Tampa Bay Area Crew Remembers Their Fallen Brother

While this business of entertainment will always remain a business, to those of us in it, especially the crew, we are a family. We share good times and bad, we hold each other up when we fall, and together we mourn and grieve when we loose one of our own. Last Monday, February 18, 2013, word spread through the backstage A/V community like wildfire that one of our own, Timothy “Tim” or “Timmy”Taraldsen had passed in a horrific car accident, leaving us all stunned. While the details and legalities surrounding it will be a tale told later to the proper people, for us, what remains is the reminder that yet again, life is very short, and the ones that come into it are there for a reason, and we must treasure every moment with them that we have.

Tim got his start in the industry at the young age of 18, working out of St. Petersburg, FL and then later for Turn of the Century Productions, teaming up with the young Ozzy Giron, first as shop guys, and B crew workers, busting butt at local venues around the Tampa Bay Area. According to Ozzy’s wife and life partner, Laurie Giron, “Tim and Oz quickly built a reputation as inseparable brothers, even looking the part by dressing alike.” Both got their big break in 1989 with a chance to go on the road as techs for Wayne Newton, later taking over entirely with Ozzy at front of house and Tim on monitor deck. After that tour, Giron says that “taking off like crazy” described both of their careers, with Tim and Ozzy touring with some of the biggest names in music.

When you tour like that, sharing the same space, the same schedule, literally everything, a family unit develops, one that is so very special and not easy to understand if you’ve never personally experienced it. The artists and all that travel with them, they weren’t just clients, they became family especially to Tim. “Living with someone on the road is like a marriage except they don’t judge each other,” says Giron. She also describes Tim as not just a friend, but also a brother, and her husband’s rock n’ roll soul mate, “Miles may have separated them with different tours, but an airplane ride away was home, and Tim always meant home to the Giron family, always will.”

Later in his life, Tim settled back down here in the Tampa Bay area, but still staying very active locally, working with many Bay area crews over the years. ESI Audio in particular was one of his local home bases, and he was often seen around the shop and at gigs causing mischief, working on gear and as always, working the boards. A show with Tim never had a chance to get overly intense since he was always the first one to crack a joke, and as ESI head systems tech, Rick Soukup put it, “Timmy’s answer to any concerns or issues that popped up was always the same, ‘No worries my friend’, and then he went and solved it, he always found a way to make it work.”

The Tampa Bay area crew has lost a talented community member, a loss that will echo through the halls of every show we set up, because as Tim well knew, the show must go on, but we will never forget our friend, mentor and family member.