Help Live Musician's Co-Op Recover

My name is Michael Gilmer. I go by the name Michael England and have for the last couple of decades as a producer/engineer. I, along with my partner (Nathan Prowse), and my son Corbin runs a recording studio and several artist/band rehearsal rooms for the North San Francisco Bay area Musicians. It's called the Live Musician's Co-op. It was started in 2007 and is loved by all those in the community. We do our best to provide a reasonably priced environment for local and touring bands to rehearse as well as record their latest songs.

On the morning of Friday, February 2nd, 2023 we were robbed by a very organized group of assailants. They circumvented our security doors in the rear of the building and broke in. We are still putting together a final list of items stolen. But, in all, it will likely be over $20,000 easily. The musicians rehearsing with us today have been so wonderful in working with us and the remaining equipment we have.

We have always supplied a drumset, a bass amp, a guitar amp, and a full PA system for each room so that they just show up and play. We keep the hourly rate as low as we can to help these starving artists. The pandemic nearly put us out of business completely.

We had finally gotten somewhat back on our feet and had just moved into a new location after getting soundproofing for the rooms built out. We opened our new location on January 1st and just one month later were nearly wiped out by the robbery.

We are still currently booking bands and will remain open. We had 6 bands in today and the mood was amazing.

The studio is thankfully intact outside of some missing guitars, basses, and amps. Several keyboards were taken as well. But, we are booking sessions and have all of our recording mics.

The money will be used for security cameras, some repairs of the damaged areas, microphones for rehearsals, bass amps, guitar amps, drum sets, and misc gear associated with rehearsals.

Thanks so much to all of the musicians who have supported us over the years. We can't do it without you.