A Life In Music
Sheffield Institute for the Recording Arts
I knew I was passionate about music - it was what I connected with most, and what I spent all my free time doing. I realized the next step was diving deeper into recording. I enrolled in audio engineering school, graduated at the top of my class, and fell in love with recording and live sound. That spark had started years earlier when Andrew showed me his first four-track, but now I had real perspective and experience behind it. I made the most of every minute of school.
The Brass Monkey
After graduating, I started doing live sound at the Brass Monkey several nights a week. It wasn’t glamorous: a rough eight-channel mixer, a worn PA, a beat-up stage, and a cramped sound booth. The engineer I replaced told me not to waste my time there, but I had already learned that these were exactly the opportunities I loved most.
So I went to work.
With the owner’s blessing, I repainted the place, rebuilt the stage, raised and relocated the booth, ran new electrical lines, 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 spent countless hours in Music Go Round as a kid, and now 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 once things were stable - 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, and because he believed in me, he sold it to me for a price I could manage.
Suddenly, I owned a 24-channel Mackie 8-bus console with automation, three ADAT machines, racks of outboard gear, and everything I needed to build a real studio. I created a control room, set up two small studios, and - using my savings and my dad’s help - bought good monitors, mics, and stands.
Because I had become a favorite live-sound engineer among Brass Monkey bands, seasoned musicians started coming to record with me. Through 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, caring about every detail, and never forgetting how lucky I was to be doing it.
Live sound taught me to read the room and solve problems instantly; recording taught me to slow down, listen deeply, and understand how tiny adjustments could change everything. Both worlds were built on relationships - with artists, with musicians, with people I learned from every single day. Staying a student, staying humble, staying appreciative - that was the heart of everything.
And through all of it, my imagination was alive. I saw possibilities everywhere.
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My First Band
