Producer, engineer and music filmmaker Jesse Lauter was introduced to music by his parents. Indeed, they took him to his first Phish show when he was only eight. He’s now been to 200-plus performances and often contributes DJ sets. He landed an Atlanta studio internship in his mid-teens and later earned a BFA in recorded music from NYU.
One of the standout records on which he co-produced was the Low Anthem’s 2008 Oh My God, Charlie Darwin. More recently he’s directed and/or produced a number of music projects including the Tedeschi Trucks Band's concert film and documentary Live From The Fox Oakland, the soundtrack of which was nominated for a Grammy.
Recently he was hired as head of production and media at New York City’s Dayglo Presents, which runs a number of venues including the Brooklyn Bowl chain. The gig came about through a longstanding relationship with Dayglo head and music magician Peter Shapiro. “I’d engineered at several New York venues including Union Hall,” Lauter explains.
“I worked at Brooklyn Bowl when it first opened and I got to know Pete. Later I was the director of production at Central Synagogue in Midtown where Pete had been a lifelong member. We became friends and he helped me make a documentary about the Tedeschi Trucks Band reunion called Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen. When the opportunity with Dayglo came up, he asked me to join him.”
Music, of course, is an art form. “If you’re in tune with the greater thing and the satellites of creativity that we all have then you’re in the right place,” Lauter asserts. “Sometimes I’ll do a project and won’t get any feedback. Then 10 years later someone will tell me that they loved it. All of the stress and intensity that you put into an album or film then becomes worth it. If it had that effect on one person, it’s a great feeling."
“I use a summing amp called the Rascal Audio ToneBuss,” he adds as he discusses his favorite piece of gear. “It’s a big part of my sound and I’ve been using it for more than ten years. If that disappeared, my session recall would be a mess. That’s why I have two of them. They’re 16 channels discrete transformers, class-A circuitry. Basically, you run the outputs from your DAW into it and you get kind of a Neve sound.”
Lauter has been fortunate to work and interact with a number of artists over the span of his career. He watched Bob Dylan play basketball with his grandchildren backstage, for example. But his favorite memory is the time that he worked with the Low Anthem in 2012, opening for Bruce Springsteen at South by Southwest.
His current project is a documentary of Little Feet, which will include insights from Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, members of the Grateful Dead and Phish. It’s expected to be released in the next year or two. He’s the sole proprietor of his production company Good Fast Cheap Productions, and mixes and engineers largely out of his Manhattan home studio.
Visit jesselauter.com, Instagram @jesslauter
