Firedog Studios Making Noise in the Music Scene

Tom DeStefano began his career as a modest 15-year-old musician.

“I was really self conscious about playing in front of people, because frankly I wasn’t very good,” DeStefano said. “I would always jam with friends in garages and basements but that’s as far as I got in high school. I loved guitars and amplifiers but never really knew how it all worked.”

That was then. Today DeStefano not only knows how guitars and amplifiers work, but he’s built quite a successful career around that knowledge.

And he’s done so in the unlikeliest of places.

DeStefano is the founder and brains behind Firedog Studios, which he describes on the company’s web site as, “a full service audio recording studio providing music lessons, Pro Tools classes, live recordings, & more. Servicing musicians in Middlesex County New Jersey including Spotswood, East Brunswick, Monroe, New Brunswick, Edison, Old Bridge and more.”

The studio was a dream that DeStefano found through a slightly roundabout route and a constant love for music and recording.

“In 1998, I enrolled in a six month recording arts program at a school called the Groove Academy in Edison,” he said. “I believe it used to be the Sam Ash program. Anyway, that was a big jump start for me.  From there, my teacher at the time got me an internship at Skylab studios down in South Jersey and within a few months I was working at the Groove Academy, interning at Skylab, working a full time job, playing in bands, and messing around with the live sound gear for shows. 

“I pushed myself to learn as much as I could from everyone around me.  Then I thought that I should go back to college for recording. But in the late nineties there weren’t a lot of audio recording programs like there are today.”

After toying with researching a few collegiate programs, DeStefano had an epiphany. “I decided that I was already working in the field, so why not just keep working,” he said. “So, that was when I decided that I wanted to build a studio.”

Keeping to suburban roots, Firedog’s very modern facilities are not located in an office park or a professional center, but in a small home on Vliet Street in Spotswood, less than a mile from the East Brunswick border. “I knew I wanted to build a studio it was just a question of where,” DeStefano said. “At the time it was a big financial risk for me to go with commercial space, so I decided to fix up the house I was in and build an addition for the studio.  By that time I had visited many studios, and I had an idea of what to build.  I referenced books on studio design and took it from there.  Obviously, the budget had a lot to do with the finished product, but all in all it turned out great.”

DeStefano opened the studio in early 2004, and his clients couldn’t be happier with the results. “All of our clients comment on the cool vibe and feeling of comfort when they work here,” he says. “That’s what I was going for when putting everything together;  if you are not comfortable then the creativity will suffer.”

DeStefano also finds tremendous benefit in company’s location. “A good thing about it is the convenience for me,” he said. “ I can work anytime, which can also be a bad thing.  New Jersey is a driving state and musicians especially are used to traveling to gigs or rehearsals or studios for work.  Most of our clients are not that local.  They travel from all around to work with us.”

In fact, ask DeStefano to pick a particular ‘favorite’ project over the years, he can hardly narrow it down.

“There’s actually two that come to mind,” he said. “ One project we recorded, produced, and performed on was with Dennis Young. Dennis is in a killer band called “Liquid Liquid” that originated in the 80s, and he came in to do a four song solo project.  After he started working with us, he decided to do a full-length album called “Shadows.”  We had some great musicians in and out of the studio for weeks playing tracks on the record. 

“Another full production project we worked on was “A Better World” with the band Unknown Souldier. Terry Baert is the mastermind behind the band and project.  He wanted to do a concept album of gospel tunes that influenced his life mixed with some original music.  So we revamped and rocked up songs and got some great musicians to come in and perform the parts we arranged... that project took almost 10 months to complete but it was a fantastic finish, plus I was able to be the session guitarist for that one.”

To learn more about Firedog Studios, visit them at www.firedogstudios.com.