Suzy Shinn

A rising rock engineer and producer who’s had to fight to be respected for her talent in the studio

suzy shinn grew up listening to bands like Something Corporate and Jack’s Mannequin, so she was thrilled when Andrew McMahon, the vocalist in both bands, called in December with the beginnings of a solo song. The only problem: They had about three days to finish the track. So she set up in her living room in L.A.’s Los Feliz, called a couple of masked friends, and made do. “I think I used a can of salt as my shaker,” says Shinn, 29.

Shinn has made a name for herself as one of modern rock’s savviest engineers, working with acts like Panic! at the Disco and Fall Out Boy — feats that are even more impressive as an Asian American woman in a field where a recent USC study of 500 songs found that just 1.6 percent of producers were women of color.

After growing up in Kansas, Shinn studied production and engineering at the Berklee College of Music, where she remembers facing double standards. “Everywhere I’d go, people would think I’m a dumb blonde,” she says. “I had female professors ask me to switch out of their class because it ‘looked like I wasn’t getting it.’ ” She moved to L.A. at 20, working without pay at a studio between waitressing shifts at a strip club. “I’d be back at the studio at 11 a.m.,” she says, “cleaning toilets, tuning vocals, and recording.”

Shinn says she’s lost out on jobs because of her gender, along with other affronts she’d rather not detail. “People will be like, ‘Where the fuck is my coffee?’ ” she says, before insisting: “I always want the job because I’m the best person for it.”

Last year, she got her biggest gig yet: producing Weezer’s next LP. “They were like, ‘Should we go to this guy or this guy?’ ” she says. “Rivers [Cuomo] was like, ‘I like working with Suzy. Why can’t we go to this girl?’ ”