The Bomb Shelter

Choose Your Own Adventure
Okay. You’re cursed. You can’t sit in a room with a guitar and not touch it. You can’t. It’s impossible. You don’t even try anymore. Your fingers start itching in that special way. You get that birthday feeling just seeing a guitar, a piano, a harmonica, an accordion. The occasional kazoo. “Oh my,” you say, eyes wide, your breath coming in short quick bursts, “why don’t we all just listen to me as I rock this joint.” “Hello Cleveland!” you bellow, making your Rock Face (an expression caught between pain and orgasm), then your friends and family sit there (im)patiently as you zone out on whatever instrument someone carelessly left in the open where you could find it.
You’re cursed, like I said. You’re almost always broke. You sleep on someone’s couch or did at one time. You don’t have a permanent address as such. Debt is a four-letter word you’ve learned to live with. You write lyrics on napkins. You count rhythm in your head. You mystify someone’s neighbor by telling him his lawnmower is making a G and you think that’s pretty neat. You can play “Ode To Joy” on your cheeks and there are multiple videos of you drunkenly doing so. You secretly know all the words to “American Pie.” You get into heated arguments over the spiritual value of this performer compared to that one. You think Celine Dion is a bad joke humanity has played on itself. You find yourself deeply impatient with songs that don’t do it for you. “I can do better than that,” you say with great feeling.
You’re a musician. A performer. A character.
And now you’ve got a band, a bunch of like-minded people that you hang out with and borrow money from. You’ve worked your asses off writing and arranging some songs that you feel strongly about. The time has come to get recorded. Like really. No more dicking around with the antique Tascam (God Bless It) or saturating everything in reverb with Krystal Audio (It rocks, but still). You need someone impartial, someone else to worry about mic placement and production values. You need someone to yell at when the sound quality isn’t what you’d like it to be. Someone who isn’t in the band, someone you don’t have to worry about alienating. Because you pay him and he has to do it. Because now you’re the Boss.
But who?
The eternal question.
There are options.Option 1: Big Ass Fancy Big Name Studio With Famous Name Working Console
This option is expensive. Big Fancy Names don’t come cheap. They don’t usually come humble either. Why should they? They’re Big Names and you’re who from where? Big Names lead to Big Deals, insofar as that’s the attitude they’re likely to have with you. In this option you spend an inordinate amount of dough and, like as not, you won’t be the boss unless you’re Elvis Presley. Option 2: Indie Hipster Underground Post This and That Studio With Nerd Glasses And Man Purse
While cheaper than Option 1 this option extracts a psychic toll that even the most creative and optimistic minds find it hard to recover from. Recording can be stressful enough in and of itself without some failed academic obliquely deconstructing your songs and making clever remarks about your lyrics. You’re not writing a thesis on derivative song formats, you’re not there to think about how lyrics in general are a fallen poetry. You’re not there to engage in a contest of coolness. You’re just trying to get recorded. Imagine that you want to make a ham and cheese omelet. You’re really looking forward to that omelet. You’re hungry, drooling, ravenous. You’ve been thinking about that omelet all day. But now the dude that you’ve hired to give you a hand with the omelet has a bunch of none to helpful remarks about everything, from the way you crack the eggs, to the way you should eat it. What was once an omelet has become something sinister and menacing, a kind of failure lurks within it. Are you still hungry? Option 3: Andrija Tokic, Now With "Famous Name Working Console".
The Man. The Dude. The Tattoos. A walking, talking, resonating power chord of cosmos sized inspiration and utter can do-ness. Andrija Tokic. The name is historic sounding. Heroic. Talismanic. Eastern European. (Think of power lines, of pylons lined up like soldiers, stretching away into the deep blue infinity of sheer distance). Andrija Tokic. He didn’t play guitar for Sepultura. No. That was Andreas Kisser. Our Andrija didn’t do that.
But he could have.
But for space and time.
Andrija Tokic.
Damn.
While his peers were salivating over the lingerie section of the Sears catalogue and bitching about homework Andrija started learning his trade at Avalon Studios in Bethesda, Maryland. He was thirteen. While hustling there he also did engineering and live sound for more bands at more venues than can be conveniently counted, the number being so astronomical. He also assisted at Pro Audio Review Magazine. At age twenty-one he moved to Tennessee where he studied at the SAE Institute and recorded local bands at his house. After graduating, he got a job at a Big Ass Music City Studio where he labored until he saved up enough money to buy a house in East Nashville, a house that he then filled with goodies—a vintage MCI Console, an MCI JH-24 2’’ Tape Machine, Vox, Silvertone, and Sovtek amps dating back to the early 50’s—until it was ready to be called The Bomb Shelter.
His house isn’t so much a house as it is a recording studio with bedrooms and a kitchen. Being a house, the atmosphere is, well, homey. It doesn’t have the sterile feel common to many studios, it isn’t alienating, and it’s got a screened in back porch that’s perfect for drinking beers and smoking cigarettes.
Make no mistake, there’s nothing half-assed about The Bomb Shelter’s recording capabilities. Andrija has busted his ass to ensure that he has everything anyone could conceivably need to get the best sound possible.
Of course the most prized asset at The Bomb Shelter is Andrija himself.
There is no way one can sufficiently describe the amount of man-hours Andrija has put into perfecting his skills. Over a decade he’s been at it, working, thinking, hustling, becoming a genuinely audio savvy dude.
He also rocks, being a musician himself. He fronted The Umbilical Chords and currently plays drums for Totally Snake. He’s down with the whole psychology of it all and he understands the frustrations of being a musician. He rocks, rolls, and grills a mean burger. He doesn’t act all cooler than thou, doesn’t have any reservations when it comes to giggling at silly jokes or taking quasi-scandalous pictures of she dogs gnawing on bits of leftover sausage.
“This is all well and good,” you say, “but what about,” you lower your voice as if you’re about to say an ugly word, “what about money?”
$$$
It makes the world keep on keeping on don’t it?
Andrija, in his infinite humble coolness understands and respects the fact that 95% of musicians don’t have any money whatsoever. He knows this and has adjusted his rates accordingly. I don’t want to say he comes cheap, because that sounds vaguely mean-spirited and nasty. But it’s true just the same.
Andrija is affordable. Hiring him won’t break the band bank. You won’t have to sell plasma or commit petty crimes and you won’t have to starve any more than you already do.
Andrija: Accessible, Affordable, Awesome. Pick this guy and get ready for your Rock destiny.
About me: