From Garage Band to Music Producer – Peering Inside Wes Sharon’s Journey

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By Elisha Neubauer

Wes Sharon picked up his first bass when he was only a young kid. It didn’t take long before he found himself playing in bands with friends and acquaintances and his love of the music industry began to blossom. Finding pushback from local recording studios as a youth, Sharon knew he wanted to change the industry to support the younger, budding musicians that weren’t always being taken seriously by the standard recording studios.

While in his 20s, Sharon managed to land himself a job working for Prairie Sun Recording in California, a high level recording studio which produced top Grammy-winning records. It was this job that altered the way Sharon saw the industry and only solidified his desire to grow within it.

“Their philosophy was ‘We don’t do demos,'” Sharon explained regarding Prairie Sun. “They treated every project with the same attention and care, no matter how big or small.” He continued, explaining what this did for his own desires. “That’s what I wanted to offer, especially to newer, younger bands. I wanted to be that guy that wasn’t there for us when I was getting started.”

Now, Sharon has been producing music for over 30 years, but his opinion was valued long before he became seasoned in the industry. In fact, in his early days, when he was about 18 or 19 years old, bands were requesting Sharon sit in on their sessions in order to offer his opinion. “Basically, acting as a producer, but I’m using that term very loosely,” he states.

Although producing was clearly his niche, Sharon knew he needed to work through the industry, in order to fully understand how the entire operation ran. He began engineering in an effort to have more control over the sound he so longed to hear. “I started engineering because I wasn’t getting things back sounding the way I thought they should sound,” he says. “Being a part of the creative process and helping people find the potential in their work – that’s something that never gets old.”

Sharon has come a long way since his early days in the field. In 2013, he was nominated for the Americana Album of the Year Grammy award for John Fullbright’s From the Ground Up, which he produced. The Turnpike Troubadours album, which he produced, was Lone Star Music’s biggest selling Red Dirt/Texas Country album of the year, earning him yet another nomination for Lone Star’s Producer of the Year.

Despite the majority of Sharon’s productions being of the country genre, he wants everyone to know that studio is indeed open to all types of music, regardless of genre. “Everybody is welcome here, that’s why I built the place,” he exclaims.

 

http://www.oklahomahomes.com/articles/from-garage-band-to-music-producer-peering-inside-wes-sharon-s-journey