Are you guys hip to Matt Boudreau’s Working Class Audio podcast? A longtime industry professional and freelance audio engineer, Boudreau has kicked Working Class Audio into high gear in the last few months, mainly through his podcast, which features interviews with and spotlights on a wide variety of recording, mixing, and mastering engineers. So far, he’s run interviews with studio owners and engineers like Vance Powell, John Cuniberti, Robert Smith, and many more, whose collective resumes span all kinds of bands, including Red Fang, Lady Gaga, Aerosmith, Joe Satriani, the Dead Kennedys, and many more. Says Boudreau of the endeavor,
Without the burden of owning a studio, I’ve developed this idea of working that I started to call “Working Class Audio”. It’s nothing revolutionary but rather a set of ideas that many freelance audio folks fail to address and end up getting out of audio as a result. My goals were to continue a high standard of audio work without succumbing to gear lust and going further into debt, develop a healthy relationship with money and business, and in my case continue to be a good parent who is present for my kids. Working Class Audio is my conduit to share those experiences and ideas.
The episode I’ve embedded below features an interview with Scott Evans, a renaissance man of extreme music if there ever was one. Evans splits his time between handling guitar/vocal duties for Kowloon Walled City, engineering records at Oakland’s Antisleep Audio recording studio (whose great motto is “Distort Everything”), and writing articles for the industry rag Tape Op. Oh, and the dude also has a regular gig writing code for Adobe Systems. So I’m sure there’s a thing or two that all you aspiring audio guys could pick up from listening to this, and not just about the technical end of things, but also the business, the realities, and thoughts on maintaining healthy client relationships.
Check out other episodes at this location.
