I don't know how it actually happened but I made a drastic decision to abandon my career as a live sound engineer. I was doing concerts, club dates and tours around the world (now you know I'm an idiot) and decided to just stick to studio recording. Although in the great scheme of things I was one of the key players on the team , I think I realised my creativity was being limited to my role as tech support (commonly called a roadie) and I opted for the more creative aspect and control of the recording enviroment. Not to mention one eventually does get tired of city after city, night after night of gruelling work. Still I'm glad to have taken that route, as I believe it to be harder to move from being a studio engineer to a live engineer than a live engineer to a studio engineer.

Looking back my experiences on the road with some of Jamaica's most talented artists like Toots and The Maytals, Black Uhuru, Dennis Brown and The Third World Band and others taught me alot about sound, but little about creativity.

They say most engineers are frustrated musicians and with that I can sympathise. In the mid 80's I bounced around New Yorks Lower East side playing in basement bands with some very talented people. I was even in a band with Dr Know and Earl Hudson from Bad Brains. I was having great fun but I knew my skills as a bass player were not going to feed me.

So I hit the pavement again with resumes in my hand knocking on studio doors. Most studios at the time in New York were catering to the straight cut advertising market and were not trying to entertain the prospects of hiring this smokey, stringy headed youth that sat before them. Still we were in and out of various studios recording our music. I was more or less cutting my teeth at the time. I found myself under the employ of Ralston Charles of Ralston Recording in Brooklyn recording Calypso music. There I worked with artists like The Mighty Sparrow. It was there I heard the words that would change my life forever "Do you own a studio? - No? Well get the fuck out of mine!" . Ralston Charles had fired me over $20.00 (long story short).

During this time I was meeting a lot of people who would prove to be both influential and supportive. There was Lou Gonzalez and Pete Lewis from Quad Recording and Mike Laskow who now runs Taxi out in L.A. Pete would hook us up on good deals on studio time while it was Mike who eventually suggested I apply at Studio900 where I landed a position as a free lance engineer. Studio900 afforded me the possibility to hone my skills further and brought me in contact with some very talented, creative and influential individuals. In particular Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones fame passed thru and recorded his first solo album Talk is Cheap there.  He had gathered together an amazing crew of musicians which I had the pleasure of recording. His endorsement of my skills opened all previously closed doors. All I had to do was mention that I worked with Keith and studio owners and managers would bow at my feet.

I remember getting called for a session at Marathon Recording and not knowing anything about the Neve console I was on the train heading to the studio cramming my head using a brochure picked up at a AES convention. It was working with Andy Panda, producer for the Cover Girls that lead me to working with Def Jam and my introduction to the burgeoning hip hop industry. After Studio900 Marathon became my second studio home. There I met and worked with Eddie F and the Untouchables Crew, through him - Heavy D, Pete Rock and CL Smooth, KC and JoJo. Faith Evans A&R for Def Jam and Oran 'Juice' Jones.

I was by then hopping around the city from studio to studio knocking out sessions left, right and center. Chung King, The Hit Factory, Quad, Electric Lady, Giant.... the list is endless.. I'd get a kick out of clients walking in the room asking for the engineer and watching their reactions upon learning that David Kennedy was black, much less a Ras. Reactions ranging from awe to disdain it was always "how'd you get here?", to which i would just shrug it off in answer.

I had a love hate relationship with most of my clients. I know it was my attitude. As a composer in training, I would help myself to producer libraries without realizing the transgression, so i soured a lot of good relationships then. The severity dawned on me after I used a 'lifted' loop to produce a remix for a client that charted number one and the producer wasn't too happy after recognizing his loop. My apologies Mr. _________ , I just figured that there was no way that that I could produce like you so your 'arsenal' in my hands wouldn't amount to anything. My bad.

I would also smoke copious amounts of weed during the sessions... whether or not the client approved or not. It was just how I worked.. take it or leave it...  as I said... a bad attitude. Sometimes it worked for me sometimes it wouldn't. Some clients smoked, some didn' and some minded while some didn't. I smoked many of them into oblivion on numerous occaisions. This isn't a 'kiss and tell' blog so I won't go into details.  more to come...