Today we’d like to introduce you to TJ Callaway.
TJ, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My journey into audio started with music. I started playing my brother’s guitar (when he wasn’t home) when I was 12. Eventually, I got my own guitar because I got tired of being beaten up when he’d come home and find his guitar out of tune! In less than a year, I switched to bass because my band couldn’t find a bassist. I fell in love with bass, the role it plays in music and never looked back. A few years later my band went into the studio to record a demo and I was fascinated with everything about the studio and recording process. I wanted to know what every knob, button and fader did on the console. I loved the effects units. I wanted to know how to make my band sound the way WE wanted us to sound, not someone else’s interpretation of it. I was a fan of a lot of punk rock back then and the DIY ethic really played a role in wanting to know how to be self-sufficient as a musician. To me, a part of that was knowing how to record.
After high school, I was lucky enough to find a mentor in an engineer named Mike Loughridge at a local project studio. Eventually he started letting me run overdub sessions, then over time he started letting me have access to the studio for my own band when it wasn’t booked. Years later, I became the first intern at Maximedia Production Group in Farmers Branch (Now Mediatech Institute, a recording school). After a year of that of that, I went to a formal recording school called The Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences in Tempe, AZ. While I was in school, I fell in love with Audio Post-Production, which is sound for TV & Film.
After school I was looking for an internship in the Audio Post side of the business. A couple of former bandmates, David & Ronnie Bates, helped me get my foot in the door as an intern at Reel FX Creative Studios. I was lucky enough to find a couple of great mentors in Frank Salazar and Frank Pittenger at Reel FX. At the end of the internship, they referred me to another post house that was opening an audio department. I got hired on at Fast Cuts Edit / Mix as the audio assistant. I spent a year there, then Reel FX called back and said they had an opening.
Working at Reel FX taught me a lot about the creativity involved with Foley work and Sound Design. Working on animated films was a great way to build up sound design skills! Like the great sound designer Ben Burtt said, “in animation you get nothing for free”. You have to create everything you hear in an animated film. There is no sound from a location shoot. It was so much fun to find different and creative ways to make the sounds for all the things you see happening on screen. It can range from how to make someone sound like they are walking on the right kind of wood floor with the right shoe in a scene to developing sounds for things that don’t exist like the time a director told me to come up with a sound for “space brakes” for a time pod that was slowing down as it went across the screen. It’s a lot of fun when you are given 4 days just to develop options for new laser gun sounds. I loved the experience and ended up spending 12 years working there. While there, I had the opportunity to work on everything from TV & Radio Commercials for national brands, Animated Feature Films (The Book of Life, Freebirds, Rock Dog), Independent Films (The Origins of Wit & Humor, The Atrium), Corporate Videos, Interactive Projects & Virtual Reality Experiences.
In late 2016, I left Reel FX and went independent as a Sound Designer, Mixer and Audio Engineer and also started teaching Audio Post-Production part time at Mediatech Institute in Farmers Branch. That was an interesting full circle to be a teacher in the same building I had once been in intern in. Teaching was a great experience but after a year of that another great opportunity presented itself at Luminous Sound in North Dallas. Tre, Paul and Taylor at Luminous have been great! They’ve allowed me the opportunity to work in Dallas’ best music studio as well as provide me a home base to work out of for my freelance post-production work. It’s exciting to be involved in music production again and take on their post-production work. I’m really thankful to be a part of the team there!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Ha! Very little about this business is a smooth road. This isn’t the type of job where you get out of college and 3 recruiters are lining up to hire you into a “growth industry”. You get into this because you love it and you are a bit of a weirdo about sound. The hours are weird, the work is sometimes weird (I once spent an entire afternoon creating an armpit-fart sound version of “Fur Elise” for a radio commercial), but that’s what makes it great! What I’ve learned about the business is that you have to make your own opportunities. You have to get out there and get to know likeminded creatives in film and music and let them get to know you and what your creative strengths are and then you find out how that aligns with them and their projects’ needs. You really don’t want to take on projects just because you need the money. You should take on projects because you can bring something to it that it needs. It’s a people business and the relationships you make in this business often turn into great friendships. That’s a really great benefit of being in this line of work.
Please tell us about TJ Callaway Audio.
TJ Callaway Audio, Inc. is just me! I specialize in Sound Design, Foley, De-noising and Mixing for Film, TV, Radio, Interactive Projects and basically any kind of medium that needs sound. For instance, earlier this year I mixed 3 episodes of a TV show called “The Price of Fame” for the Reelz Channel. Last year I worked on 7 documentary short film/VR experiences for Facebook & Oculus that each helped to bring awareness to a particular subject ranging from human trafficking to environmental concerns. Weekly I work on radio and TV commercials, corporate videos, podcasts, videos for social media and right now I’m in the middle of a really great sound design project for a group that is promoting better online behavior and choices for high school to college aged kids. I hope to be doing more independent and documentary film work in the years ahead. I really enjoy getting to work on creative projects that have a good message behind them or bring awareness to an important subject. So if you need your background noise minimized on your film, call me. If you need a unique sound of spaceship, call me. I’ll create it for you! If you need your film, video or podcast mixed, call me! If you are a musician and want to record or mix, call me!
I work both from a home studio and Luminous Sound as well as going to other local post production houses as I’m called upon. For music projects like producing, recording and mixing bands and songwriters, I work exclusively out of Luminous Sound. Stepping into that studio to record a band is a dream come true. Everything sounds great in their rooms, there’s a great mic and gear selection and I’m just happy to walk into that facility every time I’m there.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
The summer between 7th & 8th grade really sticks out to me because that was the summer I started playing bass. Probably to the dismay of my parents, literally all I did that summer was listen to music or play music either at home or at my friend Justin’s house. Justin and I started our first of many bands that summer and we were terrible, but it was so much fun! Man, to have that kind of free time again would be amazing!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.tjcallawayaudio.com/
- Email: tjcallaway76@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tj_callaway/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tj.callaway.5
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TJ_Callaway
- Other: http://www.luminoussound.com/
Image Credit:
All photos courtesy of Stacey Callaway Photography, Ronnie Blea (RB-2 Photography) and Shelby Miller.
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