Mark Graham:
Mark Graham has been making music professionally for over 20 years. Growing up in the Shenandoah Valley, Mark played with many local artists and at age twenty, moved to Nashville. It was there that Mark developed a friendship with an employee of Quad studios, where they would spend nights tweaking tape machines, doing mic tests and generally getting hooked on all things to do with music studios. While in Nashville, Mark was fortunate enough to study bass guitar with Regi and Victor Wooten. While pursuing his musical education, Mark worked in every facet of music production from the construction of road cases to running sound in a world class rehearsal facility that was home to such acts as The Allman Bros. and Garth Brooks. In 1996, Mark moved to Los Angeles and attended a year at the Musician’s Institute in Hollywood. After completing school, Mark opened a professional rehearsal studio in 1998 to be followed a year later by a ProTools HD based recording studio. Either as a performer or in his studios Mark has worked with such artists as Hoobastank, Tre of Pharcyde, L.A. underground hip-hop queen Medusa, producer Dwayne Barron, Poison, Great White, Vanilla Fudge, Grammy nominee Scott Murray, Lionel Cole, Bernard Fowler, John Blackwell, Johnny Rabb, Brett Chassen, Tasha Taylor, Carbon-9, Numira, and many other diverse and successful artists. Mark was also a founding member of the experimental jazz improvisational band Erroneous Funk. After 12 years in LA Mark moved home to realize his dream of opening a world class studio in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

James McLaughlin:
James began playing drums in a high school jazz ensemble near Boston, MA. He then pursued his musical interests at St. Lawrence University, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Music in 2000. While at S.L.U. he studied composition, performance, theory, and ethnomusicology. Experiences both in the classroom and on stage provided him great exposure and appreciation of many musical cultures from around the world. A semester abroad afforded him the opportunity to work as an intern at Stanley House Recording Studios in London, England. After a successful internship, he returned to the UK for most of 2001 working as an assistant engineer and producer to A-list pop producer Tim Laws. Since returning to the US he has lived in Charlottesville, VA and has been a regular on the music scene as both a drummer and engineer/producer at his project studio, Mountainside. Teaming up with Mark Graham, he has finally fulfilled his dream of opening a professional music production facility, The Sound. In addition to recording albums, music for film, video work and various demo songs in many genres, he has performed hundreds of gigs from New Mexico to New York and has shared stages with Blues Traveler, Little Feat, Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, Tea Leaf Green, Toubab Krewe, John D’earth, Greg Howard, Darrell Rose, RAQ, and many, many others.