Working Class Audio

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...

Camden Stoddard got his start in sound shortly after moving to the Bay Area by interning with B. Z. Lewis at  Studio 132  followed by studying at  Pyramind  in San Francisco. After graduating from Pyramind, Camden participated in some independent movies and commercials before joining  Double Fine Productions  in 2009. He has since worked...

Lij Shaw is an award winning music and podcast producer who has made records for 25 years. His studio,  The Toy Box Studio  is located East Nashville, Tennessee. Lij is my “Brother from Another Podcast” being the host of  Recording Studio Rockstars . He’s a guy like myself who has been around the block, made some mistakes along the way and is here to share his ex...

Ben Hirschfield and Scott Goodrich are studio partners at Nu-Tone Studios. If you have followed my conversations with  Chris Dugan  and/or  Willie Samuels  you’ll recognize their names. I thought stopping by Nu-Tone and chatting with these guys would be a great way to follow up on a story that started with Dugan and Samuels. Ben Hirschfield began playing music at an early age a...

Willie Samuels is Studio Trilogy’s senior engineer. A recording engineer, producer and musician with some serious studio chops, Willie began his career in his teens by operating a “guerilla style” mobile studio out of his parents old station wagon, traveling to record local bands in their rehearsal spaces, garages, or whatever space he could find that sounded good. By the time he was 18, he was an...

Lolly Lewis studied voice, composition, and electronic music at UC Santa Cruz. While still in college, she was recruited for the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival’s Audio/Recording Institute, and she was Director of Recordings at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 1981 – 1993. In 1984 Lolly coordinated audio playback of her recording of John Adams‘ Light Over W...

Emmit Brooks has run Gold Dust Studios in the same location since 1975 in the Southwest city of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Gold Dust started as a home based studio at a time when very few people had home studios and it even included an echo chamber buried in the backyard! Emmit was a member of the famed Aggie Ramblers Western Swing band that formed in 1957, playing guitar. After a reco...

Jeremy Goody is the owner/operator at  Megasonic Sound  in Oakland, California and a has been a Bay Area audio engineer/producer and performing musician since 1990. After recording school Jeremy worked his way up the engineer chain at various Bay Area studios including Skyline and Bay Records. Eventually he started  the first incarnation of Megasonic in a West Oakland...

Brian Hood is a rare combination of recording engineer, musician, journeyman studio builder and master carpenter. Brian along with his amazing crew built the new  Tiny Telephone Studio Oakland , California that opened in January of 2016, as well as  Tiny Telephone Studio B  in San Francisco and many other studios large and small in the Bay Area. Brian has a perspective tha...

Pablo Munguia earned  a bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin. After trying his hand at making a records with a friend Pablo decided to  attended Berklee School of Music where he studied music production and engineering. He then graduated in 1997. Pablo moved to Los Angeles and jo...

Justin Phelps is currently the Chief engineer and designer of the  Hallowed Halls  recording studios located in Portland, Oregon. Justin began his career in 1996 at San Fransisco’s famed Coast Recorders as the house engineer. At Coast Justin received considerable guidance from Chief engineer/producer  John Cuniberti  and studio owner/gear guru Dan Alexander. Four&nbsp...

Drew Bollman moved to Nashville in 1998 and started interning and assisting at the Sound Kitchen. While Drew worked with many great engineers he happened to meet and work with  Justin Niebank ( Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts,    Brad Paisley, and  Kenny Chesney) and would end up working him for over 10 years. That experience and training&...

Jessica Thompson is our featured guest on WCA #080 . Jessica is a Grammy-nominated mastering and restoration engineer as well as an archiving specialist who has digitized, restored and revived historic recordings including The Bottom Line, Caffè Lena, Erroll Garner, the Woody Guthrie Archives and the Newport Jazz and Folk Festival, which included performances by Pete Seeger, Ro...

Dave Fridmann is a producer, engineer and musician who has made records with  Mercury Rev  ,  The Flaming Lips  ,  Weezer , Sparklehorse , Mogwai , Gemma Hayes ,  Sleater-Kinney  ,  Clap Your Hands Say Yeah ,  MGMT , Neil Finn , OK Go , and Spoon , to name a few! :-) He works out of Tarbox Road Studios which he built over 20 years ago. As a musician, Da...

Chris Dugan is an American engineer and producer. He is also a drummer, videographer, and photographer. Dugan began his musical pursuits as a drummer. Needing to be resourceful, he learned to do basic recordings for his high school bands. Engineering was an instinctual progression and it was the purist recording styles of the 60s and 70s that really inspired him. In 1996, he opened  Nu-T...