Engineers

Greg started working at Chicago Mastering Service as an intern in 2012. He now owns the studio.

Greg was born in 1990 in Oak Park, Illinois. He was drawn to music from a very young age, largely thanks to his six older brothers who were always playing the local alternative radio station around the house and impressing their new favorite bands upon him. His parents bought him a bass guitar for Christmas when he was 10 and thus set him off on a lifetime of pursuing music.

He attended Bennington College where he studied music theory, composition, and performance. It was there that he discovered a love for recording music. He graduated in 2012 and immediately set out on finding an internship in Chicago. As a big fan of founder Bob Weston’s band Shellac, Chicago Mastering Service was the first place he reached out to. That November, he found himself helping out with menial tasks around the studio, and eventually working as an assistant engineer.

Over the years, friends would periodically inquire with Greg about mastering a record, and then owners Bob and Jason Ward were gracious enough to let him get some experience behind the console. A couple of records a year became a handful of records a year, and then an armful, and so on. By the late 2010’s, mastering records became the primary focus of his job at CMS.

In addition to his work at the studio, Greg began mixing at music venues in Chicago. Eventually he started hitting the road as a mixing engineer and/or tour manager working with the likes of Jessica Pratt, Protomartyr, and more. He would also record bands here and there at studios in town. All the while he was pursuing his own musical endeavors with his bands Stuck, Yeesh, Clearance, and his record label Born Yesterday Records. 

In 2024, Bob shared news that he would be moving to Portugal. Greg made an offer to take the studio off of Bob’s hands, and he trusted Greg to uphold Chicago Mastering Service’s legacy. 

Greg has mastered releases from record labels such as ANTI, Atlantic, Carpark, Double Double Whammy, Exploding In Sound, Fat Possum, Feel It, Fire Talk, International Anthem, Matador, Merge, Numero Group, Secretly Canadian, Sub Pop, Run For Cover, Sacred Bones, Secretly Canadian, Topshelf, and Winspear to name a few.

On the rare occasion Greg is not doing something music related, you can find him playing video games, lifting weights, reading sci-fi, or cooking a delicious meal.

Manae Solara Vaughn is a recording artist, touring musician, & audio engineer. She has been an Assistant Mastering Engineer at Chicago Mastering Service since 2023. Her bands “oux”, “Tenci”, and “dmb the etymology” showcase her talents as a multi-instrumentalist songwriter & producer. She was trained in music composition & live sound at Columbia College.