Music trumps money

Ryan Strassburg wakes up every morning about 8, drains a cup of coffee and sits down to work in a dark room with lowered shades, an electric piano and a mattress propped against the window to keep the sound from waking the neighbors.

The Corona del Mar man lives in one of the choicest neighborhoods in town, a suburban stretch fewer than two blocks from East Coast Highway. But he spends most days indoors in his second-floor apartment, recording the beginnings of songs on a small digital recorder. Sometimes he painstakingly copies them on sheet music. As Strassburg jots down melodies, he considers his vocal range as well as ones higher and lower — since one of his dreams, in addition to recording his own music, is to have his work covered by the top Nashville country artists.

He has no paycheck or benefits, no steady income. At the start of this year, Strassburg quit all his odd jobs and dedicated himself to his lifelong passion. The sociology degree he earned from Cal State Long Beach hangs unused outside his bedroom door, while books on songwriting litter the composing room and line the bookshelves outside.

When he needs a break from songwriting, he walks around his neighborhood by the beach or heads to a tiny recording studio near the Irvine Spectrum Center. The producer, a longtime friend of Strassburg, once employed him as a right-hand man at a Christmas tree lot and sometimes pays him to run errands. During their sessions, he mans the control board while the artist runs over guitar riffs, improvises lyrics, crafts songs a piece at a time.

Strassburg has three CDs to his credit, all funded and released with his own money. None appears in record stores, but thanks to the singer’s profiles on MySpace and CD Baby, his music is available anywhere in the world with a few clicks of the mouse. Right now, he’s content running his career on his own terms. He’s never signed a lucrative contract or gotten a video on MTV, but he’s also never had to convince a roomful of testy executives that his latest album really does have a hit single.

In short, Strassburg — who still remembers being 3 years old and watching his mother break down when she heard Elvis Presley had died — has fulfilled his dream of delivering his music to the world. The audience may be slim and the payments small, but the other barriers are out of the way.

“I’m always looking,” Strassburg, 34, said during a break from composing. “As an artist, I don’t want to become complacent.”

Strassburg may represent an extreme case of an artist dropping everything to pursue a music career, but in other ways, he’s typical of a young generation of musicians operating under the radar of Rolling Stone. As record stores close and major labels struggle, the Internet — which makes artists like Strassburg as easy to access online as Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Madonna — has turned pop music into a more crowded field than ever.

Newport-Mesa, which has a thriving live music scene, recording studios and even a major-label affiliate office, is no exception. Browse Web retailers like iTunes or CD Baby and you may find songs recorded by your local paralegal, a member of your church or your children’s substitute teacher. You may also hear a professional-sounding track that was recorded digitally in a Westside living room. In some ways, the digital age has made it harder than ever to achieve rock stardom; the competition has grown more intense, and record sales don’t dominate the way they once did. But for an artist with a guitar, a book of songs and a few thousand dollars, it’s an enticing time to get a career started.

“The Internet is changing the industry as a whole,” said Jon Reiser, the co-owner in charge of booking bands at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa. “It’s really in transition at this point. Between MySpace and iTunes, the bands are really able to do it themselves and get exposure without being on the radio. There are dozens of bands worldwide that become relatively large without ever taking that traditional path.”

For the next five days, the Daily Pilot will look at the Newport-Mesa music scene from a number of angles. Some stories will focus on artists who hone their craft while pursuing day jobs, or ones who make music their sole means of support; others will focus on the steps artists take to produce and promote their work. The Pilot will also visit several recording studios around the Newport-Mesa area, and check in with a punk music legend who now serves as a mentor to — and makes Subway sandwiches for — younger musicians.

On a spring afternoon, producer Richard Bredice sat in the cramped control room of the studio in Irvine where he works every week. Strassburg, one of his most loyal clients, had shown up to start work on his fourth album, and he didn’t have much yet — a guitar riff here, a chord progression there. As Strassburg improvised at the microphone, Bredice recorded snippets and played them back, sometimes tacking on electronic bass and drums.

Next to the front door, a catalog for Disc Makers — a New Jersey-based CD duplicator — lay on top of a portable refrigerator. The headline on the cover read, “We won’t tell anyone you only paid 89 cents.”

Bredice, who has co-owned Woodland Bredice Studios for 11 years, has learned over the years to play multiple roles: producer, songwriting partner, one-man backing band. Some artists come to him looking to record demos; others want to make polished albums. One of his recent clients was a Corona del Mar High School student looking to shop her work to major labels. Bredice negotiates prices with all his artists, sometimes recording their work for next to nothing.

“If they’re starving musicians, I’ll give them a special rate,” said Bredice, who plays in a band of his own, Missiles of October. “I’ll help people get it done.”

Strassburg, who met the producer through a friend of a friend, recorded two of his first three albums in the Irvine studio. His work is sandy roots rock, Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne with a country twist, dominated by acoustic rhythm guitars and Strassburg’s weathered, slightly breathy Midwestern drawl. When he hit the studio in April, he wasn’t sure what kind of an album he wanted to make — maybe a studio one, maybe even one recorded live. On this warm Saturday afternoon, though, he and Bredice had nothing but time.

“Let’s keep changing the tempos, and you do whatever comes into your head,” Bredice said. He adjusted the controls, then added, “And then we’ll have a whole record’s worth of stuff.”

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To chack out the Daily Pilot’s six-part series on the Newport-Mesa music scene, click here.

NEWPORT-MESA’S GREATEST HITS

Ever burned a mix CD for your family or friends? You may have included the Beatles, OutKast, Fiona Apple or other major-label favorites. But there’s plenty of talent around Newport-Mesa as well. Try venturing onto iTunes or CD Baby and checking out these tracks recorded in your own backyard.

 “Child of Kentucky,” Ryan Strassburg: Backed by only an acoustic guitar and a plaintive harmonica, the Corona del Mar roots rocker indulges his folk side with a love ballad that might have come out of the songbook of Dylan or Guthrie.

 “Under the Knife,” Vanessa Jourdan: A scathing — and rocking — satire of female beauty standards, sung in the voice of an insecure woman (I hear the buzz on the street/At present I am incomplete) who pines for the surgeon’s knife to improve her features.

 “Cyclone,” Kerry Getz: This highlight from her 1997 debut album, “Apollo,” draws you in with its lilting melody, a gorgeous accordion backing and Getz’s effortless vocal. Then you listen to the words more closely and it turns out to be a murder ballad.

 “Blame Game,” Dominion Status: Lead singer Dereck Blackman — the son of a Trinidad music legend — applies his hoarse, soulful voice to this heartfelt plea for romantic reconciliation.

 “Her Command,” The Growlers: A murky but richly melodic rocker, powered by a swaggering guitar riff, that evokes some of the primitive power of the early Rolling Stones.

 “Coors Lite,” The Japanese Motors: A catchy rockabilly raver, lifted high by Alex Knost’s twangy lead vocal, which the Motors recorded — as they always do — on an old-fashioned tape machine.

 “Kind Hearted Woman Blues,” Parker Macy Blues: Macy, one of the artists who record at Costa Mesa’s eVocal studio, opened his first album with this vulnerable cover of a classic by Delta blues legend Robert Johnson.

 “Venus de Milo,” D.I.: Granted, Casey Royer wasn’t a Balboa resident yet when he recorded this cut from the 1984 “Team Goon” album. Still, this twisted tale — which turns out to have next to nothing to do with the famous Greek statue — shows him at his in-your-face best.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.