Why did you choose the RADAR?

I think they’re the best sounding things on the planet. The converters that they use are very, very intelligent. They’re really true to life with the sound. I run all of my signal chain through a bunch of Neve’s and an Otari MTR-100 for more color. The RADAR’s are so fast during sessions. When we started this renovation at Fireside, I had my first chance to really use the RADAR system firsthand. It’s unbelievable during a tracking session: You’ve got all of the people in the studio, and you need to do a drum punch-in or a full band punch-in, and RADAR has a magic button called ‘Undo’. I just love that.

How many levels of undo do you usually set up within the system’s preferences?

Believe it or not, I’m a risky guy, and I just set up two. It takes extra power for me to set up multiple undo levels. My philosophy is that when you’re tracking and you’ve got so many things on your mind (like where the signal’s going, what tracks you have armed, and what everything is going to sound like), you don’t need to be sitting around trying to remember what level of undo you’re at. If you can’t do it in two levels of undo, then something’s wrong.

It’s sort of like when I talk to producers about tracks. I sit them down and say, “Yeah, we have 48 tracks, but for now, let’s just pretend we have 24”. That really works out well. And it’s the same when I look at undo levels. Sure they’re there, but I don’t really want to use them. It’s an incredible machine because at any point in a session, you can change the number of undo’s you allow yourself. If I’m in the middle of a guitar punch on a part, I’ll set up extra levels. It’s really great for that. After working with analog, you realize that this is like candy.

How did your clientele react to the digital update?

There were all kinds of reactions. I had some people calling me up moaning and groaning. But in the end, everybody loves it. Three of the projects that came in the last few months were supposed to be going to two-inch analog. As soon as they got there and saw the RADAR unit and looked at my Neve rack, you could tell they were interested. Then they’d look at my pile of outboard gear and start looking back and forth between the two-inch and the RADAR, and common sense would just take over. I’d be just ready to stripe the tape, and they’d change their mind.

A lot of the older people are skeptical of course. It took them a while to get used to the 32-track one-inch tape, but after a while they found that they could cut good records on it. Now they’re dealing with hard-disk recording, and all they can think of is their little home computers. But once they get into it, I’m having even the older producers starting to swear by it. They’re telling me they wished they had the solo from the outro over the intro, and I’m able to do it for them. It’s really cool to be able to do editing like that so quickly.

Do you think that the initial stumbling block is based on people being intimidated by having to learn a new interface, or is it actual skepticism concerning the qualities of digital recording?

A lot of it is intimidation. They make it out to be kind of complicated. I had the best tape teacher over at Masterfonics, Frank Wells. He’s just absolutely, hands-down one of the best tape people I know. He always reminded me that no matter where audio technology is going, it isn’t rocket science. We still have a ton of things to learn, but there are so many people who make everything that’s relatively simple seem extremely complicated. What I’ve learned to do over the years is to do just the opposite that. I take the more complicated technical information and simplify it to a point where I can communicate it to a producer. I try to tell it to them like I’m not an engineer. That’s what scares them: When an engineer sits there and blows smoke at them. I just say, “Here’s the deal. We record some data onto disk here and it sounds pretty much just like the old one-inch tape”.

What kind of outboard goodies do you have around the studio?

On the outboard side, we’re still using the Lexicon 480L, which we just love. We have a few other Lexicon pieces, and some TC Electronics stuff. We’ve got a rack full of the Millenium mastering boxes; they’re outrageous. I use them to EQ pianos and stuff like that, to add a bit of warmth. I’ve got an old Allen Smart compressor. And then I run all of this mess to an Alesis Masterlink of all things.

It seems like everybody has one of those lying around these days.

I think it’s because the Masterlink made everything so amazingly easy. I mix to DAT at the same time as I’m going to the Masterlink at 24 bits, so I’m getting my safety done at the same time, while being able to alter the Masterlink copy a little bit.

I know that many engineers enjoy that box because it makes it easy to shuttle work back and forth between different studios. Do enough other studio owners in Nashville use Masterlinks so you can easily swap work like that?

That’s where it comes in handy. I’ve got a few people who I usually rely on to do my mastering in Nashville, Andy Quinn and Steve Tolson at Masterphonics. I fly them off a file and make them a 24-bit CD and they can load it right into their computer. It saves a lot of time and eliminates the need for a lot of conversions. Masterlink made that possible. A couple of years ago, we would buy the Fostex or ADAT machines and use up four tracks to get up to 24 bit audio. That was kind of nasty.

What about favorite microphones?

I have a Telefunken, an AKG C12, the Manley gold microphone (mainly because it’s really pretty), a U 47, a U 67, then 87’s and 84’s.

Then there are the original Neumann’s that Porter Wagner bought in the seventies. One of them is really special: It has a U 87 body modified to resemble a U 67 with a tube in it. Charlie Rich and Ray Price did all their singing on that mic. I’ve had it rebuilt but it still has a great character to it, just because the electronics are so old. I call it the ‘Porter Special’.

I’ve got AKG C 414’s with the C12 on the Steinway. I love the new Groove Tubes pencil mics for overheads on drums and for acoustic guitars. I also use the AKG 480, Shure SM57’s, and some of the original Sennheiser 441’s, the old silver-bullet things. Each of those has it’s own personality: Sometimes they’re my friends, sometimes…

I think that over the years I’ve started to rely more and more on the microphones I use, moving away from complicated signal chains. My chain right now is very simple: I compress very little, and my mics go through a cable to a pre and then straight to the RADAR.

You must do a lot of outboard processing later on.

It depends. If I’ve got really good pickers that I can trust, I’ll let them flow dynamically as much as I can. If it doesn’t flow as well, I might throw them through some more serious compression. Working like that makes you spend more time with the microphones; lately I find myself moving things a quarter of an inch and finding completely different sounds.

What do you think about the country music business these days?

I feel like I have this conversation with somebody every day, and have had for the last six or seven years. I think it’s going through a very negative phase at the moment. What’s happened is that it has gotten too complicated; it costs too much, and the pressure to get a record deal is tremendous. More people are learning about the law than they used to, and the result is a real mess. Things are getting frustrating.

From an engineering perspective, you notice that everyone’s making the music kind of sterile. And I understand why they’re doing that: it’s a matter of survival. I’ve sat there and set up the boards for a major label session and realized that everything has to be pretty much the same from album to album.

It all stems from the fact that the market is down. Some of my friends who work with the bigger artists have noticed that the tour dates are really slowing down. The shakedown on things is really coming down in the next year or two.

Things in Nashville are going to be really different. The independent market is going to start getting a lot more attention. All the people I work with now that have the fire, that really have the talent, those are the people are going to get a chance now, whether or not they have a label backing them.

Do you think this transition is a result of country music having to compete too much with other forms of pop music?

That’s exactly what it is. It’s just a competitive thing: The industry is just trying to keep country in people’s faces. It’s having to conform instead of being it’s own thing. The artists that you hear on a lot of the country radio stations these days sound exactly like the artists that you hear on the ‘alternative’ music stations. And I don’t think Merle Haggard would call that country.

As for myself, I like the new country, because I have so many roots in rock music. But on the other hand, my country roots lead me back to the really good songwriters and the more simplistic arrangements. I think it’s going to be really interesting, seeing how this evolves. I love being where I’m at right now.

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