About Vaughn

For information about Vaughn Skow the PICKUP GUY, please visit www.VaughnSkow.com ... here is some info about Vaughn Skow the music guy!

Vaughn Skow started in music early. At 13, his band had a steady house-gig, at 15 he started a career as a radio DJ, and at 16 he opened his first commercial recording studio. Barely out of his teens, farmer-boy Vaughn took a gamble and left the small Midwestern town of Jackson Minnesota for Nashville, Tennessee

Within days of moving to Nashville Vaughn wound up in a recording studio working with Amy Grant and Art Garfunkel His first month in Nashville found him lending his voice (as a background singer) to Christian singer Sandi Patti’s album "Morning Like This", which would go on to garner Grammy and Dove awards. That would be followed by singing, along side Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White, on Tanya Goodman’s Dove award wining album "Promises". The gamble to move to Nashville was paying off.

Within six months, Vaughn built his first studio on Nashville’s fabled “Music Row” at 1508 16^th Ave. South. For the next two years he would work with nearly every country and Contemporary Christian artist in Nashville, both at this studio as well as in his new role as a regular sound engineer at Nashville’s legendary Bluebird Café’.

The next decade found Vaughn owning, managing, and serving as head engineer in several Nashville recording studios. During this time he also took sound engineering jobs on the road with several major acts, most notable were Tom T Hall, Marie Osmond, Tracy Lawrence, and Barbra Mandrel. While on the road with Tom T. Hall Vaughn had a "big break" of sorts. At a show near St. James Minnesota, Tom asked Vaughn if he would like to "open up" the show since "there was no opening act, and Vaughn had a lot of family there". It went so well that Tom went on to routinely have Vaughn, backed by Tom’s band the Storytellers, open the shows. For the next several years, Vaughn would serve as Tom T. Hall’s sound engineer, guitarist, and occasional opening act! Vaughn counts his proudest moment as being his first time playing guitar with Tom T. Hall on the Grand Ole’ Opry. "I looked down and saw that I was actually standing in the circle of stage that they had cut out of the stage floor at the Ryman auditorium and included in the new Opry house stage. When I realized where I was standing, and the historical significance, I almost passed-out. I can’t remember how I played that night, but it couldn’t have been very good."

This period also found Vaughn Engineering and Producing in recording studios every day he was "in town". Credits include Tracy Lawrence, Vern Gosdin, Vince Gill, Garth Brooks, Kathy Mattea, Michael Johnson, Brad Paisley, Keith Urban and many more.

Curently, Vaughn spends time teaching others how to be audio professionals, as an adjunct professor of audio recording at Volunteer State College in Gallatin, TN. In 2002 Vol State began a major project building a new studio complex. Vaughn was chosen to serve as design consultant on the Vol State audio recording studio as well as oversee the actual construction phase of the project. In addition, when the School of Audio Engineering (SAE) in Nashville opened its doors, Skow was picked to be a guest lecturer/instructor. Vaughn has also taught audio technology at the Delta Music Institute at Delta State University in Cleveland, MS.

Since 1999 Vaughn has worked extensively in the world of audio for picture, serving as the audio producer for several music television shows for Turner broadcasting, GAC, and National Public Television. This work has garnered Vaughn three Emmy awards and several additional Emmy nominations for his contributions. Vaughn has also been busy scoring original music for picture for Turner Network Television as well as National Public Television.

These days Vaughn is also taking his love and experience of music to others with his live DJ companies.

For decades now, Vaughn has been a contributing writer for recording and music industry periodicals. Currently, he writes for Vintage Guitar Magazine.

In all of his years helping other artists to sound good, Vaughn neglected his own music. In 2003 Vaughn decided to address this by starting his own little Rock-n-Blues "hobby band" to provide a musical outlet that working in the studio with other artists just could not provide.