Meet Aaron Kusterer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Kusterer.

Hi Aaron, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory. 
I’m a guitarist/vocalist, producer, and mix engineer, for starters, but it’s been a long road over the past 25 years to get here. I was raised in a musical family, so it’s always been a huge part of my life. My mom played and taught piano lessons, and my dad played guitar. While mom enforced the piano lessons for my brothers and I (which I’m grateful for—came in handy later in life), I ended up going to the dark side and getting into the guitar because of my dad. In fact, he ended up buying me my own guitar because he got sick of me picking up his. Ha! I worked in music stores through my teen years, which contributed a lot to broadening my horizons, which included trying to write and record my own music. That was definitely a crude process for sure, but I worked with what I had at the time. While studying music in college, I joined the United States Air Force band as a guitarist. It was in that situation that I first came in contact with real professional musicians, and it really helped to push me and prepare me for working in Los Angeles years later. 

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Like any path, it came with its bumps. For me, the primary struggle was always (and probably still is to a degree) trying to measure up. For example, you think you have something down and sounding good–then you hear the recording. Ha! And you realize that it wasn’t as good as you thought… so you go back to the woodshed to practice and hone. That is the process, though. Over and over again. It’s how you learn and grow. 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I balance my time between working as a professional guitarist for other artists/bands (studio and live), a mix engineer/producer, and writing my own music. I try to bring a polish to both my live and studio work that sticks out and sounds slick. A lot of the music I dig and get hired to play (across many styles) involves a lot of polish, and I love that endless pursuit. If I can blow away the people I’m working with and help them get even more excited about their music or project, then I’ve done my job correctly. The same holds true in my production/audio engineering work. There is a record I produced/mixed (and played on) for Tatiana Erse called Confessions that I just loved doing. She is such a powerhouse singer with a unique voice, and it was a pleasure creating that project with her. Furthermore, seeing how happy she was to be able to take it out and perform it was really fulfilling. When I’m not working on projects for others, I’m usually producing my own music which has been a growing thing in the last few years. There are a lot of things rolling around in my head that are finally coming to the surface, and it’s really fun to be able to share them. I just released an EP entitled “A Little Louder” that is out on all the big music services, and I have two singles that will be released later this Spring. 

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was mainly a nerd caught between skateboarding and music. I wanted so badly to be in with the “cool” kids at the time but just never really fit in, so music became the focus. I was a really serious kid in a lot of ways growing up, but I don’t think it really started to take hold in a musical sense until a drummer flaked out on me the day before a street festival we were going to play. I think I was probably 13 years old and extremely angry after getting that call. I remember my parents being a bit surprised at how I took it. But I played the festival solo anyway, and it taught me a valuable lesson–steer clear of the flakes! Ha! I think after that, things got more and more serious for me, which definitely influenced my personality. My parents would say that I was “intense.” Lol Luckily, that turned out to be a good thing because it took me into a career. Around that same time, I was also an apprentice in a computer store for about a year and learned to build PCs, so that definitely came in handy years later, working on computers for recording/mixing. Everything I was involved in often led right back to music or was a means to an end–often to be able to play in some way, afford more gear, or some combination thereof. I had a little lawn service that I ran for years, from when I was 10 years old until about age 16, that paid for a lot of gear. That overlapped with working at a local music store, which helped even more. And on and on… 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://aaronkusterer.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aaronkusterer/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aaron.kusterer/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAQmou9pG3UqLk90YXv5TbQ
• Other: https://akstudioproductions.com

Image Credits
Barbie Bates
Ruthie Blair
Heather Szabo
Kyle Rutjes
MarcD Photos