Joan was tracked in one take at Butch Walker’s Ruby Red Room in Atlanta. We used a stereo mic setup on the piano, I think it was 2 414s but I’m not 100% sure as it was a while ago. The vocal was a u47 I believe, and yes there was vocal bleed in the piano mics and vice versa. That was part of the beauty of it all.
Music Producer Stories
Recording “Letters” with Butch Walker
The best records you make as a Music Producer are always the easiest to make. Butch Walker’s “Letters” was one such record.
Recording Matthew Ryan’s Certainly Never
In the mid 90s, I had the pleasure of recording Matthew Ryan’s Debut album “Mayday” on A+M records. We recorded the record in NY, LA and Nashville using some of the finest gear available. We used 2 inch tape for the whole record, as most people did then. I used lots of equipment to get a very rugged natural sound but the biggest example of this was the song “Certainly Never”.
Tales From The Vault #2
The whole album was recorded in a 200 year old farm house. I rented a package from an LA rental company, which included: A studer 827 24 track, 10 API mic pres,2 la2a’s, 2 1176’s, an an Elam 251, 2 akg 414’s, A bunch of Sennheiser and Shure Mics, Cabling, Snakes, and other stuff. As far as tracking, all the rooms in the house sounded different. We would set the drums up in one room and see what song fit that drum sound. So, we recorded drums in several different rooms.
Tales from the Vault #1
So I’m working at A+M studio’s in the 90’s in the big SSL room in the back. A famous dark metal band from the 70’s(60’s) is mixing across the hall when the singer(famous for biting bats) waltz’s into my control room……
