Rob Knecht
guitars, keys, engineer
When asked to talk about some of his earliest music experiences, there are two memories that stand out for Rob. The first is when he was four years old. As he wandered down the stairs of his family's house well into the midnight hours, Rob came upon the final remnants of a dinner party being thrown by his parents. Wondering what all the noise was about, Rob enters into the living room to find none other than Tony Bennett crooning away for all the guests. Turns out that Tony was an acquaintance of his father, and after desert and coffee had been served, the party revelers had talked Tony into singing a song or two.
Skip forward about four years, and we find Rob and his brother Jon deep inside the fortress of Madison Square Garden, watching in awe as a wave of pyrotechnics welcomed Gene Simmons and the members of KISS to the stage. So inspired by the theatrics, Rob spent hours at the following Halloween dressing up as Gene, full makeup included!
Rob has been around music one way or another most of his life, sometimes as a musician, sometimes as a technician. Having worked with several bands, from Groove Politics in the '90s, to working with Drej on the Halls Corner Band project in the late '90s, Rob also put his time in behind the stage. He worked sound and lights for a theatre, working with such acts as Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Wayne Newton and Peter, Paul and Mary.
In between his musical interests and experiences, Rob was also a professional sailor, piloting and sailing vessels all over the Western map. Some of his favorite stops were the Azores and the Balearic Islands, before settling down back in the Boston area.
Rob started working with Will (a.k.a Miro) on his solo acoustic project in the early part of 2004, and with Drej on his solo efforts in late 2004. Acting as a middle man with a strong hunch, Rob brought Will and Drej together for collaboration in late 2004/early 2005, leading eventually to the formation of the Cove. Working to build the original Cove Street Studios meant a lot of leveraging of credit cards and debt. With the help of Chris Holden (co-producer and founder of music2film), Rob got the studio sounding great, only to find out that he was going to have to move house, and would have to rebuild in a new location. This started a series of temporary studio relocations, all being renamed appropriately, including the rise and fall of Dead Mouse Studios, the Barn Studios and finally ending up at the final and current resting spot, the Womb.
Looking back, Rob recalls "You should have seen Cove Street Studios in the early days. There we were in the middle of winter, in the studio, which was nothing more than a barn. No heat. Just an old gas stove that we had to light with a match. We could only burn it for an hour at a time before the fumes would get to the point of making us feel like we were going to blackout! Our ISO booth was an unusable bathroom, and the stool to sit on for recording the guitars was the toilet. But hey, that first collaboration with the three of us, a song called 'Love Inside' is now featured on the Cove's latest release, 'Back To Vienna'."
"Music is like sex - good, bad, indifferent, you just want to be involved."
