Working Class Audio

Mark Kilborn is a sound designer, mixer and implementer with over a decade of experience in the video games industry. He has worked on various game franchises including Borderlands, Forza Motorsport, Brothers In Arms, Tony Hawk and Project Gotham Racing. For the last seven years he has served as one of the Audio Directors for the Call of Duty series, collaborating with teams of sound designers aro...

Kurt Ballou  is a musician and producer, best known as the guitarist from Massachusetts-based band Converge . Aside from his role in Converge, Ballou is a prolific producer, recording and producing out of his own GodCity Studio.  Kurt has worked with numerous bands over the last 25 years in a producing/ recording role including High on Fire, Nails, Russian Circles and Code Orange. Kurt a...

Monte Vallier grew up in the Bay Area and launched his musical career by dropping out of high school and moving to London with his band Half Church who he played bass with. After making a record and playing tons of gigs with bands such as The Fall, Echo and the Bunnymen, and PIL, the band called it quits in 1986. After interning at The music annex and Coast Recorders (Bay Area) Mont...

Mike Wells has spent the last 15 plus years mastering, complimented by a lifetime in music as a musician, music theory graduate, recording artist, and recording/mixing engineer. From San Francisco to Los Angeles, Mike has had one hell of a  journey to get to the point of working with artists such as Green Day, PARRI$, Prince, and Gridlock. While we all have career ups and downs of which...

Although Frank Wolf’s background was in music, he found myself drawn to “the other side of the glass” and changed his studies to Physics and Electrical Engineering. While in college, Frank also built and ran a small studio with an old ½” Scully at it’s heart. (ahh analog!) During those years, he met the folks at The Village Recorder, and when he graduated, he was immediately hired a...

Nathan Harlow grew up in San Francisco, played in bands and eventually found his way into the world of live sound. 20 years later, his experience touring, mixing, recording and doing system design has allowed him the opportunity to work with artists such as Prince, Rob Zombie, Sonic Youth, Bebel Gilberto, Medeski, Martin and Wood and Primus. His skills are also in demand at the  Fox...

I took a trip from NORCAL to SOCAL to hit NAMM 2017. As I arrived I decided to put together a show based on “Power Chats/Talks”. 20 minute or so quick chats with friends about certain topics.  Ben Lindell from  Puremix , Sean McLaughlin, Andy Freeman, Gary Boss of Audio-Technica  and  Vance Powell  joined me. Enjoy!

Justin Pizzoferrato is a recording engineer based out of western Massachusetts. He owns and runs Sonelab with Mark Alan Miller and also freelances from time to time. Justin has worked with such bands as Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Speedy Ortiz, Elder, and many more in the rock genre. He got his start freelancing around Boston. After moving to western Mass, he noted the lack of studios and decid...

Chris Montgomery is an audio engineer and producer living and working in New York City. Having grown up in Glasgow, Scotland, he brings a musical heritage from one of the most prolific and diverse music scenes and applies this to his work in studio, live and field audio production. From live sound at The Bitter End to studio work and location sound at Dubway Studios, Chris digs in and tries it all...

Chris Graham runs Chris Graham Mastering outside of Columbus, Ohio. Chris joined Matt for a Skype call from his mastering studio to talk about integrity, his business, his website, the tools he uses to stay organized and audio conspiracy theories! The following bio is from Chris’ website  www.chrisgrahammastering.com Before I became a full time audio mastering engineer, I was an audio en...

Don Zientara is a musician and recording engineer as well as the owner and chief engineer at  Inner Ear Studios  in Arlington, Virginia located outside of Washington DC. Don has a varied background that is part art, part military, part electronics and ultimately all music and recording. While Don records many kinds of music, he is best known for his work with Dischord Records and DC...

Michael Ashby is next generation audio engineer who started out as a drummer, he was inspired by Grammy award winning engineers like Jaycen Joshua and Craig Bauermix. Michael has mixed for multiple Sony & Universal artists on his way up including Timbaland’s BK Brasco, Latoya Jackson, Fetty Wap, Sixx John (by Neyo), Grafh and more! He’s attracting the industry’s a...

Andy Deguara is a studio owner, audio engineer and producer working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His recording career started in 1994 as a Junior in High school. He obtained his first 4 track recorder and immediately started recording his friend’s vocals and D.J. mixes. It soon became very clear that He wanted to work in a studio recording and mixing records. By 1997 Andy had moved up from his 4...

Pat Patten came to be on Working Class Audio through a set of random circumstances. At our 100th show we chose his name at random to win a set of Audio-Technica headphones. After talking Pat on the phone I realized he would make a great guest for the WCA podcast. He sent me his resume which is filled with a wide variety of jobs and experience including President of Commercial Sight & Soun...

Frank McDonough has worked in the music industry since 1988. He worked at Arista Records for four years, then worked for various producer management firms, eventually starting his own company in January 2000. McDonough Management has a small but impressive client roster including former WCA alumni Andrew Scheps, Matt Wallace, Joe Barresi, Ross Hogarth, and Rob Schnapf as well as Mike Clink, D...

Leff Lefferts has spent the his career working in audio for music and film. He graduated from Berklee college and music with a degree in Music Production & Engineering in 1997 and joined on at the famous Plant Studios in Sausalito, California that same year as an intern. He quickly moved up to assistant engineer and was able to work on records with Metallica, Dave Matthews...

Well here it is, WCA #100! This was recorded at  25th Street Recording  in Oakland, California on Friday, November 18th in front of a live audience. You can either  watch it on Facebook    or listen to the podcast. This episode features Stephen Hart and Cookie Marenco. Enjoy! More On Stephen Stephen is a former mixer in residence / chief engineer at the “The...

Rob Schnapf  has been making critically-acclaimed records for the past two decades. He first gained recognition by producing (with his then-partner Tom Rothrock) Beck’s debut album, “Mellow Gold,” including the breakthrough single, “Loser.” Rob and Tom produced three albums for Elliot Smith, including “XO” and “Figure 8.” After Elliot’s death in 2003, Rob was asked by Smith’s family to help s...

Stewart Cararas  is a producer, engineer, writer and musician currently based out of Los Angeles who works on a wide variety of music projects. SOme of his clients include  Nick Lachey, Billy Ray Cyrus, Joe Perry, George Lynch, Fear Factory, Glenn Hughes, Shelby Lynne, BoomKat, Kimberley Locke, Dreamers, Better Than Ezra, Juvenile, Dee Snider, Taryn Manning, Taylor Dayne, Leah Turne...

“He’s a young man with an old soul. Matt’s got a lot of Sam Phillips in him” – Jerry Phillips Matt Ross-Spang , born in Memphis, began working at the Legendary  Sun Studio  when he was just 16, working his way up from intern to the Chief Engineer. He championed to bring the recording studio back to its origin, working hard to find, install and use the same period equipment that Sam...

J.J. Blair is a producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who hails from Chicago, and moved to Los Angeles in 1990 to get into the music business. He has worked on albums with some legendary artists. Of note, in 1999, he produced, engineered and mixed June Carter Cash’s Grammy winning album, Press On. He also engineered on Rod Stewart’s Great American Songbook albums, volumes 1 through 3; the...

Brad Wood grew up in Rockford, Illinois, the home of Cheap Trick- the greatest band alive. He played the saxophone well enough to go to college and study jazz performance. When Brad moved to Chicago in 1987, it didn’t take long before he built Idful Music Corporation- a small but mighty recording studio in Wicker Park. That’s where he recorded albums by bands like Seam, Tar, Shrimp Boat...

Scott Wiley is a music producer, engineer, musician and owner of June Audio Recording Studios in Provo, Utah. Scott studied music recording at USC and got to learn from some of the best producers and engineers in the industry during his years working in great Los Angeles rooms like Sound Factory, Sunset Sound, Cello and Conway Recording Studios. As an engineer and/or producer f...

David Barbe has a two pronged career. He has been the Director of the University of Georgia Music Business Program since 2010.  On the creative side, he has worked on hundreds of recording projects as engineer, producer, musician and writer.  Over the past few years, projects have included Deerhunter’s “Halcyon Digest,” Drive-By Truckers “It’s Grerat to Be Alive” and “Amer...

Chuck Zwicky is a Manhattan based mixing engineer who has earned several gold and platinum records in his 30+ year career, working with artists as diverse as Prince, Jeff Beck, Soul Asylum, Reggie Watts, Rick Moranis, a-ha, NIN, and the Jonas Brothers. Chuck joins Matt over Skype from his Manhattan apartment and home to his mixing /mastering suite to discuss a wide range of topics including t...