not a separate file per service.
The Green Light Never Lies – Mac Geek Gab 1151
Fresh off Macstock, you get the full debrief on this year’s gathering before diving into a stacked round of Quick Tips. You’ll learn how to disable Summarize Notification Previews to stop needless battery churn, clear every unread Apple Watch notification in one shot, and weigh whether it’s finally time to move to macOS Tahoe.
Growing Up Statler: Wilson Fairchild on Harmony, Hustle, and the Working Musician’s Life – Gig Gab 542
This week Wil and Langdon Reid of Wilson Fairchild pull up a chair beside Dave to show you what a life in music actually looks like from the inside. These guys grew up on a tour bus in the ’70s and ’80s watching their dads, Don and Harold Reid, play eight years with Johnny Cash before becoming The Statler Brothers, a side-stage masterclass we all wish we had.
Reclaim Your Storage: iCloud, RAM & Space-Saving Secrets – Mac Geek Gab 1150
This week on Mac Geek Gab 1150, Pilot Pete, Adam Christianson, and Dave Hamilton pack an Embrace Your Geekness Day episode with Quick Tips you’ll put to work immediately. You’ll learn how to schedule birthday messages so you never miss one, silence those pesky automatic Shortcuts notifications, and give Apple Intelligence the context it needs to actually help.
What Have You Failed at This Week? Business Brain 768
In this episode of Business Brain, you’ll rethink everything you assumed about failure. Shannon and Dave dig into why America’s culture of embracing failure, from bankruptcy protection to at-will employment, fuels entrepreneurship in a way most other countries can’t match. You’ll hear how low switching costs mean low experimentation costs, why VCs invest in founders instead of ideas, and why a business failure here doesn’t follow you for life the way it does elsewhere.
Ryan Goldbacher on Touring with Tom Keifer, Mixing FOH (and Monitors), and AI – Gig Gab 541
This week front-of-house engineer Ryan Goldbacher calls in from the road with Tom Keifer, and you’ll quickly learn that landing the next gig comes down to two things: competence, and not being miserable to be around. Word of mouth is the real currency of touring life, so Always Be Performing applies long after you step off stage: when the tour bus is smaller than your bedroom and there are twelve people on it, how you treat the room matters.
Save Room For Your iCloud Dessert – Mac Geek Gab 1149
You learn at least five new things every episode, and this one stacks them fast. Roll your Apple Watch crown instead of tapping it to keep Sleep mode from searing your eyes, then hit Command-Shift-F in the Finder to jump straight to Recents when a saved file vanishes into the void. When a listener asks how to archive iMessages, you’ll meet iMazing, Shottr’s scrolling screenshots, privacy.apple.com, and a public-key-encryption rabbit hole that explains why even Apple can’t hand your texts back.
Patrice Peris on Sync, Survival, and Why You Don’t Need a Backup Plan – Gig Gab 540
This week singer-songwriter Patrice Peris joins Dave to flip the script on building a music career. That question musicians always get – what’s your backup plan? – is a terrible one, because Plan A was never required to land where you first mapped it. Through COVID, a cancer diagnosis, and a bone-marrow transplant she now calls a rebirth, Patrice kept asking what each detour was teaching her and never stopped writing, landing sync placements on Netflix, HBO Max, and The Voice along the way.
There’s No Two Hands About It – Mac Geek Gab 1148
Mac Geek Gab 1148 hands you a fresh stack of Quick Tips you’ll actually use. You’ll find out how Mark recovered every one of his accidentally deleted iMessages with Control-Command-4 (or the Recently Deleted view), undo a botched Finder rename with a casual Command-Z, and automate Theater Mode on your Apple Watch so it goes dim and quiet at night without Sleep Focus.
Sub Gigs, Mic Mutes & the Art of Mixing Live with Jesus Hernandez – Gig Gab 539
This week you start things off digging into the craft that separates good gigs from great ones. You’ll get the playbook for prepping and surviving sub gigs, learn (again!) why a splitter snake earns its place in your rig, and sort through the real options when you need a mic mute switch that actually works. Then you wrestle with a question every working band faces today: are fan-posted videos helping your brand or hurting it?
One Exclamation Point Short – Mac Geek Gab 1147
Ever triggered a hidden Mac feature by accident? This week you’ll find out why a stray backtick fires up the Magnifier in macOS Preview, and how a single screenshot plus built-in OCR can lift text straight out of an image (even if that Wi-Fi password still refuses to cooperate).
Three Rush Fans and Rush’s 2026 Comeback Tour: From the Room and From Afar – Gig Gab 538
Three Rush fans — a father, a son, and Spartacus — walk into a podcast. There’s no punchline, just the tape rolling on a conversation that was going to happen anyway, and you get to be the fly on the wall. Two of them just flew home from LA, where they stood in the room and watched Rush kick off the tour nobody was sure would ever come. The third has been taking it all in from a distance, which is its own peculiar thing when you once mixed front of house for the band for years.
Mic-graines and Infotainment! – Mac Geek Gab 1145
Your iPhone might be running hot and draining fast — and it’s not just you. Dave and Pilot Pete break down the battery chaos introduced by iOS 26.5, which brought overheating, accelerated drain, and even blocked wired charging on iPhone 17 and Air models. The fix that’s working for most people: disable iCloud Keychain first, run Reset All Settings, then carefully re-enable iCloud sync — otherwise you’ll nuke your Wi-Fi passwords across every device.
Road Stories, Recording Secrets, and the Perfect Pop Song – Gig Gab 537 with Rand Lempert from The Broken Rings
This week on Gig Gab, Dave Hamilton sits down with guest co-host Rand Lempert of the Broken Rings, a two-piece recording project built on 15 years of musical kinship between Rand and guitarist Gio da Silva. You’ll hear how these two have crafted an intentional, travel-fueled recording process across cities, cutting live instruments and vocals together, passing files between New Orleans, Tampa, and now Denver, and why that friction and urgency is exactly the point.
AI and Music for Working Musicians: Tool, Threat, or Bandmate? – Gig Gab 536
This week Stu Dias joins Dave from a slightly different corner of Durham, New Hampshire, and after a quick detour through barefoot drumming, sweaty-hand fixes, and oversized triangle guitar picks, the conversation locks onto the question every working musician is wrestling with right now: what does AI mean for music?
Translate Anything, Tame Your Desktop, and Dodge the Plex Price Hike – Mac Geek Gab 1144
This week you’ll learn to lean on Apple Intelligence to translate almost any text on the fly, lock down and hide sensitive apps on iOS, and finally tame your Desktop by remembering it’s just part of the Finder: flip on Stacks and/or let Hazel do the sorting for you.
Loaded Out, Rolling Home, Rolling Tape – Gig Gab 535
Ride shotgun with Dave as he records GigGab on the drive home from a Casual Gravity gig, finally living out the show’s original mission. You’ll hear why packing your own mixer saves the night when the venue only wants a single feed from the band, what it’s like when an in-ear band plays its first fully sober gig, and why counting songs in to a click track changes everything once adrenaline stops driving your tempo.
How Do We Say G? — Mac Geek Gab 1143
Geek Pride Day kicks off an episode packed with the kind of tips you’ll actually use. You’ll learn why Shift+Tab is your fastest escape from a runaway numbered list, how holding the lower-left CarPlay button summons Siri, and why copy/paste (and drag-and-drop) between apps still beats exporting and re-importing every time.
What’s Your Band’s Definition of Success? — Gig Gab 534 with Paul Kent
OG co-host Paul Kent rejoins Dave Hamilton to talk about how The Houserockers have stayed booked into their 27th year, and what your band can steal from their playbook. You’ll dig into the social media reality of 2026 (Reels are currently king), why your mailing list is the asset you actually own, and how to grow to 10,000 followers without losing your soul.
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