sean beavan

I remember the day I found the reel-to-reel recorder tucked away in a drawer in my parents basement. I was 9 years old and I had found the Holy Grail! recording every song that played on the radio, then friends conversations, even telephone calls, I became obsessed. There was no reason to sleep, no reason to eat, sometimes I’d have to remind myself to breathe when I had my finger on the record button. Every time I listened to playback, I would constantly consider how I could make it sound more real, more intense, more dramatic. that is when I knew I had to be a record producer.
In considering how to achieve my goal I looked to my hero at the time, Bob Ezrin, who produced all those great Alice Cooper records that drove my mother crazy. So you can imagine my delight when I had to call my mother (a church school administrator) and tell her I had just been chosen to mix Marilyn Manson’s “Antichrist superstar”. “Sorry mom!”
I had two lucky breaks that got me the chance to show my metal. The first happened two weeks after I graduated from Ohio University. My friend and guitarist Don Cook called me to say he had just been recording at a studio called Great Tracks in downtown Cleveland and they were looking for an engineer. Now I had only assisted one guy for the two weeks I had been out of school, but I decided to go for it. I went down to the studio and met with the owner Bruce Seiffert. He and I got along great in that interview, and he went out on a limb and hired me. I learned the value of a great first impression that day. The second break was the big one. The one where this keyboard player named Trent says, “your stuff sounds great, could you mix my demos?” that “yes!” changed my life.