For the love of sound.
It started at 13. I walked into a San Diego studio to record a demo — the same room where blink-182 had recorded theirs — and I couldn't stop watching the engineer. That was it. That was what I wanted to do.
I wasn't much interested in school after that. Got kicked out my junior year for not showing up. Worked construction with my stepdad. Hated every minute of it. All I wanted was to find my way into a recording studio — specifically one where I knew they were making records I loved.
When I finally got an interview, they were interested — but I needed school credit to intern. On the drive home, I called to enroll myself in adult school, got my GED as fast as I could, and then enrolled at The Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences.
By late 2007 I was interning at The Pass in Los Angeles. Got hired as a runner, and when Ryan Hewitt (blink-182, Red Hot Chili Peppers) asked me to assist him I said yes without hesitating. For the next several years I was in the room for sessions with The Avett Brothers, Flogging Molly, and many others — learning craft from one of the best mixers in the business.
I took a construction job. I was miserable in a way that was hard to hide. Eventually my wife told me plainly: get back to music. So in 2016 I did — starting at Glenwood Place Studios in Burbank, working my way back up through assistant and ultimately engineering sessions with artists like Kelly Clarkson. Then COVID hit and everything stopped.
In October 2020, my wife and I had dinner with Ryan in Nashville. He called me back to work with him shortly after. Those sessions led to mixing and engineering credits on Noah Kahan's Stick Season, Koe Wetzel's Time Goes On, Cody Jinks' Sings Lefty Frizzell, and being selected as one of three engineers to remix the entire Oasis catalog from recall notes and deliver it in Dolby Atmos for Apple Music.
Now I'm building my own client roster — independent artists who care about their records the way I care about mine. Music with real instruments. Real performances. Real feeling. If I'm not rocking out and looking like an idiot at the console, the mix isn't there yet.