G'day mates! I’m Tommy W, born and bred in the land of kangaroos. I’m a self-taught musician who was quickly thrown into the deep end when I began my musical journey playing and touring around Australia. Shortly after and without my consent, life happened. I lost my day job, and made the switch to full-time music, surviving mostly thanks to my covers project Birdman Randy. 

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I fell into building container studios like a man looking for water falls into a well. I couldn’t rehearse at home and I was sick and tired of paying for shared rehearsal spaces (not to mention increasingly poor). I finally signed a long-term-lease on my very own creative studio in an artsy warehouse space. Once an ice cream factory, now an inner-city commune of vagrants, weirdos, and artists of all kinds. I was finally with my people – until my people decided I was too loud and restricted my jamming to after-hours. Soundproofing would not have saved me as we were all unceremoniously evicted shortly after. 

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Back to square one and looking for a home to strum my strings, I stumbled upon the concept of repurposing shipping containers to house studios. Buying a professionally built model was inconceivably expensive so my only option was to give it a go myself. With basically no experience on the tools, I asked the dumb questions, hounded reluctant mentors, and made all of the mistakes until somehow I wound up with my own finished studio. If I can do it, you definitely can too and I strongly encourage you to look into it (I know a guy). 

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Building my own studio was a pivotal life-changing move – I FINALLY started regularly practising, started earning a living from music, and shrugged off the imposter syndrome of not being a ‘real’ musician (real musicians have studios). It’s a TOTALLY achievable solution to a very common problem.  I’m embarrassingly evangelical about it but it’s given me so much that I’ve needed as an artist and I’m confident it can do the same for you. I believe in you.