John McEntire

John McEntire sits at the center of the “post-rock” movement that united Chicago’s fertile rock and jazz scenes in the 1990s, with McEntire’s two bands The Sea and Cake and Tortoise the genre’s leading lights. In addition to his accomplished drumming in those two bands, McEntire has served as arranger and producer for each, as well as for dozens of other acts. His greatest innovation was in his use of the Pro Tools digital audio workstation software: while Garbage’s Grammy-winning 1998 album Version 2.0, produced by Butch Vig, is often credited as the first major work of the Pro Tools era, McEntire beat Vig to the punch by over a year with The Sea and Cake’s The Fawn and Stereolab’s magnum opus Dots and Loops.

McEntire’s Soma Electronic Music Studio was a fixture in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood for decades before relocating to California, first to Los Angeles in 2014 and then to hippie capital Nevada City (hometown of Joanna Newsom) in 2018.