John Karr

Recording engineer based in San Francisco since 1988, and owner of Ear Relevant Recording and Ear Relevant Productions. Former staff engineer and manager at Olde West and Brilliant Studios. Karr studied analog/electronic music at Sara Laurence and the New School in New York and then onward to Berklee College of Music in Boston as a jazz arranging major and playing guitar in the prog-rock bands Meta Terra, Surgery and Slug Bunny. While at the New School he cut his teeth engineering live shows at Inroads Art Gallery, The Pyramid Club, A7. with such artists as Jon Zorn, Sonic Youth, Fred Frith, Eugene Chadborne, Noise R Us, Derick Baliey, Leferts Brown and some of the downtown NYC art noise and punk bands circa 1979-80. While at Berklee he began his recording career mixing exclusively live on location to a 2 track PCM F1. Early clients Included everything from student projects to members of John Mclaughlin, Weather Report, Pat Metheny, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Jean Luc Ponty’s bands. Some of these sessions were live radio broadcasts on WERS. This led to the opening of JK’s first studio, an analog tape/MIDI programming room, Skyline Audio in Allston Ma, in 1982. Since moving to San Francisco in 1988, JK became the staff engineer and manager at both, Olde West and Brilliant Studios, and led a double life working live sound at such legendary venues as The Kennel Club, the Fillmore, Slims, Yoshi’s, The Great American Music Hall, Bottom of the Hill, The Justice League and Public Works. John was also the sound department manager and head engineer of The Independent for over 7 years.