Seattle Musician Joe Reineke Talks Macklemore, Surviving Cancer

A few weeks ago, Seattle musician Joe Reineke (The Meices, Alien Crime Syndicate) played a show with indie rock band Joseph Giant at the modest Lo Fi performance gallery on Eastlake Avenue. He strapped on his bass guitar – an instrument he doesn’t normally play at gigs – complete with thumping flatwound strings and rocked. 

“I wanted to join a band where I had a really low level of responsibility,” Reineke says while sitting in a Ravenna café and enjoying a cup of coffee. “And playing bass is like a vacation. You don’t have to book any gigs or sing the songs, you just have to be there with the drummer in the pocket.” 

While playing a show at Lo Fi isn’t the most noteworthy thing in the world for a Seattle musician, the low-key set is notable for Reineke, who underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation for a throat cancer diagnosis this past September.  

“Everything got put on hold,” he says. “I’m rolling back into the music thing and singing songs again now. I’m a motherf*ckin’ survivor!” 

He finished treatments at the end of 2015. 

Now, Reineke, who also owns the recording studio Orbit Audio on First Avenue South in Seattle, is calm, relaxed and even jokey. His clear, sharp eyes take in the room around him. He sits confidently. Last year, he helped co-engineer the new Macklemore and Ryan Lewis record, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made. 

“They [came] in and out of the studio for the better part of the year,” Reineke recalls. “One time they showed up with a whole trailer full of couches and lamps that they wanted to bring in the studio. So me co-engineering their record was partially carrying in couches and lamps to set it up and vibe it out even more.” 

Reineke has been producing records and engineering in Seattle for nearly 20 years at Orbit. The Florida native moved here in 1999 from San Francisco. On Christmas in 2002, he was eating with Seattle-based Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, who Reineke knew from his days as the frontman for bands ACS and Meices. “Duff was like, ‘I have all this studio stuff in storage in L.A. and you can use it.’ I had always had studios in my bedrooms from San Francisco to Seattle, so I was like, ‘Yeah! Well, what is it?’” 

McKagan had a big mixing board and a tape machine, so Reineke drove a van shortly thereafter to Los Angeles and grabbed the gear, which he bought outright from McKagan. (R&B singer Seal ended up purchasing McKagan’s microphones and outboard gear.) In that same week, a friend of a friend had to give up his 2,200-square-foot studio space and Reineke jumped on it. 

“In the span of about a week, I said ‘yes’ to lots of opportunities,” he says. “I didn’t know how it would work, but somehow, with divine assistance, it lined up. It was a huge risk, though. I wasn’t a trust fund baby. I had a dream and it was becoming reality – and I was going to make it work [come] hell or high water.” 

Since then, he’s also founded a Washington state-licensed school, Seattle Recording Arts, to teach audio engineering and video game audio production at Orbit.

“There’s no other school like this in Seattle,” he says. “Classes are held at Orbit. We start the day in a classroom explaining the fundamentals. Then we move into the studio for the hands-on exercises for the rest of the day.”

Tuition for the school ranges depending on the course load, but Reineke said it’s generally about $24,000 per academic year and the only requirement is that students hold a high school degree. Classes, slated often during mornings, generally number about eight students. 

Professional aims aside, Reineke is happy to be able to re-enter the world of playing music after his health issues. Along with his gigs with Joseph Giant, he plays the acoustic 12-string in a duo with his wife Karyn, who plays the harmonium. 

“Last summer,” he says, “we went and toured around Europe. We called it a ‘tourcation.’” 

As things continue to progress, Reineke says he will still record artists at Orbit as well as further the aims of his school. “Our plan is to keep expanding and offer more programs,” he says. “We want to be a digital arts academy.”