Dave Cook grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York and now lives in Saugerties, NY with his wife, Julie and daughter Lola. Dave has been a musician (guitar player) since the age of 8 years old and played his first gig when he was 9. He has performed in a number of bands from his late teens to early 20’s working gigs on the NY, NJ, Long Island club circuit as well as spending lots of time in recording studios. When Dave was 19 years old, he decided to be a recording engineer. He found a job at a studio called Prince Recording in NY in 1981. There, he learned the ropes as he was immersed in working long hours on many different types of sessions from Latin to Rock to Gospel, to early Rap (Curtis Blow!) to Russian folk, to Jazz. You name it, he did it. He was also playing on many of these sessions and got very deeply involved in drum machine and synthesizer technology in the very beginning of the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) craze in 1982.

 

In 1985, he moved to Woodstock while continuing to work in NYC 3-4 days a week for a few months. Shortly after moving to the Catskills, Dave became the Chief Engineer at Dreamland Studios, a great place built in a 110 year old church. He was there for ten years and was instrumental in making it a world class recording facility. While on staff there, he engineered records for such artists as the B-52’s, 10,000 Maniacs, Graham Parker, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Suzanne Vega, Joe Henry, and many others. Before he left the staff, he had a major role in the renovation of the control room, which brought the studio to an even higher level of quality.

 

Both during the time Dave was on staff at Dreamland and after he left, he worked on a freelance basis in studios in NY, California, Boston and Louisiana. During this period, he collaborated with artists such as Juliana Hatfield, Willie Nelson, Morphine and Buckwheat Zydeco. He was the chief broadcast engineer for a series of small live radio concerts for Boston stations WFNX and WBCN. The shows included Lenny Kravitz, David Bowie, Alanis Morissette, Radiohead, Bare Naked Ladies and many others.

 

Dave currently divides his time with recoridng projects, touring, location recording, tour management and audio instruction. He has been awarded Gold and Platinum sales awards and has been interviewed by Mix magazine, EQ magazine and Pro Sound News amongst other trade publications.

 

In 2002, Dave began The Woodstock Recording Workshop offering classes and training in music production techniques. He continues to be fully active in the world of audio engineering making records and mixing concert sound.