As I start my journey of putting my thoughts and experiences of the past decade of my working in the music industry to digital paper, I thought it would be a good idea to give you a brief background on myself, to form context around my writings, musings, opinions, and technical advice.
As a musician since middle school, teaching myself how to play the drums in my early teens was what solidified my passion for music. I went to university for media production in 2007, and then received my second degree in Audio Technology immediately after that. Working for about 5 years in music retail (both in corporate and local-owned stores) while networking and building up my own business, I was able to go full-time freelance doing music production, session drum recording, and teaching music production and engineering. This led me to become involved with an Atlanta-based record label, which evolved into to me becoming the Label Operations Manager, and then running the accompanying recording studio as the Studio Manager. Eventually the studio was sold to a private artist who may or may not rhyme with Venti-Run Ravage, but fortunately I still had enough of my own clients to continue working on my own business.
A year and some change later, I received a job offer to manage a recording studio in northwest London, where my wife and I had been wanting to move to for several years. We moved over, and I started working as a private contractor while waiting for my visa to go through, and getting to know and manage the studio. Returning to the US over Christmas and New Years, the plan was to return a week later after the visa was sorted, but the owner of the business continuously dragged his feet and delayed the visa completion until mid-February. We re-scheduled our flights twice to come back over; bags packed, house and car sold, and ready to start our new lives and careers! Unfortunately, a mere days after receiving my UK work visa, the owner informed me that he had “made the difficult decision” to sell the business (which unbeknownst to me was the plan since I started), and my position would no longer exist. So, closing down yet another studio to sell to a private artist (who may have a “tiny temper”) and one employment lawsuit later (which I won), I’m back in the US starting somewhat over, and recalibrating until moving up to Nashville soon to resume my musical journey there.
The SSL at Resident Studios, formerly in Willesden Green, London, UK.
All that being said, I’ve spent thousands of hours in label offices and studios, recorded over 400+ drum tracks for people as a session musician, worked on hundreds of mixes, played across the US and in the UK in bands, and write and produce my own music under the monikers Glass Titans and Ravenholm. I’m a huge proponent of working with the equipment that you do have rather than letting what you don’t have hold you back, and am very much of the punk and DIY mindset- so much so that my first real band recorded, produced, mixed, and distributed our album and EP all by ourselves! I have a great bit of esoteric technical knowledge that is mostly useless most days, but man does it help the label contract and/or recording session when it’s applicable.
I say this all not to toot my own horn, but to provide a background and further clarity about my work history and experience. After years of working at a record label, and years of playing and recording music, I’ve spent just about an equal time on the business, engineering, and musician sides of things, and have a unique perspective on how these all coexist. The modern music business is in a weird place right now, and everything changes seemingly overnight. I don’t claim to have all of the answers, but my goal with my writing is to provide intelligent clarification on topics, respectable discussion about industry trends, and share personal stories that relate to the world we live in and how it has shaped me not only as a musician and business person, but as a human being.
After all, who in the music industry isn’t interested in sharing stories and discussing new ways of thinking?
