We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andy Cass a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Andy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I left college in 2012 with a shiny degree in music production, and knew that rather than intern at an already established studio or work as a live sound engineer, I wanted to build my own studio to work out of. I moved to Western MA due largely in part to the incredibly vibrant and active music scene/community and it’s convenient proximity to both NYC and Boston which have some of the biggest music scenes in the country of music I’m into and enjoy working with most (namely; indie rock and indie folk). It took a long time but I am working in music full time now.

I’ll try my best to sum up the last 11 years of career growth here without being too verbose or getting bogged down into the nitty gritty.

After leaving college, I joined a band which had some of the most impressive and innovative musicians I’ve ever met. I joined as their bass player, I had been studying guitar for about a decade before that so the jump wasn’t too bad for me although it did take a few years to actually -become- a bass player vs a guitarist who played bass as well. I was essentially their live bass player but I was really their engineer. We spent a year or so working on our first EP, working out of my first “studio” which was my mother’s basement. At this point, I was still working on a very threadbare recording rig, I won’t go into annoying tech-y details but to me, it’s a miracle and an incredibly proud thing to look back on that I was able to make a record that still holds up today with such a ramshackle setup. When I was younger I was a very scrappy recording engineer, always obsessing about every single detail and learning whatever I didn’t learn in school that felt relevant to my ultimate goal of opening my own studio full time. This obsession stays with me to this day, as I get more experienced, I find myself with a lot less need for exploring the technical -nuts and bolts- side of recording and thinking more on the philosophical approach of what goes into a record.

Fast forward from my mother’s basement and we find me in a disused laboratory in Amherst, MA which the band and I had turned into a one room studio and we embarked on what become the biggest and probably most important project of my career. We spent 3.5 years working on a record called Cousin Moon. I say biggest/most important for a couple reasons. 1. It definitely took the longest of any record I’ve ever worked on 2. The scope of ambition on this record is frankly astounding. It’s something like 17 songs long and I maxed out my recording program on number of individual recording channels several times on a couple of the songs and most importantly 3. Going through that whole process and coming out still loving making records proved that I was destined to build my own studio space. I learned so many more things about making music in a much more condensed timeline than I would have interning at a major studio, sometimes it feels like I condensed about a decade of learning production, interpersonal/peacekeeping skills, how good songs are built into a little more than 3 years of constant work. To come out of the other end of that process still excited to make music was all the confirmation anyone could ask for that this is the right thing for me.

Skip forward a couple more years (and a few full time jobs while I fully figured out how to do music full time, including a 4 years stint as a reading intervention tutor in a public high school) and here I am, doing music full time. I’m very careful about my language on describing what I do for a living because it’s one of the lessons I wish I had taken to heart a lot earlier which would have expedited getting to where I was a bit quicker I believe. Not only am I a studio engineer/producer/session player, I’m also an educator/occasional live sound engineer. I wish that earlier on I hadn’t been so proud and narrow minded about what was “acceptable” to me as my career path. Music is a multifaceted discipline and it was foolish to insist that I would only occupy one very narrow and small part of an incredibly large pond. I’m incredibly happy and grateful to be where I am currently (and a bit stressed always, such as the freelance life is)

Andy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I think I covered most of my pathing up to today in the previous section; but my name is Andy Cass, I’m a full time musician/recording engineer/studio owner/producer. I wear a lot of hats, I live in Western MA and run a studio called Sleeper Cave Records. I mainly record/mix bands and often find myself working with singer-songwriters that have a song that they would like to fully realize with a full band recording arrangement. My studio was built with a pretty straightforward philosophy; music and musicians first. The first 3 or so years of my studio build were focused mostly on buying instruments and various noisemakers that artists can come in and play with to help them make the best records possible. I’ve also got an excellent collection of recording gear, vintage console, vintage mics and outboard etc etc, but my main goal has always been to serve the music as best as possible, and I firmly believe that good instruments are the second most important part of making good music (behind the musician/team behind any given recording of course)

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Well, Covid was no fun. I had to figure out a way to keep making a living running a studio where people, by definition have to gather in person to make music. Thankfully, I was able to weather that particular storm without too much issue (thank god for remote mixing programs).

However, a much larger roadblock appeared in late December 2021, when I discovered I had a brain tumor and had surgery in January 2022 to remove it, I was out of commission for about 6 months, I had to re-learn a lot about recording and also had to re-teach myself a fair amount of guitar/bass. I’m about 18 months out from my surgery now and thankfully, I’m at 95% now, the last 5% consists mainly of a semi-numb left thumb and slightly number lower left lip which is annoying but nothing more, thankfully, my mind appears to have fully recovered and thus far (knock on wood) the tumor shows no sign of returning. Sorry to get too heavy with this but it was a substantial setback on my journey doing this full time, I’m mostly proud that I managed to keep the lights on at the studio when I was essentially out of work for 6 months.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I can see how doing this seems like an absolute folly, -there’s so much money that goes into it, and time, and dedication that you need for it, there’s also the benefit of having no “time off”. But I, and I feel like anybody else working in a creative field will tell you that it’s the only thing we can do. A lot of people who aren’t working full time in the arts/creative field tend to see it as a hobby, or maybe for us; a hobby that’s gotten a bit out of control. But all of us were born to do this in one way or another and have no option to find our personal happiness in our own corners of the world. I’m 100% convinced if I was stranded on a desert island one of my higher priorities would be to find a way to make some sort of music for entertainment. Banging coconuts in between foraging sessions.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sleepercaverecords.com
• Instagram: @sleepercaverecords