Mixing Engineer & Musician

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: Writing material for a third studio album with my band The Lone Crows, heading to record some demos with a friend this weekend, and mixing an acoustic folk performance after that.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: I have to say Digital because my imagination is way too big for anything less than a million dollar full Analog studio. We'll get there one day.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: Everything. Cliché, I know, but it's true.

Q: What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What's your answer?

A: Can I get more of me in the headphones? "Yeah, sure."

Q: What's the biggest misconception about what you do?

A: There are so many misconceptions around recording and mixing, I can't even begin to guess at what the biggest one is.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: What's your favorite piece of music ever recorded? Why? Tell me about it.

Q: What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?

A: I'm terrible with making up unsolicited advice. I'm great with answering questions. So my advice would be "Ask me lots of questions. It doesn't matter what, and there's no such thing as a stupid question."

Q: If you were on a desert island and could take just 5 pieces of gear, what would they be?

A: A Power Generator, my Laptop, my Focusrite 2i4 interface, the most solid Mic cable I can find, and a Shure SM57. That's really the only answer I can think would make sense.

Q: What was your career path? How long have you been doing this?

A: I got into music when I was 12 and had just been given my first guitar for Christmas. After the usual period of being so terrible it was embarrassing, I realized that I actually had a knack for the thing and then shortly afterward realized I was addicted. Over the next couple years I dug deeper and deeper, and got into recording and production actually by way of building effects pedals. After creating some of my own effects, I thought that recording and producing couldn't be that much more difficult and went to school for an A.A. in Sound Arts at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. I graduated 2 years ago and have been producing and performing my own music while working with other friends and contacts in Minneapolis to record, mix, produce, and generally engineer sound ever since.

Q: Tell us about a project you worked on you are especially proud of and why. What was your role?

A: The latest album I have produced with my band The Lone Crows, "Live at Freak Valley." I of course sang and performed on the recording, but also engineered the entire Mix and Master. It was always a dream of mine to work on a really quality live festival recording such as this, and to be so deep in the thick of the process was both elating and terrifying. It came out sounding exactly how I wanted it to.

Q: Which artist would you like to work with and why?

A: Reignwolf. They're doing exactly what I want to hear, and I would love to be there to put it on record.

Q: What type of music do you usually work on?

A: Being a guitarist and vocalist, I know these two instruments the best and seek out types of music that have it. I am active in the Rock communities in my hometown so I've often found myself working with those sorts of styles, but I also have done folk, reggae, soul, and

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: Desperation, fresh ears, and immediacy. I know what I think sounds good, and generally people tell me they agree with me when they hear it.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: Macbook Pro running OSX 10.8.5, Pro Tools 10, Focusrite 2i4 Interface, M-Audio AV70 speakers. Too many plug-ins to really get into, My setup is in a treated room at home and I listen to music constantly with it.

Q: What other musicians or music production professionals inspire you?

A: Steve Albini is the master of pragmatism and minimalism, even if he's prone to hyperbole. Dan Auerbach has done so many good things for raw and soulful music in the mainstream in the last decade that I can't leave him out. Jimmy Page because, of course. Geoff Emerick was always the unsung hero of the 60s British scene, what an absolute revolutionary. Oh, and Kawabata Makoto of the Acid Mothers Temple collective; for such an amazingly huge body of work he has, it's always fresh, it's always inspired, and it's the most raw, untouched, and immediate music I've ever heard.

Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.

A: For clients in my hometown, I have often lately started with high quality demo recordings made on my mobile set-up in advance of a full production. I've taken clients through songs from conception to release, starting sometimes as a single singer-songwriter piece and helped the process to turn it into a full arrangement. My passion is particularly in the arrangement and the mix, it's just too much fun. That being said, mixing tracks for music is what I spend the most time on.