Mr. Wiersema's background includes an over 30-year involvement with music and sound that started in 1970, recording local high school bands in Indio, CA. During his high school days he built his first 4 track-recording studio in a friends garage. Realizing that if he wanted a career in the Recording Studio Business, he would either have to build his own or “know someone”, he pursued a career in Aeronautical Engineering, recording friends nights and weekends in the garage.
In 1976 he moved to San Jose, CA to continue his education at San Jose State University. During his first week at San Jose State he sat out on a mission to find out what music and sound was being done on campus. Going fist to Campus AV, where he was told he could show films, he went to Student Union AV and met up with the director. He told the director that he had built a garage studio and was interested in pursuing his interest in sound and music mixing. He was told, “Roger, I think we can use you.” He was hired on the spot and within 6 months he was the Audio Supervisor for Student Union AV.
His responsibilities included being in charge of all sound being done out of the Student Union, including lectures, dances and concerts. During his second semester he realized that the Student Union needed a bigger Sound System to better handle the bigger concerts that were coming though San Jose State. The money for capital purchases came from the Student Union Board of Governors, which he promptly got elected to as a “student at large”. The following semester, with some heavy lobbying, the money was allocated the build a new concert sound system.
While he was building the new sound system, he learned that San Jose State was going to offer a course in multi track recording in 1977; he was the first to sign up. David Porter (president and owner of Music Annex) taught the course at his studio and when David saw what Roger was building for San Jose State, David asked if Roger wanted to join Music Annex as its Chief Engineer and build a new facility in Menlo Park, CA. Roger was now in the Studio Business!
He continued 1978 going to school by day and building Music Annex Menlo Park nights and weekends. With the new Sound System done for San Jose State he was mixing bigger shows at San Jose State, up to the 5,000 seat Morris Daley Auditorium with groups like Pat Metheny, David Grissman, John Hartman, Steve Martin and Peter Gabriel. He graduated in 1979 with a BS in Aeronautical Engineering and a minor in Business Administration and assumed a full time career at Music Annex.
Music Annex was growing rapidly and he wore many hats as Chief Engineer. Some of his major accomplishments over the course of his 25 years at Music Annex include:
Toured North and South America as band's House Engineer.
Recorded and Mixed over 30 Albums.
Designed and Built 15 Recording Studios in the Bay Area.
Built a Cassette Duplication Plant with a 500k per month capacity (1985).
Designed and built a state of the art Audio for Video Post Production facility in San Francisco.
Specified Equipment.
Implemented the use of ISDN for Studio-to-Studio real time 20 to 20 K Communication (1988).
San Francisco Studio Manager (1989 - 1991)
Designed and Implemented a LAN (10/100 BT) with over 30 computers (MAC and PC) with access to the public net (1992).
Co-Chair Workshop Panel 1998 AES San Francisco The Aesthetics of Mixing Music 5.1.
Designed and Implemented a method of delivering Radio Spots to Radio Stations for NBC using .mp3 over the web (1999).
Designed and implemented a sound effects server with over 50,000 sounds available to all 5 studios in San Francisco using gigabit Ethernet (2001).
In late 2002 he formed Polarity Post Inc. with Patrick Fitzgerald.
President and Chief Engineer of Polarity Post (2003-Present)
Roger Wiersema Selected Discography
1985 Jeff Berlin & Vox Humana Champion Produced by Ronnie Montrose featuring Neil Pert (Rush) on drums, Steve Smith (Journey) on drums, Scott Henderson, Neil Schon (Journey) on Guitars, Sheila E on Percussion, T Lavitz ( The Dixie Dregs), Clare Fischer On Keyboards.
1979 The Tubes Remote Control Produced by Todd Rundgren
1986 Ronnie Montrose - Territory
1987 Ronnie Montrose - Mean
1988 Ronnie Montrose - The Speed Of Sound
1990 Ronnie Montrose - The Diva Station
1991 Ronnie Montrose - Mutatis Mutandis
1980 George Winston - Autum
1979 Alex DeGrassi - Slow Circle
1980 Alex DeGrassi - Southern Exposure
1981 Snail Produced by Roy Segal (Fantasy) Ken Kraft Guitar, Brett Bloomfield Bass, Donny Baldwin Drums
1983-1985 Various Records for Catero Records Produced by Fred Catero
1980-1986 Various Records for Palo Alto Records including Joe Henderson, Stan Getz, John Abercrombie with John Scofield including most of these:
http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Labels/paloalto.htm
1979 Blue Oyster Cult for King Biscuit Flower Hour
1979 Black Sabbath for King Biscuit Flower Hour with Ronnie James Dio
1988 Full Faith and Credit big band
Dave Eshelmann Jazz Garden big band
Full Spectrum big band,
1979 Will Ackerman Childhood and Memory
1981 Will Ackerman Passage
1981 Expresso “First Cup” Drew Youngs Producer
198? Drew Youngs “Ignudi”
Steven Halpern 1982-1997
demos with Nick and Steve (name of band) Steve then went on to form Third Eye Blind ( Stephen Jenkins).
Edgar Winter coming in to play sax on one of Ronnie's albums.
Ronnie's first project was a duo with Ronnie Montrose and Mitchell Froom. Mitchell then moved to LA be a producer. (Suzanne Vega, Los Lobos, Paul McCartney, Crowded House, Tim Finn, etc.)
Recording Praire Prince (Tubes) playing drums all night to be programmed into Digidesign's first product DigiDrums. (1984)
Music Video for Rick Derringer's Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo.
Dance remixes for Eddie Money's Nothing to Loose 1988 album Kevin Gilbert Producer
Movie soundtrack with Martha Davis and the Motels Kevin Gilbert Producer
Soundtrack for Warren Miller's “Born to Ski” Ronnie Montrose Producer 1991
Radio interviews with:
Chicago 1979,
Eddie Rabbit 1980,
Stray Cats (first interview of their life and they were like deer in the headlights) 1982
A six hour radio show on Jimi Hendrix Elliot Mazer Producer we remixed three songs from original 16 track masters. One of our mixes ended up on a compilation disk because the Hendrix Family lost the 16 track masters after we returned them.
Solo Album with Doug Clifford (Credence Clearwater Revival) Elliot Mazer Producer
Demos of a solo Album with James Honeyman-Scott (Pretenders) Elliot Mazer Producer (he died before we were done) 1982
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