Did you grow up with a record player/console in your house, did your family listen to much music? 

I was an 80s baby so I grew up with cassette tapes mostly. For my 3rd birthday all I wanted was a pink tape player and a Bon Jovi tape. I can’t help but think that this moment was where my love of music and quirky design came in. As far as the music in my family, my dad was a huge Zeppelin, Van Halen, Lou Reed fan so those are some of my earliest musical memories. My mom loved people like Queen, Bowie, Skynard, and Aerosmith. However, I think my the person who had the biggest impact on my musical taste was my older brother, Jason, who sparked my love for a lot of weird alternative and indie bands. He taught me about The Pixies & Frank Black, Nirvana, all of Steve Albini’s projects, My Bloody Valentine, Magnetic Fields (Stephin Merritt), Jesus & Mary Chain and so many more that I could go on about this question alone for 10 pages! Also, I’m from Texas and have a lot of family members who play country music so there was a lot of Willie Nelson and classic country music happening during family festivities!

FUN FACT: I one time got hired for a job assisting a famous Japanese rock star because I told him that my favorite music was Nirvana and Garth Brooks. He hired me on the spot because he thought it was so ridiculous!

What was the first vinyl record LP that you purchased?

I believe it was Queen “A Night at the Opera” for .99 at Goodwill.

Do you have a listening room in your house, what’s your current setup like?  

We have about 10 “listening rooms” at our house thanks to Dan. Every room in our house has a record player/audio system of some sort. Even our bathroom has some sort of hybrid tube amp contraption Dan set up. Our living room has a Soundburger / Mister Disc portable record player that comes through our surround sound. Our bedroom has a Barbie Disco suitcase style record player I got at Goodwill that we refurbished and it actually sounds fairly good all things considered. Our office has a U-Turn turntable that Dan uses to test out a lot of our new speakers and listen to when he’s working. Last but not least, we finally just brought home one of our KC27 consoles that lives in our dining room. It sits at the end of our 12 foot dining table so it’s the perfect entertainment and conversation piece. (We would have brought the EGB2 but it didn’t fit properly, that thing is a beast!) We even currently have it voice activated so you can yell at it to play stuff for you which is pretty fun after a few cocktails!

What did you do before you started LUNO?

I moved to Los Angeles from Texas in 2003 to go to acting school – isn’t that why everyone comes to LA?! After a year of that, I realized that it wasn’t for me and I really like being behind the scenes. My boyfriend at the time was in a band and his manager also managed The Killers so I started helping him out occasionally. Also, all of my friends that I had met when I moved out here were musicians. I wasn’t even really aware of the “the industry” side of things before moving to LA nor had I considered it a career option, but found it fascinating and it seemed like everything was pointing me in that direction. I enrolled in MI and studied music business and interned at Interscope Records. From there, I went on to do radio promotion, marketing for a startup music platform, promotion for live venue, assisting a famous rock star, and artist relations for a guitar company. I dabbled in a bit of everything on the marketing side of the industry and absolutely loved it. It’s still my dream to someday own a beautiful live venue that I can design and Dan can do sound – future LUNO Lounge idea!? Working on the live side of things was by far my favorite experience. Everyday was something different and it was never boring. I loved being able to create experiences that allowed people to have a good time, which is something we try to do with LUNO. After I got laid off from my last industry gig, I had decided that I didn’t want to work for anyone ever again – it was natural for me as I’m stubborn as hell and both of my parents are entrepreneurs so it is in my DNA. While I was working on a startup I’d wanted to do for a while called BandPass (similar to MoviePass but for music) and trying to figure out my plan, I started painting vintage furniture in my garage as a hobby. I ended up putting some of it on Craigslist for fun and it sold. So I did more, and it sold. BandPass soon took a backseat. People soon started asking me for custom pieces, then started asking me build stuff for them (WTF) so I just sort of figured it out by being extremely obsessive and persistent! It was a very organic process and nothing I ever intended to do, but I fell in love with the design process. I studied and stalked everyone I could who knew anything about it sometimes hanging out at paint stores for hours on end. Just a few years later, we now have 2 successful furniture lines and LUNO has allowed me to combine my love of music & design. We’re planning on launching new products at ICFF 2019 and talking about doing a design show in NY this October, as well.

It sounds like you’ve met a lot of celebrities in your work, any stories you can share?

I think it’s inevitable that living in Los Angeles, you’re going to meet and know celebrities especially when working in the entertainment industry. One that stands out in my mind is when I met Paul Stanley of KISS when I was working at Daisy Rock. It was Halloween and I had no idea he was coming by and I was wearing a Kurt Cobain costume, as I would. He was not in a costume. It was such a random experience and he was super nice! I also got to meet Shonen Knife, who I had been a fan of for a while. We ended up becoming friends and they sent Dan and I a wedding gift that we still have, a beautiful Sake Set! Meeting Davey Havok from AFI deserves an honorable mention too because he’s one of the nicest people on the planet.

If you could make a custom hifi console for anyone, who would it be, describe the style and design for us?

My original intention of doing a lot of the custom designs (such as Prince, Bowie, etc) was to make them for the artists, sadly they never came to fruition. I really love the design and customization process and the ability to make something so wild that totally reflects a specific person’s style. I’m currently obsessed with trying to make a Yeezy console for Kanye. Dan and I are HUGE Kanye fans and Kanye is also a huge interior design and furniture fan and I recently read that he’s opening up a Yeezy architecture branch so I think it’s in the realm of possibility?!

What speaks to you about mid-century modern style?

Mid Century Modern style evokes a nostalgic feeling. When we launched at ICFF almost every person that came into our booth (one of them being Terry Crews) immediately would smile and say “this brings back some memories.” This is the exact feeling we wanted to create and the Mid Century Grandma aesthetic brought that to the table.

If you could choose one record to describe yourself, what would it be and why?

Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’ because damn near every song on that record is perfect and relatable.

“Think I’ll pack it in and buy a pick-up

Take it down to L.A.

Find a place to call my own

and try to fix up.

Start a brand new day”

Can you explain to someone what the experience of having one of your record consoles is like?

From someone who doesn’t know much about audio, I can say that they sound like being at a live concert. Dan is a phenomenal live sound engineer and really makes it feel like an immersive experience. We even had a customer once say as soon as we turned up the volume “Sounds like a concert!” – there is a video to prove it! In terms of the design, we tried to take a lot of aspects of the vintage players that we liked and clean them up a bit. I used Marshall Grill Cloth to really make it feel as authentic to the old stereo cabinets as possible. For our custom consoles, the sky’s the limit, you want me to wrap one in hundred dollar bills or add a mini-fridge – let’s do it! The funkier, the better! I’m up for the challenge.

What was your first concert, who did you see and what impression did that have on you?

The first concert I saw alone with friends was The Smashing Pumpkins Zero Tour in 97 or 98, I believe. I was hooked from that day forward. I remember going to the after party at a local club called Numbers hoping they would be there (they weren’t.) I’m still upset about that. Call me, Billy.

Can you tell us about the creative process of making one of your record consoles? Where do you take your inspiration from?

Typically it starts out with me seeing something I like and trying to incorporate it into one of our pieces somehow. No matter if our cabinet makers tell us it’s not possible, we always figure out a way! I’ll send my sketches to our designer and he’ll make them actually look good (and realistic) not like a 5 year old drew them. From there, my cabinet makers and I figure out what is and isn’t doable – the former always wins if I have anything to say about it! Dan spent a lot of time developing the audio components and sound quality of the consoles so we do have certain restrictions we’re working with but in terms of the cabinets & design aspect, we can get pretty funky (within reason) as long as the materials don’t affect or hinder the sound in any way. It’s a bit of trial and error when working on new designs. Most of my inspiration comes from pop culture, I would say, I’ve always been fascinated by it.

You’ve designed a lot of very unique custom hifi record consoles, can you tell us about a couple of your favorites?

My favorite to date by far is the new Limited Edition piece we just designed. I can’t get too much into it until we announce it but it’s stunning and was an extremely complicated process. It took multiple people with various skills to pull it off.  Besides that, I did a really cool Louis Vuitton piece that I’m in love with, and the Bowie was very interesting because the base had a welded constellation pattern which looked really amazing.

Can you tell us a little about what’s coming up for LUNO?

We have a new Limited Edition console coming up that we collaborated on with a famous artist so keep your eyes peeled for that! I’m extremely proud of the design, it was a long  process but the end result is phenomenal and some of the best work we’ve done. We also have a desktop/portable type console that we’ve been working on for a while that will be announced soon, as well as several cabinet designs sans equipment. We also collaborated with a whiskey company on multiple pieces that they’re using for a giveaway so you may have a chance to win one! Lastly, we’re in the process of moving our listening room aka “LUNO Lounge”, production facility, showroom, all under one roof so that’s really exciting! We’ll be able to hold inventory, have listening parties and all that cool stuff that’s been difficult to do so far.

I hear you’re also a musician, can you tell us a little about that and your current project?

I wouldn’t really call myself a “musician” per se. I learned to play bass for a band called Ghostel than Dan, I, and our friend Bryce had for a little while. It was super fun and our song “Buckley Get Your Gun” got a placement in the trailer of an Oscar nominated film called “Mustang” so that was pretty wild and got us a decent amount of attention. I’m not formally trained on any instruments and pretty much only know how to play our songs! I sort of made up my own tablature and Dan worked with me and taught me in a way that I understood.  It’s a really fun experience and I love the rush of being on stage and hope to do it again soon. The full album entitled 1414 was just released on Spotify. Currently, we’re so busy with LUNO and MVV that Dan and I write some songs here and there for fun and hope to turn those into a new project at some point in the future and release it on vinyl!

If you could give anyone a single piece of advice what would it be and why?

My dad always told me you gotta spend money to make money! So basically buy one of our damn consoles and it’ll make you rich!!!! No, but seriously, in the words of one of my favorite professors “Try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible.”

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Can you tell us a little about what you did before LUNO and is LUNO all you do?

Well, for most of my life I lived in the UK, I was a producer, engineer and guitarist for an English band, Amusement Parks on Fire.  For most of that time we were signed to V2 but when V2 closed its doors we decided to come to LA to record our third album for the also now defunct Filter magazine’s label.  This was 2009 but a series of (fortuitous?) accidents meant the album took a fair but longer than it should and that gave me time to get to know Jennifer, my now wife and co-founder of LUNO!  Since moving to LA I’ve spent more time working as a live sound engineer.

When did you get involved in the sound engineering side of things? Did you always have a knack for it or was it something you studied?

I’ve been a sound engineer almost as long as I’ve been playing music.  The first time I stepped in a studio as an amateur musician I know that was where I wanted to be.  I quit the college course I was studying and asked a local studio what I had to do to end up on the other side of the console.  This was back in the days before everyone and his dog owned a recording studio, the technology wasn’t yet affordable and these were still expensive specialist spaces.  

So, I did it the old fashioned way, I basically had to pay my dues and for about six months or so I was a “tape op” and assistant.  I would learn from anyone that would teach me and take care of all the things on sessions no one else wanted to do until the day an engineer was taken sick and I got to run my own session.  After that I didn’t look back, that was over two decades ago.

What was the first piece of audio equipment you purchased?

I didn’t purchase it myself but I do remember my Grandmother giving me a Walkman maybe when I was six or seven with a copy of the Grease soundtrack on cassette.  It immediately became my favorite possession and I spent a ridiculous amount of time waiting for songs I liked to be played on the radio so I could record them from it.  I made what would be considered some “eclectic” mixtapes back then.

For someone who wants to improve their own home audio setup, do you have any recommendations that can make a big impact on sound quality or are there any common mistakes people make that are easily avoidable?

This isn’t the most thrilling sexy answer but the main things I can think of that people often get wrong and can fix very easily are speaker placement and polarity.  

I’ll start with polarity first because it’s such a basic error and if you get it wrong you don’t stand a hope in hell of your system sounding good.  Put simply, when running speaker wire make sure the red output terminal from your amp goes to the red input terminal on your speaker and the black to the black.  That’s it, seems obvious but I’ve seen a surprising amount of systems where no one has noticed one of the wires is flipped and this means that the speakers are not only not working in unison but they’re fighting against each other.  It sounds REALLY bad.

As far as placement goes, ideally, try and place your “listening chair” in the third point of an equilateral triangle with your speakers being the other two points and make sure they’re at a reasonable height.  Head height is perfect but at least try not to have them pointing at your ankles!

What do you think about something like Sonos or wireless speaker setups? Are they compatible with your consoles?

For convenience we include one wireless option for our customers to stream music wirelessly to the console (usually Apple Airplay but sometimes Bluetooth).  However, as far as the turntable goes, to make one work as part of a wireless setup involves digitally converting the signal from it first. To me and many of our customers this often contradicts the point in buying a system like this, they want a straight simple analog path for the turntable (turntable to amp to speaker, no messing around, no digital conversion)  Of course, that doesn’t mean that converting it to digital and sending to digital speakers isn’t a reasonable option for those that value convenience and aren’t purists but I personally like the all analog signal path for record listening.

Can you tell us about some of the bands you’ve been in and if you’re currently working on anything?

I’ve been in bands my whole life but as far as selected highlights go there is Amusement Parks on Fire who I mentioned earlier and more recently I worked on an album from our house with Jennifer and a mutual friend.  The band was called “Ghostel” and we were lucky enough to have a song called “Buckley Get Your Gun” placed in the trailer for the Turkish 2015 Oscar nominated movie “Mustang”. Jennifer and I are working on a project right now, we should have an EP out in the near future

What instruments do you play, do you have a favorite piece of gear?

I play guitar fine and a few other instruments at a basic level.   As far as favorite pieces of gear I’m quite flexible, I like to use whatever is around, ideally in ways it wasn’t intended!  Really, the closest thing I have to a favorite piece of gear is a 70’s Gibson SG that I’ve owned for nearly twenty years that’s been heavily modified and broken many times over by me.  That’s still my main guitar for everything I play on.

Who are some of your favorite producers or engineers and why?

Tom Waits is an incredible producer, he’ll do whatever it takes to capture magic on record and succeeds often, that is a gift.  As a mixer Tchad Blake is one of the best, excellent use of texture and contrasts, a real genius. Pete Katis who has worked on seven of The National’s albums is also amazing as is David Fridmann, the Flaming Lips go to guy.

What is a common misconception about audio or sound engineering that people have?

That there’s a right way to do it.

You’ve worked with quite a few artists, can you tell us about a few you’ve recorded or toured with? Any crazy stories you can share or does anyone have an insane live setup?

A short while back I was working with a band called Mondo Cozmo, they’d had a strong radio hit with a song called Shine and were playing a lot of festivals.  Now, when you play festivals as a band you rarely have time to sound check, festivals are often insanely tightly scheduled and ALWAYS on the brink of falling apart at any minute.  The fact they so rarely do is always amazing to me and often a credit to the crew.

As a sound guy working a festival you often have just 20 minutes between acts to get ready for your show.  

Nowadays us engineers all carry our mixes round on USB flash drives.  Generally you use that short time you have to just plug it in, load the mix and hope to God it translates well on the sound system they’re using

Anyway, this was the case for a major festival we were at, an audience of 20,000 were waiting and I had around twenty minutes to get ready.  Usually that’s not a problem except I get to the console, plug in my hard drive and my show file is corrupt, it won’t load. Now, this is not an easy band, they have multiple instruments and singers, a very complex set up, I stand no chance of setting up a mix for them from scratch in the time available but I do remember that I’d sent a backup of this now corrupted show file via email to myself a few weeks ago.

The problem is I’m in the middle of a field, there’s no Wi-Fi available but I know that there will be in the dressing room so I start to run there as fast as I can… I know it’s maybe five minutes each way.  First I have to ask the festival’s engineer to borrow a flash drive, thankfully she has one, I get to the dressing room, log on to the painfully slow WiFi. I finally get to my email, log in, find the one with the file attached and begin downloading it.  It fails the first few times but finally goes through, I transfer it to the drive I’d borrowed and run full speed back to the stage, I have already heard the current band announce their last song. I now have less than a minute until Mondo Cozmo walk on, I put the drive in the console and thank God, this time the it sees it, the file is intact.  I hit load, wait for what feels like forever for it to complete and I manage to unmute my mix THE SECOND the band walk on stage! The show goes on, 20,000 people blissfully unaware of how close we were to a complete catastrophe that day!

Did you grow up with a record player/console in your house, did your family listen to much music?

Yeah, my uncle was a relatively successful producer and record label guy so we got his hand me down systems.  I basically grew up with sound systems in my house that would have been top of the line five to ten years before!  Because of this I did get used to good sounding audio gear and record players at a young age.

What is your favorite vinyl LP you own?

Rain Dogs, the best album in the history of the world.  Jennifer may not agree with this statement. Jennifer is wrong.

Is there something that makes vinyl sound better than other formats? What’s your take on analog vs digital?

Do you have a few hours?!  This will be hotly debated until the end of time, “better” is a hugely subjective word.  

Digital audio has actually come a long way, I remember initially that many sound engineers outright hated it as a medium when it was introduced and considered it cold and brittle sounding.  However, given time new techniques and ways of working with it were developed that got much better results because, here’s the thing, what digital does is just capture what is put in to it. extremely accurately almost to a fault, it’s like a crystal clear piece of glass. In contrast most analog gear, turntables included, are less technically accurate but impart a slight tint and color to the audio that many find flattering.  They both have their place and digital wins for convenience, sure and has probably dominated the market for that reason but for personal listening I, and it turns out many others, find listening on vinyl much more enjoyable. As I say, the word “better” is subjective, many use different criteria to try and judge what is “better” but, for me, the most important factor when it comes to listening to music is how much enjoyment I derive from it.  In that respect vinyl wins hands down in my opinion.

If you could collaborate on a custom hifi console for anyone, who would it be and what type of setup would you configure and why?

Probably James Murphy of LCD soundsystem.  He’s a great producer and engineer too so he knows his audio stuff already.  He actually designed a 50,000 watt sound system for club DJ’s to play vinyl through so he’s dabbled in that world already.  I just think we’d be philosophically aligned plus he seems like a good bloke.

Do you have a favorite live band and favorite recorded/studio band? Why? 

It’s hard to beat the spectacle of a Flaming Lips show live.  Recorded, Tom Waits still, final answer!

Can you tell us about the process of creating the audio setup for one of your record consoles? What approach do you use and was there any reason you selected certain audio components over others?

Of course, there’s a reason for everything that’s in that cabinet to be in there right down to the RCA connectors we picked.  All the components were chosen to work both well together and in the rather specific confines of being built in to a piece of furniture!  

The first thing I knew was that I wanted to keep some of the sonic characteristics of the original record consoles and part of what defined a lot of them was that the speakers were mounted in baffles with those huge open enclosures behind them, it added a certain color and length to the sound.  Generally though because of these enclosures and because a turntable had to live in the same unit often those vintage units were very light on bass. The trick for me became finding a way to house a small subwoofer that was designed to fill in that lost bass somewhere appropriate in our cabinet without also causing vibrations that disrupted the turntable.  So there was a lot of experimenting with all kinds of components both to see which combinations sounded good together and also what would allow us to achieve that goal.

If you could give people looking to purchase one of your consoles one piece of audio advice, what would it be?

Listen to the whole album, don’t skip the deep cuts.

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