DOUG McCLEMENT BIO April 2000

Doug McClement became interested in audio as a teenager, working in stereo stores and playing in bands around his home town of Kingston, Ontario. He set up Comfort Sound, a four track studio in his parents’ basement in 1973, recording demos for local bands and songwriters.

After graduating with an Honours Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University in 1975, he moved to Toronto, where he worked as a computer programmer for TD bank during the day, while running a home studio at night and on weekends. By 1978, the studio was busy enough for Doug to quit the bank, expand to eight track and go full time into recording. He also started to get requests from studio clients to record their bands on location. After a couple of years of taking gear out of the studio for these remotes, he purchased a cube van to accommodate the expanding live recording business.

In the early 80’s, Comfort Sound expanded to 16 and then 24 tracks. Doug engineered hundreds of live radio broadcasts for CHUM-FM, Q107, and CFNY, as well as some of the earliest stereo television programs in Canada: the CHUM/CITY simulcasts. The studio moved downtown in 1984, and the business shifted more towards audio post production for tv. The CHUM/CITY connection led to MuchMusic being Comfort’s biggest client, as the mobile was used for all their concert recording. Doug was also being hired by various tv networks to fly portable recording systems around the globe to tape music specials in Nigeria, Spain, the Middle East, Germany and Jamaica.

Comfort built a large, 48 track mobile in a five ton truck in 1987, expanding its territory to upstate New York and Quebec, and made a second remote system available in flight cases for worldwide shipment.

In 1994, Doug sold the studio part of the business and established LiveWire Remote Recorders in order to concentrate solely on live recording. Recent clients include The Rolling Stones, Annie Lennox, Van Halen, Joni Mitchell, and Billy Graham, and Garth Brooks.

A third system, the 48 track Tourpack, was added to the LiveWire equipment list in 1998. The Tourpack is designed for bands who want to document several performances on a national tour with minimal setup.

Doug has been nominated four times for a Gemini Award for Best Sound in a TV Variety Program, and has received platinum albums for engineering Blue Rodeo’s "Diamond Mine" and "Five Days in July", and "Bargainville" for Moxy Fruvous.