I was thinking it would be fun to drop some names. It’s not that I think I’m cool or anything, but in my previous career I interact with a lot of famous people.

The first famous people I met was when I worked at Royal Recorders, a recording studio in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They included Jerry Harrison, Adrian Belew, Tommy Shaw (of Styx) and Sebastian Bach. I was an assistant recording engineer so the majority of my interaction was stuff like “Do you want cream or sugar?” and “Here’s your headphones.”.

Then I moved to Paisley Park. Meeting Prince for the first time was scary. I used to love him. He is an intimidating personality. The first time I met him he asked me to open the vault for him. Apparently he didn’t (at that time) know the combination to his own vault. The vault was full of tapes — like a 20 by 20 room with nothing but big 2″ multitrack tapes and mixes and some CD’s and stuff. I didn’t know the combination to the lock either so I had to call someone and they were trying to talk me through it and it kept not opening. Prince was sitting there staring at me as I tried over and over and finally got it. I ended up working one-on-one with Prince a lot — hours and hours for weeks on end. He works the crap out of you. When working with Prince I met a lot of people. I borrowed a smoke from Sinead O’Connor. I drove Carmen Electra around in my Hyundai. I met Paula Abdul, George Clinton, Morris Day (and Jerome), Bobby Z., Dr. Fink, Vanity, The Replacements, Kim Basinger (who brought me in a piece of pie to the studio), PM Dawn. I talked to Kate Bush on the phone. I recorded some organ with Michael Stipe from REM at the Basillica. I did some mixing for MC Hammer, produced a song with Prince for Elisa Fiorillo. Wrote and produced a record for Ingrid Chavez.

After Paisley I met Booker T, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn from Booker T and the MG’s. I worked with some lesser known bands such as E (who later formed the Eels), frente from Australia, Moxy Fruvous and Basehead.