Apr30

Written by:Bill Park
Monday, April 30, 2001 6:00 PM

How did this project come together?

In early September I was brainstorming ways to raise awareness for the studio in the community here. I was also trying to think of a way to raise some funds - and also create a small record label to release some local talent. I have a healthy obsession with soul music, especially the Muscle Shoals sound. I thought it would be interesting to do a tribute to the sound and get some bands in here to record various songs.

I walked around the city putting up flyers and even had a small write-up in one of the weekly papers here.

You not only got the project rolling, but you managed to make some connections that would not have occurred to many of us.

I decided that I'd like to contact Jimmy Johnson to make sure he was okay with the idea, and also to see if he would like to write liner notes. I still planned on the release to be a small 500 run local affair.

Jimmy loved the idea and was interested in coming up here to co-produce some of the tracks. After I pinched myself, I let him know that I would love to host him here. Then I began living like a Buddhist Monk as all available finances went into the Muscle Shoals drawer.

Jimmy Johnson's guitar work and his production skills have kept him in demand for 30 years. But Jimmy Johnson isn't the only high profile name involved in this project.

I really focused on the band selection to make sure I had a great variety of genres and sounds. At the same time, I received an email from a Senegalese man named Idrissa Dia. He is director of French Programming at the Voice of America in DC. In his younger years, he was a DJ at Radio Senegal and 'broke' Muscle Shoals in West Africa. He really loved my idea as well and got me in touch with Jerry Wexler.

Jerry Wexler was amazing to speak to - an absolutely brilliant and gracious man. He gave me loads of advice and asked me for a copy of the CD. He said, "if all goes well,' he'd like to write the liner notes.

Meanwhile, Idrissa was working on getting the Senegalese megastar Youssou N'Dour, but as I said, that fell through.

Sounds as if this got into deep waters rather quickly.

Of course, there have been late nights of recording and kicking ideas around. I have met an amazing amount of musicians in the area. This has been an unbelievable ride so far. Keep in mind, this whole project is being conducted on a shoestring budget in a very humble studio. Every day I have to ask myself how it has ballooned into what it is. My brother and I are the sole producers of the project. He is acting as the executive producer, and I am the producer. Besides paying the horn section, no one, not even Jimmy, is receiving a penny up front. All money is back-end.

I am adamant in keeping with my original vision of making a great record that showcases local talent recording GREAT songs. I hope when all is said and done, people love the songs.

Jerry Wexler is a true giant in this business and Jimmy Johnson.....wow. Want to share an anecdote?

Mr.Wexler was extremely gracious and intelligent. When I first started speaking to him, I called him, "Mr. Wexler," and he immediately stopped me and said, "You can call me Jerry for the same price." After 15 minutes or so, we settled into a great conversation about drum micing, horns, and music history. At one point he asked my age (at the time I was 26) and he said (after a pause), "it's all ahead of you now, isn't it?" I won't forget how he said that, it was touching.

As far as Jimmy goes - he and I spent many hours together. At one point in one of the sessions, he took aside some of the players, all late 20somethings who are living the "rock n roll lifestyle", and began telling them how much better they would play if they were sober. You should've seen the looks on their faces. They thought Jimmy would be a smoking, boozing maniac - but here he was telling them how the Rolling Stones and Skynyrd were, "sober as priests," during the sessions. It was quite a moment – one of the guys has even stopped drinking in the studio because of that.

So you go down to Muscle Shoals for some mixing…

I flew in to Memphis, rented a car, and drove to a studio in Saltillo, MS called The Soundhouse run by Mike Mihelic. Jimmy met us there and we transferred by Tascam DA-78 tapes to Jimmy's Fostex Hard Disk machines. Then we drove to the Shoals and I checked into the Key West Motel.

Aside from using an Alesis D4 to fix some of the kick sounds, the mix was a pretty standard affair.

The tracks were mixed by Steve Melton, who was the chief engineer of Muscle Shoals for years. He is also Wexler's favorite engineer – it was a true honor to have him on this project. Jimmy also owns a Mackie d8b, so everything on the project was tracked and mixed through that board, whether at Soundgun or at Jimmy Johnson Productions, which is his studio.

Who handled the mastering?

The mastering was handled by Alan Douches at West Westside Music in Tenafly, NJ. I like to use him because he has amazing ears and an unbeatable signal chain. For this project we turned off his beautiful Pendulum Compressor and instead used his LA Limiter. We went with that configuration because the LA Limiter would give the tracks a darker, older sound, where the Pendulum would have brightened everything a bit. From the LA the signal traveled to a Tube Vitalizer for some much needed warming, and then onto a George Massenburg Parametric EQ. From there it hit an Apogee AD8000 and onto Pro-Tools. One interesting thing Alan did was to run every song through his plate reverb, conveniently located in his garage. We put a hint of it on almost every song - to glue them together, and also to give them that last bit of vintage-ness.

Now you've got the final project. What label are you signed with?

My brother and I have incorporated a record label. It has always been my dream to own a small label and release music by artists I love. This record will be the first release.

That's a tough way to work… in effect, you have taken on several additional jobs. What kind of distribution do you have?

In a perfect world, I would secure Sony or WEA Distribution - but this isn't a perfect world. The CD will be initially available at www.cdbaby.com/soundgun. If interest in the project grows, we may seek additional avenues.

I don't imagine that you would set up a label for only one release. You are looking toward the future?

This is what I hope will be just the start. My real love is film and video. I plan to create a small media company, which includes Soundgun in addition to a Digital Video faction that would produce socially responsible fiction pieces and documentaries. This idea wasn't even possible 5 years ago, as the technology has only recently gotten to the point where everything can be done 'in-house', audio & video, to a professional level.

I guess you could say that those are my future plans: starting up the indie film area of the company, as well as producing 4 more records for Soundgun over the next 4 months. I will be releasing the 4 records every 2 months or so over the next year starting in September.

The video portion of the business will be called Filmgun. That will be the DV arm of the company where I want to find folks with a good story or documentary idea, help them to develop their ideas, and then give them a DV cam for a month. Follow that with access to our editing suites for a month, and at the same time performing audio work for their films in Soundgun. I definitely want to push these films as far as they can go, which means Cannes, Sundance, etc. At the same time, I want to concentrate on putting out intelligent music on the Soundgun label - and also have some of the Soundgun artists contribute music to the Filmgun productions.

Essentially, my main goal is to create a community of filmmakers, musicians, writers, artists, etc. who are working together on film and music projects. I am a firm believer in strength in numbers. I also believe it is possible to make money from your art - but it has to be properly marketed. Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about millions of dollars here, just enough to enable people to lead comfortable lives.

Sounds like there is a synergy at work.

In a bizarre way, this Muscle Shoals project is a microcosm of what I want the company to be. You have rock, hip-hop, electronica, folk, blues, etc. all on one record. And, I think, they mesh pretty nicely. The release party will be pretty cool because you'll have fans of each these bands in one room - hearing stuff they normally wouldn't listen to. That's my ultimate goal. For future releases, I'd like to pair a soul singer with a hip-hop act --- or have a folk-artist sing with an electronic artist. I want all the Soundgun artists to work with each other, to support each other.

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