What brought on your move to Nashville from the Bay Area?
I work with Infrasonic Mastering now. [Owner and principal mastering engineer] Pete Lyman asked me to join the family. He invited me to move down to L.A. a few times, and I wasn't ready to leave the Bay Area. But then he called and said that things in Nashville were going really well. Nashville is a great community, and is a bigger market. I fought leaving the Bay Area for so long, but all the signs seemed to point that now was the time. It was like a red carpet welcome mat had been laid out. Not being able to buy a house and have more in my account than one month's rent, when I was already charging as much as was possible in the market and working 12-hour days, I either had to make my Oakland business even bigger and hire more staff, or join a larger company where I would have more support. Infrasonic is such a great home and company, and Pete is one of my best friends. We have five engineers, and two are women; so we are doing pretty well in that regard. Mastering is my day job and first love.
Do you think that things in the industry are becoming more democratic? My experience back in the 1980s was that engineers were usually condescending to just about everybody, and even worse if you weren't a straight, white male.
I am so happy that we are having this conversation. It is very timely. Just like the loudness wars are sort of over, the days of the "asshole producers" are mostly over now, too. It just won't fly anymore. Even the assholes have to tone it down a bit. Producers and engineers that make it all about them and not the record, they might get hired once but not a second time. If you want to get hired again, you have to be nice. It's not cool to be an asshole in the studio anymore, in the same way that people are not doing blow on the console any longer. There are rules and regulations about discrimination. Everybody's money is green. Whether you are a woman or come from a different background, and no matter what your level of experience.
Do you feel that the industry is becoming more professional and adopting more of the workplace norms that exist outside of the entertainment world bubble?
Much more professional. I was lucky to never really have to deal with too much discrimination, though I've run into my share of jackasses. For the most part, I was very fortunate. I have heard stories, and realized a few years ago how bad it often was. Leslie Ann Jones [Tape Op #74], Mandy Parnell, Leanne Ungar [Berklee College of Music (#30)], Sylvia Massy [#63], Janet Furman [Furman Sound], EveAnna Manley [#101], Darcy Proper, Leslie Gaston-Bird, Emily Lazar, Lenise Bent, Maureen Droney [The Recording Academy], and Susan Rogers [#117] – all of the wonderful women that went before me did hard time. Those people are my heroes. They went through the shit – things like engineering an entire album and maybe only to be given an assistant credit, or even no credit, by a male engineer. That said, we have a long way to go; from men making decisions about women's bodies, charging more for women's insurance, or it remaining difficult for a woman to open a business. It is hard for anybody to make a living in music. It might be harder for women. But this is not "woe is me," and women that indulge in that are hurting other people that are working very hard and not asking for pity, but rather for equality. But bad stuff still goes on.
What are some examples of that?
There are still a lot of stories of sexual harassment. Or showing-up and being asked to make the coffee. Or working twice as hard, but making half as much. When I was teaching audio engineering in college [Los Medanos], there were usually only one or two women in every class of twenty-some people. I once even got up to three women, which I thought was pretty cool. [laughs] But you have all of the dudes crowding around the console and pushing each other out of the way to see what I'm talking about. Meanwhile, the women, for the most part, are sitting in the back of the class. This was only four or five years ago. I started noticing that whenever I asked a question, the guys would just start shouting out the answers and they were wrong most of the time. But when I called on the female students, they would have the answer immediately. They felt the pressure to be right, but the guys rarely seemed to feel that same pressure. I started realizing how different the educational experience is for most women than it is for men. I began stressing equal time and space for everyone, and that everybody in the room is a future colleague or boss.
I know you said you've been pretty fortunate, but what are some of experiences of discrimination that you have had that have stayed with you?
One time when I was front of house engineer for a club, a well-known band from Germany was coming through. The barback was shadowing me that day, since he wanted to learn a little about engineering. So when the band's road manager came in, he refused to speak to me. He insisted on speaking to the barback, instead; a kid who knew nothing about audio, except that I had taught him how to coil microphone cables! Another example: I was openly lesbian and partnered, but when I first started mastering I was dressing very feminine. Some men tended to "hit on me." There was this one guy who called and booked time and said he would bring the mixes with him to the sessions. But he showed up empty-handed and just wanted to sit on the couch behind me and talk. He basically wanted to just buy my time in order to hang out. Then, the second session, he still didn't have the mixes. So he said, "Let's go get a coffee for a minute." And then he came clean and asked me out. You know, something like that is never going to happen to a young dude in the studio.
To be stalked like that.
From that point forward, I required that someone send me at least an MP3 beforehand; so I was forced to change my practices.
That sounds traumatic. How awful that it actually involved you having to change your business practices as a result.
Years later, that guy popped up again and sent some emails… and he still didn't have an actual project! It is disturbing to think what could have happened if it were late at night or when my boss and manager weren't there.
What is your definition of mastering?
At its core, mastering is format conversion and quality control, as well as the end of the creative process and the beginning of the manufacturing process. I have been working on a career in this for more than a decade. Right now, there are a lot of young mastering engineers coming up and a lot of them are very interested in pushing the envelope creatively, but what's being lost is the technical side. Mastering engineers are taking a collection of songs and getting them ready to go out into the world – whether it is vinyl or streaming – and there are so many new formats; almost a new one every day. Credits and metadata are a lot of what is getting lost. Artists are in such a rush to get things out, and content is being consumed even faster that it can be created. A lot of basic housekeeping is being forgotten. It is hard enough already to get credits and to have your career documented. I'm lucky to even get the correct spelling of the artist name and album title from a record label before I start mastering a record!
