A Port Coquitlam producer, engineer and songwriter has been nominated for a Juno award in the Engineer of the Year category.
Ryan Worsley, founder of the PoCo studio Echoplant Sound, discovered he had been nominated for the award earlier this week after submitting two samples of his work to Canada’s most prestigious music awards.
“It’s super, super exciting and I’m very honoured and humbled to even be considered for this award,” said Worsley, adding, “It’s been kind of a lifelong dream to be nominated.”
This is the first time Worsley has been singled out for a Juno nomination; in the past, he has ridden into Juno awards ceremonies on the backs of musicians and singers. But never has Worsley been distinguished on his own.
In the 14 years since Worsley started Echoplant in Coquitlam — the studio has since moved to a bigger commercial space in PoCo that can handle “anything less than an orchestra” — he and small group of engineers have mostly produced rock and pop music.
“It’s one of the fastest growing studios in western Canada and it can compete with pretty much any studio around,” he said.
But as new sounds cut across once defined genres, so, too, has the nature of the work that goes into producing that music.
In the past, an engineer’s wheelhouse was setting up the studio and in front of the mixing console, while a producer would be in charge of overseeing a recording’s sonic footprint. These days, Worsley said technology has helped to blur the lines between those two jobs. But that has also offered Worsley a variety of roles in developing new talent.
“I really like to find the artists who I think have potential and work with them from an early stage. It’s rewarding because I can help develop the band's sound,” said Worsley.
Two of those new sounds can be found in Worsley’s submissions to the Juno’s. One, Edmonton artist Nuela Charles — a Canadian, Kenyan and Swiss musician known for blending elements of soul, jazz, hip hop and pop — recorded an album with Worsley that was nominated in 2018 for a Juno in the Adult Contemporary Album of the Year category.
For this year’s nomination, Worsley also submitted an album he worked on with the Metro Vancouver group Ludic, what Worsley describes as a young, up-and-coming band that has carved out a genre of its own through a mix of jazz, funk, classic rock and pop.
Worsley said he is excited to be a part of a weekend celebrating Canadian music, especially in an age when most young people listening to music through apps like Spotify often lose touch with a band’s geographical roots and local influences. The Junos, he said, are a moment and place where the industry and music lovers can rally around and stay connected with Canadian music.
“A lot of young listeners don’t know that who they’re listening to are actually from Canada, from their city,” he said.
The 2020 Juno awards will be held over a March weekend in Saskatoon, Sask.
Perhaps fitting for a behind-the-scenes distinction, the Engineer of the Year award, Worsley’s category, will get announced at the gala the night before the TV broadcast.
“People don’t want to see me on TV. They want to see Michael Bublé,” Worsley said.
