Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle Podcast

My guest this week is Lenise Bent, who was one of a handful of women working in the Hollywood recording studio business in a technical role during the 1970s, and was the first woman to receive an RIAA Platinum album for her engineering of AutoAmerican by Blondie. While working as an assistant at Village Recorder, Lenise worked on a number of classic albums, including Aja by Steely Dan, Breakfast In America by Supertramp, and Tusk by Fleetwood Mac. She then became chief engineer for producer Mike Chapman, working on albums by Blondie, The Knack and Suzi Quatro. Lenise eventually moved over to post-production sound where she worked as a sound editor, sound supervisor and re-recording mixer on films like Shrek, Spirit and Shrek 2. During the interview we spoke about her getting her start as an assistant at Village Recorders, working on Steely Dan’s Aja Album, being chief engineer for producer Mike Chapman, getting sick from the intense work schedule, starting back at the bottom in post, and much more. I spoke with Lenise from her office in Los Angeles via zoom. On the intro I’ll take a look at how Metal continues to thrive, and the death of the key change in modern music. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 84272927, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

My guest this week is Ramon Hervey II, who’s worked as a highly regarded entertainment manager, brand consultant, and public relations specialist with a diverse and impressive roster of entertainers that encompass a wide spectrum of contemporary music genres, ranging from pop/rock, rhythm & blues, hip-hop, jazz, and gospel. The list includes Richard Pryor, Bette Midler, Little Richard Lenny Kravitz, Don Cornelius, Paul McCartney, Herb Alpert, Vanessa Williams, Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds, Peter Frampton, Andrae Crouch, Nick Nolte, and James Caan, and many more. He has also served as an Executive Producer for several films, television and live events, including the Peabody Award-winning documentary, "Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed," the anniversary album, "NBA AT 50," and was a Music Supervisor for the NAACP Award-winning film "Free Angela and All Political Prisoners. Ramon recently wrote about his experiences in a book entitled “The Fame Game: An Insider’s Playbook For Earning Your 15 Minutes.” During the interview we spoke about promoting the great Motown acts, managing Little Richard, working with Mohammed Ali, what it takes to be successful in the entertainment business, dealing with celebrity egos, and much more. I spoke with Ramon from his office in New York via zoom. On the intro I’ll take a look at why you can’t rely on social media as your online presence, and dancing more when there’s more very low frequencies. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 84224726, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

My guests this week are Mike Dickey and Russ Gavin, of JackTrip Labs. The JackTrip Foundation is a non-profit collaboration between Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and Silicon Valley software entrepreneurs. JackTrip Labs provides a low-latency collaboration tool that makes it easy for musicians to perform together online. Mike Dickey, who’s the CEO of JackTrip Labs, founded his first company in high school, and dropped out of Carnegie Mellon to become a full-time entrepreneur. Since then, Mike has built and sold three startup companies. His latest venture was Cloudmeter, which Splunk acquired in 2013. Prior to co-founding JackTrip, Mike held various leadership roles at Splunk focusing on Engineering, Architecture, Infrastructure and Product Management. Besides being the co-founder and COO of JackTrip Labs, Dr. Russ Gavin is also the Director of Bands at Stanford University. A lifelong advocate for accessible music education, Russ has taught music in K-12 and collegiate environments, continuously seeking and creating opportunities to utilize technology in the music classroom. His research publications have appeared in the Journal of Research in Music Education, the International Journal of Music Education, Psychology of Music, the Journal of Music Teacher Education, and the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. During the interview we spoke about how JackTrip Labs started, the things that contribute to latency in online collaboration, the musicians who are the most sensitive to latency, why zero latency can actually be disconcerting to some players, why conference calling apps won’t cut it for music, and much more. I spoke with Russ and Mike via zoom. On the intro I’ll take a look at what TikTok’s decreasing revenue target means, and Facebook’s new audio data compression codec. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 84118014, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

My guest this week is Joe Chiccarelli, who’s a ten-time Grammy-winning producer/engineer/mixer whose credits include Beck, U2, The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Killers, Elton John, Morrissey, Jason Mraz among many others. Other projects through his twenty-year career have included music supervision of films such as Suicide Kings and Men with Guns, the TV series Cracker and Robert Altman’s The Gun. Joe is the studio designer for the state-of-the-art Royaltone Recording Studios (now Sphere) in Burbank, CA, and has served as an A&R consultant for several major and independent labels. Leapwing has recently released his Signature plugin that captures his sounds on the most common mix elements. During the interview we spoke about , and much more. I spoke with Joe via zoom from his studio at Sunset Sound in Hollywood. On the intro I’ll take a look at if it’s worth being an opening act on a tour, and the AES 2022 New York show. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 84077308, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

My guest this week is Darryl Hurs, who has a 25 year history in the music business including launching and running Indie Week Canada (Nov 8 - 12), one of Canada’s largest emerging artist showcase conferences. He has also launched Music Pro Summit, SCREENxSCREEN and the indie101 online music and tech conferences. Darryl currently is also the director of market development in Canada for online distributor, CD Baby. Some of his past positions include graphic design and event branding for Live Nation, artist manager and venue booker. During the interview we spoke about the advice that led him to change careers, getting a job with Live Nation, the biggest mistake indie artists make, trends in the indie world, and much more. I spoke with Daryl via zoom from his office in Toronto. On the intro I’ll take a look at how playlists control the music industry, and the way consumers listen to audio every day. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 84033728, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

My guest this week is Sean O’Malley who is the CEO of the boutique music publisher Regard Music. Sean has more than 20 years of experience in music publishing and operations, including royalty collection and distribution, licensing, data processing and systems development. He was also part of the the team that started GMR, the first new Performing Rights Organization in 75 years. Prior to that, Sean worked at ASCAP for 8 years where he supervised a large, multi-coast team to resolve issues on behalf of its members. During the interview we spoke about working for ASCAP, the differences between GMR and other PROs, AI-generated songs, the era of derivative content, the future of music publishing, and much more. I spoke with Sean via zoom from his office in Los Angeles. On the intro I’ll take a look at the rise and fall of music clubs, and the Global Music Vault. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 84000347, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

My guest this week is Chuck Kentis, who has worked as a touring and session player with artists like Nona Hendryx, Julian Lennon, Power Station, John Waite, Richard Marx, Paul Young, ABC, and Micheal Bolton. He has also been a collaborator and musical director for Rod Stewart for over 30 years. Chuck has composed for many music production companies such as Killer Tracks, Mega Trax, Extreme Music and others and his music can also be heard in many commercials, promos for Showtime, television movies, and documentaries. During the interview we spoke about playing sessions in New York City, getting the gig with Rod, writing production and game music, cutting basics with a band, Eurorack synthesis, and much more. I spoke with Chuck via zoom from his studio in Los Angeles. On the intro I’ll take a look at Spotify’s reported new tier, and some of the overlooked aspects of mastering. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 83956005, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

My guest this week is Josh Simons, CEO and co-founder of Vampr, the world’s largest and most active social-professional network for musicians. Often dubbed the “LinkedIn for creatives”, Vampr is home to over one million users, and active in every country on the planet. The music startup has helped fledgling musicians broker over 7 million connections worldwide, and has made the Best Apps lists for both Apple and Google. Prior to running Vampr, Josh spent the better part of a decade as a successful artist, songwriter and producer. His artist project Buchanan enjoyed multi-million streams & chart impressions worldwide. As a producer and songwriter, Josh has shared credits with Travis Scott, Troye Sivan and Kanye West to name a few. He was also named in The Music Network’s 30 Under 30 List in addition to being voted Reader’s Choice. During the interview we spoke about touring expenses, using unseen collaborators, representing artists for sync placements, learning from bad publishing deals, and much more. I spoke with Josh via zoom from his office in Australia. On the intro I’ll take a look at the CD turning 40 after a rocky start, and the acquisition of Slate Digital. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 83922027, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

My guest this week is engineer Jason LaRocca, who has recorded and mixed music for major motion pictures, games and television. Jason not only engineers the scores, but often produces them as well, along with creating sound design and instrumentation. Jason has worked on films like Marvel's "Morbius,"“Paddington,” “Aquaman,” “The Harder They Fall,” “Coming to America 2”, “Godzilla: King of Monsters,” and the 2018 Oscar-winning documentary “Icarus,” among many others. He’s also mixed the music for the hit video games “Fortnite,” “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War,” “Assasin’s Creed Valhalla,” “CyberPunk 2077,” and Sony Playstation’s highly anticipated upcoming “God of War: Ragnarök.” among others. His TV credits include ABC’s long-running hit fantasy series, “Once Upon A Time,” “Godfather of Harlem,” “American Crime Story,” “Handmade’s Tale,” the award-winning mini-series “Little Fires Everywhere,” FOX’ #1 drama “The Cleaning Lady,” and the Amazon epic series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” In the music realm, Jason has recorded and mixed for such top recording artists as Jay-Z, CeeLo Green, Fiona Apple, Schoolboy Q and Serj Tankian of System of a Down. During the interview we spoke about making the transition from musician to engineer, the differences between engineering music and post production, the complexity of mixing Lord of the Rings, the many plugins in his mixing template, and much more. I spoke with Jason from his studio via zoom from his studio in Los Angeles, CA. On the intro I’ll take a look at YouTube’s secret weapon, and the best-selling pedals ever. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 83895287, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

Photo: Mike Krstic My guest this week is Cassie Petrey who’s been behind the social media marketing for some of the music’s most iconic artists including Backstreet Boys, Camila Cabello and Britney Spears. Cassie is the co-founder of Crowd Surf, a leading marketing and music management firm. She started at age 12 creating a newsletter for the Backstreet Boys that reached fans worldwide — then years later she helped re-introduce the band to new generation of fans. At age 17 as a college rep for Warner Music Group, Cassie was among the first in the music industry to recognize the vast marketing potential of nascent mid-2000s platforms Myspace and Facebook. Today, her company Crowd Surf has worked with tech giants Apple and Google, and labels such as Universal, Disney, Sony, Warner and more. Cassie is a Forbes 30 Under 30 and Billboard 30 Under 30 recipient, and she is a leading social media and artist management Hollywood powerhouse. During the interview we spoke about convincing a major label about the value of social media, motivating artists to post, how artists may compromise their brand on TikTok, getting artists to establish their brand, and much more. I spoke with Cassie via zoom from her office in Los Angeles, CA. On the intro I’ll take a look at the new radio artist royalty bills before Congress, and Google’s new Project Caviar. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 83855212, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };