Bio

I was born on April 4, 1988 in Waterville, Maine to John and Karen McGowan.   I was their 2nd and, as of now, last child to be born.  Both of my parents were musicians throughout their lives and played a huge initial part in my musical development.  My mother was more of a classical pianist whilst my dad played more keyboards and church organ.  In my early years I always had a desire to start playing the piano and admired my parents skills on the keyboard.

My wish finally came through in the second grade when I started taking piano lessons.  I was thrilled as a child to finally be playing the piano and enjoyed performing in front of friends and family.  This was the official start of my musical development.  I continued with piano lessons until the seventh grade, when I started learning the saxophone.  When I began my studies in the public Junior High School I wanted to play in the band.  Since there is no keyboard in a typical concert band, I was forced to chose a different instrument to learn.  I cannot remember why, but I ended up pursuing the saxophone.  I developed on saxophone relatively quickly and it fast became my instrument of choice over the piano.  

Saxophone became my primary musical instrument throughout the rest of my public school education.  Midway through the eighth grade I began private study with a professor at the University of Souther Maine named Tim O'Dell.  O'Dell was one of the primary sources of musical growth throughout high school and helped me immensely with my saxophone playing skills and with my experimentations with composition.  My weekly lessons at his studio was musically enriching and expanded my musical knowledge greatly.  Another huge source of musical knowledge and inspiration was the music teacher at my high school, Andy Forster.  Forster was always willing to pass on whatever knowledge he could if you wanted it.  Forster also supported all of my pursuits throughout high school and encouraged me to audition for All State Jazz and Concert bands and what not.  These experiences ended up being very rewarding and fun, especially playing in the talent show house band.

Playing in the High School House Band in 2006.
From left: Me, Forster, Tim Mathieu, and Jon Bradshaw in the back on the drums.

Right around the same time I started playing the saxophone, I also started to become interested in audio technology.  When I attempted to start playing keyboards in the Youth Band at my local church and found that I wasn't quite proficient enough to pull it off yet, my father, who was the director at the time, suggested that I might like running the sound system for the band.  I decided to give it a go and from then on this quickly grew to be my primary interest.

My early training and knowledge of audio systems was largely developed via the Internet and manuals.  I started out by reading the manual for the console that the youth band had and did a great deal of research into other devices in my free time.  This is a practice that I still do today.  Yes, I am still a geek when it comes to audio stuff.  Though I compiled a lot of knowledge from reading manuals and articles on the Internet, nothing is as good as hard experience.  Since I've always been a big thinker, I decided that I wanted to start learning more about the main system that was installed in the church's sanctuary so I approached the head audio engineer at the church, Ron Dunbar, and began a lifelong friendship with him.  Dunbar was very willing to teach me much of what he knew of audio systems and passed on a lot of his lengthy experience to me throughout high school.  After a few years of working with him at the church, Dunbar began taking me with him on gigs he would get hired to do and I would assist him at concerts and eventually did a lot of monitor engineering for him at various concerts and festivals.

Dunbar also loved to volunteer at much larger concerts than he typically was hired for and also started taking me with him on these trips.  This is where much of my live sound experience occurred.  My first "Big Rodeo" was the Soul Fest festival at Loon Mountain Ski Resort in New Hampshire in 2004.  This was a huge eye opening event for me and revealed to me much of the logistics and processes that go into putting on a big show.  Rainbow Production Services was providing sound and lights for that festival and since Dunbar and myself had contacts with them we would continually volunteer with them at shows they would do in the New England area, gaining me more and more experience with large outdoor and stadium sound reinforcement systems.



Taking a break at Soul Fest in 2004.
From left: Me, Ron Dunbar, and another volunteer from my church.

As I was gaining valuable knowledge and experience in live sound reinforcement I was also taking interest in studio recording and mixing.  I continued to do my geeky research on line in this area and started to put together my own small studio in the basement of my house.  Much gear was borrowed from Dunbar to build my studio and my father was gracious enough to purchase my first Pro Tools system.  With these few things I began to record local high school bands and experimented constantly in my small home studio.  I used Pro Tools to sequence some old keyboards that my father let me use in my studio and this became the basis of my compositional work throughout high school.  I was extremely fortunate to have the experiences I did at the young age I did and thank the people who helped make all of it happen for me.

           

The Final configuration of my home studio in Maine in 2006.

On one of my various escapades with Dunbar in my sophomore year of High School I asked him what kind of education was available for audio engineering.  He mentioned a few trade schools that offered shorter 2 year programs in audio engineering; but I was interested in getting a Bachelors Degree.  When I brought up a more traditional interest he loosely replied, "Well there you're thinking of something like Berklee or something."  As soon as I got home that night I looked up Berklee on the internet and after browsing their website for a bit I was instantly hooked.  From then on my desire was to go to Berklee and study in their well known Music Production & Engineering program.  Three years later the start of my dream came true when I was admitted to Berklee.  A year after that I was also accepted to the MP&E program and this is where I am in my life right now.  Berklee has so far been what I expected and more.  In addition to my studies here, I have been going on the road with a band out of Portland, Maine called The Wrecking as their FOH engineer.  We'll see where things go from here as this industry is quite random and spontaneous making it that much more exciting.

contact philyg@phily-g.com with questions or comments