Tetrasonics (p1)
Left-Brain
Mark Thelen
My first meeting with Mark, the owner of Tetrasonics Recording Studio in St Cloud, MN, was - well - interesting.
I didn't know it at the time, but his business partner had recently left the company. (I never got the whole story but my sense was that this was not an amiable separation.)
Mark was the sales and marketing force behind the company's march forward and the other guy, was apparently the technical dude.
So his exit had left Mark in a quandary about how to keep his new company afloat and moving forward without knowing much at all about what this guy even did.
Hence the job posting for an engineer.
Right-Brain
The Interview
The other thing I didn't realize at the time was that Mark really didn't know what he was looking for -- which kind of leveled the playing field if you think about it -- since I had no idea what I had to offer!
I don’t remember a lot about that first meeting with Mark (there would be more than one), but I do remember a couple of things.
When I mentioned that I played trumpet, he asked me if I was one of the best horn players in town. And of course (cocky), at 21, that’s exactly what I thought.
Throughout the interview, Mark was jotting notes on a little 3x5 index card and at the end of the interview, he picked it up and mashed it down on top of a pile of other 3x5 cards on one of those restaurant order pokey-things.
Then he announced, matter of factly, that he'd be in touch.
And I thought, "Well that's the end of that. Street Department here I come."
The Offer
But then an odd thing happened.
A couple days later, Mark called me in for second interview and subsequently asked if I'd be willing to work without pay for a week or so. Just to see if I was going to work out or not.
(Again, he wasn't sure what he was looking for so he didn't know if I was it or not.)
And so, began one of the really (really) great periods of my life, stepping into the shoes of a grownup Recording Engineer--my newly professed life’s dream--with absolutely no friggin’ idea what I was doing at all!