Website

www.madhousestudios.ca

Profile

Mike is a musician, composer, arranger and producer who has been involved in the music industry in one way or another for the past five decades. He remembers, as a ten-year old kid, being smitten by the sounds emanating from his 10-transistor radio in the early sixties. He recalls, "In Grade 7, Tim Crowley, Dennis Dineen, Jim Garrett and I formed this group and I was the bongo player. A year later, I graduated to Magnus Chord organ player." His fascination with electronic organs began at the age of thirteen, with a visit to see his next door neighbour, Brad MacDonald's new Ace Tone Top-5 organ. It was love at first sight! Mike then went on to play keyboards with Road Apples in the late sixties/early seventies, Rawnch, Piledriver (featuring John Dickie, John King), and Kitty Rye in the seventies and Jane Siberry and The Lookouts in the eighties. He later played with some "jobbing bands" in the eighties and nineties. He currently plays with King, Ring, Razz and Spaz, an amalgam of musicians from the Road Apples and Rawnch days.

Mike has produced a number of educational and pop/rock recordings over the years and has had the pleasure of working with the following musicians and singers in the studio: Mike Francis, Rob Piltch, Jake Langley, John King, Mike Spaziani, Andy Krehm, Wayne Brauer, Peter Cardinali, Steve King, Tom Szczesniak, John Switzer, Kevan McKenzie, Al Cross, Doug Ring, Steve Heathcote, Denis Keldie, Burke Carroll, Len McCarthy, Arnie Chycosky, Harvey Kogan, Moe Wozniak, Jane Siberry, David Blamires, D'Arcy Wickham, Larry Folk, Marek Norman, Danny Brooks, Dennis Dineen, Neil Donnell, Debbie Fleming, Cherie Camp, Sheree Jaecocke, Tim Crowley ......

Mike has composed a wide variety of instrumental pieces ranging from pop/rock to ambient/new age to music for solo organ. He's also co-written dozens of songs with composer/lyricist, Paul Dick over the years.

Some of the most influential bands and musicians on his playing and composing have been: The Band, Dylan, Booker T, Traffic, Steely Dan, Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, Randy Newman, Philip Glass, The Beatles, Ray Manzarek, Jon Hassell, Lyle Mays, Jimmy McGriff, and the inimitable Garth Hudson.

Mike currently owns and operates Madhouse Studios, a recording facility, featuring an array of console, spinet and combo organs,
specializing in organ overdubbing.

About The Studio

Madhouse Studios, located just on the outskirts of Toronto in Pickering, is a recording facility that specializes in "alternative" electronic organs. The vintage organs presently found in the Madhouse "Organ Bank" consist of ones I've collected over the years: the Lowrey Festival Console (Model FL, tube organ), Lowrey Celebration Console (Model C500, solid-state), Lowrey Symphonic Theater Console (Model H25-3, solid-state), Lowrey Theater Spinet (Model H, solid-state), Hammond M3 (tone-wheel, spinet), Gibson G 101, Yamaha YC-30 (60s combo organ) and Farfisa Fast 4 (60s combo organ).
This collection of organs, specializing in Lowreys, allows a producer to explore a vast array of organ sounds found on some of the great recordings from the Sixties and Seventies. Two of the models that Garth Hudson used in The Band are part of this collection and have some of the "mods" that he had done to his.
"My Guitar Gently Weeps" "Born To Be Wild" "96 Tears" "Baba O Riley" "Won't Get Fooled Again" "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" and of course, the entire Band catalogue are just some of the recordings that used a Lowrey organ. With this collection, a producer will be able to explore sounds suitable for any genre plus offer them a viable alternative to the ubiquitous Hammond B3. A note of interest, the Madhouse Studios' Lowrey Festival organ was the actual one played by Garth Hudson in the Daniel Lanois documentary/album, Here Is, What Is.
The studio has three 147 Leslies, a 145 Leslie and a Leslie 103 as well as a variety of keyboard and guitar amps. The organs can be played through a Leslie, an amp or both at the same time which can produce some interesting results.
A lot of producers and bands nowadays use laptops to do "on site" or "field" recordings. At this facility, there's a Tascam FW 1884 digital mixing console in which your laptop can be "firewired" directly into. For those interested in recording bedtracks, there's also a nice sounding Tama Superstar drum kit made in the 80s (not to be confused with the cheaper version sold now with the same moniker). The studio has a wide variety of microphones (Neumann, AKG, Sennheiser, Shure) for the many different situations and applications that may arise.
Denis Keldie, a popular Toronto session player, sees Madhouse Studios as, "a comfortable project studio and organ depository, for producers and artists looking for sounds that no one else is using." The promotional CD, Madhouse Presents King, Ring, Razz and Spaz was produced with the intention of not only showcasing MS's Organ Bank, but also in capturing the essence and style of the period that these songs originated.