Friends, I want you to meet the young, talented, sweetheart of a dude, record maker Brendan St. Gelais. I have had the privilege of working with Brendan on projects he has engineered and mixed. This is a guy who has his head on straight and is going places. Learn something from him.
Name: Brendan St. Gelais
Location: Nashville, Tennessee. (The Smoakstack)
What do you do?
I make records! I work for producer Paul Moak at The Smoakstack and produce records at the studio whenever he isn’t working on projects of his own. (Thanks, Paul!)
What are you currently listening to?
Fugazi, Counting Crows (thanks, Paul), Randy Newman, Smashmouth. Ya know, just typical millennial kid music.
Where do you want to go with your career?
I’d love to continue to make records and eventually have my own studio. I want to continue to grow as a producer and push myself, and the artists I work with, to create the best art possible without compromise. Or, I don’t know, maybe just sell my own carefully crafted sample pack of fart noises and make hundreds of dollars.
One piece of advice for people about life or music.
The Control Room at The Smoakstack
Stop comparing yourself to other people in your field. I say this because I am constantly guilty of it. Your career will never look like the producer, or the mixer, or the artist, or whoever it is that is seemingly more successful than you. And it shouldn’t. Do the work that only you can do, create the art that only you can create, and you’ll have a career that only you can have. There’s a great amount of pride to take in that. Remember to be patient as well. I always have to remind myself that I’m relatively new to this business and I (Lord willing) still have many years left to accomplish my goals. The important thing is to do your best work and enjoy the ride. But what do I know, I’m 24 and have only been producing for like 2 years.
Something you learned the hard way.
I don’t know that I’ve really felt any dire consequences from this but I feel like I’m finally learning to stop forcing a production idea on to a song just because I think it sounds like the right idea in my head. Use your ears. If an idea is taking hours of tweaking just to sound as cool as it sounded in your head, then your idea probably sucks and you should swallow your pride and just admit it already. You’re wasting everybody’s time, Brendan!!!
Something you're proud of:
I am proud of Corey Kilgannon's latest release that I did.
Listen here ----> https://play.spotify.com/album/3QnQLNyIkyjrhUfqfheYhO?play=true&utm_source=open.spotify.com&utm_medium=open
Connect with Brendan below....
Instagram: Brendanstgelais
Soundcloud.com/brendanstgelais
Photo Credit: Alicia St. Gelais
Instagram: aliciastgelais