Susan Schmidt Horning Interview
Dr. Susan Schmidt Horning is Associate Professor of History at St. John’s University. She’s the author of Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP. (In case you’re interested, she donated the interviews for the project to the Nunn Center for Oral History.)
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
My circuitous path: In junior high school I and three girlfriends formed a rock band, The Poor Girls. We were fourteen, still in school, but we got a manager who booked us for weekend gigs and more extended summer gigs in Northeast Ohio, including opening for Cream and Steppenwolf at the Akron Civic Theatre. After high school the band broke up, but the bass player and I continued working together. I studied at Berklee College of Music from 1971-72, then returned to Ohio and to playing in bands, everything from wedding gigs and lounge acts to working with Peter Laughner, co-founder of Pere Ubu.
In 1978 the bass player, Debbie Smith, drummer Rich Roberts, and I formed Chi-Pig. We recorded an album at Criteria Studios in Miami, never got signed to a label, broke up, and I moved to New York. I did a little session work while working for Ze Records, played with The Swollen Monkeys and a few other groups, but after I got married in 1982, I stopped playing professionally. Enrolled in college with the goal of getting a liberal arts education, became fascinated with the study of history and went on to graduate school, thinking I had left music behind. My doctoral program in the history of technology got me thinking about recording engineers, and I remembered when my first band did a demo at Cleveland Recording how fascinated I had been by what the engineer was able to do. That interest turned into my dissertation, and then my book, Chasing Sound. I am a tenured associate professor in the department of history at St. John’s University, Queens. Currently, I am writing a history of all-girl rock bands in the 1960s. So, that musical life I thought I had left, never left me.