AH: In one of our first conversations many years ago, you told me you had a business degree.
I have a degree in Recording Arts & Sciences and Business Administration from Middle Tennessee State University. I started school as an Electrical Engineering major, then an Accounting major, and realized early on I'd rather be interested and poor than secure and bored.
AH: What was it that got you into music from this side of the glass?
I'd always done music as a kid, like singing at church and being in bands, but I never really considered it as a career. It seemed super interesting, and I was going to go for it, so I quit school and moved down here.
AH: Where were you living before Nashville?
I grew up in Fair Haven, New Jersey, south of New York City.
AH: Had you made records for your bands in studios?
Nope. High school was the only time I was in bands. I'd done musical theater and church singing performances – but not recording.
AH: Were there certain albums listened to and identified as recordings that were made in a studio?
I really got addicted to, and started to pay attention to, albums like Heartbeat City by The Cars – I knew every note of that – and [AC/DC's] Back in Black. Also tons of '80s pop, like all the Peter Wolf pop music, the David Foster productions for Earth, Wind & Fire, all the albums by Chicago. As I look back now, I see that I gravitated towards great songs and really great production, but I didn't realize that at the time.
AH: That wasn't inspiring you to be a music producer?
My parents used to say, "Music is an avocation, not a vocation!" Until the Grammys started showing up, I guess.
AH: How many Grammys do you have now?
I've mixed ten Grammy Award winning records. A Grammy and four dollars gets you a latte at Starbucks. Don't tell The Recording Academy I said that.
AH: When you won your first Grammy, what did your parents actually say?
I remember the conversation with my dad was like, "Do a lot of people get those?" I said, "No, not a lot." He's like, "That's a pretty big deal isn't it?" I said, "Yeah, I suppose it is." I think that's when it clicked for him that this wasn't just fooling around with music, but an actual job.
AH: Are you picking and choosing the artists you work with?
I guess everybody does, to a certain extent. In the music business, as you know, it's more like they pick you. I've had a really weird career arc where it's been a lot of genre-hopping. I grew up on New York City music. I saw the Beastie Boys when they were a punk band. There were all kinds of great music, hip-hop, and all of that culture. When I moved down to Nashville, it was country or Christian. I was like, "Okay, wow." I didn't even know what Christian music was, because we didn't really have it growing up. And country music? Country music to me was Johnny Cash and John Denver. I jumped into the Christian music scene because it included rock music, pop, hip-hop, and all these different genres.
AH: It's interesting that people even consider Christian music a genre.
It's very strange. But it let me work on diverse genres of music.
AH: Why did you choose Nashville over New York? New York has a vibrant music scene.
Not so much a vibrant studio scene, does it? I came down here and had to go to school and work full-time to put myself through. MTSU was the only school I could afford. I had the single-mindedness of, "Okay, I'm going to put my head down and work my ass off." I looked up, it was six years later, and I was living in Nashville. I did school, and then internships. I almost didn't graduate because I was working in studios. It's like, "Okay, I can work on this record – or I can sit in class and do a synopsis of a Mix Magazine article." No thanks. MTSU was great – there were a couple of great teachers, like John Hill. Nobody wanted to be in the [school] studio from midnight until eight in the morning, so I got free run of the place.
AH: Were you recording bands?
Anything. I was experimenting. I started interning, and then I had an intern-to-assistant opportunity – one of those crazy moments. The engineer was mixing this song, and they were locking 32-track digital – which was Nashville's crazy-ass format – Mitsubishi machines. Sony digital didn't hit here until later. One really popular producer decided he was going to use two 32-track Mitsubishi machines – locking those, plus TASCAM DA-88s, two 2-inch machines, and video – and they couldn't get them locked. They all went to lunch in frustration. I stayed, and when they got back they were locked. That's when I went from intern to paid assistant, because they were going to another studio the next day, and they were like, "You're coming. Let's go."
AH: How did you go from being an assistant to getting your own engineering and mixing gigs?
I fell into it. The first thing I ever mixed was this Christian hip-hop project. They only had the money for three songs with the real mixer, and the producer was going to mix the rest. They had to run one of these [pointing to his SSL console]. I said, "Why don't you let me mix it? If you hate it when you get in here, you're going to have to do it anyway. I can show you how to run the board. But if you like it, so much the better." I ended up mixing the rest of that record, did another record, and the next thing I knew, I was a mixer.
