Milwaukee’s Gary Tanin on Music, Technology and Kindness

His experience with Arpanet (the military predecessor to the internet) ARP synthesizers and the birth of music software gave him a vision for where music—and the world—was headed.

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In 1967 just after the riot that broke out in Milwaukee’s inner city that summer, 15-year-old Gary Tanin took the bus from his parents’ West Side home to TPI Studio on 27th and Fond du Lac. Summoning his courage, the young white kid walked into a Black-owned studio associated with soul acts such as Vic Pitts & The Cheaters, and introduced himself to the owner, Elmo Griffin.

Tanin recalls that he found Griffin with his feet on the studio’s green metal Army surplus desk, smoking a cigar. He got to the point. “I’d like to record a record,” Tanin said. Griffin looked him over and smiled. “You’ve got the gall to come here and ask me to make a record.” He paused before deciding, “Well, I’ll give you a chance.” 

That encounter was the turning point for Tanin, the start of a 55-year career.

Seeing the Future

Music and technology have been the parallel through-lines of Tanin’s life. He recorded and performed during the ‘70s. In the ‘80s he worked as a computer programmer for the Milwaukee-based defense contractor Astronautics and wrote software reviews for the Computer Musicians Coalition. His experience with Arpanet (the military predecessor to the internet) ARP synthesizers and the birth of music software gave him a vision for where music—and the world—was headed. Quitting Astronautics, he began work on his 1994 album with Jerry Harrison, Sublime Nation. The CD partially recorded in Tanin’s living room using a DAT machine, a sequencer and other easily accessible pieces of equipment. He gave Harrison the music on a disc for overdubs. Former Short Stuff keyboardist Junior Brantley downloaded his piano part over the phone line from his Las Vegas home.

“Part of me feels I’m on a mission,” Tanin told me at the time of Sublime Nation’s release. “Jerry and I wanted to prove the technology is there to make a product that matches industry standards at home, on a budget a lot of people could afford. Technology has burst out of the container.”

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Musician-to-Consumer

In those pre-Amazon years, Sublime Nation was sold from Tanin’s website and an online music catalog. “Eventually the record industry will be musician-to-consumer. Record distribution as we know it will be out and the big labels are scared,” Tanin said in 1994. His prediction has largely been validated.

Tanin’s fascination with electronics began with HAM radio and was nurtured by Griffin, who hired the kid to work at his TV repair shop, Colortronics, at Capitol and Teutonia. TPI’s engineer Ed Sokol showed Tanin around the two-track Ampex studio, similar to the gear at Muscle Shoals where many great ‘60s soul discs were recorded. “But Elmo showed me that if you have the courage of your convictions, and by being kind and good, you can get good things done in life,” Tanin adds.

Those values have informed Tanin’s work as a producer-engineer with a resume that includes albums by Todd Rungren keyboardist Roger Powell, David Bowie accompanist Jack Spann, fusion guitarist Daryl Stuermer, jazz pianist Billy Wallace recorded live at the Jazz Gallery, Americana songwriter Sam Llanas and Violent Femmes’ drummer Victor DeLorenzo. “A good producer is a psychologist and a philosopher and has the ability to negotiate,” says Tanin. Recent years have seen him working with a variety of local musicians including The Young Revelators, Dick Eliot and Jayne Taylor as well as mastering recordings for a variety of clients.

Tanin’s road to an enduring career began early with Griffin and continued by the time he turned 17 as an apprentice engineer at four-track Arco Studio on 26th and Vliet. “At Arco they needed a record label imprint for local artists, so they asked me to handle that business,” Tanin says. That was the beginning Vera Records (named after his mother’s middle name). 

In the early ‘70s Vera released several singles and albums before recording tracks for a demo recording that became Tanin’s first solo album, Love Changes All (1972).

Music Business

He learned the business side of the music business during those years. “At the request of Arco, we started a publishing company (Tanin-Rudman Publishing) to provide needed radio clearance for songs that we released through Vera Records, as it was required at the time to get airplay,” Tanin recalls.

In 1975 he released an ambitious pop-rock album, Otto & The Elevators, featuring technically advanced synthesizers, live string arrangements and a batch of original songs that ran from intriguingly idiosyncratic to naively romantic. While at Arco, he met many of the players heard on the album, including moonlighting Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra musicians, earning extra money cutting commercials for Boston Store and WTMJ-TV. Also heard on Otto & The Elevators was a young violinist, John Sherba, later of Kronos Quartet. The strings were arranged by Canadian composer Edmund Assaly. Tanin was impressed to learn that Assaly knew Beatles’ producer George Martin.

Many Tangents

Tanin sought outside help in crafting a promotional strategy for Otto & The Elevators that earned him lots of local press, airplay on Milwaukee’s FM rock radio stations and a big display at the front of every 1812 Overture store, the city’s dominant retail music chain.

Tanin’s career took many tangents, including a 1982 country single popular in many Midwest radio markets. With Sublime Nation, he found an international audience through a Japanese label, Muse Records. “It was a recording deal completed entirely over the internet—I never even talked to the guy on the phone!” Tanin recalls. “It was an ah-ha moment.” 

He followed Sublime Nation with Xpensive Dogs, another internet-enabled album involving Milwaukee guitarist Greg Koch and Japanese artist Toshi Hiraoka. It was a split release shared with Britain’s Wat Tyler Band. 

Tanin’s greatest thrill has been to be able to make a living in the business of music since high school. “That wasn’t easy to begin with,” he says. “Since 1994 it’s been engineer-musician-producer and mastering engineer without any side hustle. It’s like being paid to do what you would have done for free, because you love it. 

“Finally, the highest accomplishment for me has been taking the lesson learned in 1967-68 about the mysterious transformational power of kindness, its ability to change lives and generate a ripple effect of positivity,” Tanin concludes. “Mr. Griffin took a chance, expressed an unwavering kindness to a then 15-year-old kid from the West Side who wanted to record in a studio and release a record and gave me the opportunity that changed my life. 

I have never forgotten how that kindness felt, and I try to forward that example of kindness onto others.”

Get Sublime Nation at Amazon here.

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