Category Archives for "podcast"

My guest today is Roger Alan Nichols, a producer, recording engineer, rock musician, and songwriter from Nashville TN.

He is owner of Bell Tone Recording in Berry Hill where he produces great sounding rock. In fact when I recorded my record Skadoosh which includes the track "American Winter" on the Mix Master Bundle I turned to Roger for guitar tones, borrowing the Bogner, and Bassman guitar amp heads for my sound.

Roger started out in Nashville with his band Dreaming In English as an artist and later moved to production and engineering after Pro Tools made it possible for him to create professional home studio. He has since moved to this beautiful commercial location at BelTone Recording and records with many country and rock artists.

Some of the Rockstars that Roger has written for, performed with, produced, or recorded are Paramore, Mix Master Mandy, Seal, Ryan Humbert, Robben Ford, The Mean Tambourines, The Campaign 1984, Tyler Bryant, and Steven Tyler

Touring Professionally Early

With technology providing opportunities for people to record and to write and to create art, the thing that is always in the back of my head is just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. That I think is one of the biggest obstacles right now with music. The fact that technology has allowed us to create really great sounding stuff with no filter. Now from an artist's standpoint, I love that, that’s the way it should be. The way the business is now the gatekeepers are gone and everyone applaudes that. But the bad news is is the gatekeepers are gone. So there’s a lot of stuff out there that’s really mediocre. A lot of stuff that is put out that should be developed better.

The way records are made now is we send files around. I’ll get a track and record a guitar part and I’ll send it off to someone else and then they’ll add something and whenever they start to mix it, whoever mixes it you end up carving the hell out of it EQ wise to make it work in the context of the mix. The way records used to be made is the band would set up in a room, decisions were made about placement of amps and mics and so forth. Then the snapshot was taken. If you solo’d the guitar or something, it might sound really shitty by itself, but in context it would sound amazing. So it was about the complete photograph as opposed to the individual in the photograph

Being A Producer 

As a producer one of the easiest failures to make is to not listen to the artist. I think that is a common mistake especially if you have artistic visions or perspectives. It’s easy to go "Well really what you need is this." I have learned the hard way that is not a good thing to do. You want to be good at what you do, and you want to be able to contribute to the vision, and a lot of times you just stay out of the way and help facilitate the vision. It’s not about contributing to the vision from an artistic voice, but it's creating an environment for the artist to find out what their voice is.

Q - What was holding you back at the start?
A - How things were done. When I was learning how to play, I’d put the needle on the record, listen, play, needle on the record, listen, play, etc. There was no YouTube demonstration of how to play the chord voicing or how to connect these devices with this. You had to find the local hot shot at the music store and ask him how it’s done or sit and observe. There’s something to be said about being able to hear a song and go, “I know what those voicings are, I know what those chord changes are,” because your ear is developed to that point.

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A- I used to take a polaroid camera and I would take snapshots of everything: mic placements, EQ settings, etc. Then I would have a notebook and give it to the drummer to sketch out his kit and mark the size of his drums and what heads he was using and where mics were placed and keep track of lyrics. It was basically a journal of the record. For me, that was a way of keeping track of the process.

My guest today is David Thoener, a multi Grammy winning producer, engineer, and mixer with a true rockstar list of credits to his discography. In fact David made many of the records that I grew up with that help define rock music for me.

David started his career in 1974 as an assistant engineer at the Record Plant in New York City, and learned his craft creating Aerosmith "Toys In The Attic," Bruce Springsteen "Born To Run," David Bowie "Young Americans," John Lennon "Walls and Bridges," Electric Light Orchestra "Face The Music" and Richie Blackmore "Rainbow Rising."

David then moved on to engineering and mixing records in 1976, and has since enjoyed a thirty year run of hit records including classic records for AC/DC "For Those About To Rock”, John Mellencamp "Little Pink Houses", John Waite "Missing You", all the hits from the J. Geils Band, Matchbox 20 and many others.

In 2000, David won two Grammys -- Record of the Year and Album of the Year -- for recording and mixing "Smooth" by Santana featuring Rob Thomas.

David has mixed hit records for Jason Mraz, Faith Hill, and Sugarland, and has made records all over including South Africa, Sweden, Australia, Mexico, and Japan to list a few.

I am very lucky to be able to have this interview in person since he lives right here in Nashville TN. Please welcome David Thoener to Recording Studio Rockstars.

Thoughts on Recording Schools Today..

​With all these schools now, a lot of guys that are going to these schools think that they are going to walk out of school, and going to sit behind the board, and going to be working with Jack White on his next record, and that’s just not going to happen. It never has happened that way! Every place that I would go when I would deliver these packages, I would fill out an employment form... I’ll clean the toilet for you, I’ll do whatever. Persistence and luck. And I have to say 50% of being successful in the music business and especially as an engineer is luck. It’s being at the right place at the right time, or some musician that you’ve worked with in the past, that just happens to say to another musician, “Hey, you’ve got to work with this guy. He’s really good, I think you’ll like him.” Then all of a sudden, it happens. It’s getting those relationships together. I want the listeners to realize that you just don’t walk out of school and walk into an amazing job.

Do you see similarities for music releases now vs back then?

Acetates in those days were not to be used for manufacturing purposes, they were just used to take your record around, because every A&R guy and every label had a record player. They didn’t necessarily have a tape player. Acetate was the medium they would play your music on. So I would cut acetate discs of a couple of songs for artists and I would make tape copies. They would take those acetate discs and tape copies around to different places like RCA and CBS. It was hitting the pavement and walking around and trying to make appointments with A&R guys, and sitting down, and they would put your record on, and then give you the thumbs up or thumbs down. And then you’d walk out of there and go to the next place!

Really the consumer is the winner now-a-days. As opposed to an artist or the people that are in the position of making the record, because you have iTunes now, and iTunes takes a fairly decent percentage of the sale of your single. I don't even know what some of the sites like Spotify and Pandora pay. I mean you're paid pennies, to my knowledge, on the amount of records downloaded.

I think there are more one hit wonders these days. There are a lot of bands that I listen to on some of these streaming mediums that I think ‘man that’s a really great song!’ I’ll check out the record and I’ll find several songs that I like a lot. And I would normally become a fan of this band, but a year goes by and they’re gone. I find that more these days. I guess it’s a combination of being able to go in and do a record way, way less expensive than it used to cost, so the bar is lowered. 

Q - What was holding you back at the start?
A - Really nothing held me back, I knew what I wanted to do. I had a mission. I just had the focus in mind of getting there as fast as possible, whatever that took.

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A- If I’ve got one, an ELAM 251 Telefunkin microphone, which is very hard to get.

My guest today is Jeff Powell who got his start as an assistant engineer at Ardent studios in Memphis TN and steadily advanced his career over decades to become a multi faceted gold, platinum, and Grammy winning record producer, engineer, educator, and vinyl mastering engineer.

Jeff also chairs the Producer and Engineering wing for the Memphis Chapter of NARAS, and is an adjunct Professor with the University of Memphis Recording Program.

His career has allowed him to work with many greats in the studio like Jim Gaines, Glyn Johns, Rob Fraboni, John Hampton, Joe Hardy and Jim Dickinson. And Jeff has even the honor of recording six albums with the great Tom Dowd.

Finally Jeff learned the art of mastering vinyl, and has been cutting records under the name Take Out Vinyl for artists from all over including The Twilight Singers, Centro-matic, Mickey Hart, and Lucero.

Jeff has a long career in recording and a list of credits that include Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Tonic, Big Star, The Bottle Rockets, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Sharon Jones, Centro-matic, Primal Scream, Lucinda Williams, Ryan Adams, and The Afghan Whigs

Q - What was holding you back at the start?
A -I gotta say nothing. Nothing held me back, I was so determined, nothing could hold me back.

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A- I like weird stuff. Cheap mics that aren’t supposed to necessarily sound good. I like different textures of things. I don’t get upset if the singer doesn’t feel comfortable singing into my Sony 800G $10,000 mic, if he wants to sing with an SM7, whatever it takes to make them comfortable.

My guest today is Matt Ross-Spang, a Grammy winning engineer, mixer, producer and recording historian. Matt began his career at the young age of 16 interning at Sun Studio in Memphis TN, which he revitalized during his decade of work there bringing it back to it’s original analog roots. After his time at Sun Studio He has more recently migrated over to Sam Phillips Recording Services, home office and studio for the legendary Sam Phillips.

In 2015 Matt won a Grammy for engineering and mixing Jason Isbell “Something More Than Free.” And he has recently broken the top 10 Billboard country charts for engineering, mixing, and co producing Margo Price’s debut record “Midwestern Farmer’s Daughter” for Third Man Records.

Matt’s extensive credits in the studio include Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jerry Lee Lewis, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, Jakob Dylan, Justin Townes Earle, JD McPherson, Chris Isaak, Mark Ronson, The Wood Brothers, and Brett Dennen to name a few. And he has also worked with acclaimed producers like Dave Cobb.

The City of Memphis has even nominated Matt as one of its “30 under 30” Memphians and in 2016 awarded him a key to the city while proclaiming April 25, 2016 as Matt Ross-Spang (day) in Germantown,TN.

Q - What was holding you back at the start?
A -I think being so young, I couldn’t stay out that late. My parents only let me be out till 12:30. I remember when I first started interning I never got to see what happened at the end of mixing, because they’d start mixing and I had to leave because I had school the next day.

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A- Microphones I think are the biggest piece of the puzzle. Everyone loved neves back in the day because it was one of the first pre’s that had clean gain. Now every pre’s got tons of clean gain. So I think mic pre’s do have sounds, but more importantly it's what microphone you have. And instead of EQing you can move a mic an inch and it changes everything especially ribbon and condensers. One of my favorite pieces of gear is the spectrasonic 610 complementor and most people who know me know I’m a geek for spectrasonics. I have tons of their equipment. But a 610, it's one of the world's most fastest compressor. Most people don’t understand how it works because they try and use it like an 1176. It’s so fast it doesn't bump, the limiter comes in at 50 nanoseconds, the compressor comes in at 60 nanoseconds. It's so fast you can pop a microphone into the complementor, plug that into a speaker, you can drop the microphone and instead of blowing out your speaker, it's so fast it tracks the waveform and it'll catch the transient. It’s that fast.

My guest today is Jody Stephens a rock star, session drummer, songwriter, composer, producer, and studio administrator in Memphis TN. Jody’s music has had a great influence on me through his work as the drummer for the legendary band, Big Star. So it is a great honor to be here today at Ardent Studios to interview Jody as part of my “Memphis series.”

Jody’s session work and live performances have allowed him to play with many artists and bands that include Matthew Sweet, The Afghan Whigs, Velvet Elvis, Golden Smog, and Bill Lloyd. He has been working in and around the studio for decades and is also the administrator for Ardent Studios and Ardent Records.

Jody’s recent band is called Those Pretty Wrongs with Luther Russell of The Freewheelers. They have released a beautiful single called “Lucky Guy” that instantly takes me back to Big Star.

"Lucky Guy" - Those Pretty Wrongs

Q - What was holding you back at the start?
A -My parents were amazingly supportive as was my older brother Jimmy, him and I played in a lot of bands together, he was kind of my mentor. The first thing I always thought was silly with my taking up drums is it's the most embarrassing instrument to start out on because you sit down and you’re trying to make your left hand and right hand, and left foot and right foot all do independent things and you just feel awkward and clumsy. When I was 14 or 15 I thought, “wow, I wonder if I could get away without playing the bass drum to make it easier?!” Obviously you just kind of keep at it and things like that work out. 

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A- You know the kind of stick you use to hit it has a lot to do with the way the drum kit sounds, not to mention the way you hit it. We have a lot of vintage gear here that I’m certainly grateful to have, vintage mics and that sort of thing that make a difference sonically and the way you hear someone's voice or the way you hear the drums, Fairchilds come to mind. We have stereo and mono Fairchilds and those are always kind of cool for voices. It’s nice having those options. We have a compliment of really nice tape machines.

My guest today is Ian Brennan a recording artist, producer, concert promoter, activist, and author. He is a GRAMMY-winning producer with four GRAMMY-nominated records for Best World Music, and Best Traditional Folk.

Ian has many interesting tales to tell. Whether performing a weekly show in a San Francisco laundromat for five straight years, or producing records in the recording studio, or promoting concerts for crowds of thousands, or traveling the world recording some of the most fascinating music you might hear, Ian Brennan is always creating, recording, and writing about it. And as a result, has an intimate understanding of music.

He has written a fascinating book called “How Music Dies (Or Lives): Field Recording And the Battle for Democracy in the Arts” that shares his deep understanding of music, culture, and recording. He helps us look beyond what the world recognizes as music through popular recordings, and into the core of what music really means to us as human beings.

​

It is an ear opening journey around the world with the intent of preventing us from deafley stumbling toward the end of music through innocent global homogenization of culture, by guiding us to a better understanding of what music really sounds like when it matters the most.

Ian has had a long career of recording his own music and producing other’s music, both in the studio and outside of the studio. His client list is loaded with names that you might recognize like Kyp Malone & Tunde Adebimpe (TV on the Radio), Flea, Lucinda Williams, David Hidalgo (Los Lobos), Nels Cline (Wilco), DJ Bonebrake & John Doe (X, the Knitters), Bill Frisell, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Jonathan Richman, Richard Thompson, and many more.

But it’s the names that you wouldn’t necessarily recognize that tell a truly remarkable story of Ian’s recording career. Projects from around the world like the Malawi Mouse Boys, The Zomba Prison Project, Hanoi Masters, and Italy’s Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino are recordings that Ian passionately writes about in his new book.

Here are the three main labels where most of the releases can be found...

http://www.sixdegreesrecords.com

http://glitterbeat.com

http://www.irl.bigcartel.com

Sainkho Namtchylak

She’s virtuosic, has a 5 oct range. The last record  she collaborated with rhythm section from Tinariwen. It was more song oriented with instant composition, for the most part they wrote songs on the spot. We recorded a double album literally in 5.5 hours in one afternoon. We didn’t release all of it, but that type of singer gives new meaning to what it is to be a vocalist. Somebody who not only has that range but somebody who has a range in terms of tone you know where they can literally sound like other people and even like other species, mirroring the sounds of the environment (water & wind).

Zomba Prison Project

We went into the maximum security prison from Malawi and worked for almost two weeks with the men and women there on songwriting and recording. We recorded over six hours worth of music which is a lot because it involved 60 people and most songs were recorded just once. From that we released a record and much to everyone’s surprise it received a grammy nomination at the end of 2015. That became a big story internationally. The individuals involved were age 27-70. With the men, we recorded in their little rehearsal area, with the women, we recorded in the dirt courtyard of the prison. As far as the EQ area, I always turn mixes over to better engineers such as John Golden of Golden Mastering. 

Q - What was holding you back at the start?
A - I think it's always fear that holds people back. You know, I think rather than trying to deny fear which is often times people's goal, I think to acknowledge it and then to proceed is usually the better course. When I began equipment was so hard to come by I mean this is before the Tascam Portastudio, so it's been brilliant to see the accessibility of recording for people that doesn’t require that pressure to go outside their own home and spend huge amounts of money, that they can develop more organically and build up to something bigger.

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A- When I’m recording outdoors I use battery operated recording devices: Tascam is kind of the origin of home recording, Zoom. Outdoors the sounds that present the most problems are wind and transient sounds. But otherwise with proximity, when the mics are close, that’s all you tend to hear.

My guest today is Cameron Henry a mastering engineer at Welcome to 1979 Studio specializing in vinyl mastering. He has mastered over two-thousand LP & 45-single releases, including Bela Fleck, John Mayer, Sturgill Simpson, Bonnie Raitt, JD McPherson, Spiritualized, Steve Earle, Dinosaur Jr., John Prine, The Rolling Stones, Whitney Houston, and many others.

And since Cameron's mastering room is located in a full-on recording studio, Cameron & studio owner Chris Mara have been able to record direct-to-disk releases for artists such as Pete Townshend, Josh Hoyer, and a handful of others.

One of the very cool things that Cameron also does here is to host a "vinyl camp" at Welcome To 1979 Studio, which is focused on teaching the basics of disk cutting, with hands-on demonstrations, using attendee's music, & a chance to participate in an actual direct-to-disk recording session. The goal of the camp is to provide knowledge to mixing engineers & producers so they can have the foresight to properly prepare an album for a vinyl release.

The cutting stylus on the lathe cuts the groove and is vibrated by the music so that when you put the playback needle on your turntable into that groove it vibrates the same way. A record is cut in a midside fashion where all of your center information is causing a lateral, horizontal groove to be cut on the record. And anything stereo is happening vertically.

When a record is pressed, there’s a hot hockey puck sized piece of plastic that goes between the two stampers. The stampers push down with a bunch of pressure and the plastic spreads outward, much like waffle batter.

Q - What was holding you back at the start?
A - One of my biggest things was thinking that if only I had the ability to go into a real studio to make a record I would totally do that. I grew up in Toledo, OH and had a port-a-studio and two mics and would make records on that thing. At the time I didn’t realize that what I was doing was super awesome and important to understanding how recording works, by just working with semi-pro equipment. There were times where I thought we could do this song, but we might need this other piece of gear to do it, and that’s the wrong attitude to have.

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A- A fun hardware tool is actually a unit by Behringer called the Combinator. It’s this multi-band limiter, equalizer, compressor that was actually intended for live purposes so you could shape music to the room you’re in. It’s an awesome piece of gear.