RSR268 – Bill Schnee – Recording Steely Dan Aja, Miles Davis, and Huey Lewis & The News - Recording Studio Rockstars

RSR268 – Bill Schnee – Recording Steely Dan Aja, Miles Davis, and Huey Lewis & The News

Bill talked about recording Steely Dan Aja, Three Dog Night, Barbara Streisand, Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis & The News, the importance of emotion in performance, record label history, recording direct to disc, and his new book.

My guest today is Bill Schnee an internationally renowned producer, engineer and mix master. In a highly decorated career that spans five decades, Bill has engineered many gold and platinum albums with a wide variety of artists that include Three Dog Night, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Rod Stewart, Chicago, Steely Dan, Natalie Cole, The Jacksons, Marvin Gaye, Dire Straits, Ringo (with all the Beatles), Barry Manilow, Carly Simon, Michael Bolton, George Benson, The Pointer Sisters, Bette Midler, Amy Grant and Whitney Houston, including her mega-single "I Will Always Love You”. 

Bill also produced multiple projects with Huey Lewis and the News, Boz Scaggs, Pablo Cruise, Joe Sample, as well as internationally renowned direct-to-disc recordings with Thelma Houston and James Newton Howard and Friends. 

In addition to working on dozens of Grammy-nominated and Grammy-winning albums, Bill has been personally nominated 11 times for The Best Engineered Album category and has won twice for Aja and Gaucho, both from Steely Dan. Those two multi-platinum releases add to a harvest of hits that includes over 85 gold records, 50 platinum projects and 50 top twenty singles. Schnee also has won an Emmy Award for Best Sound Mixing for a Variety Special and a Dove Award.

In 1981, Bill opened his own recording facility in Los Angeles – Schnee Studio. It boasted a large live recording room with a very unique acoustical sound, a custom made recording console, custom tube mic pre-amps, and an extensive collection of vintage tube microphones.  It was widely regarded as one of the finest recording rooms in Los Angeles.

Bill currently resides in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife Sallie. And we are lucky to have him here on the podcast with us today!

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Additional podcast editing and production by:
Brayden Stremming
Hugh Macdonald
Vlad Vasilcenko

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