I eventually came back to Evergreen to give my marriage another go and by then, the dream had become a real, honest, living, breathing objective, and from my experiences with Wakeman and others, my fire was kindled; it really seemed possible now, not some pipe dream. Not an obsession, exactly, but I was determined. And when I get determined, watch out!
After all those rejection letters in Great Britain, I realized I needed a new plan. Duh. Before I went to Great Britain, I had taken an RIA (Recording Industry Association of America) studio engineering course in Denver, through Denver Free University, I think it was called. The course was taught at Denver Sound Studios and it was a 10 week course which I completed in May, 1975. It so happened that the course was taught by Jim Wheeler, the staff engineer, and Green Daniel, both of whom would become a huge part of my career.
One bit of trivia that I recently just found out, was that Firefall's demo which secured their record deal and that Chris Hillman produced, in 1975, was done at Denver Sound. Little did I know that this, too, would become a part of my life later. What didn't in those days in our little community?
Anyway, I completely immersed myself in the course, as I tended to do with everything, and still do. I read the textbook constantly and knew every word (where has that brain run off to?). I sat on the floor, taking in as much as my by now 22 year old mind could hold. Luckily, Jim and I were of one mind as far as sound was concerned, so I guess he was great to learn from. I just watched him and did the work and took it as far as I could. After the class, I asked him and Green about getting a job as an assistant engineer (I mean, that's why I went to school, of course!). Hard to do, they said. Lots of kids lined up, many of them were in the class, also trying to open the drawbridge. I'd probably have to work for free (ouch!).
By early 1976, after my detour to the UK and Europe, and all those rejection letters, I was even more determined. I was gonna do this, dammit! Somehow Jim, Green, and I re-connected and they let me come to work at Applewood Studios, in Golden, just west of Denver. Golden's claim to fame is that it is the home of Coors Beer. I was to be an assistant engineer, helping the engineer with all the tasks that needed doing during a session and running the 24-track tape machine. I would gradually learn more and be given more tasks and responsibility until I was able to engineer on my own, if that was in the cards. If I made it past the first week! I was to work for free, of course, but I'd been warned previously and was able to. Even if I hadn't had a source of income, I still would have taken the job and figured out the details later!
I recently found out why the engineer hired me, out of all those hopefuls. He said that he could see that I was very serious and it was all about the music with me. That I wasn't interested in just being 'cool' or meeting 'rock stars', I knew what I wanted and where I wanted to go. And, it didn't hurt having a young girl in the studio, as it was a guy's world back then. And I found out that there was much more male chauvinism than I was aware of back then, especially by a close, close friend, which was a bit disappointing. I thought of these guys as my friends and co-workers, not that they viewed me as an object. I'll possibly speak to that in another column. But, for the most part, I was treated well, by the musicians, as I tried to just be one of the guys, when applicable. Blessedly, I only had some 'female engineer' problems with a few people. Usually I had a good time during a session, with the guys.
Had I made history? Were there any other female studio recording engineers? In the world? I had never heard of any or saw any on any album credits, but back then I wasn't really concerned with it, I just wanted to be an engineer. I recently heard that the Grateful Dead had a female live sound engineer in the 70s, but that's all I'm aware of and would love to know of any more. Even though I did a couple of live gigs, I considered myself a studio engineer and specialized in studio recording, which is a lot different from doing live sound, especially back then; I think the two have much more in common now with all the technology we now have. So there were the live sound engineers, who were doing quite a different thing, technically, than studio engineers. Some switched back and forth, doing both, some were like me, one or the other, or it seemed like most were, and recognized that line. I felt that I would be much better if I specialized in one or the other.
So...Applewood Studios was amazing, at least to me. It was state of the state of the art, and I'll speak more about that in my next column. I will say that it was Neve/Studer based at the time I started, and you could not get much better than that. They had a great roster of equipment, the best microphones, and a Bösendorfer grand piano, which was rumored to cost around a million dollars (a quick Google put that figure at $100,000 currently; so either it was a rumor given much life or PR for the studio. Don't put your drink here, please!. So I got spoiled pretty quickly, but what a great place to get my feet wet. Some might argue it best to start off in a lesser studio and work up, but I did the middle range first and lesser later and it worked well for me. I guess I knew what was possible, with all that great equipment, and so I tried to find a way to duplicate it with the lower quality rooms and equipment I later had to work with. It was a fun challenge, actually.
So I started work at Applewood in February of 1976. I was pretty well fixed for money, as my husband was a professional, so working for free was not a problem – yet. My first session, one cold night, was with the long-lived and popular Boulder rock band Bullett (still a client!). The personnel I met, and the second lineup of the band, were David Forrest Small-vocals/writer, Richie Michalik-guitar/writer, John Butler-bass, and Andy Peake-drums. Dickie Sidman, their road manager, otherwise gofer, and sometime conga player, passed away around 1990, I think, too young, and we all lost a great guy. Rest in peace, Dickie. And of course, Robert "Wiley Coyote" Wolff as the manager, with his trusty sidekick Bosco, a Springer Spaniel, who was always faithfully by his side. He dropped the "Wiley" nickname some time ago, but I wanted to make sure people remembered him, because he was Wiley, or Wiley Coyote, or The Fox to everyone. Now how do coyotes and foxes and wolves get mixed together? Same family of Canidae, I guess.
Note: Bob Harris played keyboards for Bullett, in their first incarnation, time interval depending upon whom you talk to, but he wasn't in my first session and I only ever knew him as the frontman for Helix/Boulder and now Axe (this will be important later, as he had quite a history with some of the Bullett personnel, then on to LA and much success with the likes of Frank Zappa, then back to Boulder, but that is for another column).
I mainly remember the Jacuzzi, and Richie, the guitar player, walking around in his robe. And maybe some other guys taking advantage of the amenities. Hey, cool. I was kind of worried, though, that something untoward was going on back there! An orgy could have been going on for all I knew, and I'd heard all the nefarious stories by then. But the reality was different and this was no groupie tell-all, it was work, to me, and money out for the band, so partying had to wait. It was very interesting that my first session ever was with Bullett and my last session in Colorado was with Bullett. I gradually became great friends with them, and assisted on a lot of their sessions, and eventually became their studio engineer and even lived in the Bullett House (well, Robert Wolff's house), on Flagstaff Mtn. They were a lot of fun and a bunch of great guys. But that is a lot of miles on down the road yet.
Besides the humans, I was blinded by the light, or lights, I should say, the soft LEDs (those tiny colored lights) and warm colors in the studio. Otherworldly, spaceship, suspension of time/endless night, cocoon. And the equipment, oh the equipment. Toys, toys, Disneyland. And that smell. The same smell as the little tape recorder I got one Christmas, which was the first influence that started me down this road. Oxide, metal, heat. Stone, cedar and carpet on the walls. Quiet/loud. I loved the fact that you could disappear for weeks at time in there and completely escape from the world. Day/night, who cared? Definitely my kind of place. How lucky was all this? To me, anyway, maybe not the atmosphere for everyone. But yes Sirs, I will work for free for you! I mean, Denver Sound was OK, and technically my first studio experience, but I remember bright overhead lights for the class and it didn't have the 'atmosphere' of most of the studios I worked in. It just didn't hit me like Applewood did. Plus, I was at Applewood in an official capacity, I had made it into a studio as an employee! So of course it was more magical at the time. Maybe Denver Sound was atmospheric as well, but it wasn't 'my first', job-wise.
During that first session, I don't remember being very nervous (and do you think I would have shown it if I had been?), I was/am a very 'can-do' person and I had been schooled very well, and studied really hard, so I knew what the engineer wanted of me most of the time; plus we already had a working relationship from the course. I spent that first night running between the control room and studio, doing Jim's bidding (running through that blasted 'interlock' – the vocal booth was surrounded on three sides by big doors, one to the hall outside, one to the studio, and then back into the control room, so it was a thick, heavy 2-door trip, through the vocal booth, no matter where you were headed). And of course I ran the 24-track tape machine, along with its 2-track children. And it wasn't as easy as record/stop/play/rewind; I had to make sure the proper tracks were in record mode, for basic tracks and overdubs, and the proper ones were not in record, for overdubs, or what we had already recorded would be ruined, because every track was its own little recording. I had to learn to 'punch-in', that is, suddenly go into record mode, on, say, a vocal track, so the vocalist could redo part of their vocals, while keeping all the other tracks. Sometimes it got pretty tense and the punch ins and outs were tight, like a breath, or a bar or two, so I had to come out of record just as quickly as I went in, because we wanted to keep what came after. We had no remote controls for the tape machines then, so I sat quietly by the 24-track, Sarah's little spot, until my services were required elsewhere.
I worked as hard as I possibly could. I will do anything to get things moving or fixed or more organized or whatever. That trait and my 'can-do' personality kept me there and proved to management that I was needed, which was part of the whole plan. I assisted on almost every session that came through the studio. Jim Wheeler, the staff engineer, was the Chief Engineer, as he only worked at Applewood while I was there. A couple of other local engineers regularly brought in the odd session and there were the Boulderites and the clients from the far reaches of Colorado or the rest of the US. Ron Valery was one of the part-time engineers and my favorite memory of him was the Kershaw brothers' session (don't remember which brother it was, actually), but if it wasn't Doug, the 'Crazy Cajun', well, he showed up, too, and I was scared half to death! He came by his nickname honestly! Then there was a nice, quiet, laid back engineer by the name of Tom Pope, who also came in every now and then with a mellow project. I think he was actually a teacher, as his day job, but don't quote me on that. So mainly, in the studio (not the front office), it was the Jim, Green (who produced as well as managed the studio), me, and Rick McAllister, the very young, precocious maintenance engineer and sometime engineer/assistant. And from time to time we were joined by the publishing demo producer, and some hopeful hangers on. Rick was a really bright, well-meaning kid, who tried to keep the studio running and in good repair, which to be fair, was not the easiest job in the world, especially with the high dollar value and sensitivity of the equipment and the pressure that put on him (like keeping a Jaguar serviced).
To be fair, Applewood deserves a column of its own, and I met a lot of Boulder people there, who would be a big part of my life in Boulder or Caribou Ranch later; so my next column will be devoted to Applewood; the technology, the sessions, the people who came through, the everyday, the magic, the boredom, my progress and, egads, being thrown out of the nest to fly on my own.
After all those rejection letters in Great Britain, I realized I needed a new plan. Duh. Before I went to Great Britain, I had taken an RIA (Recording Industry Association of America) studio engineering course in Denver, through Denver Free University, I think it was called. The course was taught at Denver Sound Studios and it was a 10 week course which I completed in May, 1975. It so happened that the course was taught by Jim Wheeler, the staff engineer, and Green Daniel, both of whom would become a huge part of my career.
One bit of trivia that I recently just found out, was that Firefall's demo which secured their record deal and that Chris Hillman produced, in 1975, was done at Denver Sound. Little did I know that this, too, would become a part of my life later. What didn't in those days in our little community?
Anyway, I completely immersed myself in the course, as I tended to do with everything, and still do. I read the textbook constantly and knew every word (where has that brain run off to?). I sat on the floor, taking in as much as my by now 22 year old mind could hold. Luckily, Jim and I were of one mind as far as sound was concerned, so I guess he was great to learn from. I just watched him and did the work and took it as far as I could. After the class, I asked him and Green about getting a job as an assistant engineer (I mean, that's why I went to school, of course!). Hard to do, they said. Lots of kids lined up, many of them were in the class, also trying to open the drawbridge. I'd probably have to work for free (ouch!).
By early 1976, after my detour to the UK and Europe, and all those rejection letters, I was even more determined. I was gonna do this, dammit! Somehow Jim, Green, and I re-connected and they let me come to work at Applewood Studios, in Golden, just west of Denver. Golden's claim to fame is that it is the home of Coors Beer. I was to be an assistant engineer, helping the engineer with all the tasks that needed doing during a session and running the 24-track tape machine. I would gradually learn more and be given more tasks and responsibility until I was able to engineer on my own, if that was in the cards. If I made it past the first week! I was to work for free, of course, but I'd been warned previously and was able to. Even if I hadn't had a source of income, I still would have taken the job and figured out the details later!
I recently found out why the engineer hired me, out of all those hopefuls. He said that he could see that I was very serious and it was all about the music with me. That I wasn't interested in just being 'cool' or meeting 'rock stars', I knew what I wanted and where I wanted to go. And, it didn't hurt having a young girl in the studio, as it was a guy's world back then. And I found out that there was much more male chauvinism than I was aware of back then, especially by a close, close friend, which was a bit disappointing. I thought of these guys as my friends and co-workers, not that they viewed me as an object. I'll possibly speak to that in another column. But, for the most part, I was treated well, by the musicians, as I tried to just be one of the guys, when applicable. Blessedly, I only had some 'female engineer' problems with a few people. Usually I had a good time during a session, with the guys.
Had I made history? Were there any other female studio recording engineers? In the world? I had never heard of any or saw any on any album credits, but back then I wasn't really concerned with it, I just wanted to be an engineer. I recently heard that the Grateful Dead had a female live sound engineer in the 70s, but that's all I'm aware of and would love to know of any more. Even though I did a couple of live gigs, I considered myself a studio engineer and specialized in studio recording, which is a lot different from doing live sound, especially back then; I think the two have much more in common now with all the technology we now have. So there were the live sound engineers, who were doing quite a different thing, technically, than studio engineers. Some switched back and forth, doing both, some were like me, one or the other, or it seemed like most were, and recognized that line. I felt that I would be much better if I specialized in one or the other.
So...Applewood Studios was amazing, at least to me. It was state of the state of the art, and I'll speak more about that in my next column. I will say that it was Neve/Studer based at the time I started, and you could not get much better than that. They had a great roster of equipment, the best microphones, and a Bösendorfer grand piano, which was rumored to cost around a million dollars (a quick Google put that figure at $100,000 currently; so either it was a rumor given much life or PR for the studio. Don't put your drink here, please!. So I got spoiled pretty quickly, but what a great place to get my feet wet. Some might argue it best to start off in a lesser studio and work up, but I did the middle range first and lesser later and it worked well for me. I guess I knew what was possible, with all that great equipment, and so I tried to find a way to duplicate it with the lower quality rooms and equipment I later had to work with. It was a fun challenge, actually.
So I started work at Applewood in February of 1976. I was pretty well fixed for money, as my husband was a professional, so working for free was not a problem – yet. My first session, one cold night, was with the long-lived and popular Boulder rock band Bullett (still a client!). The personnel I met, and the second lineup of the band, were David Forrest Small-vocals/writer, Richie Michalik-guitar/writer, John Butler-bass, and Andy Peake-drums. Dickie Sidman, their road manager, otherwise gofer, and sometime conga player, passed away around 1990, I think, too young, and we all lost a great guy. Rest in peace, Dickie. And of course, Robert "Wiley Coyote" Wolff as the manager, with his trusty sidekick Bosco, a Springer Spaniel, who was always faithfully by his side. He dropped the "Wiley" nickname some time ago, but I wanted to make sure people remembered him, because he was Wiley, or Wiley Coyote, or The Fox to everyone. Now how do coyotes and foxes and wolves get mixed together? Same family of Canidae, I guess.
Note: Bob Harris played keyboards for Bullett, in their first incarnation, time interval depending upon whom you talk to, but he wasn't in my first session and I only ever knew him as the frontman for Helix/Boulder and now Axe (this will be important later, as he had quite a history with some of the Bullett personnel, then on to LA and much success with the likes of Frank Zappa, then back to Boulder, but that is for another column).
I mainly remember the Jacuzzi, and Richie, the guitar player, walking around in his robe. And maybe some other guys taking advantage of the amenities. Hey, cool. I was kind of worried, though, that something untoward was going on back there! An orgy could have been going on for all I knew, and I'd heard all the nefarious stories by then. But the reality was different and this was no groupie tell-all, it was work, to me, and money out for the band, so partying had to wait. It was very interesting that my first session ever was with Bullett and my last session in Colorado was with Bullett. I gradually became great friends with them, and assisted on a lot of their sessions, and eventually became their studio engineer and even lived in the Bullett House (well, Robert Wolff's house), on Flagstaff Mtn. They were a lot of fun and a bunch of great guys. But that is a lot of miles on down the road yet.
Besides the humans, I was blinded by the light, or lights, I should say, the soft LEDs (those tiny colored lights) and warm colors in the studio. Otherworldly, spaceship, suspension of time/endless night, cocoon. And the equipment, oh the equipment. Toys, toys, Disneyland. And that smell. The same smell as the little tape recorder I got one Christmas, which was the first influence that started me down this road. Oxide, metal, heat. Stone, cedar and carpet on the walls. Quiet/loud. I loved the fact that you could disappear for weeks at time in there and completely escape from the world. Day/night, who cared? Definitely my kind of place. How lucky was all this? To me, anyway, maybe not the atmosphere for everyone. But yes Sirs, I will work for free for you! I mean, Denver Sound was OK, and technically my first studio experience, but I remember bright overhead lights for the class and it didn't have the 'atmosphere' of most of the studios I worked in. It just didn't hit me like Applewood did. Plus, I was at Applewood in an official capacity, I had made it into a studio as an employee! So of course it was more magical at the time. Maybe Denver Sound was atmospheric as well, but it wasn't 'my first', job-wise.
During that first session, I don't remember being very nervous (and do you think I would have shown it if I had been?), I was/am a very 'can-do' person and I had been schooled very well, and studied really hard, so I knew what the engineer wanted of me most of the time; plus we already had a working relationship from the course. I spent that first night running between the control room and studio, doing Jim's bidding (running through that blasted 'interlock' – the vocal booth was surrounded on three sides by big doors, one to the hall outside, one to the studio, and then back into the control room, so it was a thick, heavy 2-door trip, through the vocal booth, no matter where you were headed). And of course I ran the 24-track tape machine, along with its 2-track children. And it wasn't as easy as record/stop/play/rewind; I had to make sure the proper tracks were in record mode, for basic tracks and overdubs, and the proper ones were not in record, for overdubs, or what we had already recorded would be ruined, because every track was its own little recording. I had to learn to 'punch-in', that is, suddenly go into record mode, on, say, a vocal track, so the vocalist could redo part of their vocals, while keeping all the other tracks. Sometimes it got pretty tense and the punch ins and outs were tight, like a breath, or a bar or two, so I had to come out of record just as quickly as I went in, because we wanted to keep what came after. We had no remote controls for the tape machines then, so I sat quietly by the 24-track, Sarah's little spot, until my services were required elsewhere.
I worked as hard as I possibly could. I will do anything to get things moving or fixed or more organized or whatever. That trait and my 'can-do' personality kept me there and proved to management that I was needed, which was part of the whole plan. I assisted on almost every session that came through the studio. Jim Wheeler, the staff engineer, was the Chief Engineer, as he only worked at Applewood while I was there. A couple of other local engineers regularly brought in the odd session and there were the Boulderites and the clients from the far reaches of Colorado or the rest of the US. Ron Valery was one of the part-time engineers and my favorite memory of him was the Kershaw brothers' session (don't remember which brother it was, actually), but if it wasn't Doug, the 'Crazy Cajun', well, he showed up, too, and I was scared half to death! He came by his nickname honestly! Then there was a nice, quiet, laid back engineer by the name of Tom Pope, who also came in every now and then with a mellow project. I think he was actually a teacher, as his day job, but don't quote me on that. So mainly, in the studio (not the front office), it was the Jim, Green (who produced as well as managed the studio), me, and Rick McAllister, the very young, precocious maintenance engineer and sometime engineer/assistant. And from time to time we were joined by the publishing demo producer, and some hopeful hangers on. Rick was a really bright, well-meaning kid, who tried to keep the studio running and in good repair, which to be fair, was not the easiest job in the world, especially with the high dollar value and sensitivity of the equipment and the pressure that put on him (like keeping a Jaguar serviced).
To be fair, Applewood deserves a column of its own, and I met a lot of Boulder people there, who would be a big part of my life in Boulder or Caribou Ranch later; so my next column will be devoted to Applewood; the technology, the sessions, the people who came through, the everyday, the magic, the boredom, my progress and, egads, being thrown out of the nest to fly on my own.
Nice read Sarah......love the footnotes.....good stuff.....Niky D
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