Establishing himself as one of Nashville's top engineers and producers, Gary has worked with Nickel Creek, Alison Krauss, Sarah Jarosz, Harry Connick Jr., John Prine, and even Dolly Parton. He is also VP of A&R at Sugar Hill/Rounder Music Records. I visited Gary at his private studio and home that previously belonged to Alison Krauss. In fact, Gary even helped design the studio for her.

We're both involved in NARAS/Grammy stuff. What about somebody who's not involved. Why should they get involved?

There are so many reasons; just the advocacy of what they're doing in Washington for rights. MusiCares; No matter how indie you might be, they're there to help for any problem, whether it's medical or rehab, or anything. It just doesn't cost that much for all that you get out of it. Especially in a chapter like this, that's this strong. The P&E Wing has been good just for fighting for producer and engineer rights, royalties and credits. A lot of people don't think that they qualify [to join NARAS], but they've made it much easier. Just have a couple of releases. Online releases count now.

It even used to be a hurdle; you had to have six credits on a nationally distributed record.

It ruled out a lot of indies. That's what we're doing in Nashville, just raising awareness that you can be a member, and all the benefits that come with it. 90 percent of what's done out there is guys with no budgets, shitty bands, in shitty studios and trying to make the most out of that. It's so backwards. When you're young and fighting your way up, you're working with rougher bands at shitty studios and you've got no gear. Then when you start to make it, all of a sudden you're working with great bands in great studios. Instruments are amazing, the whole thing.

Yeah, the mandolins stay in tune.

Yes. It should work the opposite. The higher up you get, the shittier situations you should be given.

I like doing the NARAS events and stuff. We've done some in my studio. They'll bring some beers in and we'll talk about stuff.

Yeah, they pony up and pay for it. Anything that you can think of to do, you just approach them with the idea or ask for help with an event.

You've been nominated for Grammys?

I've actually had nine nominations for Best Engineered, Non-Classical. No wins. I've got nine Grammys [from other awards]. There were two years that I had two records in there. I'm very fortunate. Usually I'm in there with a very small record. It's tough, because you get in there with a Norah Jones production or some other huge record...

That's the part that does frustrate me about the Grammys. It's a sales / popularity contest. 

Definitely when it comes down to those final five nominations, it's going to go to whatever's the big record.

You have a group of engineers that meet to listen to submissions?

Yes, every year we put together a list of five guys. Now I'm trying to reach out to some guys doing cool indie records. This year is the first one we put a mastering guy on. Now the award also goes to them. We definitely need to include the mastering engineers.

Have you dabbled between Pro Tools and Cubase?

I still track a lot of projects in Pro Tools just because that's what's there most of the time. I went with Nuendo because it sounded so much better, just straight up. Every time we had a seminar, we'd do a couple of engineer and producer listening sessions, just rotating everybody through. Hands down, Nuendo would win all the blind tests. Then it got a lot closer with HD, but I did one of these three months ago over at SAE, they ran the same six channels of audio with Pro Tools and Cubase, and it wasn't even close. It was fucking bizarre. The depth on Cubase... I thought there would be no difference, because shit's all the same you'd think. I just kept saying, "How can that be?" It was the same thing. The room was unanimous. You hate to say that because everybody in the world is on Pro Tools, but when we did this, everything I love about depth and space to me is just much easier to achieve on this. I don't have to work as hard. That's really what I hear. I guess it's just how things tail out.

That's interesting.

Also, anything that you work on, you can make it work well if you're a good engineer. I'm always blown away by great Pro Tools cats. I've spent a lot of time on Pro Tools, but I always feel like I'm more a programmer than a music engineer. Now Pro Tools is doing it, but all of my esses or whatever, I can just pull them down. There are hundreds of those on every vocal, and I do my rides here and sort of have to do very little on the fader. Or for low notes that are buried in the chorus, I know that I've got a high-pass filter right there and it's done. I'll have a couple of those and another one if I need to brighten a word.

Is it rendering it when it does that?

Yeah, but the fact that it's so easy to get back stuff.

That looks faster than Pro Tools.

It is faster. It's immediate. I don't even have to look at it.

It was mastered by [the late] Doug Sax, so that was my initial attraction to him. I used to ask him questions about the mastering on that. They worked on it for two weeks around the clock. Multiple 2-tracks, everybody rehearsing stops, starts, and crossfades... true, brilliant engineering. I've worked with [The Wall co-producer] James Guthrie since then up at his place [Das Boot] in Lake Tahoe, mastering a couple of surround records with him. That was huge just to talk to him about it, just to be in that guy's presence in the room is amazing. He helped us master some of the surround stuff, I think Nickel Creek or maybe an Alison Krauss record. -GP

I mixed a record in Nuendo with Viva Voce at their home studio once and I thought it sounded really good without any outboard summing or anything.

It sounds really good.

What's the difference between Cubase and Nuendo?

They're pretty much the same. Steinberg moved me off Nuendo and into Cubase because Cubase jumped ahead. Plus, Nuendo is now much more of a MIDI and programming-based software. I don't know if I could move back to Nuendo or not. There'd be no point. It's the same thing. I definitely program all the quick keys so that it's the same as Pro Tools. My assistant who works on Pro Tools a lot can jump in on this and not spend a half day learning how to do other shit. It's also easy for me to jump into Pro Tools, because I need to be efficient wherever I go. It helped me to set it up very similar to Pro Tools. I've seen Pro Tools move to this. All the great features of this is now what Pro Tools is planning. Pro Tools still, the only thing that seems better to me is the way that the playlists work. Here it's lanes, and it's lanes and now there's a playlist, but how they incorporate it I'm not quite up to speed on.

The one in Pro Tools I really do like when comping a vocal or something.

It's huge. Lanes [in Cubase] is very similar. Some parts of it are better. I don't have multiple vocals on it, but some aspects of it are easier than Pro Tools, but in the long run... I'm changing stuff all the way through the mix. I'm still working on the comp. I'm comping until the record is out, and that's not quite as efficient to do in Lanes. I've had a couple of great assistants. Actually, they've all been great. I've only had four or so in the last 20 years. It's easy to check out on anything difficult to do until one of them has to leave the country or something.

Your assistant right now I think also works for my friend Craig Alvin.

Yeah. Shani's phenomenal. She came out of Michael Wagner's studio. A lot of what I do is acoustic based Americana, but we still have electrics and drums and everything at some point. Having Shani help me dial up tones... she learned a lot under Michael.

Michael's great. He's always really enthusiastic.

To have done it this long and be that energetic about it...

Engineers and producers traverse a lot of different styles, but I think sometimes we get locked into what's perceived as being our taste.

Bill Schnee was one of the last guys who was in all these different styles and didn't get locked in to what people thought they were about.

That's probably a testament to being aware of a lot of music.

Exactly. All those live at Sheffield Labs records were very influential to me. I bought all of those. It's funny how many things led me back to Doug Sax. I didn't realize that he was the end game of so much of that stuff, Pink Floyd, Sheffield Labs, Lyle Lovett, Doug was doing all of those. It came back around.

What projects are you currently working on? What will be out soon?

Last year I did something different, which was fun. I cut half of Harry Connick Jr.'s record, and Ryan Hewitt cut the other half. 

Was that tracking a pretty big band?

A five piece band. He wanted to come to Nashville and cut something all acoustic. It was fun to watch him, because he flipped out at the lack of communication among the players. Basically with no charts. He's used to hiring New York and L.A. jazz players and then play what's written. The Nashville thing was that, without communicating, everyone knew exactly how to play around a vocal. The song was king. Underplaying. The song and the vocal are what matters. Everything you do you play to support that. It was interesting to see his reaction to it. It made me appreciate Nashville again. It's good to get reminders of what great musicians we have here. One other record I worked on this year was Johnnyswim. Have you heard them yet? It's good. I wanted to mix the record, but they didn't have the budget and were out of time. I was jumping on another project. Johnnyswim was a great project, kind of soul-pop. It's Donna Summer's daughter and this guy Abner Ramirez, just ridiculously talented. He's a good dude.

What's the music feel like?

Well, he's Cuban, and she's pop-soul. It's definitely soul and R&B but with some real pop elements.

Is that just something you did independent of Sugar Hill?

Yeah. They kind of didn't have a deal, and now I'm trying to sign them. They've done well.

Do people ever come to you since you are A&R and an engineer/producer hoping that if they come to record with you, it'll get placed?

Oh, for sure. They'll wait until the end to go hey, how do we place this? How about Sugar Hill? A lot of them will also sign to the label if I'll do the record. We have a couple who say they'll do it if I do the record. Other times they want to know if they can also get a deal. It's like, "Is that part of this too?" It's like nope... that's a different job. It's a different thing. I have another Sarah Jarosz record coming up. I'm mixing this girl we just signed to the label, Liz Longley. She came to us with a record that she already had out. She's already sold close to 10,000 records on her own, so we're really just shooting for the next record. There was one song I remixed and she flipped, so now we're going to do the whole record. I've really had a good time with Anais Mitchell. I've cut two records on her in the past two years, and one with Anais and Jefferson Hamer called Child Ballads. That's the kind of record I really love doing. Both of those records were live guitar and vocal. I think that they're beautiful records. Just the energy of the performance in the room is palpable. I'm getting a lot of good feedback on those records. It's really anti-production, just putting people in a room and going until you get a good performance, comping a little along the way.

The general public kind of knows now that we can go in and quantize, make a shitty drummer good or a crummy singer amazing. On the other hand, people are sometimes looking for records where you can tell it's a performance.

Definitely. Nashville in particular... for a big music center, one of the big three, that's what Nashville is all about, live sessions with real players who have that interaction. The country thing is hard to take here. You almost have to eliminate that in all discussions. The current country stuff. It's awful. It's the same engineers, the same studios, the same players, and it sounds like the same song. I feel very fortunate to do what I do in this town, to have plenty of work and to work with great musicians. Even in country music, we're all hoping that it pulls back to something real. It was such a great art form back in the day. Not even that long ago, but we seem so far gone from that now. I don't know how we'll get back to it.

Even back to someone like Randy Travis...

I worked on all those records. A lot of the early Dolly stuff would involve them in some capacity at some point. I definitely know what Nashville country was, because I was lucky enough to work on it. Yeah, just bands. Punch Brothers. That's beautiful music and very much live. It's definitely all about performance.

I just wonder if the more that people know things can be manipulated, the more it makes them want to hear something that feels like a real performance with real emotions coming through.

I think that's the battle most engineers go through. You know what you can do, but then it's not doing that. It's much easier to fix it than it is to debate it, like, "Oh, it pulls my ear in a certain way, but it kind of feels good that it did that."

Country music had a background of things being kind of out of key. Don't even talk about the country yodel!

Yeah, exactly. It's the same thing with old rock music. You'd go from those old Stones records that seemed so loose and funky, even though it didn't seem that way back in the day. Then after years of Def Leppard... I'm sure the rock guys deal with that a lot of times. Is your band good enough to cut without a click? If you cut with a click, are you going to lose the soul?

It comes down to great drummers.

Pretty much.

You know, when you see a good group come together on stage and play, it's a hell of a lot easier to make that record.

Always. That is obviously a big part of A&R. A&R used to be entirely about going out, seeing shows, and finding undiscovered bands. You really could find a band that nobody else knew about. Now, the second someone is telling you about something on the phone, you've already got it pulled up on the Internet, looking at numbers, YouTube videos. There's nothing more important than seeing them live. For me, it's about spending time with them. I really need to spend time with them personally. A label deal is a lot longer time period than just making a record. You always want to know if you'll be able to be in a room with them 12 hours a day for a couple months.

My friend John Goodmanson [Tape Op #35] told me once, don't ignore the person with the wackiest ideas, because some of them are great.

Some of them are. That was the amazing think about working with Dolly Parton. She never stops with the ideas. Every flat surface has a writing tablet wherever she is. No matter what she comes up with, she wants to write it down and somebody catalogues all her ideas. Maybe it'll end up being the name of a perfume, a song, a movie idea... there are a lot of bad ideas in there, but the ones that are good are the ones that have made Dolly who she is. You can't discount those.

Read our full interview with Gary here.

Thanks to Stephen Murray for instigating this interview idea.