A singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and GRAMMY-winning producer who's worked with some of music's biggest stars, Mikey Freedom Hart built his career out of a lifelong love for music.
As a kid, that love manifested as simple awe. But as Hart got older, he became more invested in learning instruments and writing/producing himself — and ultimately, he started to discover how the building blocks of music-making can all lead up to the powerful, pure experience of music that is part of some of his early memories.
"I grew up between Lake Charles, Louisiana and New Orleans," Hart explains in this week's episode of Behind The Board. "There's a specific sound to a band walking down the street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and the way that the brass instruments ricochet off the buildings there."
It's a musical memory that sticks with him to this day. "When I'm in that space even now, it's like, you come into contact with something that's both nostalgic and really necessary in the moment," he adds.
Hart's awe-inspiring experience wasn't limited to live performances. "When I was little, I used to love to go to the record store, we were buying CDs," he recalls. "I remember you would get the CD, and if they had the big thick booklet with all the info, I was like, so gassed, because I could sit there and listen to it and read all about it as it went."
Once he got older and started playing instruments, he began to figure out how to use his experiences of musical magic to create some new magic of his own.
"As I started playing in bands, you start working on music with people, you start to realize that those experiences, you can carry forward into the creation of a record," Hart notes. "You go from being a kid and experiencing something as a sort of magic, and then realizing, it's still magic, but there's ways that you can accomplish it."
Press play on the video above to watch Hart's full interview — shot at his Brooklyn studio, Big Mercy Sound — and keep checking GRAMMY.com for more episodes of Behind The Board.