John Connor – Nurturing the Spirit
by
Martin Higgins
Jim Burns, one of Lanterloon’s two patres familias, called me to discuss the Lanterloon website, the creative-project funding sensation Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/), the music of Taylor Maxwell and Mike Murray (http://www.youtube.com/taylormaxwellmusic), and John Connor’s Launchpad Studio (shttp://lpstudios.wordpress.com). Jim explained the various interrelationships, promised to host a lunch for introductions, and suggested I interview Connor.
John Connor is an affable guy whose curriculum vitae bespeaks a life of heartfelt, self-sacrificing contributions to others. He has taken that wealth of experience – musicianship, band development, management and organizational skills – and harnessed it to a deep, abiding faith and spiritual leadership for a single purpose: “to serve the greater body of Christ.”
In addition to being a multi-instrumentalist/performer/composer/recording engineer, John has dedicated himself to leading worship and guiding the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Worship Department in Denver (http://www.ywamdenver.org/) In that capacity, he initiated a School of Worship and produced 15 CDs to support its students.
But make no mistake, John sees his mission as producing music for both religious and secular audiences. Ask anyone who has ever sung Amazing Grace, When The Saints Come Marching In, or Michael Row The Boat Ashore where they see themselves along the faith continuum and you will probably get an assortment of answers. We sing from the soul and/or the Soul… there’s little difference.
We met in Arvada at Tequila’s restaurant (http://www.tequilasmexrest.com/gallery.html) a few blocks from his studio. The Margaritas were served in what looked like a good-sized goldfish bowl on a stem and the chips and salsa were also plentiful and delicious. While our orders were being prepared, we chatted.
John had noticed the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association sticker on my Jeep Wrangler and gave me a quick description of his “flying farm” upbringing in Ontario, Canada. His dad flew both conventional and ultra-light aircraft, so I surmised John grew up with a strong grounding in observation, planning, and responsibility.
In judging a man, what he has done means less to me than how he has been shaped by what he’s done.
Our conversation flowed and we found so many similarities in our lives and viewpoints that I forgot that I was interviewing John for the first twenty minutes or so. When he mentioned that he was a bass guitarist, influenced by Primus’s Les Claypool (strongly influenced by the late Frank Zappa) I knew we had a common musical touchstone. The meeting seemed unusually synchronistic, but I chalked that up to the BBE (Burns Brothers Effect) i.e., connect talented people with other with talented people and watch sparks fly.
“I became an American citizen this summer, but I'm a bit baffled by American politics.” He said. “Right now I live within a hard-core, conservative culture, but if I were to take a personality test, I'd probably land in the moderate conservative category. I can't stand the hatred between liberals and conservatives. It's like a civil war.”
I understood what was troubling John. Embracing citizenship in a country that seems to be tearing itself apart must be a dodgy gambit. What was once considered middle-of-the-road is now pulled Left and Right with semi-truths and political spin. Conservative notions are deemed to be selfish, entrenched and phobic by the Liberals, so the Right is in a constant state of damage control. Liberal ideas are mocked as being robotic over-reactions to guilt and conformity, so the Left struggles not to appear dictatorial. Then again, as a worship leader and pastor, John is accustomed to looking at a much larger picture where human and spiritual needs are ministered to regardless of the political climate.
We agreed that, in terms of politics, if one side is willing to win at any cost, it’s the people who lose. Of course there will always be a winner, but that party must shoulder the responsibility of listening to all voices, uniting where possible and empowering people to find meaning in life and their endeavors.
"I was a skateboarder,” John said. “I grew up in the rebel class. When I began snowboarding, I was drawn to Colorado. That, and John Denver. When I was around five I’d listen to his Rocky Mountain High album and gaze at the picture of him on the album jacket, standing next to a whitewater river. I remember thinking `God, I hope I can live there someday!’ Then, when I started snowboarding, I read a magazine article about Loveland and dreamed of being there. To this day, it’s my favorite resort. It takes true dedication to get to the good side where all the snow is.
“One of the things I try to champion in the studio is working with people who have a clue about life. That’s one of the reasons I affiliated myself with YWAM. You know, people can go to another part of the world for a couple months, take on some small impact like digging a water-well and that’s great. But there are others who spend years with other people in a dedicated, long-term, supportive relationship. That can create a huge impact on their lives. I’m moved by that kind of commitment.
“In fact, I first met Mike Murray when he was in Thailand working with Stop the Traffik. (http://www.stopthetraffik.org/default.aspx ). It’s a worldwide organization that works to prevent human trafficking and protect the victims. What impressed me was that they had offices and camps in Thailand and Mike was flying between there and Stop the Traffik’s headquarters in Australia to keep things running. For years. So now, when Mike says he’s got a group of songs he wants to develop or wants to put a tour together,’ I say, ‘Come to Denver’ and charge him as little as I can to give him what he needs. I do this because the first fruits of his work came from spending five or six years of his life doing that mission work. In my eyes, he’s a rock star.
“Then, Jim Burns contributed to Mike and Taylor’s project on Kickstarter and that got our attention. Mike called me and said, `There’s somebody from Colorado Springs who just pledged money to my project. Is this one of your contacts?’ and I said no. We had no idea who Jim was.”
Note: Mike and Maxwell recently performed at Jim Burns’s game store, Dragons and Dragoons (http://dragons-and-dragoons.com/) in Colorado Springs to thunderous applause. Since that event, Maxwell has moved to Colorado with his family to foster a closer working relationship with John and LaunchPad.
“We thought, `Why is this guy who owns a gaming store giving money to a Christian kid who does missions and wants to get serious about his art?’ It’s understandable if a family member or relative gives, but Jim came out of the blue. This impressed all of us.
“I haven’t marketed LaunchPad as a cut-and-dry studio here in Denver. I have a Facebook page and a website with very little content on it. What I specifically don’t want is to get pigeon-holed as a Christian Music-only recording studio. There’s a lot of consumerism in that genre right now and that’s wonderful but, while I’m not abandoning Christian Music, I want to embrace a wide variety of styles, sounds and creativity.
In fact, I’m forming a non-profit organization (LauchPad Productions) to act as an artist resource. The goal is to allow artists to do more than simply produce work for someone else. I want them to have a higher connection – whether they’re believers or not – so they can go deeper with their art, be it life issues or spiritual matters. I hope this will make positive differences in their lives and the lives of the people they reach with their music.
"The worship music I do, on a purist level, I do for the Lord. But on a down-to-earth, cultural level, I’m a bass guitarist with roots in Funk/Punk. I love Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone and Primus. I’ve just formed a band, Snatching Billy Goats, which is just me and a drummer. I don’t see a conflict in this and I’m comfortable in both pursuits.”
John Connor is one of the few people I’ve met who understands that taking enormous creative leaps – as Claypool and Zappa did – requires entering a creative space that is, at once, immensely dangerous and immensely satisfying. Like the pioneers and gold miners who left the security of the eastern states in the mid 1800’s and risked all to come to Colorado, John is in search of new territory and whatever treasures he will find here. He’ll mine a deep, new vein of music with his tools: artists, instruments, microphones and computers.
“I channel my energy into getting behind other musicians and encouraging them to be `who they truly are’ rather than merely imitating something they’ve heard before,” John said. “When you connect with someone at that level, when you get that sort of dialogue going, the artist in that person has a chance to emerge. And now, with Internet distribution you can be `who you truly are’ and your audience will find you. The band Dispatch (http://dispatchmusic.com/) rode the MySpace wave to an undeniable success – and have since filled Madison Square Garden twice over.”
By this time, our out-sized Margarita glasses were just about empty and a second round would have made my studio tour a series of “Oops, I’m so sorry. If that’s broken, I’ll replace it” moments. So we headed out.
he studio was bright and engaging. John led the way to his control room which was stocked with top-of-the-line gear and software, and fine guitars hanging on the walls. The isolation booth was sound-deadened to be acoustically neutral and there was plenty of room for two or more people. A band room with drum set and piano occupied the rear of the building where, through a window, I could see a large tree with a rough-framed structure of a tree house sitting some ten feet above ground.
“That’s going to be another recording space.” John said. “The idea is to let an artist sit up in a tree house, absorb the ambience and still get a great-sounding track.”
Oddly, my first thought was Martin Bashir’s harsh, documentary interviews with Michael Jackson at Neverland. In one exterior scene, Jackson climbed into his “Song Tree” where he said he “felt inspired and comfortable enough to write his songs.” The King of Pop’s claim went undemonstrated in the clip when he was unable to come up with anything more than a few false starts and as many excuses.
Given the presence of cameras, a boom microphone operator and Bashir’s incessant, annoying interruptions, I give Michael the benefit of the doubt and understand the concept.
What John was proposing was a sanctuary where the spirit of an artist’s music can pervade the space. It’s a stroke of genius. Why confine a singer or musician in a sterile, high-tech studio with a rubber-padded floor and noise-killing foam on walls and ceiling? Perhaps the innate acoustics of the tree house would initiate a dialogue with the artist; present something that became an important part of the communication; add and at the same time reflect what was being expressed. It seems like a natural middle ground between live performance with an audience and an over-processed studio track.
We went back to the Control Room and John explained his computer and software choices and how they allow him to provide virtually anything that bigger, more expensive studios offer.
I noticed a similar trend in the `90’s when my film company was across the street from Lucasfilm in Marin County, California. We had a constant trickle of editors and special effects technicians stopping by to offer me the same computer graphic imagery and special effects they created at ILM for 1/50th the cost. They simply bought the needed gear and specialized on a smaller scale to avoid oppressive overhead and staffing costs.
The polar opposite disciplines of Music and Technology are apparently two additional worlds that John has managed to adeptly straddle. Over the last century, we’ve seen that when a technology becomes accessible and affordable by everyone, the nature of the medium evolves rapidly. Film and video are prime examples of how end-user innovations and stylistic influences have cultivated new audiences, new media producers, and new additions to our graphic/cinematic lexicon.
And here I was, in what will become the norm for studio owners and recording engineers; an up-to-the minute boutique facility capable of outperforming larger, traditional studios. His products will move directly to audiences over the Internet, bypassing the music industry distribution system where artists labor for a tiny percentage of the take. It’s a game changer.
Walking though John Connor’s world, I saw genius; a fierce creativity predicated on empowering artists to grant themselves the freedom to blossom. John’s not waiting for the creative freedom to express his musical personality to be bestowed upon him and, simultaneously, grants – no, elicits – that freedom from the artists who come to work with him at LaunchPad.
You can contact John Connor or his Lead Engineer Mike Flack at: 303-941-8184 or [email protected]
- end -
(c) Martin Higgins
all rights reserved
John Connor is an affable guy whose curriculum vitae bespeaks a life of heartfelt, self-sacrificing contributions to others. He has taken that wealth of experience – musicianship, band development, management and organizational skills – and harnessed it to a deep, abiding faith and spiritual leadership for a single purpose: “to serve the greater body of Christ.”
In addition to being a multi-instrumentalist/performer/composer/recording engineer, John has dedicated himself to leading worship and guiding the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Worship Department in Denver (http://www.ywamdenver.org/) In that capacity, he initiated a School of Worship and produced 15 CDs to support its students.
But make no mistake, John sees his mission as producing music for both religious and secular audiences. Ask anyone who has ever sung Amazing Grace, When The Saints Come Marching In, or Michael Row The Boat Ashore where they see themselves along the faith continuum and you will probably get an assortment of answers. We sing from the soul and/or the Soul… there’s little difference.
We met in Arvada at Tequila’s restaurant (http://www.tequilasmexrest.com/gallery.html) a few blocks from his studio. The Margaritas were served in what looked like a good-sized goldfish bowl on a stem and the chips and salsa were also plentiful and delicious. While our orders were being prepared, we chatted.
John had noticed the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association sticker on my Jeep Wrangler and gave me a quick description of his “flying farm” upbringing in Ontario, Canada. His dad flew both conventional and ultra-light aircraft, so I surmised John grew up with a strong grounding in observation, planning, and responsibility.
In judging a man, what he has done means less to me than how he has been shaped by what he’s done.
Our conversation flowed and we found so many similarities in our lives and viewpoints that I forgot that I was interviewing John for the first twenty minutes or so. When he mentioned that he was a bass guitarist, influenced by Primus’s Les Claypool (strongly influenced by the late Frank Zappa) I knew we had a common musical touchstone. The meeting seemed unusually synchronistic, but I chalked that up to the BBE (Burns Brothers Effect) i.e., connect talented people with other with talented people and watch sparks fly.
“I became an American citizen this summer, but I'm a bit baffled by American politics.” He said. “Right now I live within a hard-core, conservative culture, but if I were to take a personality test, I'd probably land in the moderate conservative category. I can't stand the hatred between liberals and conservatives. It's like a civil war.”
I understood what was troubling John. Embracing citizenship in a country that seems to be tearing itself apart must be a dodgy gambit. What was once considered middle-of-the-road is now pulled Left and Right with semi-truths and political spin. Conservative notions are deemed to be selfish, entrenched and phobic by the Liberals, so the Right is in a constant state of damage control. Liberal ideas are mocked as being robotic over-reactions to guilt and conformity, so the Left struggles not to appear dictatorial. Then again, as a worship leader and pastor, John is accustomed to looking at a much larger picture where human and spiritual needs are ministered to regardless of the political climate.
We agreed that, in terms of politics, if one side is willing to win at any cost, it’s the people who lose. Of course there will always be a winner, but that party must shoulder the responsibility of listening to all voices, uniting where possible and empowering people to find meaning in life and their endeavors.
"I was a skateboarder,” John said. “I grew up in the rebel class. When I began snowboarding, I was drawn to Colorado. That, and John Denver. When I was around five I’d listen to his Rocky Mountain High album and gaze at the picture of him on the album jacket, standing next to a whitewater river. I remember thinking `God, I hope I can live there someday!’ Then, when I started snowboarding, I read a magazine article about Loveland and dreamed of being there. To this day, it’s my favorite resort. It takes true dedication to get to the good side where all the snow is.
“One of the things I try to champion in the studio is working with people who have a clue about life. That’s one of the reasons I affiliated myself with YWAM. You know, people can go to another part of the world for a couple months, take on some small impact like digging a water-well and that’s great. But there are others who spend years with other people in a dedicated, long-term, supportive relationship. That can create a huge impact on their lives. I’m moved by that kind of commitment.
“In fact, I first met Mike Murray when he was in Thailand working with Stop the Traffik. (http://www.stopthetraffik.org/default.aspx ). It’s a worldwide organization that works to prevent human trafficking and protect the victims. What impressed me was that they had offices and camps in Thailand and Mike was flying between there and Stop the Traffik’s headquarters in Australia to keep things running. For years. So now, when Mike says he’s got a group of songs he wants to develop or wants to put a tour together,’ I say, ‘Come to Denver’ and charge him as little as I can to give him what he needs. I do this because the first fruits of his work came from spending five or six years of his life doing that mission work. In my eyes, he’s a rock star.
“Then, Jim Burns contributed to Mike and Taylor’s project on Kickstarter and that got our attention. Mike called me and said, `There’s somebody from Colorado Springs who just pledged money to my project. Is this one of your contacts?’ and I said no. We had no idea who Jim was.”
Note: Mike and Maxwell recently performed at Jim Burns’s game store, Dragons and Dragoons (http://dragons-and-dragoons.com/) in Colorado Springs to thunderous applause. Since that event, Maxwell has moved to Colorado with his family to foster a closer working relationship with John and LaunchPad.
“We thought, `Why is this guy who owns a gaming store giving money to a Christian kid who does missions and wants to get serious about his art?’ It’s understandable if a family member or relative gives, but Jim came out of the blue. This impressed all of us.
“I haven’t marketed LaunchPad as a cut-and-dry studio here in Denver. I have a Facebook page and a website with very little content on it. What I specifically don’t want is to get pigeon-holed as a Christian Music-only recording studio. There’s a lot of consumerism in that genre right now and that’s wonderful but, while I’m not abandoning Christian Music, I want to embrace a wide variety of styles, sounds and creativity.
In fact, I’m forming a non-profit organization (LauchPad Productions) to act as an artist resource. The goal is to allow artists to do more than simply produce work for someone else. I want them to have a higher connection – whether they’re believers or not – so they can go deeper with their art, be it life issues or spiritual matters. I hope this will make positive differences in their lives and the lives of the people they reach with their music.
"The worship music I do, on a purist level, I do for the Lord. But on a down-to-earth, cultural level, I’m a bass guitarist with roots in Funk/Punk. I love Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone and Primus. I’ve just formed a band, Snatching Billy Goats, which is just me and a drummer. I don’t see a conflict in this and I’m comfortable in both pursuits.”
John Connor is one of the few people I’ve met who understands that taking enormous creative leaps – as Claypool and Zappa did – requires entering a creative space that is, at once, immensely dangerous and immensely satisfying. Like the pioneers and gold miners who left the security of the eastern states in the mid 1800’s and risked all to come to Colorado, John is in search of new territory and whatever treasures he will find here. He’ll mine a deep, new vein of music with his tools: artists, instruments, microphones and computers.
“I channel my energy into getting behind other musicians and encouraging them to be `who they truly are’ rather than merely imitating something they’ve heard before,” John said. “When you connect with someone at that level, when you get that sort of dialogue going, the artist in that person has a chance to emerge. And now, with Internet distribution you can be `who you truly are’ and your audience will find you. The band Dispatch (http://dispatchmusic.com/) rode the MySpace wave to an undeniable success – and have since filled Madison Square Garden twice over.”
By this time, our out-sized Margarita glasses were just about empty and a second round would have made my studio tour a series of “Oops, I’m so sorry. If that’s broken, I’ll replace it” moments. So we headed out.
he studio was bright and engaging. John led the way to his control room which was stocked with top-of-the-line gear and software, and fine guitars hanging on the walls. The isolation booth was sound-deadened to be acoustically neutral and there was plenty of room for two or more people. A band room with drum set and piano occupied the rear of the building where, through a window, I could see a large tree with a rough-framed structure of a tree house sitting some ten feet above ground.
“That’s going to be another recording space.” John said. “The idea is to let an artist sit up in a tree house, absorb the ambience and still get a great-sounding track.”
Oddly, my first thought was Martin Bashir’s harsh, documentary interviews with Michael Jackson at Neverland. In one exterior scene, Jackson climbed into his “Song Tree” where he said he “felt inspired and comfortable enough to write his songs.” The King of Pop’s claim went undemonstrated in the clip when he was unable to come up with anything more than a few false starts and as many excuses.
Given the presence of cameras, a boom microphone operator and Bashir’s incessant, annoying interruptions, I give Michael the benefit of the doubt and understand the concept.
What John was proposing was a sanctuary where the spirit of an artist’s music can pervade the space. It’s a stroke of genius. Why confine a singer or musician in a sterile, high-tech studio with a rubber-padded floor and noise-killing foam on walls and ceiling? Perhaps the innate acoustics of the tree house would initiate a dialogue with the artist; present something that became an important part of the communication; add and at the same time reflect what was being expressed. It seems like a natural middle ground between live performance with an audience and an over-processed studio track.
We went back to the Control Room and John explained his computer and software choices and how they allow him to provide virtually anything that bigger, more expensive studios offer.
I noticed a similar trend in the `90’s when my film company was across the street from Lucasfilm in Marin County, California. We had a constant trickle of editors and special effects technicians stopping by to offer me the same computer graphic imagery and special effects they created at ILM for 1/50th the cost. They simply bought the needed gear and specialized on a smaller scale to avoid oppressive overhead and staffing costs.
The polar opposite disciplines of Music and Technology are apparently two additional worlds that John has managed to adeptly straddle. Over the last century, we’ve seen that when a technology becomes accessible and affordable by everyone, the nature of the medium evolves rapidly. Film and video are prime examples of how end-user innovations and stylistic influences have cultivated new audiences, new media producers, and new additions to our graphic/cinematic lexicon.
And here I was, in what will become the norm for studio owners and recording engineers; an up-to-the minute boutique facility capable of outperforming larger, traditional studios. His products will move directly to audiences over the Internet, bypassing the music industry distribution system where artists labor for a tiny percentage of the take. It’s a game changer.
Walking though John Connor’s world, I saw genius; a fierce creativity predicated on empowering artists to grant themselves the freedom to blossom. John’s not waiting for the creative freedom to express his musical personality to be bestowed upon him and, simultaneously, grants – no, elicits – that freedom from the artists who come to work with him at LaunchPad.
You can contact John Connor or his Lead Engineer Mike Flack at: 303-941-8184 or [email protected]
- end -
(c) Martin Higgins
all rights reserved