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SOUNDS
LIKE SUCCESS If you've seen live music anywhere in town over the past, oh, 10 years, there's a good chance you've heard the work of Claudette Heitman, who has twisted knobs on soundboards for uncountable bands and clubs. Yes, it's typically men you see running sound, but when music is your passion, you don't let senseless macho constructs stop you from doing what you love.
For Heitman, who has a quick wit and an even quicker laugh, it all started when she befriended Duke, a sound guy for local band Phamous Phaces. When Duke and the band were in a studio recording, she was there too. "Duke was letting me wrap cables and stuff like that down in the studio with the Phaces boys," Heitman said. "I picked up the owner's manual for the deck they were using and started reading. I was like, 'I want to do this, I want to learn how to run sound!'" At Swingers, where Phamous Phaces had a regular gig, Duke finally started letting Heitman plug stuff in. She figured out the rest, and her first real gig was running sound for reggae night at the old John Henry's. After that, volunteering at WOW Hall led to more and more paying gigs, and now, you can find her at Wetlands. The long nights in noisy, smoky bars haven't always been easy, especially since she's spent many years raising kids, with a 6-, 8- and 13-year-old still in the nest. She might not get home until 3:30 in the morning some nights, and still has to see the kids off to school. "The kids know that sometimes momma's gonna be grumpy!" she said, laughing. "Sometimes it's taxing, but it's an awful lot of fun." "I certainly have gotten a lot of looks, but mostly what I get from people is that it's really nice to see a woman doing this," she said. It doesn't matter what people call her — sound guy, sound engineer, sound goddess. "Just know that if you sound bad, and you don't do what you're told, I'm gonna turn you off!" she said. Heitman offers this advice to anyone, male or female: jump in there and do it. "And that doesn't just go for running sound, it has to do with anything you want to do in life."
A broken vase is bad; broken beats are good. That's your first lesson in electronic music, and one which Maressa Surrett, aka Jade Bassix, learned long ago. As Surrett, she is owner and CEO of So Broken Recordings, a label dedicated to electronic dance music. As Bassix, she travels the world spinning in dance clubs, loving every busy minute of it. At 15, Surrett interned at Schizophonic, a Salem, Ore. record label specializing in punk. At 16, friends introduced her to the rave scene. "I dived into that scene and got involved," she said. Surrett met tons of DJs and event organizers, but none of them were women. "I didn't know any women who were doing that, and I wanted to represent for females," she said. Surrett played her first rave in 2000 at the Lorax Manner on campus. She has since played in Denver, San Francisco, Boise and Hong Kong. The label idea came up about two years ago. "I just didn't see a lot of representation for independent electronic artists in the Northwest," she explained. "My friends were making this great music, and I wanted to help them get this music out to the rest of the world!" Surrett works a 40-hour week as a website and graphic designer, and then works on the label every night until bedtime. "I come home from work, and that's the first thing I do," she said. "I put a lot of hours, a lot of love and a lot of passion into what I do. We're small right now, but we have a lot of interests and we're growing." She represents five resident artists, all from the local or regional area, and runs an Internet radio station from the website: www.sobroken.com. "We have live DJ radio shows weekly, and there are also mixes that people have sent me from around the world," she noted. Surrett anticipated a shift in the industry away from vinyl records, which are heavy and inconvenient, so all of the label's music is in digital mp3 format. "It's a very male-dominated industry, and I definitely would like to see more female representation," she said. "It's been tough not to be intimidated, to just do my own thing, lead the pack." On June 1, Surrett and So Broken Recordings will host a two-year re-launch party at Indigo District.
::
Intro :: Death
Metal :: CD Reviews :: Raging
Family :: Band Profiles ::
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