The Road (pt1)
Left-Brain
The Road Beckons
But, things were about to wierd.
My friend, mentor and guitar teacher, Jim Thomas, was about to become my boss in a totally new and wild-ass adventure called Seismograph.
Jim had basically left his career as a professional musician to become a manager on one of these roving seismograph crews out west.
Eventually getting me to come along and give it a try.
I'm not exactly sure of what the initial allure of this crazy-ass idea was, but I can guess that it was probably fueled by a couple of things:
First, was the fact the the studio had become predominantly an ad agency over the last year. We we're mostly doing print ads with the occasional voiceover for the radio.
Not much real musical recording going on.
And second, (and maybe more importantly) was the fact that I was in my twenties and just plain restless as f*%k (so there was that).
Right-Brain
Creative Challenges
I'm not going to say that I was a World-Class Recording Engineer, but after a couple of years at Tetraonics (now Thelen Advertising), I felt--well--competent at my craft.
I'd spent so many hours in that studio at night, on my own time, learning and refining how to capture music with technology. And I'd been involved in hundreds of sessions with live musicians. Literally from Polka bands to Punk.
But the opportunities to practice that craft were becoming few and far between. The studio had basically (through financial necessity) transitioned into a full-blown advertising agency. And with that change came new employees to write ads and do print layout.
And what didn't come along for the ride, was more creative recording sessions.
I spent a lot of time in those days recording voiceovers. Where (as an engineer), you just set a mic up in front of someone's face and then hit the play and record buttons on and off for the next couple of hours while you try not to fall asleep.
So when Jim started recounting these unbelievable stories about riding around in helicopters all day long, blowing up dynamite and firing unruly employees by telling them to "Get out of town by sundown" (no shit, that was actually what he said), well, I was ripe for a change, so this just clinched the deal.