Karen Kane Profile (2004)
Published in Wilmington Star News, 2004

With the same skill and virtuosity of the musicians she’s recording, Karen Kane has control of the studio. “OK, let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s see if this is better. Let’s do a little bit and see if everyone is headphone happy,” she said and moves from side to side of an eight-foot long mixing board at Audio Genesis Studio on Carolina Beach Road. After everything is coming into the control room to her satisfaction – perfection, rather – she lets the studio musicians run through the song, which they have been working on for hours, one more time. She stops them about a minute into the take. “Wait, wait, wait. What was that? I thought I heard a clashy note. Let’s try it again.” The band starts again and makes it all the way through the piece. They get hard-earned praise – with a touch of honesty. “That was very nice. I think I heard one wrong note,” she said, calling them out of the studio to listen to the results. “Come hear.”

Ms. Kane’s career began in 1970 managing a “Jingle house” in New York City and then the famed Intermedia Sound in Boston, where Aerosmith cut the Dream On album. There was an unspoken rule that women didn’t touch the equipment; however, Ms. Kane started playing with the gear at night. She asked her boss to fire her as a manager and hire her as an apprentice engineer. He bit, and by 1976 she was one of Boston’s first female senior engineers. By the ’90s, she had migrated to Toronto and found her second love: teaching the art of recording to others. With the snow still flying in Toronto, and Ms. Kane looking for a change in climate, she packed her bags and headed south, settling in Wilmington in April 2002. Upon her arrival, she immediately began teaching and recording. And word of her skills has spread. By the time the musicians make it back to the control room, Ms. Kane has isolated the wrong note on her computer and is setting up for the offending musician to fix it. “It’s the epitome of my job to bring up issues that the musicians don’t even know exist,” she said later. After three decades in the business Ms. Kane has no complaints. “Between making records and teaching, life is heaven,” she said. “And I’ve got the beach. So life is pretty good at 53.”