Welcome to my recording studio. Don’t trip on the cables. As you can see.... you can see from there, right?... the studio is based on a 24 track state of the art hard disc recorder. Tracking is done via an extensive collection of outboard mic preamps and comp/limiters, assuring a short, clean signal path. Mixing is done on an 8 buss digital console. In addition to the aforementioned 24 tracks, here’s what else I bring to the party. I’ve been a musician for 40 years. Guitar, bass, mandolin, percussion. I can play on your recording. In earning my degree in music, I studied instrumental and choral arranging. Need parts? I know bunches of good players in the area, should you need back-up. I can co-produce your recording, which, in my world, means acting as a guide to help you achieve your vision. Have you written a book? These days, you want that on audio. Are you a presenter? You want a recording of your presentation. Ready for that live album? Have car, will travel. 

My recording philosophy, in a nutshell, is to stay the heck out of the way. To put it another way, I believe that the job of an audio engineer is to keep the technology invisible. The listener, unless he or she is another engineer, God help us, should not notice the engineering. We should be the unsung heroes of the recording process, working long, thankless hours, slaving over a hot microphone until dawn, drinking endless cups of coffee, all in service to the ARTIST. No glory, no rewards.... well, you will have to write the occasional check... thankful for an inconspicuous corner at the CD release party, and then on to the next selfless endeavor. 

But I wax poetic, as is my wont. I always love using that word. Wont. Short. Relatively uncommon. Difficult to work into day to day speech. Unless you go to a diner and say, “I wont a cup of coffee.” But then the waitress thinks you mean “want”, and looks at you funny, wondering where you went to school. But I wax digressive, as is my other wont. In fact, I have many wonts. For example, right now I wont to tell you a bit about my engineering background. I think it makes an interesting story. 

Back around 1980, I was heading up the Music Department in a small private school for the arts. Pretty impressive, huh? Actually, it was a dance instruction school. The owner figured she could pull in additional business by offering music and drama lessons, and hired me to put together a music program. She also hired a relatively unknown actor to run the Drama Department. A short time later, he got a starring role in a TV spinoff, and the rest is history. You’ve heard of him. Voice of Sebastian the crab in The Little Mermaid. Last I heard, playing Mufasa in The Lion King on Broadway. Sam Wright. Great guy. 

But back to me. One of the teachers I hired was a guy named Joe Lupus. Joe had a terrific moustache. One day, he came to me and told me he was setting up a school to teach audio engineering, and he wanted me to teach there. I told him I was highly complimented, but I didn’t know a thing about engineering. He said, “That’s ok, I can teach you that. You’re a great teacher, and I need good teachers.” Smart fella, that Joe. So I went to work helping set up the school, everything from typing the course outline to painting the studio. When the school was ready to open, Joe taught the first ten week course, which I attended as a student. I taught the second session. Quite the experience. I stayed about half a step ahead of my students. Wish I had the proverbial nickel for each time I was asked a question and answered, “We’ll talk about that next week.” Then I’d run home, learn how-to, and teach that in the next class. Twenty-five years later, I can laugh about it. We were running the school out of someone else’s studio, and because I was around so much, the owner started hiring me to do sessions. Look Ma, I’m a Perfessional Audio Engineer! 

After a few months, the school owners decided we had outgrown the small suburban 4-track studio we were in, and they went into a partnership with a 24-track studio on Broadway and 54th in New Yawk Cit-tee, thank you very much. Right upstairs from Studio 54 in its heyday. I have a great story about that. Ask me sometime. Again, because I was there, about six months after first sitting down at a recording console, I was a big city professional recording engineer in The Big Apple. Less than two years later, I became Chief Engineer. I had a lot of exciting adventures- had a cop point a gun at me at 2 AM in the middle of Broadway, got to work with Tiny Tim (I have a handwritten copy of “Tiptoe Through The Tulips” to prove it), worked with one half of the Shirelles (I fell madly in love with one of them who used to massage my shoulders during late-night sessions... where are ya, Doris??)

But, as is often the case with child stars and a meteoric rise to fame, the fast pace spun out of control, the bright lights turned garish, the glitter of Tinsel Town.... oh, wait, wrong coast... anyway, you get the idea. I left New York and moved upstate, the high point of which was my one and only stint playing guitar in a pit orchestra for a SUNY New Paltz production of Li’l Abner. There’s another good story there, but hey, I have to keep something in reserve for breaks during your sessions! 

Are you still reading this? Amazing! 

After a short time in New Paltz, I came to Charlemont MA. to work with Molly Scott on her album, We Are All One Planet. It took a few months to finish the album, and two and a half years for me to leave. Hey, figure it out. 
The next big event took place in 1987, when James Durst and Ferne Bork asked me to work on their upcoming album Light Up The Sky. We created that album at the now gone-but-not-forgotten Wendell Recording Studio, where we also revived the engineering school. By this time the joke was, “Bruce works on an album, becomes romantically involved with the artist.” Now James is a pretty cute guy, but I thought that Ferne might be the better bet. Less competition at the shaving mirror. That album took about 8 months to complete, and Ferne is still hanging around! (Actually, it’s me who’s still hanging around her.... but we wouldn’t want her to get a swelled head). And don’t worry about that “romantic involvement” thing.... I was young and foolish then. Now I’m old and foolish.
The next 18 years went by in a blur of day jobs, child-birth, sessions and teaching in Wendell, the debut of my own Big Chair Creek Studio, work-release programs.... ok, that’s a joke.... they never could prove anything. Which brings us to the present. Get in touch- let’s see what beautiful music we can make together. And if not, we’ll always have Paris....