A Lifelong Passion combined with endless drive and determination...
It’s hard to believe that Greazy was once just a precocious kid with a dream to one day work in the music industry. Growing up as the youngest of 4 children just north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Greazy loved music from the very beginning. Despite his desire to learn music, his family’s lack of resources kept him from being able to pursue it fully. Regardless, by the age of 11 he had managed to save enough money to buy an old acoustic guitar and taught himself to play. All throughout high school he continued to play in bands and his passion for it only grew stronger.
As a senior in high school, he watched the events of 9/11 unfolding on the TV in a classroom. At the end of his senior year, with no other real options for a future, he joined the Marines and left for boot camp in June of 2002. By January of 2003, he was on a ship heading towards Iraq. Even though he spent most of his time in the Marines actively deployed to combat in Iraq, he managed to still find time to squeeze his love for music into his life. In 2004 he was repeatedly injured during combat operations in Najaf and received a Purple Heart. In 2006, he was honorably discharged from the Marines and after a short time attempting college and finding no joy in it, he moved to Texas and started playing in bands.
In Texas is where Greazy would discover his real passion. After touring for several years with a moderately successful band, Greazy would find himself in a real studio to record for the very first time. He became obsessed with learning more about the process. When his band broke up in 2009, he moved to Arizona and went to the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences. In just 9 months, he went from knowing almost nothing about recording to being the top student in his class and recommended for an internship at the legendary EastWest Studio in Hollywood, CA. Within a few weeks he was promoted and began working on sessions with massive artists and legends in the music industry. His first sessions were with Jon Brion, Frank Ocean, Justin Bieber and country legend Dwight Yoakum. He quickly rose through the ranks at EastWest to become one of their most trusted employees and was put on sessions with their biggest clients.
After 3 years of learning the craft at EastWest, Greazy was ready to move on and his first consistent engineering gig was working for producer Alex da Kid. Engineering for Imagine Dragons, X-Ambassadors and Skylar Grey, while also cohabitating at Larrabee Studio alongside mixing pros Manny Marroquin and Jaycen Joshua gave him a chance to prove his skills fully and also continue to learn and grow as an engineer and producer. After a year working almost non-stop for Alex, Greazy went freelance and started his life as a journeyman through the industry. One day he would be working on scoring sessions with Ludwig Göransson and the next he would be on rap sessions with Vic Mensa or pop sessions with Ariana Grande. He recorded vocals for the Oscar winning song “This Is Me” on the soundtrack to “The Greatest Showman” and worked with Swizz Beatz on his score for “The Godfather of Harlem.” He would take every gig, regardless of the money and would even work for free just for the experience and friendships he would gain in the process. He became known for his ability to step into any situation in any studio in town and take over on just a moments notice. There was no session he wasn’t qualified for and as a result he found himself in the studio with some of the biggest producers and artists in the world. Pharrell, NoID, Justin Timberlake, Zack De La Rocha and Travis Barker have all used Greazy as their engineer and his work can be found on multiple award winning albums, including MGK’s Tickets To My Downfall and Jon Batiste’s 7x Grammy winning album “We Are.”
In January of 2021, Greazy was called for a late-notice session with rapper, Killer Mike. After just one day of working with Greazy, Mike asked him to stay on for the entire album, working again under Executive Producer NoID. Greazy was given free rein as an engineer to make creative decisions and never hesitated to push boundaries artistically. Blending his knowledge of rap with traditional recording techniques, Greazy helped to craft an album that was musical and artistic yet maintained the gritty emotional feel of a classic Atlanta artist. It balanced beautiful engineering and skillful arrangements while also keeping the edgy, raw vibe that Killer Mike is known for. Greazy also flexed his production skills on the album, never hesitating to add tiny flourishes on all the songs on the album and even producing the song “Act Up” ft. Young Nudy. As a result, Killer Mike’s album, “Michael,” swept the rap categories at the 2024 Grammy’s, winning Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap Album, earning Greazy his first Grammy as the main engineer on an album and Killer Mike his first Grammy in 22 years.
Achieving the music industry’s highest award hasn’t changed anything for Greazy. He continues to take every opportunity to grow his skills, whether its his ongoing work with Killer Mike or working with and mentoring up-and-coming artists on their first professional releases. He has also grown his presence on social media, becoming the spiritual leader of the audio engineering community on Tiktok. His long term goal is to grow awareness around audio engineering and promote his own philosophy of producing music, one which requires high level technical skills combined with raw emotion to achieve a sound that is unique and identifiable. He applies the knowledge passed to him while working under some of the best engineers to ever record music and blends it with his no bullshit attitude. Despite producing thousands of videos for social media sharing his skills with engineers, producers and musicians that are still just learning, he has maintained his more than full time job recording in the best studios in the world and mixing hundreds of songs a year. He is currently in the top 10% of mix engineers and top 1% of recording engineers by volume. Rather than slow down, his only desire is to do more music and achieve a place amongst the legendary producers and engineers as a peer and to be respected in the same manner as he respects them. No project is too big or too small to get his attention, provided the soul is there for him to help mould.
