CMT Blog: Archive

More and more, the success of music producers is governed by whether or not they own a studio. Some of my favorite producers in Nashville operate starkly and simply in very modest environments, but from the sound of the records you would never guess. For example, Neilson Hubbard is a producer in East Nashville (the hip part of town in case you didn’t know) who built a small studio in his back garden and has produced some great records including Kate York’s Sadly Love and Matthew Perryman Jones’s Throwing Punches In the Dark. You wouldn’t know these records came out of a studio roughly the same size as the average American living room.

One of my favorite records of all time, Patty Griffin’s Thousand Kisses, comes from such a humble place it is almost unbelievable. The producer, Doug Lancio, recorded this in his basement and when I visited him for the first time I couldn’t believe how comfortable it felt. He has all the expensive gear, but other than that it feels like you’re in someone’s living room. Just listen to the opening track of Patty’s record and you can feel the intimacy of Doug’s home. You can’t manufacture that in a high fidelity studio.

The producer of a record should be like the skipper of a ship - not always hands-on, but making decisions that are the difference between life and death. In these days of declining sales and falling budgets, record companies are turning to producers who own their own studio to bring the record in under budget. In other words, you might be a great skipper, but you ain’t going far if you don’t own your own ship.