Check Out Lori Castro’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lori Castro.

Hi Lori, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started off like most of my friends, playing my electric guitar in my garage band as a kid, experimenting with sounds and recording on little boom boxes. Our drummer’s dad did wood working projects, so he had built a somewhat sound proof shop/shed. When he wasn’t working in it – we’d all squeeze into our lead singer’s truck and swing over to the shed as fast as possible. We’d jam out all night. It’s kind of funny to look back at this because on most nights we were this angsty garage band but on Wednesday’s and Sunday’s….we would play in our church gospel band – swapping to Fred Hammond, Kirk franklin and Israel Houghton songs. If anyone found out the music we were playing in that shed, I think we would’ve had a talking to from our church haha. I will never forget though … that feeling at the time, we would record our band on a tiny boom box and sometimes over our drummers mom cassette tapes. I’d test out moving the boom box around to get a different tone and overall balance of the band. We would tinker with cheap guitar pedals, busy drum ideas and amp setups. That is all we had at the time but it was so damn fun. (sorry Mrs. Vincent about your choir rehearsal tapes). That is where it all started for me, I was hooked! Later on – I got into live sound mixing and technology because I wanted to know more about how to mix our live shows and I didn’t want to stop learning.

After getting my grip on live sound mixing, I eventually decided to go to school. After Full Sail I went back to Texas (where I am from) and did studio internships around Austin TX and Dallas. There I worked with a lot of college indie, rock and jazz bands. A studio I worked at – had back to back college bands come in to knock out singles for their sites or the local college radio station – it was a great time. The super quick session turnarounds had me learning to get faster on my pro tools setups, it was also a proper rollercoaster for sharpening a young audio engineer. It had me realizing that my previous live sound mixing experience served me well as I was both calm and sharp on my toes where just about anything was thrown at us with very little time or room for error. That same adrenaline rush in the live shows was there too on the studio side and I absolutely loved it.

At some point I took the risk and reached out to my idol, Sylvia Massy. I knew I had hit a wall in learning and I needed to find a new place to grow. I believe my email said something like “ I will mop floors, clean bathrooms, make coffee and make cables if it means I can be a fly on the wall for the summer”. It was longer than that but that was the goal – to let her know I just wanted a short visit and I was willing to put in the work to be there. I thought the worst that could happen is she just doesn’t respond but to my surprise she emailed me back. I got an interview and landed an internship with her studio. When everyone went home after a session day, I’d stay up all night – sometimes until 6am the next morning – just reading manual after manual, testing out gear and getting up to speed on equipment I wasn’t super familiar with. Sylvia had and still has a museum of amazing vintage gear and consoles and I didn’t know how to work all of them right away and I didn’t want to get left behind. Eventually the late night manual studying paid off and I was able to help fix issues super quick and got noticed faster by the head engineers.

Sylvia started trusting me to be her recording engineer and mixer so I was put on more sessions and co-produced with her.

My curious brain then pushed me toward surround sound mixing. Something I knew I also needed to learn. So I moved to Los Angeles and one thing led to another and I got a fulltime Recording Engineer job with Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control productions. There I was able to work with a broad range of composers, mixers and musicians. I was running recording sessions, mixing, editing live orchestra and setting up gear and templates for the head mixers and coordinating back to back sessions with various music editors and crews. I eventually caught the attention of Alan Meyerson and was honored to be his mix assistant. We worked on a lot of great projects together. I was also able to assist and learn from many awesome score mixers during that time too. Steve Jablonsky eventually asked me to join his team and I said yes. I worked on a ton of stuff with him wearing a lot of hats – guiding projects, recording, editing, getting brainstorming sessions brewing, producing drums, guitars, keeping his studio running on the tech side and choosing some of my crew for the massive Transformer like projects. Since then I’ve been fully freelance, recording and mixing for Film Scores and Records as well as being tapped for audio consulting for Netflix. At Netflix I helped to build, calibrate and test their atmos theaters, technical review rooms and living room simulation spaces for both LA and their other locations around the world. All of this curiosity that I had driving me – ended up putting me in some awesome places and learning a wide range of stuff along the way.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
When I graduated from high school, as much as I loved music production – I regretfully decided to go the “safe” route at first – to study for a major in psychology. Soon after, my mom was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer, we didn’t know if she was going to survive. She gave me a speech about how none of us can predict what life is going to do to us, so to do what we love now and not wait on a “perfect time”. As sad as that was for our family, that was the push for me to seriously go for my dream and to give it all I had. I told myself that even if I failed at trying to pursue this path, I could live with trying and I was young enough to figure out what to do next if things didn’t work out. That doesn’t mean it’s been easy, I lived out of my car for different periods at the start of my audio career, I lived paycheck to paycheck while waiting out internships and entry level roles. Some of my early internships weren’t paid so I had to juggle fast food jobs in the mornings and afternoons while making it on time to the studio evening sessions -just to keep above water. Some nights I was at the studio until 4am or so – and headed straight to my fast food job for my next day opening shift without sleep. I remember living off of Trader Joes trail mix for weeks (that was all I could afford) just to wait out gigs and measure out where I could drive to before running out of gas for the week. And I didn’t have a financial safety net of any kind, my parents and family also lived paycheck to paycheck – I was on my own and really had to buckle down and get strategic, get intentional. At times my previous live sound experience helped me stay afloat with gigs when times got hard. It was extremely challenging.

My experience in this journey is why I also offer advice and training to young engineers that come from zipcodes like mine. I don’t want to lose talent because someone was priced out of these opportunities. Several times I almost had to quit, not because I wasn’t good at what I did or I wasn’t passionate enough but because I simply couldn’t afford gas and groceries. It reminded me the whole way, some people don’t quit because they lack passion – they lack food.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am an audio engineer. I record, I mix and co-produce all things music. I specialize in mixing records and film scores and I also take great joy in mentoring young audio engineers too.

What sets me apart from others? All I can do is lean on what my clients tell me to answer that question. I usually get a lot of calls from artists that revolve around wanting to work with someone who isn’t afraid to experiment freely with ideas, who can listen to their needs, be patient with them, be reliable, be flexible and most importantly – be able to connect to their vision quick enough to then be capable of guiding them and as an engineer – to not be afraid of making confident decisions. In that sense, most artists that come to me also need someone who has the experience of producing. I am so grateful to my biggest mentor Sylvia Massy – that she saw that skill in me early on in my career and worked with me to sharpen it. It’s been a hat I wear a lot throughout the years when I am in both recording and mixing sessions. It takes reading the room, building trust, experience and then having a clear view of what creative and sonic decisions need to be made in the moment in order to help support and move the vision forward.

A lot of what influences my work are the amazing folks that poured their knowledge into my life all throughout my journey, my diverse background in audio technology and music production, experience sitting with artists and working with so many talented people – on so many high level projects. I bring all of this experience and guidance to my sessions and clients. And yes – my curious brain still has me learning constantly and chewing on new stuff. You can find me at my website loricastro.com

Who else deserves credit in your story?
I’ve had a lot of folks who made me feel seen and dropped gracious knowledge on me when I was young and some mentor me at so many different chapters in my life.

Roy Pozos (who passed away several years ago) was a live sound engineer back in Texas but also lived a long life – one that crossed paths with so many of my 70s rock idols during his live sound days in austin and around the u.s. He was a calm, cool and collected audio engineer – who no matter how chaotic the shows got, he was cracking jokes and keeping the energy positive. He took me under his wing when I was a kid and answered every single one of my annoying audio questions. He also taught me the foundational knowledge I have today for live sound mixing and audio technology – which also helped me in my recording studio work too. He passed down his decades of knowledge to some kid who would bother him every week about audio and taught me you can be kind, level headed and also get good shit done. I am forever grateful to him and his influence on me.

My 2nd most impactful mentor was Sylvia Massy. I don’t know how to express this but most of what I know, how I navigate sessions and how I work today is because of her. She’s a freakin legend on so many levels. And when I announced my new mix room – she reached out to me personally to send me kind words and encouragement. She’s always been cheering me on all of these years and I am so grateful. My last notable mention is Dennis Sands. My childhood movie film scores were mixed by him and to finally work with him years ago was a dream come true. He is not only a legendary mixer but a solid good person and I admired his way of doing business. It was a lot closer to how I also wanted to do business. His solid advice helped me transition into a big chapter in my career. And he also without hesitation, reached out to me when I announced my new mix room, to congratulate me and give me solid words of encouragement. Looking back, I am so damn grateful to the talented folks who saw me and also shared their knowledge with me and who keep pouring good into my life. This is why I pay it forward. And last but not least – my amazing wife Amanda and my son Luca. They are my biggest cheerleaders and it’s hard to have imposter syndrome over stay its welcome when your toddler is dancing around to your mixes.

Pricing:

• I work with all budgets, contact me via my website to talk more about your project,vision and I can customize a package for you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.loricastro.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lori__castro
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2937005/