Multimedia badass

Wendy Schneider was indie before it became a cliché

by

Wendy Schneider was having trouble sleeping the night of Sept. 25, 2016. At around 1 a.m., she heard a text come in — a friend said to call her right away, and that the news wasn’t good.

“I just knew, when I saw who was texting,” says Schneider. “I got the call that Charlotte Kainz had died racing.”

Kainz, who was 20 at the time of her death, plays a prominent role in Schneider’s forthcoming documentary about female motorcycle racers, Angels of Dirt. By the time Schneider got that call, Charlotte had become much more than a film subject. Charlotte was just nine when Schneider started following her and other young female racers; she watched Charlotte grow from a child to a woman, completing her first season as a pro short-track motorcycle racer.

“It was the most unthinkable, the most immeasurable loss,” says Schneider.

At the time Schneider was still recovering from her own trauma after a car accident. She was also wrung out after that spring’s release of The Smart Studios Story, a hard-rocking documentary chronicling Madison’s contribution to the 1990s grunge movement that was a smash at the Wisconsin Film Festival and SXSW. Schneider wasn’t sure if she had what it took to fund and complete another full-length feature. But Schneider is moving forward, inspired by Kainz’s fearlessness on the track and in life, which is at the heart of Angels.

Schneider has forged her own gutsy path as a fiercely independent producer, filmmaker, engineer and musician. On shoestring budgets and often working long hours alone, the DIY pioneer has run a video production and recording studio; released two full-length documentaries; retired one rock band and launched another; and organized the guerilla festivals called Boombox the Wasteland.

A WORT-FM DJ recently played a song from Bugatti Type 35, an iconic hard-rocking band Schneider fronted in the ’90s. “That song was by Wendy Schneider, a true Renaissance woman,” said the DJ, noting how difficult is it to pigeonhole Schneider.

The term “producer” fits best, but Schneider has little interest in the official title: “I see a producer as just somebody that gets shit done,” she says.

By continuing to broaden her platform and expand her interests, Schneider has managed to stay relevant in industries that are changing rapidly. She’s learned to trust the signs about when to put a project on hold and when to press ahead. “I hustle every day for new projects,” says Schneider. But she’s not interested in chasing stardom. “With all the work that I do, either I’m helping somebody else’s voice be expressed in a way that’s powerful, focused and intact — or I am wanting my own story or my own project to have its voice — and I don’t want anyone to fuck with it.”

We meet in Schneider’s sprawling Coney Island Studios, a softly lit space in an east-side basement with a green ceiling and comfortable thrift store furnishings. Wiry and energetic, Schneider bounces around the studio, making tea and showing off her video editing station, her audio console, a platform for drums and a tapestry inherited from her deceased mom. She provides a brutally honest appraisal of what it takes to stay afloat as an independent producer and musician (and one of the few women doing so) in Madison.

She credits her blue-collar dad, Jack Schneider and her singer/dancer/model mom, Jean Rayner, with instilling in her what she calls “the independent DIY ethos.”

They also raised her with a love of music and art. Her maternal grandparents were symphony musicians in London. Her mom “sought adventure” and came to the United States, touring as a cabaret/burlesque dancer and singer. She met Schneider’s father (“a much older Jewish guy in the Army”) and they married and raised three kids in Teaneck, New Jersey, living among more affluent families. “My dad was a bit of an outsider, but he was somebody who everybody loved, who could tell great stories and build things. My mother, nobody could understand.”

Her mom turned to commercial work in New York City, and became a hand model. “She was squeezing the SOS pad and she was the Palmolive hand that got dunked,” says Schneider, laughing. “Those hands put tuna casserole on the table.”

“I always saw them working and keeping themselves afloat,” she adds. “They were the best models I could have had.”

But when Schneider was 11, her dad died of a heart attack at age 52, and things got rough. “Helping us kids cope with the loss of our dad was not something my mom was able to do. The grief was immeasurable,” says Schneider. Her mom’s new husband was an abusive alcoholic. Schneider started drinking and using drugs. At 17, she tried a fad “liquid diet” to lose weight and developed an eating disorder. “I was afraid to eat anything solid, even a carrot,” says Schneider. “That’s when I began binging and purging. The behavior became a coping mechanism for me for the next eight years.”

Schneider moved to New York City where she began working as a messenger at a multimedia company, quickly rising up the ranks to become the creative director of audio. In 1990, she relocated for what turned out to be the last time. She moved to Madison and enrolled at the UW, where she studied music and literature. She received treatment for her eating disorder, and started learning live sound engineering by working for a reggae band. When she was just 23, she knocked on the door of Smart Studios. “I asked if they were hiring interns,” says Schneider. “They didn’t even ask for a resume.” Within an hour, she was hired and became a part of a scene that included Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins, L7 and Tad. Local Killdozer, Die Kreuzen and the Tar Babies launched far beyond Madison after honing their sound at Smart.

Around the same time, Schneider began to rock around Madison, fronting and playing guitar with Bugatti Type 35. And she started recording people in her basement. “I’d record my friends and people we knew from touring would come in and make a record.” When she outgrew the basement, she moved to a rented warehouse off Cottage Grove Road. Coney Island Studios thrived there for almost a decade, until the proliferation of studios and digital home recording began to take its toll, just as it affected Smart Studios. Schneider looked around and realized it was time to broaden her focus. A recording studio wasn’t going to be enough.

In 2008, Schneider closed Coney Island to focus on video production. A self-taught filmmaker, she’d bought a used camera and written, directed and produced CUT: Teens and Self Injury, a documentary featuring interviews with teens and others, including Shirley Manson from Garbage. The film premiered at the 2007 Wisconsin Film Festival, and has been used by many educators and screened at the national conference of the American Psychological Association. Her own experience with bulimia meant that the subject resonated.

Her interest in teens led her to start following the thriving subculture of female motorcycle racers. Schneider herself rides, but does not race. “The first person I met in 2006 was Charlotte Kainz,” says Schneider. An Indigogo trailer for the film shows a confident, ponytailed Charlotte, age 9, sitting on a lawn chair, drinking a Red Bull. “She started racing, like many racers do, when she was 4, racing 5 and 50 cc motorcycles at local tracks and loving it — just totally loving it.” Schneider dove into that project, conducting more than 50 interviews between 2006 and 2008. She was zipping around the country, shooting at races and talking to racers and parents, but still didn’t know quite how to focus the story.

On her way to shoot at a race in Nashville in 2008, Schneider was run off the highway by a truck. She hit another truck that was parked on the side of the road, and the driver got out to help her. “I heard what I thought was an explosion; I actually thought that we were under attack. There’s ambulances, all of a sudden, and no traffic moving. It was very quiet and I was like ‘Where’s that guy?’ I couldn’t put all the pieces together.”

The good Samaritan, an African American man named Milton Mohammed, was hit by another truck and fatally injured while trying to help her. She’s since learned that he was a quiet father of five. “That was really pivotal for me,” says Schneider. “I went into trauma therapy for the better part of the year. I didn’t pick up the film and the studio closed. I felt guilty and obligated and I felt like I was letting everyone down. But I had enough support around me to say ‘You’ll take it off the shelf when you’re ready; trust yourself.’”

Schneider was still “doing a lot of soul searching” in 2010 when Mike Zirkel, who was running Smart Studios at the time, approached her with the idea of starting to interview people about the closing of the studio.

“Steve and I had seen the writing on the wall, and we knew it was inevitable,” says Butch Vig, the legendary producer and drummer who launched the studio with Steve Marker in 1983. “But when we announced it, there was a loud outcry from people and musicians in the community who were sad to hear about it. Wendy started filming little testimonials.”

Vig wasn’t convinced there was enough to make a feature-length documentary. “I said ‘Who cares about a recording studio?’” But Schneider persevered and made a trailer, which convinced him. “It was a lot of fun, and I realized it’s not just about the nuts and bolts of it. The film was about the history of DIY in music and how alternative music surfaced into the mainstream. It was all her idea. She found the inspiration.”

Schneider, says Vig, excelled at the “DIY, seat-of-your-pants” approach, which epitomized the Smart legacy. “She was the producer, director, writer, fundraiser, cheerleader. It’s tough making independent films,” says Vig.

The Smart Studios Story sold out a 900-seat screening at the Barrymore for the 2016 Wisconsin Film Festival, within hours of tickets going on sale. A second showing at Sundance was also packed, with a boisterous, appreciative crowd.

Vig and Marker attended the Barrymore screening. “It was quite moving, especially to look out in the room,” says Vig. “I knew half the people in the audience. There were lots of friends and musicians there, just overwhelming support.”

“I was really happy for Wendy,” adds Vig. “She persevered, with dogged determination. She got the damn film made.”

In March 2016, Vig, Marker and Schneider took the film to SXSW, which has become a hot destination for film as well as music.

A reviewer for Variety wrote: “Wendy Schneider’s fond, unpretentious feature will appeal to a more limited audience of audiophiles still or newly smitten with bands that — Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins aside — remain mostly well under the popular radar a quarter-century later.” It ends with a nod to the ethos: “The Kickstarter-funded documentary sports an aptly DIY feel but is polished where it counts, notably in the sound departments.”

For Schneider, the film took its toll. “It was very difficult to ram all that into this sardine can of history. It’s 30 years in 90 minutes. I was beat to a pulp after that film,” she says. “But I was happy with it; I still am.”

In a bit of a twist, it was the death of the motorcycle racer Charlotte Kainz that ultimately compelled Schneider to return to the film she had put aside 10 years before.

It dawned on Schneider that her documentaries, which on the surface couldn’t be more different, shared a thread. “Now that I look at the [Angels] story I see that it’s about how a community transcends loss. Losing Smart was traumatic for people; it was an anchor.”

The absence of Charlotte required a radical rethinking of the film’s direction. “I knew I was going to start working on Angels of Dirt as a way of honoring her,” says Schneider. “She was humble and caring and sweet and wise and a trickster. How do I represent her voice with her not being here? How do I bring her to life?” With the blessings of Charlotte’s parents, Schneider began to pursue the project in earnest, raising $14,000 in an Indigogo crowdfunding campaign and securing more help from private donors.

These days, Schneider is back in full swing. She’s hired an intern who works a couple of days a week, to help avoid the burnout that happened after Smart. She’s sorting through 50 interviews from what she calls “phase one,” and another 10 recent ones. She’s been in Charlotte’s room to shoot video and look through her possessions. “I’m also beginning to home in on what the story is about, which is the life force of Charlotte and what it means when that life force transitions away,” says Schneider.

In early March, she shot a race in Milwaukee, Flat Out Friday, where Charlotte was honored. “A year and a half after losing Charlotte, her spirit was powerful and present,” says Schneider, adding that four of Charlotte’s racing bikes were ridden by racers “who knew and loved her. Her dad, Jack, rode her Harley XR750 for one parade lap prior to the pros racing.” Schneider also realized she probably has enough race footage in hand to make the documentary. “I got back to Madison and re-thought the season ahead — I will travel to fewer races and spend most of my time editing.”

The tagline for Angels of Dirt is “The freedom to be fearless is every girl’s right.”

We are living in a #metoo moment and a time when female directors and producers are claiming new territory. After she won Best Actress at the 2018 Academy Awards, Frances McDormand asked all the female nominees to stand up. “Look around you, because we all have stories to tell and we all have projects we need financed.”

This is not new territory for Schneider. Time after time, she has seized opportunities in industries dominated by men. When asked whether she experienced sexism at Smart, an almost exclusively male environment, she says she always felt included. “I wouldn’t have worked there if I hadn’t felt that my voice was welcome,” she says. “It was on me, the way it is on any female artist, to insert yourself. Nobody is going to ask you to the table. They’re just not. There’s not judgment in that. But I think it’s a really healthy thing to share with younger women coming up in the creative professions.” That said, Schneider makes it a practice to always ask “Where are the women?” at all-male panel events.

She reopened Coney Island Studios last May and has started recording bands in the space. “I have certainly learned through this process that I love recording musicians,” says Schneider. “I miss it so much. I feel at home doing it, because I really was doing it in Madison for 20 years.”

She also missed playing music, and has formed a new dark rock duo, Howler, with Joe Bernstein (The Kissers, Oedipus Tex, Cribshitter), which is recording an EP at the studio and has played out just a tad. At 53, she’s not keen on playing late shows in crowded clubs. “Starting out as a new local band fuckin’ sucks,” says Schneider. “I can barely lift my amp.”

Several longtime Madison musicians have jumped at the chance to record at the reopened Coney Island, including Chris Wagoner, a violinist, and Mary Gaines, a cellist, some of the city’s most sought-after strings players. Wagoner says he was driving down Atwood Avenue when Schneider waved him down and invited him to visit. Wagoner and Gaines have worked with Schneider many times over the years.

The married couple has laid down tracks at many studios, but when it came to a new and very personal project, EPs of originals and covers, Wagoner and Gaines chose to work with Schneider. They say she brings creativity and innovation to every project.

“It’s not just cookie cutter. She never says ‘This is how I always do it,’” says Wagoner. Recently, he says they set up a mic in a stairwell, just to see what it would capture. “We wanted to see what the ambience would be. It’s that spirit of experimentation.”

Wagoner also appreciates the studio’s open floor plan. “It’s all about mic placement and using the ears to get the right sound from what’s in the room. She has great ears.”

Schneider plays a snippet of the recording, and it sounds like Wagoner and Gaines are right in the room: “It’s so fucking pure,” she says.

Tex Mex singer/songwriter Cris Plata is another fan. He sought out Schneider 20 years ago after being unhappy with sounds he was getting at Smart Studios. “I wanted to work with a woman engineer because mostly everybody else I’ve worked with was strictly men, and I thought it was time to throw a change in there,” says Plata.

His plan at Coney Island is to record “old school,” as he puts it, sharing one microphone with his bass-playing wife, Ann. “It’s kind of like what you hear on the old recordings: the mistakes, the little warts, the hairs in the soup. That’s how it used to be done.”

Schneider’s goal for these projects is to make the clients happy and serve the music. She’ll do what it takes, one project at a time.

Schneider is proud of her body of work — her wall of records and her movies — and how she has managed to keep her editorial power intact. She’s not in it for the money and never was. “Do it because you love to do it.”