Steve Kravac
Steven B. Kravac (born June 17, 1964), is a Canadian-born RIAA gold-accredited record producer, recording engineer, musician and composer. He is the owner of the music label Porterhouse Records and its sub-labels Porterhouse Prime Vinyl and Porterhouse 101. He has produced albums for MXPX, Pepper, Less Than Jake, Tsunami Bomb, and Home Grown among others. Known for achieving a polished radio friendly sound, many of the acts he has worked with have enjoyed a moderate amount of commercial success. Life and career Steve Kravac was born in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, a suburb of the City of Vancouver. He attended Burnaby North Secondary School and while in high school began playing drums and founded his first band, Social Outcasts who played locally in support of punk acts DOA and the Angelic Upstarts. He graduated in 1982, and shortly thereafter moved across Canada to the city Montreal where he resided for twelve years. While in Montreal he attended Concordia University for two years studying photography and film before leaving the school to pursue music as a full-time career. At this time he began working on his first commercial productions including records from Canadian bands Doughboys, Asexuals and Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra. He also joined the punk band My Dog Popper, and played drums on two records as well as performing live with the group and in their side project Johnny Neon Beef. Later he would join forces with noted Canadian songwriter Alex Soria of the band The Nils. to form Los Patos, a pop rock music vehicle for Soria's songs. The line up consisted of Soria on guitar and vocals, Stephan (Hams) Hamel on bass and Kravac on drums and background vocals. The project was short lived, but one commercial track was released, a cover of Donovan's "Changes" which was on Island of Circles, a tribute album to Donovan released on the Vancouver, B.C.-based Nettwerk Records. In 1994 shortly after the Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, a recording engineer position became available at Westbeach Recorders. Well known in the punk rock community, Westbeach was located in Hollywood and co-owned by Brett Gurewitz of Epitaph Records and his business partner, noted recording engineer Donnell Cameron. With a little prompting from Youth Brigade drummer Mark Stern, Donnell asked Kravac to forward him a demo reel of his work. Cameron was impressed enough with the contents of the demo to offer Kravac a position at Westbeach and three months later in March 1994 Kravac moved to Los Angeles to take the job. Kravac would remain at Westbeach for the next five years and during that time began recording some of the acts that he would eventually be best known for working with. One of the first sessions he engineered upon arrival in L.A. was the album "Cheshire Cat" by Blink-182. The record released on Cargo Records went on to be a successful release for the band and provided a springboard to other production and engineering opportunities. One of those opportunities