Since the tender age of 12 years old, as I walked into the Solar Studio in Dartmouth, above the Musicstop store, I have been enamoured with recording studios. Even before that, I owned a portable cassette recorder, and I commandeered the home stereo tape deck with two Realistic microphones ( that I still have and they still work). I would record all my band practices and jams, and attempt to record my own song demos as well. I recorded several live band performances with my portable Panasonic blaster ( surrounding it with foam to create a ‘natural’ compression of the loud sound). My first multitracking was with a borrowed 2 track cassette unit, on which I recorded a few memorable demos.

Next it was the Tascam 8 Track recorder borrowed again by a family friend, on which I recorded my first demo ever submitted to the CBC Radio song contest.

Back to Solar Studio….Harold Tstinas was the engineer and he smoked right at the board and the ash tray was always overflowing and the room full of smoke…we would be asked to help with the manual mix of a song by being assigned our own ‘moves’, slider up, slider down, hit mute, hit unmute….we all participated in Harold’s mixes. This studio is where my uncle recorded amazing music by the band Chalice (2 projects – Story of Jess and Dancer Blue) and his own recording called BackStreet Hero.

Being in this studio at the time was completely magical….the scent of it, the look of it and of course the amazing sounds coming out of the huge ceiling speakers….I had found my destiny at 12 years old, and never looked back.