2/21/11 During the 2011 Grammy montage honoring the artists who passed away in 2010, I was saddened to see the inclusion of one of my mentors, Bill Porter. Bill was a professor of mine in college, but more notably was the recording engineer on numerous Gold Records by Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison among many others. Click here to read a great article in which Bill describes some of his experiences with Elvis.
In the mid-1970's I was part of Bill's inaugural class in the newly created Music Engineering program at the University of Miami. It was his first experience at teaching after being a "hands-on" person throughout his career, and all of us realized we were in a very unique situation. It was so cool to listen to his stories about the sessions for records that I had heard so many times and the live gigs with Elvis that he was still doing during breaks from teaching! Bill's real world experience was so insightful and went beyond theory; besides multiple audio engineering techniques, I even learned simple things from him like how to properly coil a cable and the professional courtesy of zeroing a console to its' default values for the next user.
For several months while attending college, I also had an outside project playing drums in an original rock group called Wiros. Bill was kind enough to engineer and mix our demo at the University of Miami's Gusman Concert Hall in April 1976. Click on the play button below to listen to a track created from my cassette copy of the demo. This was originally recorded through a MCI 428 console onto a MCI 16-track 2" tape machine. R.I.P. Bill.
"Against The White Background"
Wiros: John Lovett - Composer, Rhythm Guitar; Steve Couch - Lead Vocals; Jim Workman - Electric & Acoustic Guitars, Backing Vocals; Sid (?) - Bass; Ron (?) - Flute, Backing Vocals; Paul Fallat - Drums; Bill Porter - Engineer
12/6/10 Yesterday I had the privilege of playing drums in the orchestra for Dunwoody Baptist Church's Christmas Concert featuring Grammy and Dove Award winner Larnelle Harris and combined choirs from the church.
11/8/10 I've created a page dedicated to a reunion gig I did this past summer in my hometown of Auburn, NY. I also scanned an interesting Reader's Digest article from November 1989 about Children's Trauma Centers that featured my cousin, Dr. Mary Fallat. Click here to read it. Finally, I posted some new photos on my Photos page.
9/16/10 I played drums for Robert Ray's Big Band show in Fairburn, GA last month. Here's a nice edited video compilation. The other performers are Courtenay Collins, Marsha Dupree, Shea Johnson and Shawn Megorden on vocals, Tony Winston - synth & vocals, John Willingham - bass, Bill Hatcher - guitar, Steve Gulasy - tenor sax & vocals, Jonny Hibbert - baritone sax, Dave D'Angelo - alto sax, Lee King and Todd Motter - trumpets, Bob Lewis - trombone.
11/23/09 Took the plunge and entered the wild world of
11/15/09 Made some minor edits, added some calculators to the Tech Info page, added a few new links.
8/25/09 After having ZERO life for the past few weeks I finallyhave this new site up and running!
Please let me know what you think!
In the future I plan to post more photos, add some useful templates, information sheets and articles I have compiled to the "Tech Info" page, and start a Blog - so check back often.
