Heyhey Inrockers and Welcome to The Lobby … here as we are every month, wandering our way through time together in the pages of the mighty InRock.

As we make our way into the colder months Goo Goo Dolls performed our final public show of 2021 in Mt. Pleasant Michigan a couple of weeks ago (indoors), kind of a strange year for sure, but we feel fortunate to be able to play any shows at all after such a dreadful year for traveling and gatherings and hopefully we’ll have a full touring season next year here in the US. We have a many months long touring schedule lined up, all domestic dates here in the US at this point, and we hope to see international travel return soon so we can continue playing around the world! In the meantime, we continue to work on the new release (due out this spring) and are beyond excited at the idea of getting back out to playing music for people on a regular basis, the band’s always better that way, and well, things just feel right when all the elements are working together!

As I’ve been here in Buffalo, NY for the past few months I’ve gotten to spend a little more time down at my GCR Audio recording studios in the Allentown neighborhood of our city. I’ve been working in that space for nearly 40 years, starting as an apprentice recording engineer in 1984 and working with many local bands including the early Goo Goo Dolls recordings which were done in the Studio A space of the 3-studio facility. Originally known as Trackmaster Audio, the studio hosted acts such as Yes, Melanie, Rick James, Yo Yo Ma, Ani DiFranco and my band recorded the entirety of our first 3 albums there, continuing to use the space since on many of our projects for the band over the years.

My partner John and I took the space over from the owners in 2010, redesigned and remodeled the space with the legendary studio designer John Storyk as “Inner Machine Studios”. It was retooled for modern recording processes, and we began to record our Something for the Rest of Us album and using the space as a base for the band’s then new album. In 2014 I opened the studio to the general public for recording sessions as “GCR Audio” and have since hosted artists such as Lil Wayne, B.O.B., Passion Pit, Jessie J, Moe, Aqueous, Man O War, James Taylor, Griselda Records and of course Goo Goo Dolls.

We recently have been doing a ton of hip hop recording as Buffalo has been experiencing a huge wave of exciting hip-hop artists breaking internationally through a group of artists who call themselves Griselda Records, Benny The Butcher, Conway and West Side Gunn are the primary artists and we’ve been lucky enough to host many of their sessions as they gain notoriety in the rap world. This action has brought many young artists to our facility, and we’ve decided to open another location right down the block from the main studio space with 2 small production studios and a common live room for bands to rehearse and record in. It’s an exciting time here in Buffalo and I’m so glad that our studio is part of this promising time in our local music scene.

Ok, I’m headed back down to the studio again now, you know the holidays are coming up soon, there’s some brand-new Goo-Goo Dolls Christmas stuff out there this year for all of you to hear, check that out! Hope you are having a great month so far and I hope next month’s even better as the holidays get into full swing! See you in the next issue with jingle bells on and a whole bunch of Holiday Cheer for your Christmas Time !!!!

All the best and we’ll talk soon !!!

Peace …

Robby