A Life In Music
Sheffield Institute for the Recording Arts
I knew I was passionate about music - it was what I connected with the most and what I was spending all of my free time doing. The next step I took was diving deeper into the world of recording. I enrolled in audio engineering school, graduated at the top of my class, and fell in love with recording and live sound. The spark had started years earlier when Andrew showed me his first four-track, but now, with having real studio experience from recording two records, I knew I wanted to make the most of every minute of school.
The Brass Monkey
After graduating, I started doing live sound at the Brass Monkey Saloon in Fells Point several nights a week. It wasn’t glamorous: a rough eight-channel mixer, a worn PA, a beat-up stage, and a sound booth crammed to the side. The engineer I replaced told me not to waste my time there, but I had already started learning that these were exactly the opportunities I loved most.
So I went to work.
With the owner’s blessing, I repainted the venue, rebuilt the stage, raised and relocated the booth, ran new electrical lines throughout, and pieced together better gear - supplying my own mics and cables. This was the period where I truly learned by doing, figuring things out from scratch, making mistakes, fixing them, and seeing results instantly. It was unbelievably fun and absolutely foundational.
By then, the technical side of music had become a huge part of who I was. I had so much experience being in a band, doing live sound pushed those instincts even further. When a mic died mid-set or feedback exploded through the room, how fast could I find the problem? And what I loved the most - if I stuck with it, how good could I make the band sound?
Every night felt like I was the extra member of every band. Their performance and the audience’s experience depended on me, and I loved that responsibility. It deepened my connection to music in a completely new way and helped shape the musician I was becoming.
Blue Room 808
Around this time, I became close with one of my favorite Sheffield teachers, Drew Mazurek - a full-time recording engineer with a complete home studio. When he decided to upgrade his setup, he planned to sell everything as a package. Because of our relationship, he sold it to me for a price I could manage.
Because I had become a favorite live-sound engineer among Brass Monkey bands, seasoned musicians started coming to record with me. Through a few years of trial and error, late nights, and curiosity, I taught myself how to record bands. School gave me a strong foundation, but the real learning came from paying close attention and caring about every detail.
Live sound taught me to read the room and solve problems quickly; recording taught me to slow down, listen deeply, and understand how tiny adjustments could change so much. Both worlds though were built on relationships where staying a student, humble and appreciative, was at the heart of everything.
