Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Parisi.
Matthew, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Like most young boys I wanted to be a rock star. I idolized the bands I listened to and dreamt of one day performing to thousands of people on stage. After getting a Saturday job at 13 and saving for what seemed like an eternity, I bought myself my first guitar. I played that thing incessantly. For hours and hours every day. I played it so much that I became the music guy at my school and when a local Producer came in to find some young talent for a record he was making, I was the first to be nominated.
As soon as I hit the studio, I no longer cared about being a rock star. I knew the studio was my calling. Watching a band come in, play a track and then hearing it back through a broken pair of NS10s through a desk that you had punch every now and then to make it work was pure magic for me. I spent every spare second I had in that studio learning from that Producer. When I moved to Brighton to study music further, it wasn’t long until I found another studio to work from and it was there I started learning how to run a production business.
I finished University, a broke student, wet behind the ears but determined to stay where the music was happening. I took a job as a corporate headhunter and whilst I absolutely hated it, I got to learn a lot about running a business, selling my services, selling people and how to work under pressure. At the same time, I was cooking up an opportunity to fund my own production company along with songwriter Peter Harwood so I stayed in the corporate world in anticipation for my big break.
We went for an investment of £150k which at the time seemed like a lot of money. I know now that in terms of investment, it’s not a lot at all. We had management, connections with publishers and financial guardian angel. It felt like a bit of a whirlwind adventure and I honestly had to pinch myself every time I thought about it. Then we found out the stakes were being raised. Our manager and investment team had an idea to take what we were doing and make it into a multimillion-pound company. This was so exciting.
I started worrying when I was suddenly not invited to meetings anymore but I think I knew we were getting cut out when I turned up to a skype meeting and our manager spent the entire time introducing us to his cat. I was so angry but I had no other opportunities so I had to just go along with everything. Now, I would probably fight back but I was young and naive.
When this whole deal inevitably collapsed, I got super depressed. I was a corporate headhunter. No longer a musician or a music producer. I had lost my identity and I was coming up to 25. I decided that on my 25th Birthday if I hadn’t got myself a job in music, I would restudy and pursue something else. I quit my job and begun calling up record labels and production companies introducing myself and seeing if I could get an in. I had some meetings with the majors but ultimately I think it was more out of curiosity for them than any real offer. I got pipped to the post for a few exec jobs but my heart wasn’t into being a company executive. I wanted to make records.
It was about a week before my 25th Birthday when I got an email from my old university telling me that Mike Stock was looking for a head engineer. Mike Stock is the UK’s most successful Songwriter and Producer having produced over 100 hits in the 80s and 90s. I had already met Mike a year previous and had his email address. I sent him an email and told him my background as an engineer. He called me in for an interview on my 25th Birthday.
I spent my entire Birthday in a 6-hour interview with Mike whilst he was recording with Nicki French (Eurovision). At the end of the session, he simply asked me ‘can I do this’. I told him of course. In fact, I said it would be embarrassing for me and a waste of his time if I couldn’t. I think he liked that because he offered me the job on the spot but inside my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. This was a multimillion-pound studio and the best I had worked at was studios thrown together with tape and wishful thinking.
I spent four years working at Mike’s and in that time got to work on records with Kylie Minogue, Shayne Ward and BucksFizz as well as getting some charting records in the UK and working with Nickelodeon. It was there I got to learn from mixing engineers that had sold records in their millions, mastering engineers from Abbey Roads and Metropolis and I got to see how a top UK Producer works his craft.
After four years, I felt like my time there was up. It was a great gig but I wasn’t learning much more, I wasn’t earning much more and I wasn’t working on music I was passionate about. I had also been given a contract to produce an album for a UK based country artist called Hayley McKay as well as a contract to run some music festivals. There was also another investment opportunity.
I spent the next year working with Hayley McKay, working the festivals and working on this investment opportunity. This was also the year I first got to fly to LA and meet loads of artists and industry people. Myself and my writing partner, Peter Harwood had been invited over by Sat Bisla of A&R Worldwide as we were working with him on our new company. We flew over and had a whirlwind week of meetings, showcases and writing. LA felt like the place to be to get anything done in Music.
January 2018, the album was done and the festivals had been a giant flop. I had to turn around to the CEO of the company and tell him to fire me and cancel the festivals otherwise they were going to lose hundreds of thousands of pounds. It was an incredibly humbling moment. All my money had dried up, I was massively in debt and the investment was stalling. I tried to get a part-time job and even that proved impossible.
Out of sheer desperation, I set up a new business called Studio Chimp and started advertising that I could do mix work for bands and artists. I went hell for leather. I woke up at 5am everyday and worked every hour that existed. Soon, work started trickling in but it wasn’t enough to pay the bills. However, in February I had an in at a Studio. It was a two-hour drive there and not a lot of money, but I took it. By March I was starting to get more clients and by April I had so much work I was sleeping under studio desks in order to get it all done.
By May, Pete and I were again flown out to LA but this time for nearly a month to write with a tonne of artists and to meet more industry people. It was there I started writing with Madyx. She’d been performing around LA for a number of years and had built quite a name for herself. We wrote a song called Girl Boy amongst a few others which I then produced back in the UK.
A few months later it got released and was a massive radio success playing all around the world. It won a huge radio competition in Las Vegas and was getting a tonne of buzz around the industry. Madyx, Pete and I knew that we had something special between us. She flew to the UK to finish off a few more songs with us which is where we are now so I can’t give away too much on that!
In the last year and a half, Studio Chimp has become much more than an online mix service. People have started calling me The Studio Chimp as a Producer name, I work with labels across the world. I’m also an artist mentor for a label in the UK started up by Robert Plant. I have a podcast series and there is a book in the works.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Some of the biggest struggles I’ve found has really been down to naivety on my part. I have believed people when they say they are going to do something or got too excited about ‘opportunities’ that have come my way only to turn out to be no big opportunity at all. Perhaps it’s a little bit cynical but I really don’t trust many people in the industry. Not because they are necessarily lying but I think it’s very common for people to overstate their abilities!
Probably the biggest struggle I had in terms of finance was with the festivals. This was a real lesson in only doing what you are an expert in doing. I know studios. I understand records. I’m not even the biggest fan of live events. I just ran a load whilst I was in University. Festivals are just big gigs, right?
So this opportunity came about after going to a party at a massive WWII fort. It was an amazing area that I thought would be perfect for hosting a festival. I spoke to someone there quite casually about it and they said they’d put me in touch with the CEO of the charity that runs the place. I met the CEO in a pub somewhere and talked about the ideas. He said if I could make the finances work, he’d do it. It all happened quite by accident really.
I balanced the books in theory, got the contract and begun work. As I did more research, it started to dawn on me just how much work it involved. I had to get local government clearance, traffic plans, police and fire plans, huge amounts of security. I also started seeing just how bad a War Fort is for a festival. It’s a health and safety nightmare. Access was via one tunnel over a moat and it was on top of a hill which meant that any sign of wind, the stage would have to be pulled down. I needed twenty of me on my team and about twenty times the budget. It was a disaster.
I had already lost that charity a tonne of money. Had I been able to afford to give them back my fee I would have. Telling their CEO that he should end my contract was both sickening and huge weight off my shoulders. I still feel bad to this day but I guess they knew the risks involved as well.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
My business Studio Chimp is a music production company. I am a Musician and Producer having worked in studios since I was 14. Studio Chimp started as an online mixing company but is now covers all production.
For me, I really wanted to take back the role of a music producer. I feel like anyone with a laptop and a pair of KRKs can call themselves a Producer but the role really means a lot more than just making a track for someone. I like to develop and mentor my artists. In my career, I’ve been lucky enough to be part of some great marketing campaigns which has resulted in charting songs, launched careers and for my own business, created something incredibly profitable from my spare room. Any opportunity for me to chat about this is always welcome!
When artists approach me, I don’t think they really know what they are in for. I spend a lot of time with them not only developing their songs and records, but I’ll talk them through their marketing process, talk them through any issues they are having, sort out fights within the band and almost become another member of their group. I’m also now in the process of creating a company that can go one step further and actually help generate income for the artists I work with. It’ll be another year before I can launch it but I’m super excited to get it going.
To me, this is what a Producer does. They develop the artist in a very real way from the music to how they conduct themselves in the industry. They open doors where possible and become an integral part of their career. I’ve never wanted to be one of those people you just book a day in the studio with and then you never see them again.
What were you like growing up?
I was quite an introverted kid. Surprisingly I wasn’t that into music. It didn’t really grab me as a kid. I was a real wallflower and I liked to bury myself away in books. Not to do the whole poor me thing but I was also tiny (still am) and so was an easy target for bullies at school. In fact, I think the reason I turned to music in such a big way when I did was that it was a way for me to escape all of that.
I liked to write a lot. I wrote loads of books as a kid and would spend hours in my room with just a pen and paper. I wrote all sorts of stories although I’m sure they’re all rubbish. Surprisingly, I always thought I was going to an actor.
It was when I discovered rock music and nu metal which was big at the time that I felt passionate about records. I loved how angry they were. It was as if someone had put into words how I felt and screamed it in a way I only wish I could have. After discovering Marilyn Manson, I went through my goth phase. Not sure I ever left it really. It’d be rare to see me wearing anything other than black and I’m covered in tattoos.
It was through music that I gained more confidence, started leading bands, going on stage and performing. I put together a band called The Death Parade when I was about 14 and we had the most ridiculous lyrics. I tried to just piss people off. I once had a gig at a Catholic school so I read out our song lyrics whilst holding a bible upside down. Kind of childish when I look back but at the time I thought I was super edgy.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.studiochimp.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studiochimp/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheStudioChimp/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/matthewparisi
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