Sometimes in the music business unpredictable things happen. That can be a good thing or not… It certainly makes for some interesting stories. Back in the day, The After Hours Band was recording at a studio out in the country near M52 and I96 in Southeastern Michigan. This was us taking the big step into a professional recording situation with a real studio, not somebody’s basement…
So, we were on our second or third session of mixing down songs and we noticed our engineer was having trouble focusing – eventually, we asked him if he was okay and he started to cry.
He tried to explain what was going on but he wasn’t making any sense. He eventually got up, tossed us the keys to the studio and said he was leaving and that we could go ahead and finish mixing without him. He walked out and we were left there looking at each other like – what the F just happened? This was our first attempt to take the next big step and go pro in a real studio and we had no idea how to operate his elaborate set up of gear so we left, too.
Our lead singer was running late from some poor directions and pulled up to the studio just as the engineer, looking like death warmed over, was leaving. Our singer decided that whatever was going on in there he wanted no part of and left as well.
We never did finish the session, never got the tapes, never paid a dime. Basically our engineer had a nervous breakdown, fortunately it wasn’t because of us!