cavemanproductions2006

kevincavemanshirley                                                                                          
I was born in South Africa. I really hated living there during the apartheid era.

I started working at the SABC, the National radio station at 19, and then joined Tully McCully's Spaced Out Sound Studios. He taught me a whole lot!!

I started making records when Tully let me use studio downtime, after we'd finished recording voice overs for law cassettes and radio spots for Pep Stores. The first album I produced was "At the Corner" for Robin Auld. I do not own a copy!

I worked with many of the top local artists, including Juluka, David Kramer, Winston Mankunku, Basil "Mannenburg" Coetzee, The Sweatband and many others, including producing two records for my own heavy rock band, The Council, and picked up some local awards for engineering and the "Caveman" nickname along the way. It's David Kramer's fault!

After a few years of making local records, I left the politically troubled landscape of South Africa, and headed for Sydney, Australia. I was following a woman. That's one of life's curveballs - women! Life as a freelance producer in Sydney wasn't always easy, and to support the family, I mixed live sound for a local band, then produced local albums from a small 16 track studio in Newcastle for peanuts, before things began to click in Sydney, and after working on demos with a new band called The Baby Animals, I became the engineer on their debut album , working with uber-producer Mike Chapman in New York. The album went multi-platinum, and was #1 in Australia for weeks on end, after which my common-law wife left me for a hippy guru, so I moved to New York City with my 2 year old son to work with Chapman on records by Billy Squier, Material Issue and others. After bashing away at doors, and borrowing money to mail out showreels and tapes, I secured a gig in Canada engineering the Rush album, "Counterparts", for mega producer Peter Collins, and then later on the Bon Jovi "Greatest Hits" singles and the Divinyls' contribution to the Melrose Place soundtrack.

At this stage, after the U.S. refused me entry and with just enough Rush cash to move, I'd had enough struggling and moved back to the land Down Under - where Silverchair surfaced on the rock landscape, and the Caveman produced debut proved to be internationally succesful - leading legendary A&R man John Kalodner to sign me up to produce U.S. supergroups Journey and Aerosmith - then I produced San Diego punkers Rocket From The Crypt, The Black Crowes, Dream Theater and a few album for Iron Maiden amongst others, a personal highlight being mixing a huge Led Zeppelin DVD and live CD set "How The West Was Won", the Page/Plant Unledded show, remixing all the Metallica hits in surround sound as well as producing the song which Tina Arena sang at the lighting of the Olympic Flame at the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Favorite Band: Led Zeppelin

Favorite music: The Jazz of Miles Davis

Favorite Work: Mixing Hard Rock (Dream Theater, Led Zep) and producing album Rock (Black Crowes and Healing Sixes).

Favorite tipple: French Bordeaux

Thanks for visiting,

Kevin
April 2006