Coming up through the ranks of Memphis' fabled Ardent Studios [Tape Op #58], Jeff Powell has been making cool records for more than two decades, initially as an assistant engineer, then as a staff engineer/mixer, and finally as a producer. He's been independent since 1997, but still considers Ardent his home base. Powell's enviable credit roster includes the likes of 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. His early years at Ardent landed him sessions working elbow- to-elbow with producer/engineer legends such as Jim Gaines, Glyn Johns, Rob Fraboni, John Hampton [Tape Op #92], Joe Hardy and Jim Dickinson [Tape Op #19]. And getting the call to do six albums with Tom Dowd certainly must've been a career highlight. Gleaning and condensing a huge "bag of tricks" from these greats, Jeff has come up with his own eclectic approach to making records.
In addition to working on multiple gold and platinum records, as well as six Grammy-winning projects, Jeff currently chairs the Producer and Engineering wing for the Memphis Chapter of NARAS, and has been honored as a legendary producer of Memphis at the annual Blues Ball. Recently, Powell has learned the disappearing art of cutting vinyl, apprenticing under Larry Nix on the original Stax lathe at Ardent. He's been cutting vinyl, under the name Take Out Vinyl, for artists from all over the country such as The Twilight Singers, Centro-matic, Mickey Hart, and Lucero. In July of 2011, Jeff and Lucas Peterson opened Humongous Too, an open room style tracking space in the Edge district in Memphis. And since 2011, Jeff's also been an Adjunct Professor, overseeing senior projects at the University of Memphis Recording Program.
I've always been struck by Jeff's approachability, friendliness, and awesomely skewed sense of humor. He has recorded my band, The Weisstronauts, at Ardent on a few different occasions, and it's been a pleasure to take off my own "producer hat" and work with him.
When and how did you get into cutting vinyl?
I suppose it was summer of 2008. There was a band called Super 400 working here at Ardent who had wanted [famed Stax/Ardent mastering engineer] Larry Nix to cut their vinyl. They had taken the studio tour and when they saw the cutting lathe, they were like, "Gosh, Larry. We'd love for you to cut our vinyl." And he said, "Oh, that doesn't work. I don't do that anymore." They kept pestering him about it and he kept saying no. So, I approached him one day in the parking lot and said, "Larry, I've been thinking. You go home everyday at five and you don't work weekends. Why don't we get the cutting lathe going again? I'd really love to learn the craft. Why don't you teach me? Wouldn't it be cool to come in in the mornings and find a check waiting for you on the turntable?" He said, "Let me think about it." He took two steps away from me and said, "Let's do it!"
All the associated gear was here?
Yep. It was always here. It was set up just like you see it here now. But it just wasn't being used. Some electronics had gone bad and it needed some TLC. And Larry had gotten fed up with it. For vinyl, he had mainly been doing DJ and hip-hop stuff and was having trouble turning a profit. I think he was charging old school prices. He eventually decided to concentrate on mastering CDs.
How long did it take you to get up and running?
Well, [Ardent's owner] John Fry [Tape Op #58] and [tech] Chris Jackson had a lot to do with getting the lathe going again. It didn't happen in one day! I learned a lot just sitting on the couch and keeping my mouth shut while they were working. I'd ask a million questions later, as well as reading anything I could get my hands on.
What's the optimum amount of time per side of LP?
The optimum time of an LP at 33 is less than 18 minutes — the less, the better. When you start cutting further and further towards the inner part of a record it gradually distorts. John Fry described it to me as the difference between 30 ips tape and, by the time you get to the inner groove, 7 1/2 ips. But to the human ear, when listening to an LP side, linearly, it's like anything else. Your ear gets used to things and then it's not drawn to the difference in fidelity as much. But, if you think about it, the amount of space that's going by, it's a lot like magnetic tape. I immediately went home and pulled out all my old albums to see how they were sequenced. You want your biggest, loudest songs with the most information at the beginning and your softer stuff goes on the inside. Look at your old records and it's so clear. It affects everything.
That's why albums often end with a ballad.
Or a quieter song. Exactly.
What do you do if you have someone who insists on having a side that's 20 minutes long?
I would explain to them that I can still cut it, but they may need to sacrifice volume and a bit of low end.
Where would you roll off the low-end in a case like that?
I'd use the high-pass filter on the Neumann console that I work with. Its presets are 40 and 63 cycles. There's also a thing called elliptical EQ that centers the bass information below a selected frequency to the center of the stereo image. Its presets are 150 and 300. I think anything below 50 cycles will roll off pretty drastically. But when you play it back, it's so much bigger and warmer than the CDs we play that have the bass piled on. It's unbelievable.
Like the medium itself makes up for the loss?
Absolutely, as far as my ears are telling me. It's just warmer and it sounds better. I've been doing it for over four years now. But I'm constantly learning and absorbing what I can from the veterans. There's definitely a difference of opinion about the best use of space. For instance, if you're gonna go for the extra expense of four sides, only cut halfway in. Some say still do the four sides, but use all your real estate and open up the grooves. If you look at some of the Radiohead records, that's a pretty good example. They cut halfway in and there's this big empty space of the run-out groove. That's because they only use the part of the disc surface that sounds the best. But do people even care what it sounds like? It doesn't appear so. But I certainly care.
How did you meet John Fry?
I was a student at University of Memphis. The first time I met him, he came to our class to speak and I fell asleep! [laughter] I dozed off in class! I was embarrassed about it later, but I just couldn't help it. I had no idea whose presence I was in.
What have you learned from him?
We have what we call the John Fry trickle down theory here. He's not one to sit down with you and explain how to get a good guitar sound or how a compressor works. But, I thank my lucky stars, he taught Terry Manning [Tape Op #58], Joe Hardy, and John Hampton. Most of my assistant days were spent with John Hampton. I'd say the biggest things I learned from John were compression and listening at a reasonable volume. I like to listen loud; I'm still a teenager when it comes to that. But I also know you need to turn it down and see what you can hear. If you can't hear your cool guitar sound on a medium to low volume, you probably don't have a very good, or exciting, guitar sound depending on what kind of music, obviously. And compression... what are you hearing when you're using a compressor? I learned mainly about attack and release times. I have a lot of fun misusing compression — I think it's a very modern thing to do. It makes things exciting to misuse it. But it's also important to learn it in the right way, the way he looked at it. It's necessary to get it to stick to the medium that you're trying to record to; that's why it was invented. Knowing what comes in and what goes out, you know? Analog tape always gave you that.
You worked a lot with Alex Chilton.
Yeah. When Big Star first got back together with Alex and Jody [Stephens, Tape Op #58], along with Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer from The Posies [#58], they recorded that live show in Columbia, Missouri [Columbia: Live at Missouri University, 1993]. That came back to Ardent to be mixed. Jim Rondinelli was the engineer, so I was his second. I had a tiny involvement in that. Then I worked with Alex on A Man Called Destruction, where I was the engineer and mixer. I learned a lot from Alex and I love that. Then there was a Big Star tribute record [Big Star, Small World] where I worked with some other bands that were recording Big Star songs. I engineered two or three tracks on that, one of them being the reformed Big Star in the studio for the first time. ["Hot Thing"] wasn't a good song; it wasn't really the best thing. But it is the song that got on the record. It was cool to be working with them. Eventually, Alex announced, onstage in London I believe, that they were going to go back in the studio. From what I heard, that's the first time Jody, Ken and Jon had heard about it too. [laughter] But when I heard the rumors that it was going to happen, I certainly went and made it known to Jody that I'd love to work on it. I wanted my name thrown in the hat, even though there were a million names in front of me. Jody called me into his office one day. He said that he'd talked to Alex and asked him who he wanted to engineer it. Alex said, without hesitation, "I want Jeff Powell to engineer it."
You must have been honored!
I was very happy to be a part of that. I think my biggest lesson from Alex was when we were working on A Man Called Destruction. He was overdubbing vocals and I had the mic out on the floor in the middle of the room. I had some baffles because the room was open and loud — I needed to deaden it a little bit. He was cutting his vocals on one song and then said, "Hey, put up that other song. I want to change one line." Knowing that he'd cut the vocal in the isolation booth when we tracked it, I said, "Hey Alex, do you want me to move the mic into the booth for consistency's sake?" He was smoking a cigarette and he blew smoke in my face. Then he said, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." My first reaction was, "Fuck you, man." I didn't say that, of course. But his reaction was that he just wanted to change one line and it didn't matter if it matched perfectly. In the end, it didn't matter at all. And no one, including myself, could find it today — I guarantee. He was right. I didn't like being told that I had a small mind, but what I learned at the end of the day was that he was right. As engineers we often spend so much time matching little things up that don't amount to a hill of beans. He just wanted to change the essence and get on with it! Rather than belittling me, he could've said it in a nicer way — but that's not really who he was. And he taught me a great lesson.
Was he ever, in the time you worked together, surprisingly kind?
Absolutely! He was like that most of the time. I used to get off on making him laugh, especially when I learned how easy it was. There's a documentary [Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me] about him. Some of the documentary guys were talking to me on the phone the other day and I said, "I can remember what we ate for lunch!" There was this great Greek restaurant across the street from the studio, and we used to crack up about the fact that everything on their menu had the word "Grecian" in front of it. It was just hilarious to us. He was on the phone one day calling in his order for potatoes. I started waving my arms and said, "Grecian potatoes." He started laughing so hard that he couldn't finish his order. He hung up the phone and said, "Fuck you." Then he walked out of the room! [laughter] He came back in and said, "You've got to finish the order." He was so embarrassed that he'd hung up on them. One of the hardest times I've ever laughed in my life was when we were over at the band house where he was staying. We had a day off and he'd asked me to come over and hang out. He'd rented the Woody Allen movie What's Up, Tiger Lily? I think we'd smoked a joint, or something. At one point he leaned over and said, "See the lead character?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "That's the Japanese John Fry." Man, if you know John Fry and have ever seen that movie — it looks just like him! I laughed so hard; I almost pissed my pants. He was just like that — so kind and funny. And I'll tell you the biggest one. I still can't believe it. The last Big Star record [In Space] — we'd had a blast and everyone got along. Ken and Jon were so great. They came in with no songs — writing the songs in the studio. We'd record 'em and mix 'em that day, song by song. That was Alex's stipulation for doing that album. That was a fascinating process, in and of itself. I'd never seen that done before and it was working; everything was going along great. We were at the mix portion of it and we had two days left on the books. It was a little scary how well everything had gone. Alex was in a great mood. The second to last day, I walked in the studio and Jody was waiting for me. He said, "I need to talk to you in the other room." I went, "Oh, shit. He hates everything and he's gonna bring somebody else in." I had been hired to be the engineer and mix the record; the four of them were co-producers. So Jody said, "Alex didn't want to say it himself, but he really appreciates the hard work. He wants to make you a co-producer of the record. Is it okay if we give you a point on the record?" Who does that? You could've knocked me over with a feather. That's Alex, to me.
You also worked on a number of projects with Tom Dowd.
I have to say Tom Dowd was the most influential to my career, in every way. I was really lucky to be in the right place, at the right time. I met him in 1991. I was the second engineer on a Lynyrd Skynyrd album, titled 1991, so it's easy for me to remember the year! It was their first studio album since their plane crash and Johnny [Van Zant] was their new lead singer. I think they'd done a reunion show or two and had gotten a really great response, so they decided to go into the studio with Tom Dowd and make a record. I guess Tom had had a meeting with John Fry at Ardent and said, "You know, if you make some of these adjustments to the studio for me, I have some big projects coming up." It was Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers, back to back. So, John did. That's when they bought a Neve VR console. They redesigned the control room and the whole studio space.
That's the one in Studio A, right?
Yes. That's when all the wood went up. It made it really live. It didn't use to be nearly that live. I believe that was on Tom Dowd's request.
What was the room surface before?
It was kind of like in C or B — carpet. It was much more dead, or controlled, if you will. I guess the reason I got to be the second on it was because I was kind of the house guy. They got the new Neve in over the holidays and they gave me a band to work with. They probably wanted to work with John Hampton or Joe Hardy and didn't have the money to do it. They gave me to them for next to nothing and told them I was going to produce! It was my first time. I got to produce a band from Michigan called The Holy Cows. I was supposed to find any kinks in the board before Tom Dowd came in with Lynyrd Skynyrd. Without getting into all the horrendous mistakes I made with The Holy Cows, I did learn the board backwards and forwards. Tom Dowd seemed fairly impressed that I knew every nook and cranny of the console. Anything he asked me to do, I could figure out a way to get it done, especially the automation; he was very into the computer side of things. He had a 1991-era, 20-pound laptop he was lugging around! I was always full of questions. I didn't hit him with them all at once, but I'd plan out how to ask him things. He was always quick with a story and I soaked everything in technology-wise, as well as the history and the stories he had to share. He was always on the floor, like an orchestral conductor, with the band. He'd wave his arms around with headphones on and point when it was time for the guitar to come in. It was amazing to watch. One of Tom's lessons was to spoil the singer rotten. Make them feel really important. When you want to talk to the singer, instead of talking over the talkback, especially if they're having a rough time — you turn off the speakers and go out there. You go into the room and talk to them. You don't let anyone in the control room hear what you're saying. It's your little secret. Help them to feel comfortable, whatever substance that may include.
We were looking at some of Ardent's old compressors, including the [Universal Audio] 176 from the very early days. You learned something from Tom about that equipment too.
Yeah, he loved those compressors. He showed me something that he used to do with Aretha Franklin. Her voice is so powerful. He told me he used to have to give up on her crapping out the mic, because she just would. Have you listened to some of those records closely? She's destroying it! But he still had to get it to tape, and eventually get it to vinyl. He showed me a trick with the 176s. Nothing works all of the time, but if he was having troubles with somebody so powerful, he would daisy chain the 176s together. You can do this with any compressors that have variable attack and release times. What he would do is take the first one and put it on the slowest attack and the fastest release. Then he would take the output of the compressor directly into the next compressor and put that on a very fast attack and a very slow release — the opposite. You look at the meters and they're working opposite. So basically the first one is kind of catching bulk on the slow one. It's a slow attack. It's letting it through, without restricting it too much. And on the second one, you've got a better chance if you use a fast attack to keep them from creaming you. You gotta finesse that one a little bit, but the result is a big wow! Another thing he used to do with a compressor is he would run the tape backwards. You can have some fun compressing things that way too. Put the compressor on, take it to another track — whether you're going to go fast attack or slow release — whatever you're doing to it, run the tape backwards and it has a backwards effect on it. Play it back and you can have some interesting results.
You can get infinitely fast attack by compressing backwards, because the attack is the release. Calibrating the 176 is a bit of an adventure, eh?
It's kind of a rite of passage around here. I'm sure it was John Hampton who showed it to me. You put it in test mode, and it basically cranks the voltage up really high. You hear a hum. You turn the fader up all the way, you hear this hum, and you basically have to stick a screwdriver in there. You just turn it until the hum is at its minimal, and then you take it out of test mode. But if you touch anything, it'll knock you across the room!
What was Glyn Johns like?
He was another one who taught me to push the faders up. Without those parameters that Dowd taught me though, just pushing up the faders, I probably would've been to the wall and had to keep pushing my master fader down or compressing more. Both of those lessons work together. Now I like to push everything up and pull it around, cutting this and that. I like to get a general sense of the song. It'd better sound like something when you push them all up.
What did you learn working with Rob Fraboni?
I was doing a project with him. This is something I'd tell young engineers to be aware of: there's a tendency when you're doing overdubs to have that track pushed up louder than everything else. My reasoning used to be, "Well, if there's a mistake or noise that I should've caught, I don't want it to slip by me." Fraboni's point was, "How do you know if you have a great guitar sound if you have it 10 times louder than the rest of the mix? It better sound great if it's tucked in somewhere where it may end up in the final mix. Make it sound good there, and then, when you turn it up, it will sound really good."
You've been doing some symphony recordings lately, but they're kind of a hybrid situation?
Yeah. I guess they're what I call punk rock orchestral recording, which is exciting to me. There's a series going on with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra called Opus One. I think it's largely the brainchild of the first violinist/ concertmaster here, Susanna Perry Gilmore, who wanted to bring the Symphony out of its square box and give it to everybody. [She's currently concertmaster for the Omaha Symphony.] She wanted to show how beautiful, wonderful and hip it could be! They can't bill themselves as the Memphis Symphony, so it's "members of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra." Basically, members of the Symphony team up with a local artist or band. They play in different clubs, not necessarily good- sounding venues. Drinks are served. The audience is right there. The last one we just had was in a 400-capacity bar and it was a 35-piece orchestra, plus the band. There's a real thrill in that; I had no idea how it was going to work! There's a certain bravery to that, especially on her part. I'm using some classical techniques, mainly a Decca Tree. Chris Jackson, who's the head tech at Ardent, and a fellow named Curry Weber, who's a staff engineer at Ardent, have put together a mobile-recording unit. Man, I'm just so excited about it. It's really fun! I've had to loosen myself up. It used to throw me when I'd hear a bartender slamming a beer bottle behind me during these orchestral passages. But I had to realize where I was. The first one we did was with my wife, Susan Marshall, singing and that was fantastic. It's really great that we have local arrangers and composers that are taking these local artists' original music and scoring it with these symphony musicians. It's amazing, unique, and at the end of the day, we have a beautiful recording.
It's going to be ongoing?
Yes. I've learned a ton already, past what I thought I already knew. That's what's so exciting about it. And that's what I'd say to everyone who reads this: you have to keep challenging yourself. I worked really hard to get to a place where I was confident in the studio, and to know that whatever the artists' sound was, I could get it for them. I still do know that; but I wasn't content to stop there, and I never will be. Never get comfortable. I'm not even halfway there yet!
