Working Class Audio

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...

A jack of all trades and master of some, his areas of expertise run the gamut of daily station operation; from the foundations of real-time networking for  AoIP , to FOH and live sound recording,  IP phones  and  SIP trunking , MPEG audio, and video standards and codecs, radio automation, HD radio transmission, to remote broadcast coordination, even security cameras, and keycar...

Gary Hobish brings over 30 years of experience as a professional recording engineer/producer to A. Hammer Mastering which he runs out of Secret Studios in San Francisco. He started as an assistant engineer at legendary Bell Sound Studios in New York City but found his way to San Francisco in 1976. He has worked in many disciplines in recording and music, most notably as Mastering Engineer/ Ta...

Nashville producer Mitch Dane has managed to cross the lines into almost every genre In his 20+ years of production/engineering experience. Though most of his work can be heard on Rock, Roots/Rock and Singer/Songwriter records, Mitch continues to work fearlessly in other styles like Bluegrass/Americana. In his own words: “I like to collect the best aspects of every genre of mus...

Tremaine Williams (AKA: “Six7”) was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. He began his musical journey by taking piano & drum lessons while in elementary school, as well as becoming a classically trained singer in the Raleigh Boychoir. He grew up playing in church but was also heavily influenced by R&B. He began to dabble in music production in high school as a hobby. ...

John Schimpf got his start in the music industry working in clubs and theatres as a production manager and sound engineer, and working as a recording engineer for the University he was attending while pursuing a classical music degree. As a student he built what became the technological backbone for a music industry program developed at that University. In 2001, he went on to become an engineer an...

Mike Kalajian is the son of an audio technician/audiophile who was exposed to music and recording equipment at a very early age through family including his Uncle’s home recording setup  which fascinated Mike and started to draw him in to the audio experience. Mike’s parents say his first word was actually “speaker” and at  9 years old was given hi...

Finding detailed information on Producer/Engineer/Mixer Niko Bolas is a challenge. Niko is not a publicity hound and generally avoids big star-studded events. He’s a man that stays focused on the work in front of him and he puts his all into it. Looking at his discography you’ll notice a couple of things, repeat clients such as Neil Young, Melissa Etheridge, Robert Cray, and the late War...

What can you say about Al Schmitt that has not been said? The man truly is a legend and a complete professional.  He has scored a pile of Grammy wins and nominations over the years, recorded and mixed more than 150 gold and platinum albums plus his credit list includes Henry Mancini, Sam Cooke, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Sammy Davis, Jr., Natalie Cole, Thelonious Monk, Elvis Presle...

Magnus Lindberg is a freelance engineer based in Stockholm, Sweden. Despite his young age of 35 he has already been an audio professional for 14 years, working with a wide range of independent bands and artists from all over the world. Starting out at a young age with various intern ships, most noticeable the one at Sound City Studios, LA he then found himself a part of the production team at Tont...

John Paterno is an LA-based audio pro. He has worked with a wide range of artists, including Robbie Williams, Soraya, Badly Drawn Boy, Lustra, The Thrills, Tim McGraw, Robben Ford, Eros Ramazzotti, and The Steve Gadd Band in his 25+ years in the music business. John moved to Los Angeles two weeks after graduating from the University of Miami’s Music Engineering program, and quickly gained foo...

Matt Wright grew up in an extended musical family, of both musicians and aficionados. Every family gets together involved extended periods of both playing music and arguing about pop records, which strongly influenced his relationship with music: a) He’s a lifelong musician because of it, b) He was raised listening to the canon of great pop records, and c) He was surrounded by people who...