| Bob Drake's Relatively Attenuated Music Oriented Autobiograpy. There is a novella-length version in the works, chock full of amusing anecdotes, witty observations, and shocking details from all eras and areas of my earthly existence thus far. Meanwhile here is the attenuated version. I was born in 1957 on a full moon (just had to include that thrilling detail!) in Cleveland Ohio. When I was twelve or so my factory worker father was transferred to a different factory so we moved to a small town in rural NE Illinois. There I borrowed a drumkit which I could play straight away pretty much the same way I still play today, and started teaching myself guitar; which unlike the drums seemed impossible at first. Never learned to read or write music and still can't. I began experimenting with tape recorders as soon as I could get my hands on them, around 1970 I'd say, "discovering" things like phasing by recording a record on tape, then playing the record and the tape at the same time, synching them up by speeding up or slowing down the record with a finger just to hear what would happen... 1972-78: In 1972 after hearing Yes' Fragile I bought a bass guitar, and that became became my main instrument for many years. I'd play with any group I could find around Iroquois and Kankakee counties who needed a bass player. I just wanted to play, so I'd play with anybody! Not surprisingly though, I couldn't find any serious musicians in that region who were into making the kind of music I wanted to make. So in 1978, two years after (barely) graduating from high school, I quit my dismal factory job and went out to Denver Colorado, where I knew someone wh'd let me sleep on their couch.1979-1989: The first musician I met in Denver - after being there just a couple days - was Mike Johnson. We hit it off real well and started a project together which we called Thinking Plague. In the ten years I was in Denver, inbetween a series of temporary "unskilled labor" jobs, I played bass or drums with scores of bands, and would make recordings of bands I liked (and/or anyone who asked) on whatever recording gear I could borrow, or in a studio if we could manage to get into one. Around 1985 I became the entire sound department of a little film company who made cheap horror films. They could barely pay me but let me use their recording gear (two Fostex 1/4" 8-tracks) and with that equipment and some borrowed mics, I recorded most of Thinking Plague's "In This Life" and Hail's Turn of the Screw. By 1989 I was tired of starving, it was becoming harder and harder to get any kind of interesting musical projects going, couldn't get a gig engineering in any of Denver's studios...to whom I was something of joke: "...oh...you're the guy who makes all those weird little sounds". I knew I was good but was going nowhere fast so decided to take my chances in Los Angeles. 1989-1994: In autumn of 1989 a visiting pal from Venice California offered to give me a ride and drop me off in Los Angeles. So I stashed my musical gear at Mike Johnson's house and off I went. I arrived in LA with 7 cents, a dog, and a blanket, and started working as first engineer at the first major studio I walked into, on the same day. Obviously I was in the right place! Between 1990 and 1993 I was engineering sessions with popular artists including Ice Cube, Shirley MacLaine, Quincy Jones, Latin Alliance, Lily Tomlin, and so many others I couldn't possibly remember them all. I also met David Kerman who asked me to join his group 5UUs. Around 1992 I started touring Europe playing bass with Hail and the (EC) Nudes, and as live sound engineer for Peter Sellars' "controversial" adaptations of classic plays The Persians and The Merchant of Venice. Touring with Hail and the (EC) Nudes, the drummer was Chris Cutler and the sound engineer was EM (Maggie) Thomas. I heard from them that they'd bought a big old crumbling farmhouse in Southern France a while back and no one lived there, that I was welcome to go if I wanted to...I said why not put a studio there...and to make a long story short: we have, and I stayed.1995-present: Along with Maggie Thomas, two dogs, two cats and the mayor's horse (she had nowhere to keep him and we have lots of space!) I live here in the Aude in the big old farmhouse which isn't crumbling anymore. Well not all of it anyway...there are still some crumbling bits but we'll get to those. Since 1994 I've recorded and/or mixed and/or mastered well over 100 albums here, and continue learning about and improving my skills as an engineer and musician and song-maker. If you're looking for more, here are links to pages written by other people about me...mostly correct:Answers.com entry Pitchfork profile My bio on Thinking Plague's website. |