Meet Johnny Abreu | Producer/Recording Engineer known as Johnny Hits

We had the good fortune of connecting with Johnny Abreu and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Johnny, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I started playing piano at the age of 5, recording at the ripe age of 12 years old, at 18 graduated high school and enrolled at Chico State University under their recording arts program and transferred to San Francisco State and got my Bachelors Degree in Radio & Television with Audio Production emphasis. During my time there they gave me an internship opportunity at Coast Recorders in San Francisco on their Mission Street location where I helped Dan Alexander (owner of Coast) move from Mission St. to 3rd and Howard. From there I then got a job at Bill Graham Presents where I was able to get some on hands behind the scenes experience with live concerts at Shoreline Amphitheater, as well as the rebuilt Fillmore in 1994 and The Stone (all owned by Bill Graham Presents at the time). So after many years working under other people it was natural at some point that I start my own recording studio.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I formed Red Eye Recording Studios with the bassist, William Dougherty, of my then band Payne & Eden. We operated the studio together form 1997 to about early 2000. He then wanted to move on to do other things so we agreed that I would buy out his investment of equipment. So I paid off his part and kept all the gear that we had purchased together and continued to operate the business while also maintaining a full time job. I named it Red Eye Recording Studios for the late night session time since I worked from 9am to 5pm full-time, and could only run the studio from 6pm to midnight. I did this for more than 10 years when I finally quit my day job and turned it into a 7 day per week noon to midnight availability recording studio. After about 5 years and many 16 hour days on my own I had various engineers that I brought on to the team to assist with the crazy schedule, which many of them would last only about 3 to 6 months and would either flake on sessions or just not be fully engaged. Every single engineer I have had work for me claimed to love music and I kept reminding them that this job is not for people who just think music is a cool job, it’s for people who literally love music and will give their life to it. If you can’t be a slave to music you most likely won’t last in music. But if you are willing to be paid very little and work a lot of hours it will for sure pay you many times over in the long run. I have been lucky to stay busy and be blessed with people who appreciate my dedication to keeping the business running and staying on top of the latest technology changes in music. I am constantly reading and taking classes to stay on top of the latest trends in music. At the end of the day you better know your audience and who you are producing the music for. I have been blessed to have my Son “Lil Hitz” working with me in this business and he has been the anchor on the regrowth of the studio. He brings a young energy to the place and has been producing music as well as song-writing and helping artists make their best music ever. I also had a long-time engineer of Red Eye Recording Studios Manuel Rodriquez V (aka Haz) work for us for over 7 years before he finally had to make a career change due to having a child and getting married. So his life circumstances changed and he wanted a more reasonable work schedule. He was one of the best engineers I have worked with and I hope one day he will return to working in music again.

Outside of all of this, we have focused on Music Distribution and we partnered with Believe Digital (a Sony Company) to provide full music distribution for local artists to have their own label and a real partnered distributor that can help them get a larger fan base reach than Distrokid or these other paid for release platforms. They provide full support and give one on one advice for how to properly launch a release and get the best results for your music. In addition to this we have a graphic designer on board to make any design and we have full video production as well for music video production.

So from day one to today we have grown as a locally known business to be your go to place for music production. My brother Gerard also owns a T-Shirt printing business in Santa Cruz so this has also opened up new opportunities for my artist clients to be able to make one-off prints or small orders of shirts for a very affordable price.

All in all, I would also like to thank your company for taking the time to interview us!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If we had a visitor from out of town then I would recommend the comedy club. I always love the local Comedy Club in San Jose. There’s a great restaurant I recently went to with family called Sauced BBQ, so I would definitely take them here. Going to see live music I would recommend Boom Boom Room in San Francisco. It’s a small venue and let’s you hear music how it is supposed to be heard. I love to see live music so you can’t really go wrong no matter who is playing.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would love to shout out Dan Alexander from Coast Recorders. I learned a lot from being in his studio and being around amazing talented musicians. Also shout out to Bill Graham Presents and company as they were a key impression on how I saw the structure of the music business as well as the love of music they shared with me. I would like to Shout out Lil Hitz (my son) for keeping up with the non-stop grind of hours and always challenging himself to learn new things in music.  Shoutout to my loving wife who puts up with my crazy schedule and has been the backbone of support to help me succeed! And finally shout out to my parents who have recently passed but will always be remembered and who always supported me spiritually to pursue my love of music, as you know many parents say it’s not a job, but not them!

Website: www.redeyerecordingstudios.com

Instagram: instagram.com/johnnyhits

Twitter: twitter.com/johnnyhits

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnny.hits.3

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/red-eye-recording-studios-san-jose-2