About

A little history about me - I grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC and was raised in the band program there. One day my band director hours before a jazz band concert said to me “you’re pretty good at technical stuff, how about you go up in the sound booth and run sound for the jazz band. Take your best guess for your own mic.” Obviously, I had not a clue what I was doing, but somehow the 24x8 or whatever it was Mackie console just kind of clicked for me. The idea that with a small manipulation of a small piece of electronics, I could alter the way someone feels about a sound. I was hooked.

After high school I knew my life would somehow revolve around music. At the behest of my parents to get some kind of bachelor’s degree, I found Shenandoah Conservatory. I landed there because it was very much a musician’s school first, technical school second and I thought to myself ‘make great music and the rest will sort itself out.’ I’m really happy with that decision to this day. 4 years later I had a BM in music production and recording technology and fancied myself an audio engineer. Then the cold hard reality of being a young person with a fresh college degree and no experience hit. I soon found a job at a local venue in Northern Virginia called Empire. It was a down and dirty punk and metal venue. 500 capacity, sometimes 7 bands a night, one X32 for monitors AND front of house. I learned to grow a thick skin, work quickly under pressure, and eventually how to slam out a half decent mix.

Soon I learned that mixing in a small punk venue was not going to pay the bills in one of the most affluent counties in America. I decided it was time to follow the music and in March of 2015 I packed my bags and moved to Nashville, TN. I soon found myself in an similar situation, running sound for a bunch of punk and metal bands at a non-profit venue in down town Nashville. The only difference was I could actually pay rent! Eventually just enough word of mouth had spread that I got the chance to go out on my first tour. A pop act named Jacob Whitesides was looking at bringing on an ‘intern’ sound engineer. I went on the road for 7 weeks for only per-diem and an Avid SC48 running in-ears and FOH. I loved it. And through the people I met on that tour, it seems like I never went home again.

Since then I have been fortunate enough to run for a number of really cool artists; Lido, EDEN, Mikky Ekko, NeverShoutNever, Greta Van Fleet, Sara Evans, King810, Why Don’t We and Scotty McCreery. I’ve been lucky enough to travel all over the world; I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve looped the US, having done a show in all 50 states; all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Canada and Japan. One thing I’ve figured out is that I am nowhere close to done learning. I want to share what I’ve learned and I hope that this website, the blog, the YouTube or maybe just an email threat can be a place of learning for all of us.

More recently I have been doing more and more studio work. While the mediums are certainly related they seem to exist in their own parallel universes. They each present their own challenges but also their own advantages. Perhaps what I enjoy the most out of studio work is I can work at whatever volume suits me. But even more than that, I get to work in my own backyard of the home I bought in 2018 and share with my amazing wife whom help me design and build my own studio workspace.