„Just do your best!” - Trevor Gabriel

Hello Trevor, thank you very much for taking the time! Please introduce your studio and the team to our readers!

Hey, I’m Trevor Gabriel, and I run Cactus House Recording! My wife, Erika, handles most administrative work, and our cats, Ash and Miso, help with the ambience. We mostly work with up-and-coming rock bands based in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as a few jazz and classical chamber musicians.

 

Was this the initial concept to work mostly with up-and-coming bands, or did this situation just naturally evolve to this?

It was a little bit of both! Originally I started building out my studio to work on my own projects and record my friends as well, but over the past several years we’ve expanded into working with many more bands that we have met in the local music scene.

 

 

Cactus House has a really heart-warming origin story, could you share it with the readers?

Cactus House was built in the 1800s as a part of the Quicksilver mining operation south of San Jose, CA. The cabin was originally built in the hills closer to the entrance of the mine, but was carted by donkeys down to where it is now, a cozy community called New Almaden. In the 1970s, a group of boys were playing and throwing prickly pears at one another, and one of the prickly pears happened to land on the cabin’s roof and take root. The cactus is still up there and fully grown, which is where our studio name comes from – Cactus House Recording!

 

 

Your everyday life ties you to this special place as well, correct?

In the 2010s, I was working as a music teacher and session player. I was looking for a place to live that was still close to my roots and found the Cactus House. After a couple years of renovating I was able to move in and slowly build the studio ground up while working my other jobs.

 

Where is your passion for music rooted?

I grew up playing piano and around 14 fell in love with the guitar and rock music. Ever since getting my first guitar and amp I’ve been playing in bands, touring and recording. I ended up going to school for music, getting a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts, and spending the next several years as a session guitarist and music teacher.

I was playing mostly in rock and pop bands at the time, but did play with the San Francisco Mandolin Orchestra and some local jazz musicians as well. I was also playing a lot of solo acoustic gigs at wineries and events around the area, which looking back was great for honing chops!

I’ve always gravitated to musicians who blend multiple styles and influences while having their own unique voice. There are too many amazing musicians to name them all, but a few I’ve personally seen live and been inspired by are Chick Corea, Prince, Robben Ford, Roland Dyens, Allan Holdsworth, Thundercat, The Goat Rodeo Sessions, The Bad Plus, Kneebody, System of a Down, King Crimson and Primus.

 

You manage the business together with your wife. How did this come together?

Erika has always been supportive of my musical goals and has a background in administrative work and copywriting, so naturally she was the perfect person to help get the business going!

 

For most of us, it can be hard to imagine running a business with your beloved. How does this translate into your everyday life?

Really well actually, it reinforces the feeling that we’re a team with shared goals!

 

Cactus House is proudly working with independent bands mainly. Does this mean, you get to work with a lot of musical styles?

Definitely, and the variety in projects is one of the most exciting things about this job! Switching from a loud punk album to dynamic acoustic jazz tracks to a layered progressive rock song—dialing in each project is like a puzzle that becomes more rewarding as you work on it!

 

So we established that you have a degree in music and a lot of performing experience. But how did you end up behind the mixing console?

The recording process and equipment involved has always interested me, even when my focus was more on performing. When I was going to CalArts, I took a recording class that really piqued my interest and also gave me access to the school studio, where I booked a lot of midnight sessions and spent countless hours experimenting. Those nights at the school studio really planted the seed in my mind of eventually having my own project studio, which is now, thankfully, a reality!

 

Which style is closest to you?

Rock and Prog are really at my core, but I love to push myself out of my comfort zone! Recently I’ve been playing mandolin in a group called The New Acoustic Collective that is challenging me to build up more bluegrass and gypsy jazz chops, but I still sneak some Prog into the improvised solos!

 

Haha, that must sound interesting! Any recordings of that?

We’re currently mixing the upcoming New Acoustic Collective studio album, so that will be available soon!

 

Having done a lot of projects, what are the ones, you’re most proud of?

My band, Dark Satellite’s latest album Splitting Image and New Acoustic Collective’s live album Something New Acoustic, as well as their upcoming studio album - which was partially recorded at Cactus House and is being mixed here! -

I am also very proud of a string of singles and EPs I’ve been working on with a new independent record label in Oakland, Minor Chord Records. We just released our first 45-vinyl split that will be a part of a series which will really help build interest (and hopefully some money too) for independent Bay Area bands!

Also, we are currently working on two EPs and two full-lengths for four different up-and-coming bands that I have played shows with, which is a really cool process.

I love recording bands I’ve shared the stage with and tracking the songs to keep the feel and emotion from the live performance. These should be finished and published early 2026, and I can already tell they will be going to the top of my studio portfolio!

 

 

 

Having mentioned money... you work with a lot of independent bands, who – I assume – can have a hard time reaching the audience, and generating revenue, or even break even. How’s life treating these bands in these years? What opportunities do they have?

There are definitely a lot of challenges for any independent artist these days, but also a lot of opportunities. I think it’s really important for any musician starting out now to go to local shows, meet other creative people, support the scene and network with various professionals. There are lots of independent venues looking for musicians to book, tons of artists looking for people to collaborate with, and companies looking for musicians to endorse their gear. Actually, now might be a good time for me to mention that we use Vanguard Audio Lab microphones at Cactus House Recording. They are an awesome company and we use their V13 Tube Mic on pretty much every recording session!

 

 

Which type of Buso desk are you using, and what brought you to that decision?

I’m using the Buso desk for the Audient ASP 4816 since that is the mixing console I use everyday, and this desk for the Audient is the most ergonomic and functional I could find! There is plenty of rack space for all my outboard gear and the monitor bridge is wide enough for two 4K monitors as well as my Amphion speakers.

My vintage Roland JUNO also fits perfectly in the optional keyboard tray and there is still enough room below the desk for my ADAM subwoofer and custom PC! Also, the dark cherry panels on the Buso desk are just perfect, pretty close to the wood stain I used on the floor and my homemade bass traps.

 

 

Who influenced your work from the engineer perspective?

Steven Wilson’s artistic direction and production work has always resonated with me on a personal level, especially on his band, Porcupine Tree’s album Fear of a Blank Planet, his solo album, The Raven That Refused to Sing, and Opeth’s Blackwater Park album.

Alan Parsons' work on Dark Side of the Moon and Rudy Van Gelder’s engineering work with Blue Note Records (especially on John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme) are also touchstones for me as an audio engineer!

 

I’m so happy that you mentioned Steven Wilson and also Blackwater Park! I’m also a huge admirer of his work and a devoted Porcupine Tree fan. Their concert poster from 2009 still hangs on my wall... what an experience that was!

Oh, that’s awesome, Steven Wilson is such an inspiration and that’s so cool you saw Porcupine Tree in concert!

 

 

 

Give us the studio tour!

Currently, I’m using the Audient ASP 4816 mixing console with BURL and RME converters. The mix out of the board runs through a Heritage Audio master buss EQ into a Rupert Neve Designs MBC (limiter and converter). The board’s 8 mix busses have my 500 series rack as inserts, so I can send tracks to any combination of them using the board’s routing switches, no patchbay needed!

My favorite pieces of outboard gear that I use are the 1176 Revision F clone I built (from Hairball Audio), my Pultec EQs, Lexicon PCM 90, and my Rupert Neve Designs 535 compressor.

 

So I can see you put some emphasis on owning the classics… what got you to the Audient console?

Definitely, I love analog outboard gear and would probably have a lot more if I had the space and extra money! There are lots of great mixing consoles available but the Audient ASP 4816 really was the clear choice for us considering the features, price and size. Being relatively affordable and compact while still having 16 channel strips, 8 busses, flexible routing, and an ergonomic layout is what made us go with the Audient!

 

 

So it’s not such a wild guess, that our desk have made your workflow much smoother with all the outboard gear.

The Buso desk allowed me to consolidate all of my tools, making my whole workflow more efficient. The board, all my outboard gear, and even my keyboard are within arm’s reach! Having room for two 4K monitors is really helpful too, especially during precision editing like vocal tuning with Melodyne or noise removal with iZotope Rx.

 

Music industry was and is going through major changes these years, how do you see its current state and what advice would you give to someone starting out?

I think there is an increasing demand for independent audio engineers and smaller project studios with affordable rates and artist-first business policies, so I would say the future for audio engineers will require us to be adaptable and willing to work on projects outside of our comfort zones. A piece of advice I have been giving out more recently is instead of running ads to get the kind of clients you want, just do your best and consistently put the artist and music first, and in doing so, the right clients will find you!

I can imagine, that this is not just advice, but a tried-and-tested method for you.

Absolutely!

 

AI is gaining more and more ground these days, how do you see it affecting or changing the business and the industry?

I don’t use AI in my workflow personally, and it’s hard to imagine a future where I would. I see AI being used a lot for show flyers and content creation, but beyond that I don’t see it being useful for helping new artists or bands. I guess coming from a live-performance background, where the way a song translates to a live audience is more important than getting playlisted on Spotify, the AI tools for music making just don’t appeal to me. But it clearly appeals to quite a few producers so unless it’s regulated, I suppose AI will continue to grow in usage in the music industry.

 

How do you see the future of Cactus House, what are the short and long-term goals you wish to achieve?

As far as short term, I’m hoping in the next year or two to be able to quit my part-time jobs and focus on the studio and making music full-time. Long term, I would like to eventually lease a commercial space and expand Cactus House into a bigger facility, but until then we’ll just be focused on the artists we are working with! We also have our first baby on the way, due next April, so having more time for family will be a priority in the near future!

 

I wish you the best of health and joy with this new chapter!!! Good days ahead! And now it is my honour to ask you to contribute a song to our Buso playlist!

Thank you and we wish the same for you and the Buso Audio team as well! I’ll go with “Blood on the Page” off of Dark Satellite’s latest album Splitting Image!