Michael Wojewoda is a veteran Canadian music producer and engineer who has worked in the industry for 34 years. He began experimenting with recording as a teenager, setting up a studio in his mother's beauty salon basement. Throughout his career, Wojewoda has focused on helping artists create meaningful work and coaxing the best performances from them through his people skills. His success producing Buffy Sainte-Marie's 2015 Polaris Music Prize-winning album demonstrated this approach. Now, Wojewoda looks forward to making his own album while continuing to work with new artists. He advises up-and-coming producers and engineers to focus on connections and knowing their worth.

1. 20 PROFESSIONAL SOUND
ProFile
Michael Phillip WojewodaBy Samantha Dotson
R
eflecting on 34 years of hard-
earned success,MichaelWoje-
woda says that working in the
music industry is about creating
things that matter.
The veteran Canadian producer,
engineer,and musician is speaking to
Professional Sound from the Little Box
Office,his studio set inside a 107-year-old
coach house originally converted from a
blacksmith shop. He tells of how he was
born inWinnipeg but was still a young
child when his parents decided to move.
He has lived in a handful of places,but
by age 10,Wojewoda was settled in his
current home of Toronto. Growing up,he
developed a profound love of all things
music and learned his way around several
different instruments,with his early focus
being on the drums.
He distinctly remembers being in
grade seven when the idea of tinkering
with recording came to him.“I remember
borrowing a reel-to-reel tape recorder
from my grade school’s AV department,”
saysWojewoda.“I began to run sound-
to-sound experiments between it and an
eight-track cartridge recorder.”
As a teen,he played in various bands
and would rehearse in the basement of
his mother’s beauty salon. It was then and
there that he set up his own little studio
and continued to experiment with mak-
ing his own music. A major breakthrough
for his work,he recalls,was when Tascam
released its four-track Portastudio, the
Teac 144,in 1979.
He was constantly working on his
craft in parallel to the other interests he
had growing up. He took a summer job at
an experimental performance theatre in
Toronto called the Music Gallery,where he
was principally a recording engineer but
also mixed FOH – from the monitor sec-
tion of his recording console – and edited
and delivered the weekly magazine-style
radio show heard on CKLN via 1/4-in. tape.
He went on to work at various night-
clubs in Toronto as a FOH engineer and
quickly earned a reputation for his work.
“Bands would come up to me after having
fans compliment them on the sound,”he
recalls.“They would tell me they loved my
mix,so I would tell them I made studio
recordings as well.”He built an impressive
clientele organically, touring with acts like
Nash the Slash and Fm while maintaining
his house FOH gigs
and logging hours
in the studio. His
list of recording
clients had grown
enough that by
1991,Wojewoda
was able to start
doing studio work
exclusively.
“One of the
things I got good
at early on,just
because of my
character and
temperament,was
the people skills
side of producing,”
saysWojewoda.
He describes how
performing live and performing inside of
a studio are two very different things,and
how some artists feel immense pressure
when doing the latter.“When my grand-
mother asked me what I do for a living,”
he adds,“I told her that I coax performanc-
es out of frail egos.”
He has always tried to approach every
project with artistic integrity, trying to
make things that matter and that will
endure.When it comes to his clients,he
strives to help them make choices that
facilitate the creation of something mean-
ingful to them.“I didn’t realize that I had a
mission statement all those years ago,”he
says.“But I think that’s part of it,and I still
maintain that.”
This strategy was particularly advanta-
geous to his work on Buffy Sainte-Marie’s
Power in the Blood, the winner of the 2015
Polaris Music Prize. In addition to produc-
ing and engineering six of the 12 tracks
comprising the effort,Wojewoda was also
tasked with mixing the entire collection.
“She was a perfect pairing for me,”he
says.“She doesn’t need to do anything
but be pure and honest with her creative
energy. She’s amazing and I’m so happy
for her.”
As for aspiring recording processionals,
Wojewoda stresses that organic connec-
tions and knowing your worth are the
most vital keys to success.“No matter
how well online culture keeps people con-
nected,nothing beats meeting people,”he
says.“Face to face does more to get gigs
than anything else. Find a way,whether
it means being an artist yourself to a de-
gree, to be in places where you are going
to be meeting artists.”
Wojewoda understands that young
producers and engineers feel the need to
work for free to prove themselves when
they are first starting out,but advises
them otherwise.“The most important
thing is to have as little ambiguity as pos-
sible about one's worth,”he says.“There
is a tendency in human nature that if you
are insisting that you have value,you’ll
get more respect throughout the whole
process.”
After 34 years of producing and
engineering for other artists,Wojewoda
is looking forward to finally making his
own album. He has hired two producers
that he truly admires,Chris Stringer and
Joshua Van Tassel, to help him from the
other side of the glass.“It’s really exciting
to me,and really nerve wracking because
I’m experiencing all the feelings and all
the complications that I’ve observed
and assisted other artists in navigating
through,”Wojewoda says.
He also expresses excitement to just
continue to be as he is,finding cool artists
and making cool records.“There’s some-
thing about the process,”he says.“It’s
defined my whole life. I’m looking forward
to just being able to still do it.”
Samantha Dotson is a photojournalist
from Toronto. She enjoys a good concert,
spending time with loved ones,and live-
tweeting about the Toronto Maple Leafs or
TheWalking Dead.