"I’d started playing guitar at about 15 and getting more seriously into music. We moved house when I finished secondary school, and on the other side of the park to where we had moved to was a college that did sound engineering. I nearly ended up doing an apprenticeship at BT or the MEB but I didn’t really want to start working, so I thought I'd give college a go.
The course was predominantly studio based, with Yamaha O2Rs and an SSL in the main room. While there I got a house gig in a small venue near to where I grew up, doing punk/metal bands every Friday night. I remember it being madness at first, trying to get four bands organized and sound checked, and then on stage on time!
At the time I'd also started playing in a band, and had set up a little recording rig in our lock up from whatever we could beg or borrow. I started to notice I was getting more into recording and mixing than I was actually playing the guitar, and I was recording my own band and anyone else I could persuade for me to practice with!
Upon leaving college, I got a job at SSE Audio Group, loading trucks and sweeping the warehouse. I did that for a couple of years and then became freelance and started to go out as a system tech for them. Then I got my first FOH engineer job in 2005 and have been doing that ever since, with bands including Catfish & The Bottlemen, The Wombats, Zemfira, Rooster, The Kooks, Peace, Billy Ocean, Plan B, The Marmozets and Reef."