Electricians and Madmen

Recording live performances for The Kevin Brown sessions, composing music for post-production, and running a multimedia facility in the heart of downtown.

Room sound techniques, bringing out great vocal takes, and gear talk to the moon and back.

Big drum sounds in Third Coast's big room, production that supports the song, and importance of a great monitor mix.

Geoff Michael is owner and head engineer of Big Sky Recording in Ann Arbor. Geoff has been a cornerstone of the Michigan music scene for over two decades, working with artists such as Joshua Davis, The Great Lakes Myth Society, Dick Siegel, Peter "Madcat" Ruth, Jill Jack, Laith Al-Saadi, Hot Club of Detroit, and Whitey Morgan. Geoff has also recorded hundreds of live, in-studio performances for Michigan Radio's Acoustic Cafe, featuring internationally known stars like Iron & Wine, Suzanne Vega, Death Cab For Cutie and Dar Williams. We talked in March of 2018 in Big Sky's main tracking room, among his collection of beautiful instruments and classic microphones.

Bryan Heany is a recording and live sound engineer, as well as musician, educator, archivist, and radio producer. A prolific contributor to the Kalamazoo music scene for over 20 years, Bryan is an soundperson of diverse tastes and skills, from wildly inventive indie albums, to pristine classical recordings. We talked in December 2017 at his own Studio 37, set up in the second story of a barn on the outskirts of town.

Anthony Gravino, an independent engineer, producer, and musician from Chicago Illinois. Anthony does tracking, mixing and mastering, working in a wide range of genres, including Rock, Jazz, Folk and R&B. A go-to collaborator for some of the most skilled and creative independent musicians in the city, his credits include The Claudettes, Davy Knowles, Hood Smoke, Bunny Pattootie, and Matt Ulery. Anthony also has a lot of sonic ties to Michigan, including mastering albums for Red Tail Ring, Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, Stephen Lynch, Sky & Signal, and The Red Sea Pedestrians. We talked in February 2018 at his private studio, The Drake, nestled into a a quiet neighborhood in Logan Square.

Jen Shangraw is Director of Recording Services at Michigan State University. Jen is an expert classical and jazz sound engineer who handles concert recordings and sessions in a number of performance spaces throughout MSU's campus. From Jazz orchestras and chamber music in the 440-seat Fairchild theater, to symphony orchestras in the 2400-seat Wharton Center, to the Spartan Marching Band playing halftime in the 75,000-seat Spartan Stadium, Jen is skilled at creating world-class recordings in a wide variety of scenarios, often on the fly and without a net.

Bob Benson is a sound designer at Audio Recording Unlimited, a 4-studio facility in downtown Chicago. Bob is a veteran post-production engineer who has spent decades recording, editing and mixing sound for film, TV, radio, and internet broadcast. We talked in February 2018 in one of ARU's beautiful production suites, 24 floors above Michigan Avenue.

John Campos is Director of Western Sound Studios, the recording facility at Western Michigan University. John has managed this classic Kalamazoo studio for over 30 years, and as WMU's recording techniques instructor, he has helped generations of successful engineers get their careers started in audio.

Bryan Heany is a Kalamazoo sound engineer with eclectic experience in all things sonic, including studio engineering, live sound, archiving, radio production, equipment repair, and audio education. As a musician, Bryan has played with a long list of groups, including Guitar Up!, Zed Zeppelin, The Nwe Spryghts, The Roman Invasion Suite, The That's, and his own 37.ent projects, among many others.