What started with a cassette recorder, a microphone and a 100-mile commute from Brooklyn has blossomed into a 30-year musical love affair with Philadelphia and the region. MIlkBoy Studios, the brainchild of Tommy Joyner and Jamie Lokoff, will celebrate 30 years of recording and music with a block party on South Street in Philadelphia on Sept. 21 in front of MilkBoy venue. “I didn’t expect it to last three months, much less 30 years,” said Joyner, who’s commute is much easier now that he lives in Rose Valley. “It was just a recording studio in North Philadelphia on top of Zapf’s Music. We were there for seven years.” Recording on top of a music store also had perks. “We’d drive down to Philly and we could play all these really nice instruments, way nicer than anything that we owned,” Joyner said. “The second floor opened up and that’s how the studio started. I would work in New York for a couple of days, drive down to Philly to record for a couple of days, then drive back up to New York to work as a handyman. It seems crazy now, but, at the time, it was like, whatever.” Cleaning out that first studio actually led to the company’s name. “We were cleaning out the old repair shop to turn it into the first studio,” said Joyner. “We came across a drum kit that had a picture of a kid drinking a glass of milk. We just thought it was funny and silly and it became our mascot.” With some of the biggest acts coming into MilkBoy to record, the partners soon realized they had to get a little bigger. A move to Ardmore was just what the engineer ordered. Soon, MilkBoy expanded across the street to open a coffee house and music venue. “We didn’t know anything at the time,” Joyner said. “We just thought we’d sell coffee. We had some very good baristas and we learned a lot about coffee ourselves. So being a venue is a really tough business model. You’re not going to make it on open mic night, you know. So we’d have bands and some really cool acts playing there.” MilkBoy now has two venues in Philadelphia, one on Chestnut Street and another on South Street. Joyner has also been known to take the stage as part of Pep Rally, a two-person band with Emily Roane. They are both drummers, so it’s been a fun side gig. Emily Roane and Tommy Joyner make up Pep Rally, a band born in Philadelphia. (COURTESY OF JOHN WELSH) “For me as a player, I was always in other people’s bands,” Joyner said. “I was a guitar player. I wasn’t a singer, so this to me is like a career shift. It’s to refocus myself on the art rather than the craft. I was feeling like people thought of me as somebody who pushes the buttons. I’ll admit it was kind of childish. Like, ‘I’ll show them I’m a musician.’ It’s really artsy.” As a producer, though, Joyner is still at the top of his game. Some of the musicians who have come through MilkBoy: Zach Bryan recorded his solo album at the studio. Additionally, Silk Sonic, Lizzo, Lil’ Uzi Vert and Jazmine Sullivan are recent clients. Joyner is responsible for production on over 100 records and demos annually, numerous composition jobs for film and television, and he continues to perform with his act Pep Rally as well as as a side musician, both live and in the studio. In addition to Pep Rally, Joyner has played drums in Digable Planets and overseen recordings by James Taylor, Dave Matthews, Gorillaz and Miley Cyrus. “I love writing music and I love producing the music,” said Joyner. “I really enjoy producing my own stuff. I love the challenge of producing music for other people as a recording engineer. I approach it as a recording engineer. I approach it mostly as a technician.” MilkBoy continues to showcase some of the top up-and-coming acts at both venues, while helping some of those same bands in the studio. “The common thread there is it’s all good music,” Joyner said. It’s all music that we find to be important. Oh yeah, they’re cool too.” There is coffee, food and now movies keeping MilkBoy busy. Together, Joyner and partner Jamie Lokoff have produced the feature films “Slow Learners,” which was bought by Sundance Channel, and “Sparkle, A Unicorn Tale,” bought by Lionsgate. “We’d been working as composers and audio mixers on other movies,” says Lokoff on what lead to producing the movies, “and we got the itch to make our own films. We feel very fortunate to live in a place where we have access to such incredible technical and artistic talent: if you can dream it, you can do it in Philadelphia.”