Ron Freschi looks up at a black-and-white poster on a wall in his Tracy home recording studio.

It stares down at him, full of silent poise and confidence.

Freschi, in the poster, stands tough with his fellow band members of Babylon A.D. — an ’80s hair metal group that started in the East Bay. While the lead singer, a heart-throbbish man with long light hair, steals the scene, Freschi is an interesting study. A guitarist, his baby face is framed with hard-rock locks that flow down to his pecs.

Freschi, in the desk chair, doesn’t even have sideburns now. He’s talking about the albums, the record deal with Arista, the good times.

“…and then Nirvana came crashing in and it kind of took out that whole scene,” he says, not with resignation, but with acceptance.

The 44-year-old Tracy man is, for the most part, done with the metal lifestyle. While he plays guitar for Syrym, a local rock group, Freschi wants to help other local bands and musicians get their start in a career he’s always loved. A couple of years ago, he started buying equipment to convert a room in his house into his own recording studio.

It’s an impressive setup. In one room, there’s a digital control center with a mixing board, hundreds of buttons and knobs and two linked computer flat screens. The magic, the music, happens on the other side of the window.

Freschi doesn’t just have an ear for head-banging rock, though. Through his company, Hatrix Media, he wants to open his studio to any musician who wants to lay down a few tracks or record a professional-sounding demo for labels to hear.

“Given that he hadn’t produced a rap track before, I’ll give him some credit that he did pretty well,” said 18-year-old Josh Pendragon, aka Krikit Boi, of Tracy hip-hop duo Natural Born. “After a while, it just flowed. He’s a real cool dude. … The more versatile he gets, the better he’ll be at producing.”

Chris Wilson, from the East Bay rock band Out of Tolerance, said Freschi’s experience with the music industry is one of his favorite things about working with him.

That Freschi even knows his way around mastering a track is a testament to some prudent planning. After graduating from Mount Eden High School, he got a degree in electronics engineering from Chabot College in Hayward, just in case a wall full of platinum records wasn’t in his future.

In 1992, he left Babylon A.D. — which had some airtime on MTV in the late 1980s — and entered the workforce. Since then, he’s worked with software and Web development in addition to producing.

Now that Freschi has his studio up and running, he does have plans to get the band back together, in a way. He plans to record a bunch of his old guitar riffs that didn’t make it onto Babylon A.D.’s albums. Freschi also wants to re-record, re-master and re-release the band’s biggest hit from 1989 — “Bang Go The Bells.”

“If I could (produce) as a job eight hours or 10 hours a day, I would do it,” he said. “I get a lot of enjoyment out of making music, whether it’s my music or somebody else’s.”

• In the Spotlight is a weekly profile in Our Town. To nominate someone to be In the Spotlight or to comment on this week’s story, contact Our Town Editor Justin Lafferty at 830-4269 or jlafferty@tracypress.com.

Meet Ron Freschi

Age: 44

How long in Tracy: 15 years

Born in: Hayward

Education: Mount Eden High School; Associate’s degree, electrical engineering, Chabot College (both in Hayward)

Family: Wife, Annette; son, Aaron, 14

Claim to fame: Guitarist for Babylon A.D.

Favorite artists: Van Halen, Ratt, Y&T, Kanye West, Carrie Underwood

Get plugged in: HatrixMedia.com