Steve Rubin

Co-founder, Producer, Engineer, & Musician

First, a little background on myself. I live and work in Washington, DC. I was born and raised in New Jersey and attended college at West Virginia University where I was probably the only student to actually graduate in four years. I received a BS in Communications in 1995 and moved to the DC area in 1998. I bought my first guitar when I was 14 years old and haven't put it down since.

After emulating Eddie Van Halen in my older brothers bedroom for years, I figured it was time to actually start doing the real thing. I formed my first band in 8th grade, High Voltage. Young and inexperienced, we thought the difference between types of guitars was how they were tuned, leading one of our friends father to tell us that "you guys sound like Sonic Youth." In high school I went on to form another band called Insanity for which I was the lead song writer and guitar player. Once that band split up after a few local firehouse shows, I went on to form yet another band, Garden of Rhythm. GOR was more of a "jam" band, but it enabled me to learn and appreciate other styles of music besides hard rock. Acting as a singer and rhythm guitar player, I started to appreciate the collection of sounds that make a song—and not just thinking about myself.

In college, I formed my next, and most successful, band to date, The Circle Six. We toured the mid-atlantic region for close to eight years capping off our stint with shows with such bands as The Roots, G-Love, The Verve Pipe, Linkin Park, and Papa Roach. Circle Six was, at the time, considered somewhat ground-breaking in that we were five white guys playing hip hop music with a live band. "Hendrix mixed with Wu Tang" we were told. We recorded one full length CD, Gravity Hits, and two EP's, Six Shooter, and 4 Cutz. It was during the Gravity Hits recording sessions that I realized my love for sitting behind the board and mixing the songs. In 1998, I also played guitar in an all instrumental band with some close friends called ALOHA!. Shortly after The Circle Six broke up and ALOHA! stopped performing, I produced a solo album of all instrumental drums-n-bass influenced music under the name Deep Rooted entitled Score for Intercourse.

A few years back, the drummer of The Circle Six and I started a rock project called Eight Track Mind. We self-produced a CD of original music, The Art of Making Noise, played some live shows and called it quits. During this time, I was asked by a friend who was producing an East Coast surfing documentary called Drawing Lines to write the score for the movie. Under the name Lords of DC, I produced six songs that were used in the film. Today I play in a band called Girl Loves Distortion and am currently working on a hip hop project called The Perps with Bill the Emcee from The Circle Six.

In conclusion, I will say that I feel that I have a very open and creative musical mind. I do not limit myself to one particular style of music or style of recording. If it sounds good, it's good. While I can follow the "industry standards" on certain things, I also feel that creativity goes a long way in todays world. Since most people can easily obtain their own working studios at this point, I feel it's more important to offer clients more than just a guy who pushes buttons. I see my job as someone who coaches, inspires, and teaches artists how to get the best performance out of themselves. I play guitar, bass, piano, drums, and can hold my own vocally, so I am pretty well versed in most instruments used in modern music. I have self-taught myself almost everything I know about playing and recording music, but am always willing and looking to expand my knowledge base even further.

Photo by Kyle Herchert