John Custer - COL Producer

Excerpts taken from John's Bio HERE

Award winning songwriter and Grammy-nominated producer, John Custer began his career as a studio session guitarist. By age 23, Custer was providing guitar tracks for the #1 scoring house in America, New York's Vision Sound Studios. Custer played guitar on National Television Ads for VH-1, Ford, Jovan, Mazda, Revlon, and Coca-Cola. At age 25, Custer returned home to Raleigh, North Carolina to produce and develop original artists.
Corrosion Of Conformity hired Custer to produce their first major label disc, 'Blind' in 1991. The success of 'Blind' brought the attention of Columbia Records, who signed COC in 1993. Custer produced COC over the next ten years. In that time, they received a Grammy nomination in '97 for the single, "Drowning In a Daydream," a gold disc for 1995's Deliverance CD and two COC tracks appeared in major motion pictures CLERKS and THE FAN

By 1992, Custer landed two major label deals for Raleigh bands he'd been developing since 1989. Cry of Love, and Custer's own funk creation, Dag both signed to Columbia Records on the strength of Custer-produced demos. Cry Of Love's first Columbia single, "Peace Pipe" went to #1 on Billboard's Rock Radio charts. It remained at #1 as the most requested song in the nation for an entire month, and was the 5th most played song of that year. The next single "Bad Thing", which Custer co-wrote with the band, went to #2 in Billboard.

Funk band Dag was Custer's 2nd studio project to get signed. Custer wrote three songs showcasing the quartet's funk arsenal. They recorded. Three months later Dag was signed to Columbia Records.

Custer has produced in every genre: He produced music for comedian Rich Hall's show on Comedy Central. He co-wrote songs with Canadian rock star Sass Jordan. Produced Broadway star Lauren Kennedy (Les Miserable, Sunset Blvd.), the brilliant Chris Whitley, Alt-country pioneers The Backsliders, Jazz/Hip-Hop band San Kofa (who made it to the finals of MTV's Best Unsigned Band In America Competition on the strength of the Custer-produced "Suspended Animation"), > and Pop group Gran Torino (whose single "Moments With you", co-written by Custer, won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest as the Best Pop Song of 2000). Moments With You was a Top 10 Most Requested Buzz Track on Pop Radio for 4 months.
In 2003, Custer finished construction of his own Pro Tools recording studio, which began in late 2001, Custer continues to produce and record acts such as television and motion picture star Michael Pitt (Murder By Numbers, Bertolucci's "The Dreamers") who Custer developed for Sony Music in 2003.