Dave encouraged me to become a "presence" around Laughing Tiger Studios in the wake of me deciding to bail on the Ex'pression School thing, because I was not able to "decide between being an engineer and in a band"…….. so I did.
I was painting houses full time, a journeyman by this point. Basically the lead guy on jobs. A great skill to have, and I was pretty good at it. Clearly my passion lay elsewhere, though; I mean, I was playing in four bands. I often had to go to a rehearsal or a studio session straight from spraying a house all day, covered in paint.
My boss at the time, Rich Robertson, was super cool when I told him I wanted to break off after a half day's work a couple days a week, in order to intern at Laughing Tiger. I was in my late 20's and was totally stoked that I was emptying trash cans and running to get food orders for clients at the studio. I did this for a good few months before I actually started working on sessions as an assistant.
In the meantime, Dave was facilitating the recording of our band, Jimmy 2 Times, at the studio. I was just being a complete sponge, sitting there watching what was going on, until I got to the point where I was like, "can I try doing that??"…….
I started working on some of my own stuff for fun; Ari, the owner of the studio, was really receptive to having new blood in the fold. If you became a reliable asset to the studio, you actually ended up being able to take advantage of the fact that you were in a world-class operation with major clients. Before I knew it, I had a set of keys and access to everything in the building- and the trust of the man, which ended up being probably the most important factor in the whole equation.
Eventually I was getting paid a little bit to help out on sessions, and even getting some of my own; my "big break" came when a horrible, to-be-unnamed Christian rock band wanted to do a project, and someone said "this would be a great first project for Matt"………. because nobody wanted to do their record!
I jumped right into it. I learned a shit-ton on the job, always behaving like I knew what I was doing already, which wasn't really the case…….. but I guess I pulled it off. These guys didn't even know that I am Jewish until the last few sessions of the project! What the hell??! My name is about as Jewish as it gets……….. my middle name is Israel, for Christ's sake!!! (that was totally intentional…..)
There were a lot of people that came and went during this time. I have been trying to remember everyone's names lately but I just can't remember them all. We used to have Monday morning meetings where we would discuss all kinds of stuff, and I tried to make it to every single one. We'd feast on bagels with all the fixings and drink coffee for a couple hours while we talked about stuff that had gone well, gone shitty, that we needed to know, or whatever…… It was a pretty sweet team huddle kind of thing. The Trick of the Week was always fun, too…….
Somehow I made it through the cuts… (they weren't really cuts….. people would just kind of…… not show up anymore….)…. and continued to get work. At one point I was even doing all of the studio bills every week, for a small amount of pay. To this day I still mark my own personal bills in the same way after I pay them. Eventually, I was able to give up the painting job and just work at the studio (before the days of wife and kids, of course!).
Ari runs a really tight ship; and he is very streamlined, meticulous and attentive to every little thing that goes on in his domain. It is totally one of the reasons why his studio is still around and successful after so many years, when so many others have taken a complete shit.
He still sometimes tells people that I was the fastest-progressing intern-to-engineer that he ever had; well, I would have never been able to be that guy without the opportunities that he allowed me. He is truly a mentor and teacher to me, and a great friend.
And Laughing Tiger to this day remains my go-to studio of choice in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Thanks, Dave. Good advice.