161 Twists in the Tracks
in a way with the American fabric of Americana/folk, if you will, where
I morphed into country/folk out of the rock. And I loved it, and I lived it
for years and years and years. And I hooked up with other musicians and
wrote many, many songs.
But anyway so the country thing – I was too country for LA and I was
too folky/LA for Nashville, and this would have been in around ’97; and
then later on I moved away from it, because basically I’m 34, I got back
from Nashville; I’m 34 – ran that track. Also, I didn’t like all the attention
afterwards, like men coming up to you and having their agenda in a bar
in Nashville, such as “Oh my God, I’m in love with you, and I want you
to meet my mom, and blah blah blah. . .”, and my guitar player having to
pretend to be my boyfriend. You know, it was a very interesting thing. But
you’re talking about a 30-year career in what I’m trying to shove in in 20
minutes – how I got to where I am. . .! But I came to LA, got into a job,
because I didn’t want to be a broke musician. So I got very practical. And
then my work – I fell in love with my work – and did a sh** ton of mov-
ies and a sh** ton of work and walked away from the music, getting into
sound editorial for film.
And we can get into that later – I don’t want to just monologue for
you – but I moved away from music. And then maybe halfway through
my career, you know, working as an editor, I knew something was missing
from my soul – this creative side too, that the editing wasn’t satisfying –
and that I wasn’t playing music anymore. And some people I would meet
at parties that I used to be in bands with, they’d say, “Aynee, how can you
not be doing this?” And I would say, “well, you know, I met a girl, I got
married and I got a house; I have a job. I’m, you know, blah, blah, blah,
you know, that whole materialistic thing”. And then I realized – you’re
right. So then I started to get in that groove. And then I ended up getting
into a blues band. And that’s when the blues band thing started because
I could be any age – didn’t have to be young and hot. I just had to sing
and really have that together. And the blues was kind of jazz and country
coming together. And it was this Bonnie Raitt thing and Susan Tedeschi
and Aynee [Osborn Joujon-Roche] – this melding, and I was thinking, this
is awesome, because it had the power but the finesse and the ease, and so
I was digging that and I’ve done that for eight years, which brought me
into where I am now.
And at that point I was 48 years old, and playing in a club from say
11 pm to 2 am, and – who am I? – driving home drenched from sing-
ing for three hours and feeling incredibly satisfied – and that you know
had its trajectory and as bands go, as relationships go, we kind of had
our climax and, it exploded and imploded when my brother got sick. And
then after I lost my brother, I could not touch a guitar. I could not – you
know, I wrote one song that nobody probably will ever hear called Broken.
And then I didn’t sing anymore, for a while, like over a year, year and
a half, and then I slowly have gotten back into it, slowly, a little bit at a
time, because it’s all about our lifestyles, and our managing our stress, or
whatever – that reflection of us – and also I was just, you know, healing.
And part of that healing was me allowing myself to give myself a break,
162 Liesl King
and to do whatever it is I wanted to do that I needed to do for me, because
so much of my existence was output. You guys as Moms can understand
that – as a mother, as a woman, whatever, giving, giving – and I almost,
and it almost, killed me. To be perfectly honest, it almost killed me. And
so climbing back from that, from the worst possible thing that you could
imagine, you know, and coming back from that and how that’s going to
play into my music is still a story that’s unfolding. You know, right now
I’m singing – I’ve gone back to singing – not my stuff. It’s too close. To be
able to sing these classic songwriters and just have fun. . . . Just have fun
again, right? I am also starting to play my own material with my writing
partner Drew, and it feels good. I have a great home life with my wife, who
is a light and my rock.
That’s why I surf so much too, because it makes me feel closer to my
brother. It resonates with me. And it’s just pure fun. No thought. Just fun
and joy and oneness with the planet, with the ocean. It’s just the greatest
gift in the world. I am so happy. I’m almost happier there than I am play-
ing music.
PART 2 – WOMAN IN AUDIO
Interviewer
So what’s the relationship between – or is there one? – between the sound
editing work that you’ve done, and your original interest in music and
singing? What’s that segue?
Aynee Osborn Joujon-Roche
It was interesting because when I was making a record, when I first got
into the music industry, it was analogue. So you’re recording on this big
two-inch tape, and it was visceral, and you were physically cutting the
tape to edit out a breath that you didn’t like, or whatever. And I was blown
away by that process. When I started to work in sound, and I was helping
to produce my own style of music, where we were taking control, it had
become a digital world of sound. So now we’re working in Pro Tools, but
you’re still seeing this visual representation of a track, and you’re record-
ing sound waves you can see going across this track. And so the music in
Pro Tools, it’s this linear thing, of this, for example, pink track, or orange
track, or whatever; so it’s really, it’s almost like paint being dragged across
the canvas horizontally with the soundwave going like this [gestures].
So it’s really kind of cool visually. So when I first saw my voice being
recorded that way, and the drums and how they looked, and the guitar, and
all of this, I thought wow – that’s pretty cool. That was my first introduc-
tion to sound being digitized and represented visually. And it was cool
because it was multimedia, right? Plus, you’re doing this creative thing
that’s energizing you and it’s stimulating. So when I started to work for
Warren Dewey, a sound engineer, sound designer – where he’s designing
sound, working in a digital format, with a huge mixing board still, it was
163 Twists in the Tracks
the same kind of visual thing. But maybe in sound for film, as a sound
effects editor, you might have that visual track going by, and instead of
drums, it’s the sound of crickets – because it’s a scene that takes place at
night in the forest. You might have another track of fire, crackling, and
another track of the wind moving the leaves of the trees around. So you
have that visual representation of the sound that way. It was an easy transi-
tion. And there’s a ton of musicians who work in post-production sound,
right? Because it totally translates across.
Interviewer
Can you say something about the changes you’ve seen in terms of the tools
you use to produce audio since you first began?
Aynee Osborn Joujon-Roche
I would say that technology has made my job as an editor and musician
much easier. For example, my cell phone is also a recorder – I can quickly
record a song idea and then email that audio file to my writing partner, and
he can then use that audio file as a foundation to start building a song. In
the same way, recording equipment and digital editing tools make every-
thing more streamlined. Fast internet speeds are also a great tool, mak-
ing it possible to send large amounts of data over the internet – sharing
songs, or sound for a TV show or film; it can all be ‘uploaded’ via fiber
optics, making it possible to send huge amounts of this data, intact, to the
studio servers in a very short amount of time. For example, I can send
the dialogue for an entire episode of a TV show I work on in less than an
hour. A few years ago, without fast internet it would take over 12 hours to
upload this material. Before that, I would take a portable drive and have
to physically drive to the studio and give it to the assistants personally. In
this digital age, things can happen in seconds vs. hours, and that’s a huge
help in productivity.
Interviewer
Right. That makes sense. So back to the narrative about your career – you
said you went to work for a sound designer?
Aynee Osborn Joujon-Roche
Yes, I was working for this sound designer. And he taught me a million
different things. And there – this was a nice thing because it never ended in
this betrayal [like] it did with Paul – as I said I worked for Warren Dewey,
who had started also as a sound engineer for people like Aretha Franklin,
doing concert mixes and amazing things. And he was a record mixer and
came up with songs as well. So, we would sometimes do radio shows;
we’d record the dialogue of a radio show, where you had, say, William
Shatner, and these amazing actors, and we’d have a microphone on each
164 Liesl King
guy and record them all. And we were still recording on digital audio tape,
called Dat machines at the time. It wasn’t even that digitized. Then we’d
bring that back. We’d make this radio play, and even, say, how they did it
in the old times with the guy holding the shoes, to make it sound like the
footsteps were approaching or whatever – there’s a door knock and glass
breaking; we’d have the same thing. But we’d add it later; it exists in the
library, a database that you could grab from and draw on.
And then I basically segued into working for a huge sound company in
Hollywood called Sound Deluxe. And they did – you know – all of Oliver
Stone’s movies; they did everybody’s films, mostly men’s. So I basically
worked my way up by working in a sound effects library, an encyclopedia
of sound. So I would categorize, and I would organize, and I would edit
and clean all these sounds from sound libraries from years gone by, and
also [I was] creating new sounds. So I would go out with my microphone,
and I would record a racing car going by, or we’d go out of the box and
we’d go to, say, JPL – Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. And we’d
talk to some of the scientists there and go into their laboratories, to see if
we could find new sounds to record. And there were animals to record,
too; there were a million things like that. I worked my way up – I finally
got into a union, where you have to have a certain amount of hours as an
editor, a certain amount of hours working with audio on certain movies,
because it’s a whole political situation. I had to have someone write a letter
for me. And I worked my ass off there for about five years.
And then they got bought by a bigger company. And it became less of a
Mom-and-Pop type feel. And just as I got into the union, one of the men
who owned the company, they basically let me go. They gave me sever-
ance. And they said – we don’t need you anymore. Thank you so much,
after I had produced a sh** ton of work, but they were downsizing and
I didn’t have the language, the self-love, to express myself and say, wait a
minute, you guys are making a huge, huge – do you know what I could have
brought to your company, the value? I wish, right, as a 55-year-old woman
now looking back, I wish I’d had those – that language – but also with all
of those heartbreaks or disappointments in this career, in this world that
is dominated by men – music world and post-production – as are so many
other fields, we find, it also led to another opportunity for me that was
where I hit my stride. So it was 2002 when I joined the union and I was let
go from Sound Deluxe. And a woman who is a dear friend of mine, we’ve
known each other for many years – worked there. She was leaving at the
same time to basically start her own company. And she said, because I was
in tears, you know, and they knew that I had formed a department; I had
made this thing – I had made, I had monetized their library; I had digitized
their library, and continued to bring in money, and all this stuff that was
going to go on in perpetuity. . . . Oh, by the way, as well, [it’s] still going on
today, over 20 years later. But she left and she said, come and work for me.
Come and work with me. And here it was, this woman going out on her
own with one movie called Blue Crush about women surfers, and that was
it. And we were off to the races, and we haven’t looked back since. There
have been ups and downs, ebbs and flows – film segueing into television,
165 Twists in the Tracks
which is fantastic. More women. And now there’s a ton of women on our
crews. And we keep working, and I’ve been working steadily for a really,
really long time.
PART 3 – ON GENDER
Interviewer
Okay, the second question was around how you were supported along the
way, and you’ve really covered that. The next question is about obstacles,
and I feel that you’ve talked a little bit about that, but is there something
more that you wanted to add? The question is – what obstacles did you face
as producer/engineer/musician that may have shaped the future for you?
Aynee Joujon-Roche
I mean, I’ve had such cliché experiences with male chauvinism and male
control. But I’ve also had, you know, the ‘let me handle this for you
sweetie’ type thing. And, and men just sh** on you, thinking if I sh** on
you, maybe it’s going to make you better type thing; make you stronger.
And, of course, sexual undertones/overtones always end up being a part of
it. And, I’ve – you know, like many women I used it too, if I could, used
it in my benefit. I did too. And you know, I think it’s part of the learning
process, and the experience that is reflected by our society. And that evo-
lution of realizing – okay, I don’t need to do that. And I’m not that cute
anymore anyway, so maybe I . . . you know what I mean? So there were
some obstacles like that, and the self-doubt and of jumping into an area
where you think – I didn’t go to school for this; I don’t have a degree in
this, where some people, you know, did and do; I don’t have an engineer-
ing degree. So much of it again, comes back to when you finally realize
who you are and what you bring to the table, and how sometimes we beat
ourselves up about it. . . . And then that realization – the irony that happens
later in life that you do [know who you are and what you are doing]. To
find your voice and your self-worth and are able to stand up for yourself. If
young women could find their voices and self-worth sooner – ah, the years
of pain and BS that might be avoided.
But one other thing I wanted to tell you was a positive experience, also
with men – is sometimes if you’re lucky, and you’re making music, it’s
one of the few things – also in Martial Arts – but making music some-
times – it’s one of those beautiful things. Maybe you’ve experienced this,
where you’re involved in a creative process, and you’re with the opposite
sex, where you just become humans, musicians – making music, where
I’m not looking at ‘Oh, wow, those are nice breasts’, or ‘Wow, he’s so tall
and handsome, look at his jaw line’. No, we’re just humans, in the same
tribe, making music, and that’s such a beautiful thing, when those outer
things can fall away. So I’ve had some lovely experiences with other musi-
cians making music, making sound for a film, making a soundtrack for a
film, where for a minute, we take those hats off, of men and women.
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