TH UR SDA Y , JA N U A R Y 19 , 2017
COUNTY WIDE YOUR HOME AND FAMILY NEWS FROM ALL OF KENDALL COUNTY
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HOMEGROWN SOUNDS Kendall County residents get creative with music industry careers By TONY SCOTT tscott@kendallcountynow.com
Not all great music is made in Nashville, Los Angeles, or New York City. Some is made right here in Kendall County. Here are a few residents who are making their livelihood in the music industry.
John Mackniskas
John Mackniskas of Oswego has been recording bands since he started his first studio in his three-bedroom apartment in 1994. He now runs Comfortzone Audio, his own custom studio, out of the basement of his Oswego home. Mackniskas, known as “Johnny Mack” to his musician friends, bought the house shortly after getting married in 2001. But it took a few years before it was finished and open for business. “I put everything on hold because I wasn’t going to bring people downstairs into my unfinished basement and say, ‘Hey, come on into my studio,’” he said. “I waited until I had it constructed in 2007.” Mackniskas worked a day job in information technology until 2015, when he made the leap to being a full-time recording engineer. He said he had his wife, Mary Jo, to thank. “She kind of makes everything happen here because she has the bread-winning job right now,” he said. Mackniskas has four kids, including two older kids from a previous marriage, and he said being at home was going to be better for his two younger children. “My wife and I talked about it and decided, if I stayed at home it would be better for them,” he said. “And I’d be able to do more in the studio in the day while the kids were at school.” In addition to being a recording engineer, Mackniskas is a lead guitarist in a collective of Fox Valley area musicians known as the Empty Can Band. Mackniskas has been playing guitar since he was a kid. He said he first started experimenting with recording by recording himself when he was around 16, which resulted, he said, in “a bunch of really bad tapes.” “I started messing with tape record-
Tony Scott - tscott@kendallcountynow.com
John Mackniskas at the mixing board in the recording studio he built in the basement of his Oswego home, called Comfortzone Audio. ers,” he said. “I didn’t have a multi-track machine. What I had was a three-head recorder. I found that if you covered up the erase head, you could multi-track two tracks. That was an eye-opener for me, because I knew about multi-track but I could never afford something like that.” Mackniskas then started playing in bands, and was the only person who was interested in being the “sound guy.” “I was the only one who really cared enough about sound to do it, so I was always stuck doing it,” he said. “I was doing the sound, I was doing the lights. My friends in other bands asked me to do
their sound.” He continued, “Then I ended up going to the library and checking out all these books on sound, and professional sound reinforcement. I learned how to solder and do other things.” In 1994, he bought an eight-track reel-to-reel recorder and started booking bands, calling his apartment-based studio Comfortzone Recorders. “I lived in an apartment, but for drums I would take them to warehouses or churches or whatever else was available,
See MUSIC, page 26
“I was the only one who really cared enough about sound to do it, so I was always stuck doing it. I was doing the sound, I was doing the lights. My friends in other bands asked me to do their sound.” John Mackniskas Oswego resident