A Career Journey to “Narnia”
Carrie Atkinson Weber is an audio engineer in Boyers, PA. She has a passion for music history and the mechanics of sound. Spending her day in the Underground, poring over a collection of an artist’s tapes, is her happy place.
Have you ever wondered what your favorite musician’s handwriting looks like? I can probably tell you. But how do I know? Because I’ve worked with hundreds of original master recordings.
Neat, right? I hear it all the time: ”You have the coolest job in the world!” I definitely do. I get to see the notes, pictures, and anything else that was thrown in the tape box at an original recording session, AND I get to run the master tape, too. The tapes themselves hold their own secrets. Is that an uncredited, hugely famous singer singing background vocals on that track? You bet! Did that mega-popular song have other versions that were never released? Sure did!
So how did I get here? I’d love to tell you it was a birthday wish come true. (Fun fact: my birthday is March 8, International Women’s Day.) The truth is it was dumb luck and a whole lot of hard work. I began my adulthood with a degree in Band Instrument Repair Technology from Western Iowa Tech. I spent almost 15 years in the trenches, dealing with mouse-infested tubas and moldy saxophones. I’m a classically trained French hornist but dreamt of going back to school for archiving: I wanted to work in a music museum, immersing myself in the history of everything before me. Given that I could preserve an instrument, I figured I would be an excellent hire once I had a Library Science degree. There was one problem though - I was a single mom who could not afford the time or money to return to school. That dream would have to wait.
In the early 2010s, there was a shift in the band instrument market. Imports became readily available in mass-market retail stores, and you could easily buy these inexpensive imports online, too. The imports were cheap for parents to buy, but they were not made to last, and replacement parts weren’t available for sale – meaning that for all intents and purposes, they were not repairable. Local music stores lost instrument sale revenue AND they couldn’t service the unhappy parents who had purchased these brand-new $150.00 clarinets (or the like). After dealing with this daily for several years, I decided that I needed a change. I became an “accidental chef.”
My brother is a trained chef with his own restaurant. I had cooked as a hobby; a way to relax. I helped him cater events regularly and really enjoyed it. Right around the time I decided I needed to find a new career, he asked me to come and work for him full-time. Over the next six years, I would earn the title of “chef” in my own right. I took over the catering arm of my brother’s business. I catered fancy weddings at country estates; I fed Orville Peck and Ozzy Osbourne. I won national recognition for my catering work.
Catering opened a lot of doors for me, but the most wondrous were those doors than the “Iron Mountain Digital Studios,” now known as Iron Mountain Entertainment Services in Boyers, PA. In my catering schedule and on their custom menus, I referred to the studios affectionately as “Narnia,” since the first time I walked in was like entering another world. The music history I cared so deeply about was HERE! I was in awe. Now I knew that my dream job existed - but in an even more awesome form. Best yet, it was literally in my backyard.
As fate would have it, one of the guys in Narnia recognized me from my music store days. One of his former bandmates was one of my former co-workers. He realized I had knowledge that would be very useful to the IMES Studios. He used to tell me, “Let me know when you’re ready to leave the kitchen!” every time he saw me. I was afraid to get my hopes up, and I felt a very strong loyalty to my brother. Eventually, though, the time was right and I made the leap.
Once I became an IMES studio employee, I decided I wanted to become an engineer. Like I had with my previous two careers, I wanted to see the nuts and bolts of what was in the “office.” I wanted to understand it at a granular level. I wanted to be elbow-deep in the tapes and hard drives I saw. I wanted to consume this history in a way most people never get the chance to do. Luckily, I have some very wonderful and knowledgeable co-workers that decided I had potential. They set me free to work with a 16-channel audio interface and a (non-music, but museum-related) cassette project to see if I could understand what was going on. And, I did.
Today, I am a full-time student at Berklee College of Music studying Audio Engineering while also working as a studio engineer in “Narnia.” I’ve worked on some of the biggest album reissues, commercials, movies, tv shows, and sporting events of the past year. My wildest dreams have come true, and then some! The road has not been easy or straightforward, but I am proud to say that I am Iron Mountain Entertainment Services’ first female Audio Engineer.