Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1057439
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y F A L L 2 0 1 8 19 Cloris Leachman. I was asked to do some demos with her daughter who lived in Los Angeles. I lived in a friend's apartment for six months and ended up staying. That was 17 years ago. I guess things turned out okay! After that demo, were you working on commercial music projects or did you get into film music? I started working at Cherokee Studios (closed in 2006). Being from Nashville without any clients, I had to start at the bottom as a runner. I was determined to make it work. So, a week-and-a-half in, an assistant didn't show up for a session. One of the owners asked if I knew how to run the tape machine and punch. During the session, I was punching on syllables and they were impressed, so I moved up. How did you end up on the film side of music recording? While at Cherokee, I was engineering on a Warren Zevon record. Actually, it was during the recording of his last record before he passed, The Wind. That record's great and has so many legendary artists that were incredible to work with; Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, some of the guys from The Eagles. It was one of those things where you ask yourself, "Is this really a job?" That record won several Grammys, didn't it? Yes, it did! Anyway, one of the producers and mixers on the record was Noah Scot Snyder and he also worked in the film world. Noah had worked with Dennis Sands CAS. Dennis was building his room in Santa Barbara and he was looking for a recordist. I ended up working for Dennis. You know, he's a CAS Career Achievement Award recipient. What an introduction to score mixing! My goodness! I know, right? Dennis is such a wonderful guy and I'm so fortunate to still be able to work with him on occasion. What was the first big project you remember working on in film music? The first was The Polar Express, which Dennis was one of the mixers on. I was able to go to the old Todd- AO scoring stage and watch (composer) Alan Silvestri conduct a 90-piece orchestra. It was truly amazing. Were you working out of a particular place from that point on? I worked with Dennis, but I also did other freelance work. I used to work out of Signet Sound, which was the old Motown West studio back in the day. I did some medium-to-large-scale work there, also some dub work. I worked at Todd-AO doing some music mixing and also worked as a recordist; I even did some re-recording mixing there. They closed and I went to Technicolor, where I did some dubs and some post work while still working on the music side of film. It's interesting that you were able to work as a re-recording mixer as well. Working in dubs has really informed me relative to how A copy of the check from Greg's first engineering session. Score recording set up for BlacKkKlansman on Sony's Barbra Streisand Scoring Stage.