In the last few weeks, Cleveland has lost a couple of significant figures in vastly different areas of its creative scene.
Studio owner/producer/engineer Bill Korecky was known as a gruff curmudgeon, who could be hard on the bands he worked with. But underneath that exterior and his often tough critiques of area bands was a person who rooted for them to succeed. He was widely mostly for the metal bands he recorded and produced at his studio Mars Recording: Mushroomhead, Environmental Hazzard, Hatrix, the Spudmonsters, Incantation and Mystik among others. But his studio also turned out recordings for hardcore, punk and alternative acts such as Integrity, Face Value, Outface, Ringworm, Lestat, Beatnik Termites, Ringworm, Craw, the Heathers, Brandtson, and Keelhaul. Conversations with Korecky about the local music scene were always amusing, entertaining and above all enlightening.
Writer Joyce Brabner was known to many as the wife of graphic novelist/storyteller Harvey Pekar of American Splendor Fame whom she married in 1984. But Brabner wasn’t the type to be subsumed in someone else but she was a major creative talent in her own right, both collaborating with Pekar and writing numerous books and graphic stories of her own, including writing the 1994 book Our Cancer Year with Pekar about his struggle with cancer. Pekar passed away in 2010 but Brabner soldiered on, both producing her own work, and tending to Pekar’s legacy. She died following her own battle with cancer which she documented in her social media posts.
One Response to “Cleveland Loses Noted Music Producer Bill Korecky and Writer Joyce Brabner”
John McGrail
The first recording I ever released we (my band “A Grey Sky”) did at Mars Studio when it was on Brookpark Road. He was very talented and professional. I enjoyed working with him.