Kendall County musicians making homegrown sounds

Not all great music is made in Nashville, Los Angeles, or New York City. Some is made right here in Kendall County. Here are a few residents who are making their livelihood in the music industry.

John Mackniskas

John Mackniskas of Oswego has been recording bands since he started his first studio in his three-bedroom apartment in 1994. He now runs Comfortzone Audio, his own custom studio, out of the basement of his Oswego home.

Mackniskas, known as "Johnny Mack" to his musician friends, bought the house shortly after getting married in 2001. But it took a few years before it was finished and open for business.

"I put everything on hold because I wasn't going to bring people downstairs into my unfinished basement and say, 'Hey, come on into my studio,'" he said. "I waited until I had it constructed in 2007."

Mackniskas worked a day job in information technology until 2015, when he made the leap to being a full-time recording engineer. He said he had his wife, Mary Jo, to thank.

"She is kind of makes everything happen here because she has the bread-winning job right now," he said.

Mackniskas has four kids, including two older kids from a previous marriage, and he said being at home was going to be better for his two younger children.

"My wife and I talked about it and decided, if I stayed at home it would be better for them," he said. "And I'd be able to do more in the studio in the day while the kids were at school."

In addition to being a recording engineer, Mackniskas is a lead guitarist in a collective of Fox Valley area musicians known as the Empty Can Band. Mackniskas has been playing guitar since he was a kid.

He said he first started experimenting with recording by recording himself when he was around 16, which resulted, he said, in "a bunch of really bad tapes."

"I started messing with tape recorders," he said. "I didn't have a multi-track machine. What I had was a three-head recorder. I found that if you covered up the erase head, you could multi-track two tracks. That was an eye-opener for me, because I knew about multi-track but I could never afford something like that."

Mackniskas then started playing in bands, and was the only person who was interested in being the "sound guy."

"I was the only one who really cared enough about sound to do it, so I was always stuck doing it," he said. "I was doing the sound, I was doing the lights. My friends in other bands asked me to do their sound."

He continued, "Then I ended up going to the library and checking out all these books on sound, and professional sound reinforcement. I learned how to solder and do other things."

In 1994, he bought an eight-track reel-to-reel recorder and started booking bands, calling his apartment-based studio Comfortzone Recorders.

"I lived in an apartment, but for drums I would take them to warehouses or churches or whatever else was available, record the drums, and then come back and do everything else in my apartment," he said.

Mackniskas was a truck driver at the time, but the company had to shut down and he had to find a job. He started calling around to recording studios and one of them agreed to allow him to use its studio to "freelance" engineering projects.

He started working out of RCL studios in Glen Ellyn.

"I operated Comfortzone Recorders out of there," he said. "I recorded bands like Lucky Boys Confusion there, other local bands. Whenever RCL – that was the studio name – had any bands, pretty much they gave them to me, because they were busy doing school groups and church groups. Their main breadwinner was Billy Graham, the preacher. They did all of his radio shows, the distribution of the tapes throughout the country."

Mackniskas said he is more affordable than studios in Chicago, but that he isn't so cheap that the musicians don't appreciate their investment.

"I try not to price myself too low, because if you don't pay enough you don't really appreciate what you got," he said. "I price myself with the experience I have."

Five years ago, Mackniskas met Frank Pappalardo, who has engineered records for Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, Stevie Nicks, John Legend and others. Pappalardo has been using Mackniskas' studio for his own projects with artists he records.

The income from that work has helped keep his prices reasonable, Mackniskas said.

"I see a lot of people doing GoFundMes for their albums," he said. "They're paying thousands of dollars. Where, you can get an album out of me for probably under a grand."

With a wide variety of home recording software and equipment available these days, musicians can make a record in their bedroom for a fraction of the cost of a traditional studio. But Mackniskas said the difference is the sound and acoustics of a good room in a recording studio.

"It can sound good, but it doesn't sound great," he said. "There's nothing better than a natural reverb. An echo chamber surpasses a digital reverb any day. I don't have an echo chamber, but I have a good room."

More information on Mackniskas and his studio can be found at comfortzoneaudio.com.

Ethan Bell

Ethan Bell, 25, of Yorkville fronts his own Ethan Bell Band, which plays at local bars and festivals.

Bell said he started out playing music at his local church, being mentored by a music teacher who he said was patient with the young Bell.

"As a music teacher now, it gives you a lot of perspective, because you run into students like that and sometimes they end up doing a ton with it and sometimes they never get into it," he said.

But Bell first fell in love with music thanks to his father.

"My dad played the acoustic guitar and would sing us to bed every night," he said. "That was my first interest in music, my dad playing a little bit, just a couple chords."

Bell said he got his start playing at Community Christian Church in Yorkville. He said that gave him a lot of practice.

"I learned a ton with that," he said. "I learned how to play with a band, I learned about band dynamics, stuff like that, at a young age."

Bell was home-schooled when he was younger, and finished high school early.

When he was 18, he started playing at local restaurants and open mics.

"The first few years of me playing, it was all kinds of acoustic stuff," he said. "I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I made a goal for myself to be able to make a living playing music, and I didn't have a specific idea of what that looked like. So I started teaching lessons."

Bell has his own company, Ethan Bell's Portable Music Studio, that employs music teachers and teaches lessons to 50 students.

Bell said his friend Woody James, another local musician, introduced him to older country, like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. He said that being home-schooled, he only listened to Christian music growing up. The two formed a friendship and helped each other out with gigs.

Two years ago, Bell started the four-piece Ethan Bell Band. The band plays Bell's original songs along with modern country pop tunes.

Bell also runs a variety of open mic nights in the area, along with band member Brandon Weber. Bell said singing at open mic nights helped him get better at his craft.

"That's where I got a lot of playing experience, going to these open mic nights," he said.

Bell said being an independent musician is about hard work, no matter if you're playing a packed room or just to the bartender.

"It's waves of being on top of the world and crippling self-doubt," he said.

Bell, who has four kids with his wife, Michalene, said his schedule is like being on third shift on the weekends. Sometimes he doesn't get home until 3 or 4 a.m.

"That's a little bit challenging, too," he said. "But if you really want it and you really want to do it... you just brush it off."

Bell said the Ethan Bell Band will be performing in 10 states this year and will be releasing its first single this summer. For more information, visit EthanBellBand.com.

The Giving Tree Band

Although Todd Fink of the Giving Tree Band jokes that the band "dreams of South Texas," he and his brother Eric are happy the band has put down roots in Yorkville.

The band has a headquarters of sorts and a recording studio – Crooked Creek Records – out of their house in Yorkville. The band started in 2006 and has released four full-length albums, one live record and an EP in that time. Their newest album, Frequency of Love, is due to be released this spring.

The band consists of Todd and Eric, known as E, along with multi-instrumentalist Norm Norman, bassist Charlie Karls and a drummer called simply Z.

"It takes a long time to build something up, both the home and creative space and the relationships with people," Todd said. "It's nice to see over the years how things have progressed and changed. I feel like there's a lot of new things happening in Yorkville."

After long trips touring, Eric said it's good to have a place to call home and lay one's head.

"Lately it's felt really good to be in that place, and just focus on new sounds, new ideas, and help the project evolve from that space," Eric said.

The brothers said they are excited about the new record coming out.

"We've always had the mindset of trying to push the envelope a little bit, and get different sounds; almost a Miles Davis approach to producing and arranging," Eric said. "There's some soul tunes, there's some folk tunes, some rock tunes; it's gonna be interesting to have it come out and see what people think.

The brothers wrote all the songs on the record, they said.

"For us, it's a really vibrant record, and the artwork by Jon Marro of Los Angeles reflects that," Todd said. "It's an explosion of vitality."

The brothers acknowledged there are challenges to being on the road and touring.

"The main thing is not to kill yourself out there," Todd said. "But you kind of have to in the beginning. Then you slowly start to do it smarter, then you learn from your mistakes. It's a growing process, for sure. It's refined over time. You figure out, like, what the best times and strategies for routing, how much time you need to recover and not lose your voice or lose your energy. And when is it time to step back from that so you're not draining yourself of your creative juices."

Eric said musicians have to learn that life goes on at home even while they are on the road.

"The road is tricky because things still go on at home," Eric said. "The grass still grows, and storms still ruin your roof. But you don't know that that's not happening, because you're not there. If you push it too hard, which, we've been at that verge many times, you end up sacrificing a little bit in some other area that you need to regroup and make up for. Touring, we feel like this year, it will be a lot of fun again. I think we've learned from our years of touring and just try to put on a great show and bring joy every night."

Todd said the road teaches one problem-solving skills.

"You have the same challenges as you do working from home," he said. "Same conflicts with people you do business with, sickness, car trouble. But now all of these things are happening with you in transit. Anybody who gets a lot of touring under their belt naturally becomes very resilient. You have to expand your problem-solving skills, and you have to solve problems quickly. Otherwise, there's significant consequences, and the demands are high. It can be a high-pressure situation at times, and if you can handle that I think it helps artists become better performers."

Eric agreed.

"It makes your songs more believable if you've actually been to the places that are in your songs and you've experienced what you're singing about," Eric said. "We've been stuck in the desert for days, we've been stuck in the snow for days, and that's when you see what you're really made of and the people around you, how much everybody believes in each other. And I think consequently that makes you a better band."

Todd said when musicians are young, they have certain goals to show they are successful, like getting signed to a big record label.

"What you start to realize is that real progress is gradual progress," he said. "If you're patient as an artist, you're going to be successful, especially if you start to rethink what success actually means. For us, we define success as, we made this record and we made it the way we wanted to make it. And what it does from there is outside of our control. But what we came here to do is make a record."

The band's next gig will be Jan. 28 at the Old Town Pub in St. Charles, in preparation for another full national tour this year, Todd said.

"The adventure continues out of Yorkville, Illinois," he said.