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Discover Lafayette’s sound engineer, Jason Sikora, has a voice many of you are familiar with, as he’s participated in our interviews over the past seven years, ensuring a finely-tuned, professional podcast.
But many of you may not know his interesting back story, or how he came to live and work in Lafayette LA. A native of Detroit, Michigan and graduate of the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, Jason has a rich collection of memories to share and insights into how rock concerts are orchestrated.
Jason’s dad worked for Ford Motor Company in Detroit, but when Jason and his two brothers were young, the family moved to Hartland, Michigan to be able to escape the city life and its accompanying declining socio-economic factors in the 1980s. Describing Hartland as “basically a truck stop,” it was much more. Jason graduated from Hartland High School, playing drums in its marching band and eventually serving as the Hartland Eagles’ mascot.
Sadly, Jason’s younger brother, Kris, died when he was 11 years old, from a blood disorder. Kris’ life and death had great meaning, however, as researchers were able to study his condition. Jason stated that today, people with Kris’ condition would survive.
Upon graduation from high school, Jason hightailed it to Hollywood, California to attend the Musicians Institute (“MI”), a college that was known as a ‘player’s school,’ meaning that students were taught the skills to make a sustainable career in the music industry. While many young people could qualify to be a guitar tech based upon their self-taught abilities, Jason credited MI for a valuable education and teaching him guitar repair and cable management.
” I started playing guitar in 6th grade, so I had six to seven years of experience with signal flow, how to solder microphones back together. I learned a lot in high school with my band, messing with pedals and guitars and amplifiers. I did learn guitar repair, cable management and how to get tone while in college at MI.”
Andy Brauer hired Jason right after graduation from MI, to work at his shop that specialized in instrument and musical gear rentals. Jason had the good fortune to work with Faith Hill in his very first gig, being hired to work at Skywalker Ranch to assist in recording track sessions. “I got to hang out with the best musicians in the world for a week: Mike Landau, Dean Parks, Paul Bushnell, and Vinnie Calaiuta are monster players!” Jason also got to witness the regular lives of performers such as Faith Hill, her husband, Tim McGraw, and their children, and realized how fortunate he was to be a part of this experience in the ordinary lives of superstars as the album was being cut.
Jason then met Michael Lockwood, a guitarist who hired him to be a touring guitar tech for Aimee Mann, performing sound checks and restringing guitars, ensuring that all would go well during concerts. Jason would continue this type of work for several years, working with greats such as Lisa Marie Presley, Britney Spears, and the Goo Goo Dolls, as well as other acts during what he calls his ‘lost years from 2004 to 2006’, such as Hanson, Gerard McMahon, Puddle of Mudd, and the recording of “A Mighty Wind,” an album accompanying a movie of the same name, featuring Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Jennifer Coolidge and many other staples of comedy culture of the time.
“The work ethic is very different when you’re on the road. You’re not allowed to be sick. The show must go on. If there is a half million dollar guarantee and there are 10,000 people out there, your rig has to work. There was always a doctor out there with water, vitamins, and oxygen. You have to do the show. There’s no back-up. No one else would know my rig,” says Jason Sikora.
Asked if he missed traveling on the road for months as a time as a guitar tech, Jason says, “It is not so much about the job but the people you get to work with. I do miss putting on a show, but not all the other things such as pushing heavy equipment, the long days, or the stress.”
Jason Sikora remembers with fondness the time he worked with the principals behind “A Mighty Wind,” a mockumentary comedy film starring Christopher Guest who according to Wikipedia, “co-stars and reunites many of Guest’s company of actors from This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, and Best in Show, including Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard, Bob Balaban, Ed Begley, Jr., Jennifer Coolidge, John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, and Parker Posey. “The album accompanied the movie of the same name,
Jason moved to Lafayette in 2010 after meeting Lafayette native Scott Olivier, another music technician, who had been working for Michael Jackson before the musician’s untimely death. Jason had been working for the Goo Goo Dolls, and would work in a warehouse where other musicians such as Scott Olivier, as well as Credence Clearwater Revival, Van Halen, and others had space. “Touring was so far behind technology with no technical data backup, no security, no central management of data.” So Scott and Jason saw the opportunity to create Laptop Roadie, and they headquartered in Lafayette LA where Scott hailed from. Jason says, “I knew I didn’t want to live in a forty-foot bus at that point in my life. And I knew I didn’t want to live in a big town like New Orleans.”
While Laptop Roadie didn’t survive as a company, many good things came from the endeavor. Jason met Chris Rader, through Chris’ banker, Craig Duplechin. Chris ended up hiring Jason, along with others who had been a part of Laptop Roadie. Jason says, “I was the number 6 employee of RADER, along with numbers 7 and 8, John and Joseph, (who came along from Laptop).”
“I certainly don’t miss unloading a 53’ truck every morning at 7 a.m. or loading it back up at 11 p.m. that night. I do miss the amazing people. After 10 years of working with artists like Faith Hill and Britney Spears, I swapped my job, music, with my hobby — computers. I moved to Lafayette with my girlfriend, jumped into the computer business and ended up at Rader. It’s tough and it’s full of great people, who like me, played with computers as a hobby and liked it enough to make it their job of choice.” Pictured is Jason Sikora with Chubby Carrier, at a recording of Discover Lafayette podcast.
Jason is now a Technology Specialist with RADER’s project team. “I take on onboarding, offboarding, special projects. I work with domain names and email integration, as in merging information from one platform to another. You have to know how to trouble shoot. Things change daily so you have to keep up. Just as when I was on the road handling things daily.” Jason is a valued member of the RADER team, and takes his profession seriously, while thanking Chris Rader for the opportunity he provided him.
“I always wanted to do something in music. I’ve always enjoyed music and wanted to be surrounded by music somehow. Whether its working in a studio, working for an artist, or playing. I knew I would always play. I always have a guitar here in the podcast room. Anywhere I go there is always my guitar and gear around. But only one in a million make a living playing music. It wasn’t in the cards for me. I basically switched my hobby and my job in working at RADER. On the road, I was the guy who could fix computers. Now my job is fixing computers and my hobby is music. I still play guitar. Here at RADER, Brandon Daigle and I got together in 2014 to write music. Two hours per week, every Thursday night. After five years, we finally had 10 songs!
Happily, Jason is still pursuing his love of music, and has published a double EP with his band, “Cancel the Sun.” His coworker, Brandon Daigle, and Jason, can be listened to on Spotify, where you can enjoy beautiful extended play music as “Zero Point” and “Neutrality.”
Enjoy music by Jason Sikora’s Cancel the Sun band at Spotify, which he created with RADER team member Brandon Daigle.
In closing, we’d like to include Jason Sikora’s comments about his boss, Chris Rader. “Chris is very smart in his mindset. He asks, ‘What does the user need to get their job done and make their life less of a headache? Let’s do that thing.’ We are as proactive as possible. If your internet goes out or if you get hacked, we probably know it before you do.”
We cannot thank Jason Sikora enough….for his professionalism, his commitment to Discover Lafayette, or the joy he brings to each podcast interview. Thank you, Jason! And thanks to Chris Rader and the team at RADER for supporting our podcast for the past seven years. What a gift, what an opportunity to share stories such as that which Jason Sikora shared with us on this episode.
