01 / Artist development
Careers, not only sessions.
Chica, Abigail Johnson, and Sincere were part of the shift. The question became larger than how a song sounded: who was the artist becoming, and what kind of structure could help that career grow?
About
The work changed shape. The builder didn’t.
ProducerCreatorBuilder
Scroll to move through the archive17 frames / One life in motion
Prologue / The through-line
I planned on making things.
I never planned on having one career. I planned on making things. Records were the first language. Then came studios, artists, businesses, systems, websites, applications and AI. Somewhere along the way I realized they were never separate disciplines. They all asked the same thing of me: listen closely, understand the vision, build what isn't there yet, and finish it with intention.
Before the rooms, there was a guitar and a radio.
I grew up in Akron. At five, I picked up my father’s guitar and started learning the songs I heard on the radio. The music of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s formed my ear long before I knew what to call the instinct.
At sixteen, I made my first track. After high school, Mike Jackson—Jodeci’s musical director—helped me understand how the records I loved were actually built, and how to begin creating that feeling for myself.
Roughly two years later, I began investing in equipment and committed to the work. Ghostown Studios started at home. Neon Cactus became another classroom: a working room where attention, repetition, and responsibility mattered every day.
Herky, D-One, After The Rain, Terrance, Maddi Madd, local radio, and regional artists made the possibility feel real. Akron gave me a creative community—and eventually brought me to the point where growth meant leaving home.
“Akron taught me how to start.”
The room started moving.
JR opened the door. In January 2000, I flew to Detroit and stepped into a 42-city touring operation carried by five buses and two semis. Every stop meant load-in, stages, risers, musical equipment—and then breaking it all down fast enough to do it again.
I assisted Marvin McQuitty and watched extraordinary musicianship night after night. Men Of Standard, Yolanda Adams, Fred Hammond, and the larger Shout 2000 environment showed me what preparation, scale, and service looked like in motion.
The road was exhausting, funny, spiritual, and personal. The work changed cities every night, but the relationships and what I witnessed inside that moving community changed me.
“They called me Slim Shady.”
“The last show was Nashville.”
The last stop became the first door.
The final Shout 2000 stop was Nashville. I stayed for roughly a week trying to secure label meetings. At Gotee Records, Jeff Jackson took my track CD; its first track became “Sold Out Believer.” By April 2000, I had moved to Nashville.
A partial studio setup marked the beginning of the new room. The relationships widened through Nicole C. Mullen, Antonio Neal, Robert Marvin, David Schumaker, and a professional ecosystem larger than the one I had known in Akron.
Renee and Albert Anderson became writing relationships. Abigail Johnson, Amy Jo, the ZOEgirl team, Lynn Nichols, Tedd T, and other collaborators made something clear: the people in the room were becoming as important as the projects.
The rooms got bigger.
The opportunities began stacking. My work with GRITS on The Art of Translation led to two Dove Awards and a Grammy nomination. TobyMac’s “Hope Road” and Fred Hammond and Joanne Rosario’s “Never The Same” widened the rooms—and the responsibility inside them.
On Shout 2000, I had been serving and carrying gear. Now Fred was flying me into the studio to co-write and co-produce. The change was not only a better credit. It was the feeling of being trusted in a room I had once helped build from the floor up.
An EMI/CMG publishing deal with Eddie DeGarmo expanded the writing side of the work. Relationships with Out of Eden and The Katinas kept growing, while I began thinking seriously about developing artists of my own.
- Dove Awards
- 02
- Nomination
- Grammy
- Publishing
- EMI / CMG
“The guy carrying gear was suddenly sitting in the producer’s chair.”
The work moved beyond the record.
I was no longer thinking only about the next session. I was thinking about developing careers, production-company work, A&R, label operations, studio building, and the business that had to exist around the music.
02 / Arizona / Sought After Entertainment
Ambition met infrastructure.
At Sought After Entertainment, I worked in A&R and as an in-house producer while helping develop the studio and Chica. A Universal-associated distribution context made the possibilities feel real.
The venture ultimately struggled. That belongs in the story. A bigger structure could create opportunity, but it could not guarantee a strong foundation.
03 / Los Angeles / Encino → Newport Beach
The map opened again.
I moved to Encino near Can-Am Studios, a room with its own history as a previous Death Row Records location. The work connected me with K-Solo, Canibus, Money B, Caz / Casual T, and relationships around Digital Underground.
Los Angeles and Newport Beach brought recording, production, movement, and friendships that lasted beyond the sessions.
Los Angeles had momentum. But I was about to become a father.
Father
Los Angeles had momentum. But my son was about to be born, and that changed the direction of the story. I returned to Nashville because I wanted to be present for his birth.
Kaleb was born in November 2006. I have described it as the greatest day of my life.
By then I had been called producer, writer, engineer, and A&R. None of those titles meant what this one did.
“The most important title I ever got was Father.”
The room became a system.
At Bethel World Outreach Church, what began as a part-time audio-director role became full-time responsibility. Debbie Winans brought me into an environment where every week asked for more than a clean mix.
Three Sunday services could mean a band, praise team, large choir, and thousands of people streaming. I mixed live sound, recruited and trained volunteers, managed stage setup and clearing, recorded services, uploaded content, and supported livestreaming.
As the building expanded and a new sound system came online, consistency mattered as much as creativity. The work was leadership, service, infrastructure, and calm under pressure. My final service was Christmas Eve 2016.
Without knowing it yet, I was becoming a systems builder.
Life Between the Sessions.
This was the life around the work: old friends, a good table, personal style, movement, quiet, and the places between one room and the next.
Some people became part of the life.
The work introduced me to people who eventually meant more than the project that put us in the same room. Mari Burelle, Greg Lucid, Ivan Gutierrez, Lou Bermudez, Pettidee, and other long-running relationships became part of the life around the records.
Creative chemistry moved beyond sessions. It showed up in Miami and New York, over dinner, in airports, on ordinary streets, and in the laughter between one assignment and the next.
That changed how I understand legacy. A record can preserve a moment. Friendship is what keeps carrying it forward.
“The records brought me into rooms. The people are what stayed.”
Relationship feature / Ivan Gutierrez
Ivan Gutierrez
Miami introduced me to Ivan Gutierrez in 2017. I was there working with Mari Burelle when we met, and the connection was immediate. Ivan was already a deeply respected musician and producer, known for his work with Cultura Profética and a career rooted in Latin music at the highest level. What began as two producers trading ideas quickly became a real friendship.
When Ivan moved to Nashville in 2018, we joined forces for a season. We lived together, wrote together, produced together, and worked with artists and songwriters moving through the city. From 2017 into the years that followed, we developed a sound that kept drawing people into the room.
Ivan had a natural ability to bring talented people together to make incredible music, we would have writing camps and all these people would come over to write and share their gifts for whatever song was being worked on. Every song made in those camps was a hit!
Seguimos Caminando / Palau The Movie
One of those collaborations became ‘Seguimos Caminando,’ a song we created for Palau The Movie. But the records were only part of what lasted. Ivan became part of my life, not simply another name in a session.
“We do not work together as often today, but the friendship never left. Ivan still calls Nashville home and continues making music with artists around the world. Some collaborations end when the session does. This one didn’t.”
A different kind of steady.
COVID disrupted the rooms and the rhythm of the work. I moved into sales with Postmates because steady pay and benefits answered a real need—and because the feast-or-famine reality of the music industry does not disappear just because the work matters to you.
The shift was not an exit from creativity. I kept making things through relationships with Pettidee and Village KNG, Michigan artists, ADABOY, Dusty Bonez, and the creative connections that continued through the disruption.
Reset was not failure. It was adaptation: taking responsibility for the present without abandoning the part of me that still needed to build.
The same builder found another medium.
For thirty years, my job had been to listen to someone describe something that didn't exist yet—and build it. A song. A record. A sound. A room.
When AI arrived, I eventually realized the medium was changing, but the process wasn't. A website starts with an idea. So does an app. So does an automation. So does a voice agent.
You listen. You understand the problem. You organize the pieces. You build. You test. You revise. You finish. The studio didn't disappear. It expanded.
- 01Music
- 02Studio
- 03Websites
- 04Apps
- 05Automation
- 06AI
- 07Systems
“The studio didn’t disappear. It expanded.”
The through-line / The next room
The work changed shape. The builder didn’t.
The medium keeps expanding. The discipline remains: listen closely, understand the vision, and finish with intention.