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WCA #588 with Joe Costa– Ordering Lunch with William Shatner, Berklee School of Music, Mixing from Home, and Reading the Room

March 23, 2026·1 hr 3 min·5 clips

William Shatner wouldn't let Joe Costa order Thai food because he had a stack of Baja Fresh coupons.

Matt Boudreaux keeps the setup pretty direct. He introduces Joe Costa as an engineer and mixer, mentions Ben Folds and William Shatner, and credits Lidge Shaw for the recommendation. Before the interview settles in, Matt's rant is about knowing your value when someone asks what you charge for mixing, mastering, or recording. Joe's story starts without much shine. At Synchro Sound in Boston, he was still in college, interning and trying to be useful fast. One small studio moment changed things. An engineer asked for an RE20 and some other microphones, saw that Joe knew what they were, and decided to keep using him as an assistant. Then the whole thing took a hard turn. Two weeks later, that engineer went to jail, and the steady assisting path Joe could almost see disappeared before it really started. He kept going anyway. The studio made him weekend manager, a job he quickly learned was not for him, though he gets why some people love that role. Staff engineering came next, with different sessions and more reps. The bigger reset came when he moved to Nashville and accepted that he had to start over. That part lands because he was only a year or two into the climb, so starting again did not mean throwing away a whole career. Nashville meant being humble in public. He went back to studios, internships, and assisting at places like Treasure Isle and House of Cards. Tom Harding is the named door-opener there. Working with him at Treasure Isle taught Joe how engineers read rooms, build trust, and get asked back. The episode closes in the same working-audio lane, with Matt pointing listeners to Working Class Audio's Audio Life forum on Gearspace for talk about work life, health, hearing loss, and the rest of the job.

As heard by us

A practical studio-career conversation with grounded advice and useful shop talk.

Working Class Audio presents Joe Costa's career as a steady lesson in knowing what one's work is worth, moving from internships and assisting to a reset in Nashville and then into independent work.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Joe Costa on knowing your value, starting over in Nashville, and finding a path from intern to independent engineer.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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