Backstage at Kavka (Antwerp, Belgium) in March 2016. Photo: Hannes Meier
In 2002, when my high school band was ready to record our first batch of songs, we were shocked to learn that studio time might set us back thousands – a tough pill to swallow when you’re earning $6.75/hr at your after-school job. So I saved up for a digital 8-track recorder & some microphones and went to town – first with my own bands, then my friends’ bands and onto other local acts we met at shows.
Mercifully, most of those early experiments are lost to the ages. But I was hooked! I saw immediately in the recording & mixing processes what I still see in it today – an entire dimension of creativity layered atop the music itself, complementing or subverting compositions, bound only by the limits of one’s imagination & arsenal of techniques. Plus, on a practical level, I figured I’d be able to earn more money producing music than playing it. (This turned out to be a half-truth.)
I matriculated to Emerson College, a noted vocational school for weirdos, cutting my teeth In the performance studio at WERS 88.9 FM. While interning for producer Jay Maas at Getaway Recording, I set up shop renting the house I had grown up in and transformed it into The Office Recording, a studio that served as the foundation of my “career” and evolved with me as I honed my craft. My own bands (Aviator, Alcoa) released albums I recorded & mixed in partnership with renowned indie labels (No Sleep, Bridge Nine) and played shows across North America & Europe to promote them. My reputation for professional & flattering production earned me clientele from increasingly far-flung locales – Philadelphia, Baton Rouge, Boise, Milan, Singapore, etc.
Those were the halcyon days: The Office shuttered in 2016; my road-tested musical projects are defunct, #giglife a distant memory. By day, I earn my living in public radio. But outside of that, the dream lives on: I’ve built a hell of a studio at my home, just outside of Boston, and I continue to record & mix as much as life allows. So if you’re thinking about committing your music to tape and want it realized to its fullest potential, let’s have a conversation! At this point in my career I can provide a boutique experience – the undivided attention of a passionate producer with thousands of recordings under his belt, at a fraction of the cost of the “household names” who have to turn projects around and move onto the next in order to keep the lights on.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading and see you in the studio.