Finding the Sound That Makes Us™

The flagship documentary series of Up The Hill Backwards

A documentary series about the people, places, and communities that keep American music alive.

Rochester, New York is where we begin.

The Project

American music is made in more places than the national story remembers.

American music is usually told through famous artists, landmark albums, and cities whose reputations are already established. We are interested in what happens before that recognition, and what continues outside it.

The working musicians.
The churches.
The clubs.
The record stores.
The rehearsal rooms.
The neighborhoods.
The people who keep showing up.

Finding the Sound That Makes Us listens to the places where culture is still being carried forward.

Up The Hill Backwards

The organization behind the work.

Up The Hill Backwards is being developed as a nonprofit cultural-media organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and advancing America's living musical heritage.

Finding the Sound That Makes Us™ is its flagship documentary series. Beginning in Rochester and designed to travel, the series brings that mission to life one city at a time.

Through documentary storytelling, music education, historical research, original performance, and community engagement, the organization plans to explore how music connects people to place, history, and one another.

Document
Produce original films and media that reveal how communities shape American musical culture.
Preserve
Record oral histories, musical traditions, and the stories of the people and places that sustain them.
Educate
Develop learning opportunities that connect musicians, educators, students, and audiences through intergenerational exchange.
Connect
Create shared experiences through screenings, performances, conversations, and public cultural programming.

High Falls, Genesee River

Where we begin

Rochester, New York

Rochester, New York is our first city.

Its musical life has been shaped by migration, faith, industry, neighborhood change, blues, gospel, jazz, salsa and Latin music, hip-hop, independent music, classical training, and generations of working musicians.

We are following the people and places carrying that story forward now.

With thanks to Coral Moons · Son Henry and the Revelators · The Studios at Linden Oaks · Rochester International Jazz Festival · Record Archive · Bug Jar · Clarissa Uprooted

Rochester · 2026

In Production

Development and production are underway in Rochester.

An on-camera interview being filmed in a recording studio control room, with lights, cameras and a boom microphone

Paul Boutte and Peter Bianco in a studio control room beside the mixing console

The Studios at Linden Oaks, Rochester

Beyond Rochester

One city at a time.

Rochester is the beginning of a broader national series.

Each city has its own history, its own musical communities, and its own way of carrying memory forward.

The project is designed to travel without reducing any place to a single genre, scene, or sound.

Team

Who is making it

Carter Mezzio and Quinn Vankerkhove of Real3D Media with Paul Boutte and Peter Bianco in a studio control room — Carter Mezzio and Quinn Vankerkhove of Real3D Media with Paul Boutte and Peter Bianco at The Studios at Linden Oaks

Co-Creator / Executive Producer
Peter Bianco

Pete has played guitar since he was eleven and came up playing in bands around the upper Midwest, before a career bringing new medical technology to market. Music came first, and it is still how he gets to know a place.
Sound Editor & Series Music Supervisor
Tad Wadhams

A Rochester native who came home after two careers: bassist and songwriter in Sheryl Crow's band, where he co-wrote "Love Is a Good Thing," and post-production sound for television and film, including 18 seasons of Hell's Kitchen. He runs Tadsworld, a post-production sound company in Rochester.

Read more

Tad Wadhams is the sound editor and Series Music Supervisor on Finding the Sound That Makes Us™, an Up The Hill Backwards Production. A Rochester native, he left the city to build a career and later came back. He brings two careers that rarely share one résumé: decades as a working bassist and songwriter, and a second life in post-production sound for television and film.

As a musician, he played bass in Sheryl Crow's band and co-wrote "Love Is a Good Thing" with her for her 1996 self-titled album, Sheryl Crow, which won the Grammy for Best Rock Album. Beyond Sheryl Crow, his recorded work ranges from Animotion's Strange Behavior to Lowen & Navarro's second record, Broken Moon, to Immigrant Sons by Bernie Taupin's Farm Dogs. He has also performed on film and television soundtracks, including the soundtracks to all three High School Musical films.

In post-production, his credits include dialogue and SFX sound design and supervising sound editing on 18 seasons of Hell's Kitchen, as well as MasterChef, Survivor and The Apprentice; sound effects editorial on the CBS series FBI; and sound editing on the feature Night Train. He now owns and runs Tadsworld, a post-production sound company in Rochester.
Rochester Music Director
Paul Boutte

Keyboardist, songwriter, producer and longtime Hammond organist, with four decades across Rochester's gospel, R&B and jazz communities. A WDKX broadcaster, educator and Rochester Music Hall of Fame board member, he is the music director for the Rochester pilot and the connector across the city's scenes.
Advisor, Artists & Repertoire
Alayna Alderman

Former vice president, Record Archive. A founding member of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores and a co-founder of Record Store Day. Inductee and board member, Rochester Music Hall of Fame.
Co-Creator
Blair Wisner

Works from a simple conviction: that music is one of the clearest ways to understand a place.
Production Partner
Real3D Media

The Rochester production company that shot and produced the preview on this page, setting the visual tone for the pilot to come.