I remember reading somewhere years ago that The Beatles had never heard of psychedelic music before until they heard The Thirteeth Floor Elevators from Houston. I'm sure you remember those guys from the 60's. I once went out to Walt Andrus' recording studio to see about getting a recording engineer position back in 73'. Walt did the engineering & produced the Elevators and owned the International Recording label they were on. He didn't have anything for me here in Houston but offered to fly me out to LA where he had some friends in the studio biz --- he was sure he could get me on with one of his buddies in LA. Walt was a pilot & flew out there often. However, I was warned by a mutual friend of Walt's not to get in an airplane with him if he was flying it. It seemed Walt had a horrible sense of direction & commonly followed railroad tracks & rivers to get where he was going. Although he had never crashed (that anyone knew about), flying with him was definitely considered risky to say the least.
So, I turned down his offer to fly out to LA with him. I've wondered if I might be working in one of the top studios for the last 25 years if I had. Oh well - at least I didn't end up in a plane crash!!
I always wanted to work full-time in the audio field (engineer/producer), but got side tracked by playing the guitar. There was never enough time to do both it seemed. I engineered some albums around Houston & owned my own 8 track studio from 82' to 85' but then I sold it to Jake Willimane (bass player for Clint Black) and I moved to LA for 3 years. I lived in Van Nuys on Sepulveda Blvd., but my address was so close to Sherman Oaks that I always told everyone that I lived in Sherman Oaks. I even received my mail by putting Sherman Oaks on my return address (but I included the correct zip code).
I even wrote an industrial pop tune on the fly, for a Patrick Swayze instructional "Dirty Dancin'" video in LA in 88'. We got the call to do the tune, and I took a C&W tune my song writing partner had done several weeks earlier & rearranged it. We went into a 16 trk studio called Sing Sing out in Woodlands Hills somewhere and cut it 2 days later. We enlisted a really hot keyboard player to produce it in the studio because I didn't have a clue on getting an industrial pop sound in a studio! He knew the drum sounds to use, played all the bass & keyboard parts in less than 2 hours, quantized everything, and we recorded the guitar and vocals shortly afterwards. The whole thing from start to finish only took about 6 hours for the tune to go to master mix. (I think Sing Sing is where Richard Marks cut a few things.) That tune is why I left LA & moved back to Texas. The producer of the video owed my co-writer & I approximately $80,000 & he refused payment. He killed himself with a drug overdose before I ever got a chance to whip his ass!! His son spent the remainder of any proceeds from the video/estate so it was fruitless to pursue in court. The video was certified platinum by Billboard with sales exceeding 500,000 copies. At $29.95 per copy it adds up quick. Obviously I was pissed! I moved back to Texas where I've always done business on a hand shake & never got screwed yet, (knock on wood). I still get pissed when I see it on the shelf of a Blockbuster, Tower, or similar video rental store. Someone's making money off my work -- & it ain't me!
When I decided to go into recording back in the 60's there weren't any recording schools like there are now. In 1969, I remember going over to Jones Sound (a studio close to my home in The Heights). A couple of artists that recorded there are: Bobby "Blue" Bland, The Moving Sidewalks (forerunner of ZZ Top with Gibbons, Hill, Beard, & Greg Lanier on keys). Anyway, I talked to Doyle Jones the owner & asked him how to get into the recording biz. (Keep in mind I was still in high school at the time) He said, "Go to electronics school, because everybody has to fix the equipment themselves". In those days you had to build your own plate reverbs and fix bad sliders, calibrate the tape recording machines and do all sorts of electronic repairs to the recording equipment. So after graduation from high school I attended Bell & Howell's electronics school in Dallas Tx (DeVry Tech). I think the school is still around in name, but it has been bought out by another company. Techs were pretty sought after from DeVry then & Texas Instruments even offered everyone a job as soon as they graduated. I could have gotten on with TI for around $12 an hour, and back in 1972 that was very good money! Kind of like being offered $25 an hour right out of school today. But - I wasn't very good with a slide rule & I dropped out of DeVry before I flunked out. I finally got a slide rule function calculator in the last weeks of school but it was too late to bring my grades up. A slide rule calculator went for around $200 back then. What a rip off. It had the same chip in it that the $30 regular calculator did, but it wasn't wired up to have a slide rule face plate & key function buttons. Nowadays you can get a regular calculator in any drug store for $5 & a slide rule calculator goes for $25 at Kmart. I finally went back to school in Houston (at Elkins Electronics) and graduated in 75'.
I remember coming in from school once back in 71' to see my folks & watch the Superbowl with my dad. I think The Cowboys were playing that year. Anyway, I got to my parents house & my dad announced that in order to watch the Superbowl, I would have to fix the TV that had gone out 2 nights before. I tried to explain that I was learning digital technology & we didn't fix TVs at school. (We only read about the basics of TVs in a book.) My dad went ballistic - he couldn't understand how he was paying all that money for me to learn electronics & I couldn't fix his TV. We ended up renting a TV to watch the game.
By 1980 however, there were a great number of gear manufacturers and the need to be an electronics tech in a studio was greatly reduced. Now all outboard gear is made by outside companies & most equipment warranties are void if you even open the back of the device!!
I worked on vending machines (juke boxes, pinball machines, etc.) when I dropped out of electronics school back in 73' & stayed with it until 1982, which is when I built my own studio. I worked part-time for a couple of other studios in town but had to go out on my own. It was just an 8 trk (Tascam 80-8) studio but it was good quality. I spent a lot of bucks on just making the room sound good, so when I put in the gear it did need a whole lot to get a sound from any instrument. I had minimal outboard gear. I had a Ramsa board (the pro line for Panasonic). In 1980, ABC bought 750 of them to do sound for the Olympics on TV. I figured the techs at ABC knew more than I did so they must be good boards. I was very impressed with the quality - and it did things most other boards that cost twice as much didn't do.
I've been out of the studio biz for years now, so I'm not really sure what the specs are on newer analog machines, but I know they don't beat out digital. However, when my band The Tweeds went in to record our album last year we went analog. I picked a small 16 track studio using a Tascam half inch. We mastered to DAT but for my money the mastering recording was as good as digital. Of course the reason I'm a analog fan is this ---- I play blues & like to do it the way blues bands of the early years cut records. Live. Basically we cut the drums, guitar, bass, & laid down a scratch vox at the same time. I think as musicians you get a better feel that way. We did overdubs on guitar & put the vox & backing vox on afterwards. Layering on track after track, one at a time is for the digital junkies/one man band situations. It may make for some interesting takes but most of the time there is no personality or feel to the tracks.
When recording analog you get a warmth you can't achieve with digital. That warmth becomes a part of the sound as much as the instruments themselves. I realize that digital has its place, it's just not for me. It really makes sense to me to record analog to save money as well - by cutting analog I was able to do our album for less than what the digital studios around sell time for. (I figured with my pre production techniques, I saved us $5000 over what other blues bands spend to get the same quality.) What I would have done had I gone digital would be spending money for outboard gear to make the digital sound come off warmer. I'm paying for the studios' outboard gear. If I don't need it - why pay for it? Of course I know that digital would probably be a better choice for pop or other forms of music, but like I said, we cut all the basic tracks live & with the outboard gear the small studio had (compressors, limiters, reverbs, dbx, etc.). It came off as good as digital, spec wise.
My wife & I love living out here in Deerfield…it's like being in the country. I've got a 5 year old & the suburbs is the place to be for raising a little boy. There are still plenty of rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, armadillos, & a few possums around out here - and a cow pasture right around the corner. Ah - No Place But Texas!!