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How did you end up with this job?
I was in a band called Orangutang and we signed to Imago Records, which was sort of a failed major label experiment. We toured — we were big in Boston. Don Zientara did our first record, Sean [Slade] and Paul [Kolderie] mixed it. Sean and Paul produced our second record.
Classic!
When I was 22 I was wondering who was going to produce our record. We were listening to Fugazi and we were like, "We're going to Inner Ear!" [laughter] Anyway, the band broke up and the label was crappy. I knew I had to figure out what to do. I had been in a bunch of bands, but that was the best one by far that I had been in. I knew I had to figure out how to be more in control of my destiny. So, I started producing records.
How do you just start producing records?
Right out of college I worked at a place called Anything Audio, which was Dave Malekpour's pro audio business before Pro Audio Design. I was a horrible, horrible employee. I didn't sell anything! [laughter] One day I just stopped going to work, but I worked there long enough to know how to put a studio together from the vendor's perspective. I worked on a few projects brokering studio gear. I'd taken a couple of audio classes in college — I was always interested in recording. When we were making records I was always very interested in the process. When the band I was in after Orangutang, Jocobono decided to do a record in Boston, we did it at a studio called New Alliance. Do you know Mudrock [Andrew "Mudrock" Murdock]? It was his studio and Billy [O'Malley, the singer from Jocobono] helped him out with building some stuff. He handed us the keys and said to come in when no one was around and finish our record. Billy and I would go in at 2 a.m. and wait for people to leave. We'd drink a bunch of vodka and then figure things out.
You could sit there for hours trying to figure out how to get a headphone sound. [laughter]
Yeah. Andrew helped us out a lot. He was a mentor. He put the studio together himself and he knew how to do everything. By the time that was finished I felt like I could make a record — even though we did everything wrong! [laughter] I started working at New Alliance as an engineer. Andrew made a Godsmack record, and he went out to L.A. and started doing the heavy-duty thing out there. He still owned half of the business, but his partner helped run things. I was the engineer there for a while. Then I left and Andrew Schneider [Tape Op #89] took over engineering at New Alliance. I started playing drums for Blue Man Group. After playing in Blue Man Group for a while and being in Boston and my bands drying up, I figured that I wanted to move to New York. I told the guys that had founded the show that I could help them make a record. They had made a couple of attempts to make records before and it hadn't worked out. I came to New York and I helped them do a couple of projects. One was directing sound, designing things — they liked it and said, "Okay, you're going to move to New York next week and you are going to produce the record." I packed my bags and was there the next week. We built the original studio at Third Street to make the first record, Audio. That's when I finally got Dave Malekpour back — I bought the gear from him. [laughter]
It all comes around!
I called Carl Plaster, the drum master, to come down from Boston and help tune the drums — there are so many drums! Andrew Schneider from New Alliance engineered the record. It was the first time the founders of the show focused on music and recording — really concentrated for that period of time. When it was over I became the Music Director. And from there on out, because there was a studio there was need — more material for the shows, we needed to record songs for the commercials, we needed sound design. When I got Pro Tools, Blue Man flew me to L.A. so that Mudrock could teach me how to use it. I worked on Pro Tools for two years and then hired an intern, Matt Werden, from Berklee. Immediately he knew way more than I did! And now he has so much experience engineering and mixing such a wide variety of things here that he has fast become one of the best and most versatile engineers I've worked with. I'm lucky to have the engineering staff that's here — these guys are great. We were on top of each other in the old space — the composers, the different recording projects — Blue Man is always doing so many things. At the other facility right now, an engineer is working on translating the "How to Be a Megastar Tour 2.0" into Korean. She already did it in French. I've got a guy making an opera song on the mezzanine [upstairs]. It's amazing. I'm so psyched to have a facility that's working.
Could you run a tie line to the room up above us?
