Issue 172

Despite her relative youth, Piper Payne has forged a formidable reputation as a mastering engineer, a rarefied set of skills that can make or break a recording commercially. Her work with artists like Third Eye Blind, The Go-Go’s, LeAnn Rimes and others put her on the radar while she began her career in Oakland, California. Now relocated to Nashville and engineering at Infrasonic Mastering, she still involves herself with teaching, and in promoting equality in the studio workplace through her advocacy with the Audio Engineering Society (AES) and other organizations. She is also a co-owner of Physical Music Products, a Nashville record-pressing plant.

John Seetoo: You mentioned in Sound on Sound magazine that you like to coordinate with a mixing engineer before they’re finished with mixing an album, in order to prep your mastering work for the project in question. How often are you able to do that? And is it normally the case that you’re contracted to master a project during the recording or mixing stage or even earlier? And what about when you’re asked to master a project after the mixes have been done for a while? Can you outline your protocols?

Piper Payne: Sure. So…the first part of the question was in regards to how often I’m able to interface with a mixing engineer. I’m able to interface with the mixing engineer ahead of time probably about 50 percent of the time. Sometimes that’s out of necessity, meaning that there might be a really tight turnaround. And it might require us to get on the phone together and come up with a plan to execute the master as quickly (and without any potential revisions) as possible. [Other] times, we have so much time that we have the ability and the runway to be able to work on this thing together.

And sometimes the artist just is, in a way, over it, and wants to have the engineers take over and just get it finished. That’s not always my favorite part; what I really like is for the artists to be engaged in the process. But sometimes, I’m put [in] with the mixing engineer out of necessity, because there’s just been so much back and forth that the artist just says, “Okay, you’ve got to handle it and get it done for me.” And then I’ll be ready when the [final mix] is done.

JS: Is this something that will happen even if you’ve never worked with that mixing engineer or that artist before? Or, is it usually the result of past familiarity with each other?

PP: That’s probably half and half. How’s that for a non-answer? I’d say sometimes out of necessity, because the artists and I are working together for the first time. Maybe I’ve worked with the engineer before. Or maybe because the artists and I have worked together a bunch of times, [but] I’ve never worked with that engineer before. I don’t have any problem with it [either way]. But I do prefer the artists to be more engaged than less.

Piper Payne.

JS: Unlike a number of your older peers in the mastering room who cut their teeth on analog tape, you grew up in the digital music production era. So how did your affinity for analog tape come about?

PP: Oh, boy. Well, I think it’s just what you highlighted, which is that I came up in a digital era. Funnily enough, my mom called me about an hour ago. And she said, “I’m watching a documentary and I’ve never seen it before. It’s about music and the history of music. Do you know what the Napster is?” (laughs)

And so that led to another 30-minute long conversation with my mom explaining to her what MP3s are, [what] peer to peer networks are, and how Napster came about and why Napster doesn’t really exist so much anymore. And then I talked to her about streaming. And it was just a very funny…it’s very funny that you asked me this question because I just literally had this conversation with my mom, who was very…she’s a very intelligent woman, but she was not super clued into all of the latest and greatest technologies when I was coming up through audio engineering school.

But it’s funny that you asked that because I [first thought that] everything [that was being recorded was] on computers. That’s why, when someone [first] put a tape machine in front of me, I was like, “wait a minute, this music is the same as the music that’s on the hard drive, [which is] the same music as what’s on this tape.” And somebody said, “no, no, no, this tape is better than the music that’s on the hard drive, because it’s not an interpolation of the sound waves, the digital interpolation; this is the actual analog, [with] the same compression and rarefaction [as] you would hear it live in the room, without any gaps in information. That’s what this analog tape is.”

And that’s where I really fell in love with it. Because I feel like in a lot of ways I’m an engineer because I really like pressing buttons and moving faders and turning knobs and all the tactile functions of being an engineer, and the tape machine really lets me do that. But also the fact that [when listening to an analog master tape] you are only one generation away from being there in the room. Was that magic [there] in the recording? When it’s on tape? That’s pretty cool.

JS: Did you hear a difference? If so, did it happen the first time you heard 2-inch analog tape versus what you’d previously heard in digital, or did it take a while?

PP: I could hear the difference right away. I mean, you hear the hiss. [But] you hear the life in the recording – when you compare it to the digital realm, [digital] sounds sterile, sounds almost too clean, almost creepy, you know. And on [analog] tape, even the compression of tape mimics the way that your ears hear music, the compression in your ears.

I liken it to when you ride motorcycles, and the difference between a carbureted motorcycle and a fuel injected motorcycle. When it’s fuel injected, you hit the throttle and it just goes on right away. Almost like an electric car. But [with] a carbureted motorcycle, you kind of have to work with the bike when you ride it, because there’s the tiniest little delay when you turn the throttle and you feel the engine roar to life. And then it goes…

That’s what it’s like when you are working with the tape machine and you hear the music come out of the speakers. You’re working with it rather than just hitting go and go, like digital.

JS: That’s a wonderful analogy.

PP: You know, there’s merit to each format and I’m not sh*tting on digital either. I mean, there are amazing things that you can do in the digital realm that you just can’t do on analog tape, or vinyl. Some of my very favorite recordings have never seen an analog format. But some of my very favorite recordings have never seen a digital format.

JS: What are some examples?

PP: Morten Lindbergh Lux. He makes these amazing spatial and surround recordings of chamber music groups and they’re done in high-resolution SACD and Blu-ray. But as far as I know I’ve never seen [them] in a [2-channel] analog format and might not even exist in vinyl as far as I know. But then, you look at something like the album by Daniele Luppi and Danger Mouse called Rome. That’s one of my very favorite records in the whole world. And I don’t think it was ever really destined to be listened to in the digital realm, because the vinyl is so much better than the digital releases. I think it was made, I mean, I know it was made on tape. And I think it was made specifically for vinyl because it just sounds so damn good on vinyl. Both of those are modern examples of recordings, not Steely Dan or old orchestral stuff or whatever.

JS: Does your love for analog gear extend to tube amps? Teletronix LA-2A compressors? Pultec equalizers?

PP: Absolutely.

JS: Do you ever use them in conjunction with, say, a UREI/Universal Audio 1176 solid-state analog compressor?

PP: Yeah…some of the things you mentioned are going to be [used for] mixing [rather than mastering]. The mastering [gear] that I would use would be like the old 660-style, Fairchild-style [compressors and] stuff. As far as tube stuff goes, the Pultec, things like that.

But some of my very favorite pieces of gear are not tube. One is a parametric equalizer by GML, the 8200, which is a stalwart, amazing mastering equalizer. And I love the Rupert Neve Designs Portico II Master Buss Processor, I absolutely love that one.

But some of my other favorite gear: I’m looking at my Manley Slam! sitting right in front of me, which is a tube compressor limiter [and mic preamp]. There are other things too, besides just the solid-state and tube [gear] – optical compressors and things like that. They’ve always been part of the chain.

JS: Are there any digital units that you use?

PP: I use some plugins. I use plugins [add-on software used in digital audio workstations – Ed.] on the output of the mix coming out of the computer. I have a Waves L2, an old school L2 Ultramaximizer [peak limiter] that I totally love and I use way too much. [Actually}, I use it really sparingly; it’s more of a seasoning than an actual sound in my chain. I don’t have them anymore, but I used to have the Weiss Instruments DS1 compressor and EQ-1 EQ. Those are really amazing outboard units.

JS: You’re now the owner of Physical Music Products, a vinyl record pressing factory. How did that come about? And what were the steps that led to your other entrepreneurial ventures as well?

PP: You know, I think I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I mean, I remember being six years old knocking on my neighbor’s door and offering to rake their leaves for 20 bucks. I’ve always had my own business. I have my own mastering business. Even when I worked for other mastering firms, I did it as an independent contractor, and ran my own business that way.

But after I was mastering records for quite a while, over and over and over, I had clients coming to me saying, “I know you mastered the vinyl for this. I know that it sounded good when you had it, and I have these test pressings that don’t sound good.” Or, “I have these test pressings that have a problem.” Or, “I have this test pressing where one side of it is my band and another side of it is somebody else’s band, and I don’t even know how that happened!”

Over the years I came to realize that it was almost a necessity for artists to be able to make a physical product that they can control the distribution of, how many they make, how much they charge to sell it, and where they sell it. And there were not a lot of record pressing plants that were catering to independent artists in the right way. There were some plants that were really, really small and not able to do turnaround times relatively quickly. There were some plants that were really, really big that didn’t care about the quality. And I felt like something in the middle of that was needed, where you could have quick turnaround time, but still have good-quality records coming out, that didn’t have to be the 500,000 Adele records, you know, to just be able to get something quick.

So about five years ago, I started a venture with some partners in the Bay Area. I learned so much, and I made amazing connections in doing this, but it failed miserably. We had enough money to open doors, but then didn’t have enough in reserve to continue operations. When I closed that chapter and left, they ended up going bankrupt shortly after. I left to go to Nashville, because my mastering company, Neato Mastering, that I had started and ran for a few years up in Oakland…I got an opportunity to join the family of Infrasonic Mastering. Pete Lyman, who owns the company, offered to get me out to Nashville to be able to cut records more often out of Nashville, rather than just existing in my Oakland studio. And so, I ended up coming out here.

And luckily enough, I’ve made a couple of really wonderful connections here in Nashville, and one of the main investors in that previous Oakland venture kind of followed me along and said, “if you want to do it in in Nashville, we’ll be happy to help you with some seed money to open a plant in Nashville.” To be honest, I was pretty…I had a little bit of PTSD from opening that first one. So it took me a little while to kind of get my feet on the ground here in Nashville and build it again.

But for the last two and a half years, I’ve been working on opening this plant [Physical Music Products]. We built out [the facility to accommodate] 12 presses, instead of just the one that we had in Oakland. I brought my technology for quality control and quality tracking [of] records at scale. I think, this week we should press our 100,000th record after being open for only six months.

JS: Congratulations.

PP: Thank you very much. Yes, very exciting. We worked really, really hard, around the clock for going on three years now. It’s been an absolute nightmare and a dream all at the same time. But we have three running automatic presses, which puts me solidly into the sort of mid-sized plant pack. And we’ve built out for 12, so we will just continue to grow. I’m happy to report that our quality is very, very good. And our turnaround times are unheard of.

We’ve been turning around thousands of records in less than a month, from lacquer to finished goods delivered. Those are the kinds of turnaround times that really should be happening. This whole 9 to 12 to 18 months wait…in some cases, 18-month turnaround times, is absolute bulls*it. There’s no reason that these records should be taking as long as they are and we’re proving it every day. So Physical Music Products is definitely a labor of love, but it’s really starting to pay off now and I’m starting to see happy clients. We’re turning around a lot of records really quickly, and they are of the quality that I would expect to come out of a record plant of any size. Nowhere to go but up with that.

Part Two of this interview will appear in Issue 173.

All images courtesy of Piper Payne.

Renaissance (Columbia/Parkwood Entertainment)

I’d always enjoyed Beyoncé’s music, from the time when she was in Destiny’s Child, the essential R&B girl group of the 1990s. That Beyoncé Knowles (now Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, married to Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter) would be a successful solo artist was never in doubt. If she now stands alone in popular culture as Beyoncé, whose eminence in today’s R&B/pop/soul is unquestioned, remember she’s been working at it for more than 30 years; her solo album debut was Dangerously in Love in 2003, almost 20 years ago. She works hard for the money, and the stature she enjoys.

When my department chair and I decided some years ago that a course I taught at St. John’s University, The Journalist as Critic, needed rebranding to increase signups, I half-seriously suggested calling it “The Institute of Beyoncé Studies.” I still use that phrase as a teaser in the syllabus for the class now known as Writing Music, Movies, and TV Reviews. In alternate semesters, I teach Writing About Music: Pop, Rap, Rock, and so the “institute” still has residual usefulness in describing the course in the school catalog.

How important Beyoncé is to my students was hammered home to me on December 13, 2013, when her fifth solo album, simply titled Beyoncé, had a surprise release at midnight. The final exam for the class was that morning, and one of the assignments was an album review. More than half the class wanted to write about that hours-old Beyoncé album.

Beyoncé’s work methods and visual presentation show an insistence on perfection. In pop music, this is not always ideal, even if the results are satisfying to both the artist and her ardent fans, which include a plurality of the world’s most influential pop music critics.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Mason Poole.

Her most recent album, Renaissance, was released July 29, 2022, and it is excellent in most ways, a seamless song cycle that maintains a crisp focus as an homage to club dance music cultures and subcultures since disco. It is a “perfect” party record: put it on and you don’t have to worry about changing the music until the final track is over. That track is “Summer Renaissance,” based on Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” the disco hit that is sort of ground zero for all of the rest of the rhythm music on this album. Beyoncé sings the breathless Summer swoons perfectly. It’s not a sample, it’s an “interpolation.” The US Copyright Office, in its online section on “Sampling, Interpolations, Beat Stores and More…” says:

An interpolation involves taking part of an existing musical work (as opposed to a sound recording) and incorporating it into a new work. While sometimes confused with sampling a sound recording, interpolating a musical work is different because it does not involve using any of the actual audio sounds contained in a preexisting recording. (Click on this link for more information.)

But it does require a license from the copyright owner of the previous work, which Beyoncé surely has done.

She hits all of her dance-culture marks so well: when a friend whose first language is Spanish came over when I was blasting Renaissance (it sounds good loud), I told her it was the new Beyoncé album. But she asked: When? And I repeated “new.” And she said again, “When? Eighties, Nineties?” She recognized these beats and rhythms as authentic creations or recreations of her youthful club-kid nights.

That means house music in its many specific forms: Chicago house, Detroit house, New Orleans bounce, and more underground sounds such as hyperpop, which my students say is a Tik Tok-sourced beat.

Since this is not my area of expertise, I thought I should listen with a scorecard helpfully prepared by Michaelangelo Matos, a trusted cultural historian and participant of this era. Matos prepared a guide for The New York Times (click on this link), a track-by-track guide to the specific sources, samples, and gestures on the album. For example, he helpfully describes the second and third tracks, “Cozy” and “Alien Superstar” as exemplars of Chicago house, of which, he writes:

“…often moves with a heavily pronounced swing, accentuated by octave-jumping staccato bass patterns. The canonical example is Adonis’s “No Way Back,” from 1986, and the bass line of “Cozy” plays like an inversion of it. The song is almost mnemonically recognizable as early Chicago house without simply sounding like homage.“

This was by far the most useful article in saturation coverage of Renaissance in the mass media and the Times in particular. Other articles, not so much. Wesley Morris, the Times’ critic-at-large, has won two Pulitzer Prizes, the highest honor in journalism, for criticism: in 2021, in his writings for the Times, according to the Pulitzer committee, “for unrelentingly relevant and deeply engaged criticism on the intersection of race and culture in America, written in a singular style, alternately playful and profound.” Morris also won the 2012 Pulitzer for his film criticism at The Boston Globe.

But something about Beyoncé turns this usually astute and clever culture critic into a squealing word-slinger without boundaries. About Renaissance, he wrote: “The range of her voice nears the galactic; the imagination powering it qualifies as cinema. She coos, she growls, she snarls, she doubles and triples herself. Butter, mustard, foie gras, the perfect ratio of icing to cupcake.”

It is true that she “doubles and triples herself”: What used to be known as “overdubs” is now stacking, and Renaissance is stacked so high so often that it is a minor miracle that it doesn’t topple over. The album is stacked so thick that it makes earlier efforts, from Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound onwards, seem like Joan Baez wandering with an acoustic guitar in a forest.

I bought the CD of Renaissance partly so I could get a much-better-than-streaming sound, but also so I could grasp the hundreds of words of credits, writers, producers, samples, and interpolations. These cover four full pages in the CD booklet, in unreadable white type at a font size I would describe as minus-two if that was mathematically possible: it is the tiniest font I’ve ever been confronted with for what I consider essential information.

There is one song that credits 24 different songwriters. (“Alien Superstar,” which may be my favorite track on the record; it would segue nicely into David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust.”)

Songwriter Diane Warren faced fierce Twitter backlash for asking what to her was an obvious technical question. Warren might have thought she would be understood, since she wrote a song, “I Was Here” that was recorded by Beyoncé on her 2011 album, 4, and is apparently credited somewhere in the unreadable credits to Renaissance as well.

Producer writer/artist The-Dream [cq], aka Terius Nash, quickly become the de facto explainer: “You mean [how] does our (Black) culture have so many writers? Well it started because we couldn’t afford certain things starting out, so we started sampling and it became an Artform, a major part of the Black Culture (hip-hop) in America. Had that era not happen[ed] who knows. U good?”

Others noted the collaborative nature of hip-hop, which is certainly part of the Renaissance album. That’s part of Beyoncé’s gift: her vocal range and creative appetite ranges from Disney soundtracks (The Lion King: The Gift from 2019) was her previous album) to the down and flirty “I’m That Girl” that opens the album. She gives credit where credit is due, and to construct a Beyoncé album is to make use of an army of subcontractors, be they song samples, ambient sounds, a few rhythmic bars, instrumental passages, or interpolations, all meticulously stacked.

The August 1 tweet was followed by an August 2 apology by Warren. (Beyoncé herself said nothing.) As the dust-up recedes, though, the thousands of tweets by people who thought Warren needed a history-spank showed their own disregard for outstanding black songwriting achievements by, for example, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Roberta Flack, Smokey Robinson, Allan Toussaint, James Brown, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Thom Bell, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Otis Blackwell, Billy Strayhorn, Miles Davis, Count Basie, Missy Elliot, Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys . . . Do I have all day? I’ll fill the page. These people are now sampled; they were not samplers. They were and are songwriters.

The essence of any discussion of Beyoncé can’t avoid being about the costs and benefits of seeking perfection. I came to that discussion in a different class I teach, the Craft of Interviewing.

In 2014, the veteran actor Frank Langella was playing a limited run as the title character in Shakespeare’s King Lear at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was a triumphant opportunity for an aging, veteran actor: the role one trains for for a lifetime, since one can only be Lear with earned gravitas. Langella was 76 years old.

He was being interviewed in 2014 by Charlie Rose. About 32 minutes into the televised interview, Rose asks Langella about what he learned from playing Richard Nixon (in the movie Nixon/Frost): Langella volleys back, “When you’re caught, admit it.”

And then, this brilliant elder statesmen of American film and theater begins to talk about Beyoncé, and what he believes to be her lip-syncing, or using a backing vocal track, to sing the National Anthem at the 2013 second inauguration of President Barack Obama.

“I think Beyoncé is one of the greatest performers who has ever lived,” Langella said. “And I think she should have risked it, at the inauguration, because that is what great artists do. The fact is, I have such admiration for her, I’ve never met the lady, I doubt if I ever will, but I would say, when you’re my age, you’re going to be sitting with your grandkids on your lap, saying, I sang for the President. And they’re going to know you faked it. So what if you went flat? So what if you missed a note? Risk it! She’s a great artist! and she should have risked it. That is what aspiring to greatness is about, risk. The pursuit of excellence. Just jump. Some nights you’re terrible, some nights you’re transcendent, and some nights you’re steady. If you don’t risk, you’ll never be any of those things.”

Beyoncé acknowledged singing along to a backing vocal track. She told reporters that she’s a “perfectionist” and – due to a lack of rehearsal time – “did not feel comfortable taking a risk.”

“It was about the president and the inauguration, and I wanted to make him and my country proud, so I decided to sing along with my pre-recorded track, which is very common in the music industry,” Beyoncé told CBS News.

This is the Beyoncé conundrum. Revered not only by fans but by other professionals as one of the great talents of her lifetime, she refuses to risk failure or transcendence, because she’d rather look great, sound great, than strive to be greater.

I think one of her best performances is the live rendition of her song from Lemonade, “Daddy Lessons,” performed with fellow Texans, the band formerly known as the Dixie Chicks (now The Chicks) in difficult territory: the Country Music Awards TV show.

Renaissance is a great dance music album. But is it as great as Beyoncé could be without the meticulously constructed library of sounds? I don’t think that it is. I think the great Beyoncé album will be one that is recorded with a minimum of fuss, of overdubs, or stacking. It will be a record of great songs, originals, classics, songs of passion and heart that make demands on her talent. It would be much more tasty than feeding “butter, mustard, foie gras” to her courtiers.

Copper contributor Wayne Robins writes the email newsletter Critical Conditions at http://waynerobins49.substack.com

Header image: Beyoncé, Renaissance, album cover. Photo by Carlijn Jacobs.

When it comes to rock and roll excess, tales from the rock tours of the 1970s rarely disappoint. It was an era defined as much by the music and live shows as it was by the after-parties and what went on in the hotels, planes, buses, and limos. While first-hand accounts by the musicians themselves have been entertaining (or worse), some of the most revealing stories from that period have been shared by those who weren’t the center of attention but whose hands still left marks on the moment. David Libert’s new autobiography gives an inside look.

Rock and Roll Warrior, subtitled, My Misadventures with Alice Cooper, Prince, George Clinton, Living Colour, the Runaways, and More… tells the tale of a 50-plus-year career in music spent as a booking agent and manager for some of modern music’s most notorious characters – and Libert was not immune to the highs and lows that can be encountered in the music business.

Libert began as a performer and founding member of vocal harmony group the Happenings. They scored several hits in the mid-’60s including the now-classic “See You in September,” along with “I Got Rhythm” and “Go Away Little Girl.” But it wasn’t meant to last.

The book devotes most of its pages to the shift Libert’s career took when he went to work tour-managing Alice Cooper. At that point Cooper and his band were already known as a theatrical group. With each tour that followed the production became more and more involved with props, costumes, dancers, special effects, pyro, fake blood, live animals, and the guillotine that beheaded the headliner each and every night. After each show, the onstage circus moved quickly to the hotel, where further acts of boundary-pushing shenanigans by “the Godfather of Shock Rock” would further Cooper’s reputation for excess and outlandishness.

Alice Cooper and David Libert. Courtesy of Paul Slade/Getty Images, used by permission.

David Libert and Alice Cooper. Courtesy of Terry O’Neill.

During his tenure with Cooper, Libert famously handled a “messy” onstage moment when DJ Wolfman Jack arrived on stage riding a camel to introduce the band. Libert also devised creative ways to transport band and crew contraband over the Canadian border, and accommodated the generosity of famed groupie Sweet Sweet Connie (namechecked in Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re An American Band”) for all interested parties when the act rolled into Little Rock, Arkansas. In short, he did it all.

Libert would then move to booking and then managing one of the fathers of funk, George Clinton, his main band Parliament-Funkadelic, and its many offshoot units. He also managed R&B artist Sheila E. and in turn had a front row seat into the “rule with fear” approach that Prince, on whose tour Libert’s client was featured, would take with everyone on the team.

George Clinton and David Libert. Courtesy of axiomgrl.

Libert never found himself on the receiving end of those kind of attacks, and, as he had with other mercurial artists, David found a way to work with Prince that they could both respect, even if he found Prince to be “unusual.”

Like some of his infamous clients, Libert dallied with cocaine, and his ties to drugs would lead him to dealing and ultimately to prison. But just prior to his stint in jail, Libert found himself at a crossroads that would have likely changed his life’s course forever. In the 1980s he was offered the chance to become the manager of an up-and-coming Los Angeles-based hard rock band, but needed $20,000 to prove himself and provide the group with some much-needed equipment. He turned to his brother for a loan. His brother turned Libert down, and with that went an opportunity of a lifetime. The decision also ended their friendship. They would never speak again. That band was Guns N’ Roses.

After serving his time, Libert returned to the world of music, managing acts like Living Colour, and demonstrated that the skills he had learned on the road with some of rock’s biggest acts hadn’t withered in his time away. Libert would once again find demand for his services from both established and emerging acts. It was simply another demonstration of his resiliency and pure talent.

Rock and Roll Warrior is a behind-the-scenes look into the rock and roll access and excess of a bygone era, a fun and fascinating read. Now at the age of 79, David Libert rescues dogs instead of rock stars. But his memory of this remarkable career and its most memorable moments is razor-sharp. Copper caught up with David Libert and learned that in rock and roll, there’s always room for a second act, or if nothing else, an extended encore.

Ray Chelstowski: You open the biography at the beginning of your life, as opposed to a specific moment on the road. That’s rare these days. How did you know that this was the right approach?

David Libert: Well, it actually starts with a prologue about the Woodstock 1999 festival. It was added to give the book a reference point for how I got here. That led to going all of the way back to the beginning where I first became interest in music. Making a deal with my parents about [getting] piano lessons might seem rather insignificant, but it wasn’t. I was taking lessons but I could also play by ear. It made me feel that I could do what I was hearing people do in recorded music. It was what made me start to think that perhaps this could be my future.

RC: There are so many salacious rock stories in your book. How do you know when a story is maybe too racy to be included?

DL: One thing that I learned about writing a book is that you have to make conscious decisions about stories that might be [entertaining] but could also throw someone under the bus. There were a good many stories that weren’t included for that reason. You sort of have to decide whether it meets the criteria of what you are trying to accomplish with the book. Listen, it’s rock and roll so there’s a little bit of that to be found here. But I wanted whatever I included to be part of the general flow of how the book read. There were some personal moments with people that I ultimately decided were too private to include.

RC: The Happenings’ pop-lite sound is so different from the music made by bands you managed. In the end, which do you prefer?

DL: My musical interests were pretty diverse. I did like rock and bands like Led Zeppelin, and I was always crazy about the Rolling Stones. But I was also into the genre that the Happenings fell into that included acts like the Association, the Turtles, and that kind of music. Somehow I never associated that other [heavier] style of music I loved with what we were creating in the Happenings. What I learned is that I really love blues-based music that’s also danceable, and if I had learned that about myself much earlier, the Happenings would have sounded much different than they did and may have lasted [on the charts] a lot longer. But that’s water under the bridge.

RC: The Happenings continue to tour (with original member Bob Miranda). Over the years, have you ever considered joining them on the road?

DL: Never. I wanted to apply what the Happenings did best (which was our [vocal] harmonies) to more contemporary music and themes like Crosby Stills Nash & Young had done. The Happenings wouldn’t have any of it. That’s when I decided that I didn’t want to be in that band any longer. Since I had been managing them for a few years at that point, I realized that my future in music was to be on the business side of things. I always knew that I couldn’t be a Happening forever.

The Happenings on the cover of Cash Box magazine, February 4, 1967.

RC: What path do you think your career would have taken if you hadn’t met Alice Copper?

DL: That was a lucky break. I got a call from Jonny Podell, Alice Cooper’s booking agent. We had become good friends because our girlfriends were close and both had grown up in Rego Park, Queens [New York]. He told me that Alice was looking for a tour manager and that call put me on a certain level, because the band was becoming huge at that time. I was also lucky that Alice was managed by Shep Gordon, who became my mentor, and together they taught me everything that I know about the business.

David Libert and Alice Cooper. Courtesy of Ellie Holecker.

RC: Did you ever mend fences with your brother after he passed on lending you the money you needed to manage Guns N’ Roses?

DL: We never spoke again and several years later he ended up passing away. People often ask me if I’m sorry that I never reconciled with him and I’m frankly ambivalent about it. Life is a series of crossroads. You mention Alice Cooper and that was a crossroad in my life. Can you imagine if my brother had loaned me that $20,000, what a crossroad that would have been?! He didn’t see it and his accountant thought it was a bad investment for an unknown band; even though I was going to give him 20 percent of the entire management company. After he passed on this I fell into drugs and irresponsibility. That hit me hard.

RC: What was it about artists like George Clinton, who it seems continually let you down, that kept you coming back as their manager?

DL: It was his will. Here’s a guy who had this amazing charismatic hold over everyone who worked for him. What made him different from the other members of Parliament is that he is a very bright guy who knew how to read people. He’s as “street” as anyone I’ve ever met. He looked at things so differently than anyone I’d ever known. His perspective was unique and because of that he was able to come up with some really fascinating decisions on what he wanted to do with his career. The downside to all of that is that he also created a lot of chaos. He kind of liked that entropy because it kept everyone off-guard and it put him in control.

RC: Why didn’t the band Living Colour last?

DL: I put the band back together after they had been broken up for many years. They were very intelligent and highly-disciplined, politically astute fellows and just phenomenal musicians. They were drug-free, had families, and were very focused on what they did. I think the problem was that they were very competitive with each other. In the end they just had difficulty getting along. When they’d perform on stage you never really knew what was going to happen because they liked to keep things loose. But that kind of led to a competition-like environment. Musically speaking I kind of got a kick out of it because you never knew where it was going to go. But I think they were [just] strong-willed guys.

RC: At the end of the day, what do you hope to accomplish with this book?

DL: Well, I hope it does sell. But this is going to be the last highlight out of a career filled with many highlights. I never thought that my life was that interesting because I was living it every day. It was my girlfriend who encouraged me to write the book, because it wouldn’t be from a musician’s point of view but instead from someone who’s been a fly on the wall to some of the biggest stars in the world. That would make it unique. I wanted it to have a certain flow to it that was “me,” and I think I accomplished that.

Over the past few months, our esteemed editor Frank Doris has been sharing with us his personal choices for a desert island collection of rock albums (as per his list of 150 favorites in Issue 150). I thought it was high time that someone made the same kind of list for classical music (though it should be noted that Don Kaplan has been covering desert island, recommended, and other varieties of classical music in his “The Mindful Melophile” column, Anne E. Johnson writes about classical music in her “Something Old, Something New” articles, and Larry Schenbeck was a past classical music contributor).

Before I jump into my list, I need to offer a few important comments:

1. Obviously, this list reflects my taste. Yours may be entirely different. In fact, it’s very likely that it is. So, if you hate my choices, I totally understand. But we can still be friends.
2. My tastes run largely to orchestral music and opera, primarily from the late classical period through to the middle of the 20^th century. While I certainly enjoy instrumental and chamber music, they’re not generally my first choice.
3. Wherever possible, I’ve tried to provide catalog numbers for the recommended recordings. However, since many recordings are available on vinyl, CD, SACD and as downloads (in different formats) and each format has a different catalog number, it was not always possible to do so. But a quick Google search (or a search of your favorite music site) should easily find the format you prefer.
4. Like Frank, I’m going to break this article into multiple parts. Truthfully, if I was stranded on a desert island (putting aside the issue of where I would plug in my equipment), I would want to have the entirety of my music collection with me. And given that it all fits onto a portable USB drive (albeit a big one), that would even be possible. But this is supposed to be a list of the essential music that I couldn’t live without. So without further ado, here goes:

[Editor’s Note: the video clips may not be the same as the performances noted, but are included to give an idea of what the artists might be like.]

BACH: Goldberg Variations. Glenn Gould, 1955; Pristine Classical PAKM062

Here’s an album that needs little introduction. Glenn Gould’s breakthrough performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations has been a kind of gold standard for decades. While some of his choices around tempo and dynamics may be controversial, this is a recording that must be heard over and over. Gould’s contrapuntal playing is without peer and he influenced a generation of pianists who followed him. Andrew Rose of Pristine Classical has done wonders with the original recording, rendering it far more full-bodied and three-dimensional.

BACH: Mass in B Minor. Philippe Herreweghe, Collegium Vocale Gent; PHI LPH004

During the long days of the COVID-19 pandemic, my choir (which was unable to rehearse, for obvious reasons) conducted an online poll and selected Bach’s Mass in B Minor as their all-time favorite choral work. I was one of the few dissenters (personally I lean toward the Brahms Requiem) but it’s hard to argue with the greatness of this work.

In truth, there are a number of very fine recordings of this remarkable mass and I was hard-pressed to choose a favorite. Jos van Veldhoven and the Netherlands Bach Ensemble (Channel Classics CCS SA 25007) deliver a swift, minimalist reading that is fascinating for its use of small forces. René Jacobs with the Akademie für alte Musik Berlin also offers a strong performance with – unsurprisingly –  some unusual tempo choices, and John Eliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Soloists on Archiv is always a safe choice. But in the end, it came down to a choice between this – Herreweghe’s third recording of Bach’s great mass – and Masaaki Suzuki with the Bach Collegium Japan on BIS. Ultimately, I chose this performance because the recording itself is magnificent, allowing all of the individual voices to shine through. But frankly, you would be well served with any of the performances above.

BARTÓK: Concerto for Orchestra. Pierre Boulez, New York Philharmonic; Sony Classical

Someone once said that “Boulez is brilliant in music he loves” and it’s clear that he loves Bartók. After all, he’s recorded this work at least twice (this one, and a later recording with the Chicago Symphony) and made a documentary with the Berlin Philharmonic. Bartók’s last major work for orchestra, the Concerto for Orchestra is also among his most popular compositions and it’s easy to see why. While it still contains strong dissonances, the music is largely accessible: in some sections highly motoric and forward-moving while in others, soft and contemplative.

This recording was originally made in quadraphonic sound (anyone remember Quad?). The album cover even shows the orchestra in four distinct corners. However, to my ears, the current issue sounds like a conventional stereo recording. Like many of Boulez’ recordings this one has great transparency and rhythmic surety, two qualities that work exceptionally well with Bartók’s music. While the later performance (on DG) is similar in many ways, I prefer the sound of this one. Available on SACD or as a high-resolution FLAC download.

BEETHOVEN: Fidelio. Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, Christa Ludwig, Jon Vickers, Walter Berry, Gottlob Frick, et al; Warner Classics

Beethoven’s only opera is often described as problematic. A lot of it is very static and it levels huge demands on the vocalists. Sometimes it actually works better on record than in the theater. Recorded in the early 60s under the supervision of the legendary Walter Legge, this recording is an evergreen. Christa Ludwig, a mezzo, nevertheless delivers a thrilling performance in a role traditionally taken by a dramatic soprano. Listen to her effortless vocalism in Abscheulicher. Jon Vickers, at the peak of his career, delivers an emotionally torrid performance in the relatively brief role of Florestan. Walter Berry is a menacing Pizzaro and Gottlob Frick a deeply sympathetic Rocco. The rest of the cast is equally fine and the Philharmonia Orchestra plays its heart out. Finally, to say that Otto Klemperer feels a deep sympathy for this music would be a vast understatement.

BEETHOVEN: Missa Solemnis. Otto Klemperer, New Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus; Warner Classics

Otto Klemperer’s Beethoven is widely esteemed, although, to make a personal confession, I’ve never been a huge fan of his recordings of the symphonies. While they possess that granitic quality for which he was renowned, to my taste they are lacking a bit in momentum.

That hesitation emphatically does not apply to this recording of Missa Solemnis (or, for that matter to his definitive recording of Fidelio). This is a performance for the ages with a quartet of brilliant voices, Wilhelm Pitz’s highly trained Philharmonia Chorus and the New Philharmonia Orchestra playing to its usual standard of excellence. I have heard many performances of this work (I’ve even performed in it myself) but none of them has ever come close to this one.

BEETHOVEN: Symphonies No. 5 and 7. Carlos Kleiber, Vienna Philharmonic; DG

I had the rare privilege of seeing the brilliant but eccentric Carlos Kleiber in 1978, during one of his very infrequent appearances in North America. Conducting a program of Weber, Schubert and Beethoven with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, it was one of the standout concert experiences of my life. In spite of his very limited performance repertoire and his increasingly rare appearances, Kleiber was voted the greatest conductor of the 20^th century by an audience of his peers.

Kleiber’s traversals of Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh symphonies are nothing if not definitive. While I have heard many very fine performances of these symphonies (including wonderful recent recordings from Manfred Honeck and Teodor Currentzis), none of them quite equals the sense of inevitability that each of these performances conveys. Listen, for example, to the way in which Kleiber uses the timpani to punctuate the climaxes in the first movement of the Fifth. No other conductor that I’ve heard manages to make this quite so effective. Wagner famously referred to Beethoven’s seventh symphony as “the apotheosis of the dance.” You can tell that Kleiber feels this and manages to bring the dance alive in every movement of the symphony.

This performance is also available on SACD or as a downloadable high-resolution FLAC.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9. Manfred Honeck, Pittsburgh Symphony; Reference Recordings FR-741

Truth to be told, my favorite performance, of this, Beethoven’s final symphony comes from Toscanini’s 1939 Beethoven cycle with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Pristine Classical has done a remarkable job on the restoration of that cycle. For me, that performance has almost everything – drama, probing intensity, fabulous playing and a great quartet of soloists. However, the one thing that it doesn’t have is great sound, despite Andrew Rose’s fine work.

Manfred Honeck’s performance on Reference Recordings, part of an ongoing Beethoven cycle with the Pittsburgh Symphony, most emphatically does have wonderful sound and a performance that – to my ears – comes close to equaling Toscanini’s drive and intensity. As usual, the playing of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s is beyond reproach.

BERLIOZ: La Damnation de Faust. Sir Georg Solti, Chicago Symphony, Kenneth Riegel, Frederica von Stade, Jose Van Dam; Decca

Arguably, this is one of Berlioz’ greatest masterpieces. Neither an opera nor an oratorio, he called it a “Dramatic Legend.” Notwithstanding its complex structure, it is frequently presented as a stage work, including a brilliant production at the Metropolitan Opera created by Robert Lepage (available as a video and as an audio download). This is also a work that is much loved by conductors, as witnessed by the number of great conductors who have recorded it. That list includes Colin Davis (a renowned Berlioz specialist), Simon Rattle, Wilhelm Furtwängler (!), Kent Nagano, James Levine, Georges Pretre, Eliahu Inbal, Bernard Haitink and many others, including the recording above.

The music consists of a series of scenes drawn from the epic Goethe play, showcasing a brilliant array of moods, from the pomp of the Rakoczy March, to the fairylike Dance of the Sylphs, and the bombast of the demons’ chorus.

Ultimately, there is no such thing as a perfect performance. There are always compromises, and I can only make recommendations based on the recordings that I have actually heard. This particular one is brilliantly played by the Chicago Symphony, extremely well recorded by Decca, and offers a solid cast of soloists.

BERNSTEIN: Candide. Leonard Bernstein, London Symphony, Jerry Hadley, June Anderson, Christa Ludwig, Nicolai Gedda, et al; DG

During his lifetime, Leonard Bernstein often expressed frustration that he was better known as a conductor than as a composer. Ironically, and like so many other great artists, it took a few years after his death before his remarkable gifts as a composer came to be fully appreciated. Candide was created after he was approached by Lillian Hellman, who wanted him to write incidental music for a play based on the novella by Voltaire. Bernstein became so enthused by the idea that he decided to write a full-fledged operetta instead.

That operetta has undergone many changes, the most significant being the replacement of the original Lillian Hellman libretto with a new one by Hugh Wheeler. But Bernstein’s brilliant, sparkling music remains the main attraction and with the composer at the helm and a luxury cast (including Christa Ludwig and Nicolai Gedda in small roles), this recording does total justice to his vision. While it may not have the gravitas of a Mahler symphony or a Wagner opera, you will be hard-pressed to find a recording that is as much fun as this one.

BIZET: Carmen. Lorin Maazel, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Anna Moffo, Franco Corelli, Piero Cappuccilli, Helen Donath, José Van Dam; RCA

Bizet’s Carmen has sometimes been referred to as the Queen of Opera. And for good reason. Can you think of another opera that contains so many well-loved tunes? It’s also a showpiece for its three leads. If you have a strong Carmen, Don Jose and Escamillo, you are pretty much assured a wonderful evening at the opera.

I know that there are arguments in favor of the Callas, Gedda, Pretre recording, as well as de los Angeles, Gedda and Beecham. And those recordings certainly have their strengths.

This particular recording, from 1970, features Anna Moffo nearing the end of her career but before her vocal difficulties became obvious. She is in fabulous voice here. She is matched by an ardent Don Jose in Franco Corelli. Although his French accent is sometimes non-idiomatic, it’s certainly no worse than Placido Domingo who sang (and recorded) this role many times. Piero Cappuccilli exhibits plenty of swagger as Escamillo and Helen Donath is a meltingly sweet Micaëla. Many of the minor roles are filled by great singers in the early years of their careers, including Arleen Augér, Jane Berbié and José Van Dam.

Lorin Maazel can sometimes be willful in opera, but here he leads a straightforward reading with fabulous playing by the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin along with their strong chorus. The recording quality is excellent.

BRAHMS: Ein Deutsches Requiem. John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Choir, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique; SDG SDG706

To beat a tired drum, this is another work that I’ve been privileged enough to sing many times and it happens to be one of my favorite choral works, even if George Bernard Shaw did quip that it is ”patiently borne only by the corpse.” In fact, it is a magnificently constructed piece of music, with some of the most ethereal moments in the choral repertoire. Virtually every major conductor has taken a crack at the work, including Klemperer, Solti, Karajan, Giulini and numerous others. Sir John Eliot Gardiner has recorded it twice, and this is his later traversal, recorded live at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, in 2008. You will be hard-pressed to find a recording where the music and the words blend together so splendidly.

BRAHMS: Piano Quintet in F minor Op. 34. Maurizio Pollini, Quartetto Italiano; DG

I mentioned George Bernard Shaw’s rather sharp opinion about Brahms’ Requiem. His opinion, however, was entirely different when it came to Brahms’ chamber music, an opinion that I strongly share. I recently attended a competition of young classical performers and – for me – the performance that really grabbed me was a young Mexican violinist playing Brahms’ third violin sonata.

All of which is a long-winded way of me saying that I have a deep and abiding love of Brahms, and particularly this early quintet. A friend of mine, a Russian-Canadian pianist and accompanist who graduated from the Gnessin State Musical College in Moscow (one of the leading music academies in Russia) said it all when she said, “What a performance!” I echo that sentiment; this is a beautifully played, highly dramatic account of this great work. Available as a high-resolution download.

BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1. James Levine, Chicago Symphony; RCA

Brahms’ First Symphony was the first of his symphonies that I ever heard played live and it left a lasting impact and a lifelong love for the music of the great German composer. Recorded during his heyday as the music director of the Ravinia Festival, James Levine’s cycle of Brahms symphonies with the Chicago Symphony remains one of the outstanding recordings of this music. In my opinion, it is far better than his later cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic. And this performance of the first symphony is the standout performance of the cycle. Clear, concise, dramatic and gorgeously played, it exudes the youthful energy of both composer and conductor. Listen, for example, to the opening of the first movement which sweeps along with an inevitability that many other performances seem to lack. I recognize that James Levine had a very checkered past, and some listeners may feel uncomfortable with his recordings, but it’s hard to ignore the greatness of this performance.

BRAHMS: Symphony No. 4. Carlos Kleiber, Vienna Philharmonic; DG

As I mentioned earlier, Carlos Kleiber had a small performance repertoire, but when he did choose to conduct, it was always at the highest possible level and this performance is no different. From the opening with its sliding intervals, to the bouncing scherzo, and the fourth movement Passacaglia (what other romantic-era composer would have thought to write in that form?) this is a performance that brings Brahms to life. I’ve heard many fine performances of this work, but none better than this one.

CHOPIN: Polonaises. Maurizio Pollini; DG

I’ve been exceptionally fortunate to have seen many of the great pianists perform live, including Vladimir Horowitz, Rudolf Serkin, Alicia de Larrocha, Khatia Buniatishvili, André Watts, Radu Lupu, Vladimir Ashkenazy and – on one occasion –  Maurizio Pollini. It was a transcendent experience. Half of his program consisted of music by Chopin and he played as if he were the very embodiment of the composer.

This album of Chopin’s Polonaises is, justifiably, one of Pollini’s most acclaimed recordings. In terms of tempo, dynamics, articulation and the spirit of the music, he seems to get everything right.

Ken Kessler revels in the stories told by scraps of paper found in tape boxes

However old the tapes, however worn and unloved, nothing amuses or delights me as much as finding the inserts intact in the boxes for those I’ve been salvaging. It’s like finding the prize in a cereal box (or Cracker Jack, when it was worth having). They tell me much about the earliest days of hi-fi and stereo and separates, even though I could get the same information by curling up with the oldest hi-fi magazines in my library, or simply trawling the internet.

But it just ain’t the same: these slips of paper are physical artifacts which would have greeted the original owners a lifetime ago. This audio archaeology is a dimension of the hobby I never quite realized how much I relished, despite having found myself dubbed “a hi-fi historian” by virtue of the few books I’ve written. That said, access to the archives of a manufacturer to curate a company’s history isn’t the same as the surprise when a catalog or coupon lands on the floor, upon opening yet another tape box which had probably lain undisturbed since LBJ was in office.

There are myriad treasures to be found in those old cartons, little time capsules like the catalogues from Capitol, which aid the curious by featuring on them the actual month and year they were issued. RCA and Columbia and Bel Canto – they just incite more lust for tapes I might never get to hear. Then again, I suppose that was their raisons d’être.

Of late I have been bemoaning the passage of time with each arthritic creak, and the demise of dear Queen Elizabeth II made me appreciate in spades that I have lived in the UK for a half-century, so seeing items decades past their sell-by date does nothing to help me dispel notions of mortality. But curiosity always gets the better of me, and I am lost in a reverie, an audiophile fantasy wherein I could send off to Tape-Log for a free subscription, or tap Ampex for a $1 discount.

A typical package’s inserts, this one from Tape Mates.

Ampex voucher for $1 off your next tape purchase.

Such inserts fall into a number of categories, the most plentiful and obvious being label catalogs, followed by newsletter subscriptions and, as mentioned above, the odd coupon, etc., but the ones which serve the most value for hard-core tape fetishists have to be the technical sheets. I’ve scanned two here to show you just what they used to do for music lovers and audio enthusiasts in the old days. (STS: are you paying attention, ye of the least-informative liner notes in the entire pre-recorded open-reel tape business?)

Starting with one of the generic information sheets, certain tapes duplicated on Ampex EX+ were accompanied by a small folder (of which both sides are seen here) that explained what the new formula offered. It discussed tape strength, durability against “nicking and tearing from careless handling,” and other life-extending virtues. I particularly loved the bit about “Ampex Ferro-Sheen®,” which sounds as much like a new type of condom as it does a tape type.

Both sides of the free 1-year subscription coupon for Tape Log which informed readers of new releases.

Various coupons for Ampex catalogs.

That’s the usual hype element for the casual consumer, though it is not as misleading as the missives declaring that 1/4-track was as good as 1/2-track, or how halving the speed didn’t have a deleterious effect. Pathological lying and undiluted bullsh*t are not modern concepts.

Of far greater value was the tech talk. Flip open to the center spread of the Ampex EX+ folder and the spiel changes from matters of tape longevity to sonic issues, i.e., how much they can load the tape. While Ampex drew the line at using terms like “headroom,” they did explain the relationship between recording levels and distortion, and then included a graphic to show this with a clear and comprehensible visual representation, free of jargon. How accurate it is may be a moot point, but the promise of enhanced performance probably was more than wishful thinking.

Insert explaining the technical virtues of Ampex’s EX+ tapes.

Even more informative were inserts related specifically to the recording in the box. I chose the one from David Rose’s 21 Channel Sound on MGM because it plays right into the desires of audiophiles who like to judge performance according to the soundstage. I recall how useful were Dave Wilson’s reviews back in the day when he wrote for The Abso!ute Sound, and recall trying to hear if the instruments matched his layouts.

MGM went all the way with the Rose tape because it was pushing multi-channel recording at the time: “21 microphones mean the ultimate in sound separation,” etc. OK, so with hindsight we also know that the cross-paired microphone technique might deliver greater realism, but commerce is commerce. Regardless of what you might feel about multi-track or multi-channel recordings, overdubs, or the like (and the finest recording I have ever heard used just a stereo pair – more about that in a future installment), the map of the orchestra with this tape is priceless.

Not only is every single instrument located on the sheet – all 62 or so musicians – every microphone is identified by manufacturer and model designation. Thus, if you’re a golden-eared studio denizen who can tell your Neumann U67 from your Telefunken U47, this sheet enables you to test your mettle. You will see, for example, that the two guitars were miked with ElectroVoice 666s, while the harp faced a stand-mounted AKG C24 stereo condenser. It just doesn’t get any better than this, and I have a few tapes with similarly extensive technical information.

David Rose and His Orchestra, 21 Channel Sound, cover.

David Rose, 21 Channel Sound, insert.

Does this make a difference to one’s listening pleasure? Ironically, the finest-sounding tape I have ever heard – a 1957 Josh White session from the Livingston Tape Library – has no technical information whatsoever. One’s ears tell the listener that there is a real space being reproduced, and oh, how nice it would be to compare it to a floor plan of the actual session. MGM’s 21 Channel Sound insert just makes me wish the Josh White recording was as well-documented.

By the way: the David Rose tape – with or without the insert – is sensational.

It was a lovely mild evening as the sun set behind the hills which flanked the Belle Fourche River. A light breeze filled the canopy of overarching trees providing shade and comfort for the area in which we were seated.

“Let’s continue our tradition of making the last meeting of the year a question-and-answer session,” the Bhagwan proclaimed. “I know you all have conundrums that need to be resolved. This is your opportunity.”

Someone stuck up their hand and asked, “I’ve done a lot of traveling for my job, Bhagwan. Everywhere I go, whether Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa or South and Central America, everyone in the street says they want to live in peace and harmony. So why is there so much war?”

“I’m sure you think you have asked me a difficult question,” the Bhagwan smiled, “but the answer is not complicated.

When I was a child, a German family moved into our neighborhood. Nobody was happy about it because this was barely a decade after the War and people were still suffering from the misery it created. As kids, we’d march in front of their house with arms upraised hollering ‘Heil Hitler’ in mock tribute.

As time went on, we got to know their kids in school and we liked them. We started to include them in our play sessions, and when they offered their yard as a playground, we got to know their parents. I found them to be patient, loving adults; not genocidal killers as we’d been told.

One day, I had a chance to ask the father about his war experiences. He told me he’d been brainwashed in the Hitler Youth movement as a child. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the father was conscripted into the army medical corps and persuaded that he was working for the greater good. Once there, he learned Hitler’s real agenda and discovered how badly he’d been manipulated. He was so incensed he decided to emigrate to the States as soon as he’d finished his medical education in Vienna.

When they were eligible, they became American citizens. Eventually, they were even accepted into our neighborhood social group. I remember seeing my father and him sharing a beer at a backyard barbecue as if they were lifelong friends.

How’s this possible? I thought to myself. Before I was born, they’d have killed each other on sight. Now they are sharing a beer. What’s changed? Aren’t they still the same people?

After months of deliberation, I figured it out. They self-identified differently than they had decades earlier. Then, they identified with opposing countries and armies. Now, they identify as neighbors.

It occurred to me that as the world shrinks, perhaps it’s time for all of mankind to identify as neighbors. Perhaps it’s time to set aside the concepts of race, religion, ethnicity, political dogma, and country. We’re not living in tribal societies anymore.”

The crowd applauded.

Someone asked, “How do we bring that about, Bhagwan?”

“As the previous questioner pointed out, the best education is travel. The more you travel, the more you realize that ordinary people the world over are much like yourself. It’s difficult to see them as enemies once they’ve been your friends.”

“What about aggressors, Bhagwan? The world has always been governed through the aggressive use of force. To stop them, we must fight on their terms. How could we have stopped Hitler and Hirohito without violence?”

“Aggressors can’t fight a war without troops. What if they threw a war and nobody came? Had the German and Japanese people refused to fight, they wouldn’t have suffered the devastating consequences.”

“I understand, Bhagwan, but how should we deal with an aggressor who has amassed an army willing to destroy us?”

“Christ said that if a man smite thee on the cheek, turn to him the other also. It’s one of the most ignored passages of the Bible, along with ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If all of mankind took those passages seriously, we’d have no more wars.”

“But ‘all of mankind’ has never taken those passages seriously,” the contrarian continued. “Some may have, but others haven’t. There has always been a Hitler or a Stalin to threaten peace and harmony. Should we treat them as neighbors and open the door?”

“Christ also said, ‘Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”

“That may be so, Bhagwan, but we’re going to get there a lot sooner than we planned if we don’t stand up to aggression. Meek societies don’t survive long enough to pass on their genes to the next generation. Maybe that’s why mankind has evolved to be so aggressive?”

“Perhaps it’s time to transcend our evolutionary inclinations to see the big picture,” the Bhagwan argued, “If we don’t learn to get along as a species, we’re doomed.”

The crowd applauded again.

The Bhagwan continued, “Gandhi stopped British imperialism without revolution, Mandela stopped apartheid without violence, the Soviet Union ended with little bloodshed; it is possible.”

“That’s true, Bhagwan, but millions in those countries suffered for decades before those regimes crumbled. I think many of us would rather fight and risk death than live like slaves or serfs.”

Although I kept quiet, I agreed with the contrarian. It’s fine for the Bhagwan to imagine what should happen in a perfect world, but if his vision of Utopia ignores the imperfect nature of mankind, it can never be. It’ll eventually turn into another Soviet-style tyranny.

Someone else raised her hand and asked, “So Bhagwan, are you suggesting that there should be no borders?”

“There were no enforced borders until relatively recently in history,” the Bhagwan responded, “because there was little economic disparity. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that border security became rigidly enforced.

If the borders were suddenly thrust open today, there would be chaos in the industrialized countries which would cause suffering worldwide. Instead, measures should be taken to improve the economic status of Third World countries so that its citizens no longer need to emigrate to realize a higher standard of living. I already see that happening in parts of Asia and Central America.”

Courtesy of Maxpixel.net.

Another student asked, “What is the worst crime anyone can commit, in your estimation?”

“It depends on who we are talking about. The most deplorable crime that leaders can commit is to provoke disharmony. The 20th century was the deadliest in history because leaders succeeded in convincing the public to limit their identity and adopt an us-versus-them mentality.

The most deplorable crime the people can commit is to believe leaders who promote limited identity. There’s always a hidden agenda which never works out for the people in the long run. We must broaden our identity, not narrow it. We have much more in common with the guy we’re shooting at than with our pampered leaders.

Christ said, love your neighbor as yourself. We are all snowflakes sourced from the same ocean, and we shall all return there. Although others may look and think differently, we could have been born as them, and vice versa. When we hurt others, we hurt ourselves. If everyone experienced others as an extension of themselves, no one would go to war, we’d cooperate with one another. It doesn’t make sense to kill tomorrow’s friend because some third party has decided that he’s today’s enemy.

This time, the crowd stood up and applauded.

“I don’t see people cooperating much with one another, Bhagwan,” another student asked. “They seem more to be in competition with one another — everyone trying to outdo everyone else.”

“That is largely the fault of the Western educational system,” he responded, “All that matters is who comes in first. Second place is laughingly termed the first loser. So only a tiny percentage of every schoolyard or campus consists of winners; the rest are all considered losers. For some, this is a crippling handicap which they never overcome psychologically. Others spend the rest of their lives scrambling to prove they are not losers. The cost of such effort is too high in terms of health, happiness, and family.

Instead, we should teach our children that they all have different talents, and that just because theirs is unrecognized or unrealized, it doesn’t mean they are insignificant. History is full of ‘losers’ who’ve made huge contributions to the world. If everyone follows their passion, they’ll eventually be good at it and succeed. First or second place is of no consequence to them. What matters is to enjoy life. People who focus on that don’t over-value competition, and they tend to be much happier and healthier.”

The first questioner raised his hand to confirm, “That’s right Bhagwan, the kids in some of the poorest villages I’ve visited seem to smile a lot more than the kids in wealthy American cities.”

“They live for the moment, like we are meant to live,” the Bhagwan replied “They employ all of their senses to enjoy the world. Western kids are taught to see everything through the lens of their conditioning and education. Their intellect becomes their only tool. That’s fine for solving problems, but if you use your intellect exclusively to experience the world, you’ll miss out on most of its richness – just like if you use your eyes exclusively to experience a concert.”

The contrarian put his arm up once again and stated, “Bhagwan, what you said makes perfect sense in theory, but in practice, I find it hard to believe that Utopian ideology will ever prevail over human nature.”

“I know it’s a pipedream,” the Bhagwan replied, “but one thing is certain, if we don’t believe it’s possible, it will never happen. At one time, manned flight was considered a pipedream. Since then, we’ve landed on the moon. Anything is possible if we have faith.”

Header image: Belle Fourche River, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Walter Siegmund.

Author’s note: The following article was written in spring 2021 for the recently-published book Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century (Rare Bird Books, Los Angeles), but along with other material was edited from the book. We present it here exclusively for Copper.

A recurring theme while researching Record Store Day was the need for more pressing capacity to keep up with the consumer demand for vinyl. So far, the backlog hasn’t prevented Record Store Day (RSD) titles from being manufactured. (See the 2022 update at the end of this article.)

While RSD is responsible for only two production cycles during each year, the hope is that every day is Record Store Day, so that fans get used to regularly visiting their favorite stores, or their online destinations (because of COVID-19 concerns) if they’re unable to shop in person.

Besides the pandemic forcing everyone to change how they do business, other factors have threatened to disrupt the vinyl supply chain. Rainbo Records, thought to be the second-biggest US producer of records in recent years, closed in January 2020 after 80 years of being in business, due to the landlord no longer wanting a manufacturing firm in the building. The high cost of doing business in California made it prohibitively expensive to move the factory elsewhere in the state, concluded owner Steve Sheldon, whose old office was used as a set for actor Paul Giamatti in the movie Straight Outta Compton about the rap group N.W.A. Rainbo sold its pressing equipment to United Record Pressing (URP, the largest pressing plant in the US), and completed its last job in December 2019, closing out six million units produced in the facility that year. Seven days after Sheldon closed the doors for good, another development threatened vinyl production.

In February 2020, a fire destroyed Apollo Masters in Branning, CA, the world’s biggest supplier of lacquers, the blanks needed to make the acetates used to make record pressing molds. Apollo was also a major manufacturer of the styli needed for cutting the lacquers.

The acetates for the 2020 Record Store Day titles were already produced by the time of the Apollo fire. The finished records were ready and waiting to be shipped to brick-and-mortar retail in time for RSD 2020 in April, which had to be pushed back to three drops in August, September and October 2020 due to the pandemic.

As vinyl came back in vogue and the major labels jumped on the bandwagon, as did the big-box retailers, some indie labels were concerned about being able to reserve pressing capacity that might be compromised by large-volume siphoning.

A record pressing machine that was purchased by United Record Pressing. Courtesy of Rainbo Records/Steve Sheldon.

In fact, Fat Possum Records became a partner in Memphis Record Pressing, which opened in 2014 and now produces vinyl for indie labels as well as for Sony. Before the vinyl resurgence of the past 15 years, all three major labels owned manufacturing facilities, remnants from vinyl’s original heyday. Over in Hayes, England, EMI operated a pressing plant that is now independently owned and known as The Vinyl Factory. Record Industry in The Netherlands used to be owned by Sony.

In 2005 in the US, Universal shut down a vinyl pressing plant in Gloversville, New York, “even though by all accounts the factory was making money,” wrote Michael Fremer in Analog Planet. “These days, it’s all about the short-term corporate bottom line. Shut it down, sell the assets, take the payroll off the balance sheet, and guess what? Better short-term bottom-line!” The Universal plant, which opened in 1964, had 112 employees and sold its lines to URP. Universal spokesman Peter LoFrumento then offered a PR-speak statement: “While decisions like these are difficult to make and are not undertaken lightly, they are necessary to meet the many new challenges brought about as the industry continues to rapidly evolve.”

Bringing the current vinyl manufacturing crunch into perspective, Sony Music International’s Gerhard Blum observed: “The reality in today’s world is [Sony] and no one in the industry can get enough vinyl right now. [The comeback] is beyond your wildest dreams. And there are some factories that now have a lead time of up to nine months.”

A map of US and Canadian record-pressing plants. Courtesy of Making Vinyl.com.

The Netherlands’ Record Industry Vowed to Press “The Last LP”

For more than 20 years, Anouk Rijnders has worked at Record Industry in Haarlem, Holland, currently as project manager of the company’s mastering facility Artone Studio. “Record Store Day certainly helped enormously in making the customer more aware of vinyl record stores,” says Rijnders, who joined the company as a recent college grad two years after Ton and Mieke Vermeulen bought the plant from Sony Music in 1998 when the plant produced 1.5 million LPs that year.

The next year, Record Industry’s output more than doubled to 3,741,842 LPs, and additional impressive growth occurred in 2000 with 4,662,427 LPs and 7,749,272 LPs produced in 2001. At the time, the facility was somewhat busy because other major pressing operations had gone out of business. But then, for two consecutive years production was off by more than 1.9 million LPs.

In college, Rijnders studied filmmaking and television, and found a first job in the field. Yet she was drawn to manufacturing records when the opportunity arose. “We always believed in the future for vinyl and that is because it’s a product with emotion,” Rijnders said, adding that most people consume music via Spotify, or in the past, on an MP3 player. “You don’t even know what the cover looks like or who wrote it or even who sings it, because it’s an anonymous file. There are still more than enough people who are not happy with that; they want something you can touch, feel, smell, experience. So there will always be a market for that.”

A few years into working there, Record Industry’s busy times subsided.

“I told Ton and Mieke, ‘If you have to let me go, please do so’ because perhaps 15 years ago we had to let go of quite a number of people. I had no family yet. It would have been much easier for me to find a new job than people [who] needed to support their families. But, Ton always said, ‘The last record in the world will be pressed at Record Industry.’ Even Ton did not imagine it [vinyl demand] would go up and up and up again. I remember a newspaper in The Netherlands said that ‘Vinyl comes back more often than Jesus stood up,’ something like that, because it’s still surprising for everyone.”

Record Industry hit a high of 10,309,834 LPs manufactured in 2017, and it’s since leveled off a bit with 9,248,000 in 2020, a year when it was expecting only steady growth. Then the pandemic hit, and, “it’s been incredible.” To meet the demand, in late 2020 the company hired about 30 people, mostly musicians – drummers, guitar players, sound technicians – “because of the busy season.”

Record Industry is a partner in the Music On Vinyl reissue label, always active for Record Store Day. In fact, since 2008, Music On Vinyl has released more than 3,000 titles, including new three-LP artist compilations under their “Collected Series,” for which it licenses tracks. “Each year, [Music On Vinyl] does its best to put out special releases and get out rare stuff, including soundtracks,” Rijnders said. By being part-owned by Record Industry, Music On Vinyl most likely doesn’t have the backlog issues that Sony Music International ironically is now facing.

Beggars Considers Getting Into Pressing (Again)

The Rough Trade record shop in London’s Ladbroke Grove opened in 1976, and soon gave way to the Beggars Group of labels. Beggars in recent years intermittently considered opening its own pressing plant as a way to resolve the backlog of getting its records made. “We’re currently back in the conversation about this based on the backup at the final manufacturing plants right now,” explained former US group label head Matt Harmon. “We have over 200 orders that we can’t fill. We have a lot of back catalog that we’re trying to sort of manufacture at this point.”

Beggars considered getting into vinyl production about four years ago when orders were backed up by 100,000 units. “We have been talking about how we sort of deal with this,” Harmon said. “One of the ideas would be to open a record pressing plant. We’ve debated it internally for the last five years or so. It’s about capacity. If we’re getting guaranteed capacity at some of these plants, that is great. But if you’re getting 20,000 or 25,000 LPs a month, you have a number of double LPs, so when you remanufacture, for example, Radiohead’s catalog, you’re talking about a number of double LPs. It’s been fantastic that the smaller plants have opened up, but it’s very hard to use them to do the level of repress that we tend to sort of need.”

Not for the faint-hearted, building a new pressing plant from scratch is quite an undertaking from both a financial (i.e., investment of millions of dollars) and technology standpoint, despite Canadian vendor Viryl offering its WarmTone fast-turnaround pressing solution, along with Swiss hardware supplier Pheenix Alpha also cranking out new machinery. It’s not your father’s record industry to be sure. Everyone along the vinyl value chain is working smarter and leaner, perhaps with greater cooperation than what existed in the past. That camaraderie is especially evident in the birth of new pressing plants over the past few years.

“[Running a pressing plant] is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Sean Rutkowski, then general manager of Independent Record Pressing in Bordentown, New Jersey, told a Making Vinyl conference in 2018. Asked what he learned along the way, he replied, “Double your projected costs and cut the revenue in half.” Co-panelist Jeff Truhn, operations manager of Cascade Record Pressing in Milwaukie, Oregon., noted that labor will cost more than expected.

Another record pressing machine at United Record Pressing. Courtesy of Rainbo Records/Steve Sheldon.

Occasionally, half-century-old pressing equipment will show up on eBay for sale, prompting bidding wars. Third Man Pressing and Furnace Record Pressing pursued the same seller in Mexico, with Furnace winning out.

Furnace principal Eric Astor, who spoke at the first Making Vinyl conference in November 2017, had been involved in pressing seven-inch singles of friends’ bands since he was a teenager in Arizona. He started participating in Record Store Day in 2009, overseeing the manufacturing of a couple of titles and in 2010 became an RSD sponsor. “At the time, I don’t think there was a manufacturer that had been involved, so it gave us some good exposure.”

Eventually Furnace also made CDs, but Astor also worked as a broker for the large German pressing plant Pallas Group. “Frankly, we were getting so much work that the shared capacity that they’re giving to us as a broker wasn’t enough. So we bought our own machines to guarantee the additional capacity that we needed to keep up with the demand. By 2018, Astor was ready to open his own plant in Alexandria, Virginia.

“Every year in the months leading up to Record Store Day we see a rush of new orders, not just from official RSD titles, but from general volume riding the anticipation of the event,” points out Paul Miller, vice president of sales at Precision Record Pressing, outside of Toronto, Canada. He could be talking for all pressing plants. “This [demand] has become something we can count on and that’s had a really positive impact on our business.”

Generally speaking, record labels that take advantage of RSD are already placing orders with Precision throughout the year. Labels with rich back catalogs view RSD as the perfect time to reissue from their catalogs with a deluxe treatment to reintroduce the title to the public.

“These reissues get more people out to stores, and while they’re there and in a vinyl buying mood, many will take a chance on titles by lesser-known bands too,” Miller says. “The net effect is that more people buy vinyl on Record Store Day whether it’s an official title or not, which plays a part in encouraging new record labels to get involved in making vinyl too.”

Six years into owning and operating its own plant has been a learning experience for Third Man Pressing. “From late December through March, that’s the crazy season for vinyl records,” says Ben Blackwell. “But now, vinyl records are just 12 months of crazy season. It’s not really dying down. The more we get our capacity dialed in, the more it overwhelms and becomes tricky,” he added.

The first Record Store Day launched as Cleveland-based pressing plant Gotta Groove Records was forming. “The excitement it created at that time was something that I had not previously seen in the market, and I knew RSD was going to be a success,” says Gotta Groove President Matt Earley, adding that it was the “official pressing plant sponsor” for RSD in 2009 when “even my most curmudgeonly stores were onboard.”

Some of Gotta Groove’s earliest customers are still with the pressing plant, and among those who have had their RSD pressed there are Colemine Records, MVD, and Thirty Tigers.

Meanwhile, Steve Sheldon is in retirement mode in southern California. When Sheldon joined Rainbo in 1971, all they made was vinyl, later expanding into manufacturing cassettes, CDs and DVDs. “I have a special place in my heart for the vinyl. I miss it a little bit. But I don’t miss the aggravations that go along with it. At one time, I had 140 employees. A couple times a week, I’d wake up at one or two in the morning, walk the floors and never fall back to sleep. And that was not unusual. I’ve never slept better. I sleep eight hours through the night. If I happen to wake up, I fall right back to sleep.”

******

2022 Update:

Some RSD titles that were planned for April 23, 2022 were pushed to a newly-created June drop because of supply chain issues, not so much because of a pressing backlog. Previously, and initially conceived as a COVID-19-safety precaution, three RSD drops happened in August, September and October 2020, and then in June and July 2021, in addition to the previously planned Black Fridays for both years.

In March 2022, Jack White made an appeal that went viral, calling for the major labels to build their own pressing plants once again to meet consumer demand and loosen the 10-month backlogs, which have also impacted his own Third Man Pressing facility in Detroit. I knew from my own research, as mentioned above, that Universal, Sony and Warner were unlikely to do so.

At the 2022 Making Vinyl conference in Nashville, Third Man Records’ Blackwell admitted that White didn’t really expect the majors to really get back into the pressing business, acknowledging that they were perfectly happy outsourcing their needs. When I interviewed Blackwell for the book in January 2021, I asked him what the chances were that Third Man might also open a plant in Nashville, where the label is headquartered. He drolly responded, “Nashville already has a plant,” meaning the aforementioned URP, which helped Third Man Records create a liquid-filled record in 2012, and the “fastest record” stunt on RSD in April 2014, in which White recorded two tracks before a live audience and had 900 copies of a URP-pressed seven-inch single for sale within four hours.

Attendance was high at the 2022 Making Vinyl conference. Courtesy of Making Vinyl.com.

Unbeknownst to both Ben and me, a flurry of announcements in April 2022 would promise new pressing capacity from existing and new players, including URP, which is doubling capacity at its Nashville facility.

My Making Vinyl co-founder Bryan Ekus and I looked like geniuses for staging our first post-pandemic event in Nashville at the boutique facility The Vinyl Lab, where attendees could watch records being pressed while listening to the conference. But then we learned that long-time mastering engineer Piper Payne was also opening her own nearby plant, Physical Music Products, and that GZ Media – the world’s largest record factory, in the Czech Republic – was building Nashville Record Pressing, which will deliver a maximum capacity exceeding 20 million records per year by the fall of 2023.

Brandon Seavers (Memphis Record Pressing), Piper Payne (Infrasonic Mastering, Physical Music Products) and Ben Blackwell (Third Man Records) at the 2022 Nashville Making Vinyl conference. Courtesy of Making Vinyl.

But that’s not where the story ends.

At the 2022 Making Vinyl conference, Memphis Record Pressing, also backed partly by GZ, announced expansion plans. Then the record-membership club Vinyl Me, Please revealed it was building an audiophile state-of-the-art facility in Denver, Colorado, to accommodate its own growing record-pressing needs.

New pressing-capacity announcements didn’t stop there. Large CD replicator ADS Group COO Connie Comeau revealed plans for pressing records from its brand new facility – the first modern-era plant in Minnesota – by September 2022. Embattled audiophile label Mobile Fidelity also announced plans to open its own dedicated audiophile-record pressing plant.

Back across the Atlantic, at Making Vinyl Europe in Offenbach, Germany, Dutch manufacturing giant Record Industry CEO Ton Vermeulen announced that his company was adding 14 new presses, expanding its capacity from 11 million to 15 million records a year. And Sonopress CEO Sven Deutschmann announced the Bertelsmann-owned media manufacturer was getting back into vinyl for the first time in 30 years.

Jack White can rest easy; help is on its way.

Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century is available at good book stores everywhere and Amazon.com. More information about it is available at https://larryjaffee.com.

Header image courtesy of of Rainbo Records/Steve Sheldon.

In previous Copper articles (Issue 168 and Issue 169), I have discussed the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix, Arizona and some of my favorite exhibits. Here I would like to tell you about some of the intriguing guests I have met and memorable experiences I have had as a volunteer tour guide at the museum.

As noted in Issue 168, there are three types of guided tours at MIM:

• School tours: These are for school groups and are of two hours duration. A guide will typically work with an entire class.
• Adult tours: These accommodate groups of adults and are about one hour long. Large groups are divided among multiple guides.
• Orientation tours: They are scheduled at specific times each week and are open to all museum guests. They last 40 to 45 minutes.

Here are some examples of tour experiences:

Native Americans. During my first few months volunteering at the museum, I did a school tour for a fourth grade class from Guadalupe, AZ. Early in the tour, one of the adult chaperones informed me that most of the children were Yaqui Indians. That particular tour included one of the museum’s five geographic galleries and I would usually take a class to the Africa or Asia Gallery. There is also a large area dedicated to Native American and First Nations people, including Yaquis, in the United States/Canada Gallery, so I decided to take them there instead.

Yaqui Native Americans, circa 1910 – 1915. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress/public domain.

I brought the group to the Yaqui exhibit and was thrilled at what transpired. The class flocked around the exhibit and every one of them closely examined each instrument and artifact and excitedly viewed every video. I was standing a few feet away, basking in the moment, when one of the boys in the class came over to me, took me by the wrist, and led me closer to the exhibit. “Look, look Mr. Jeff. That comes from our town!” He was pointing at a coyote headdress and the descriptive information indicated that it was made in Guadalupe. He was beaming with pride.

A little later in the tour, I took the class to the Experience Gallery, where guests can play a large assortment of instruments. One of the boys in the class used one of the museum’s percussion instruments to demonstrate a Yaqui ceremonial dance.

A Cappella. I did a tour for half of a female a cappella singing group from New Zealand. Of course, I took them to the New Zealand exhibit. One of the videos at that exhibit depicts Maori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) music. Some of the people in the group were amused at my pronunciation of Maori and very politely corrected me. I was saying may-awe-ree when the correct pronunciation is mau-ree. Being a museum guide is a two-way street; I sometimes gain knowledge from our guests.

After the tour was finished, we got the entire group together and brought them to the museum’s rotunda, which we use to demonstrate the phenomenon of resonance. The dome shape of the rotunda is critical in amplifying the entire sound of music in a sonically pure manner. They sang a few songs and many other museum guests came to listen, giving a huge round of applause at the end.

Ghosts. I did a tour for a local social group consisting of people of Eastern European heritage. I took them to the Europe Gallery and, of course, spent time at some of the Eastern Europe exhibits. At one point during the tour, a woman suddenly let out a scream. I became frightened because I thought she was having a heart attack! To the contrary, she had spotted her deceased father playing an instrument in one of the videos. Tears of joy were running down her face.

The Piano. I often do the Saturday morning orientation tour. I mentioned earlier that this is available to all museum guests. We are asked to report to the museum a half hour prior to the tour to tell folks about it and otherwise assist the guests. Adjacent to the meeting area for this tour is a Steinway grand piano which is available for any guest to play. People of all levels of expertise (or lack thereof!) take pleasure in playing the piano.

A woman occasionally brings her 10-year-old son to the museum to play the Steinway. The boy is a true prodigy who plays only classical music. His sessions last 20 to 30 minutes, always attract a large crowd, and get enthusiastic applause when he’s done. There was one occasion when a white-haired woman sat down at the Steinway and played The Everly Brothers’ “All I have to Do is Dream.” I have no idea if she was a professional musician or someone’s piano-playing grandmother, but it was truly some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard!

A Steinway grand piano similar to the one at the MIM. This one’s at Abbey Road Studios, London. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Josephenus P. Riley.

Drumming. I conducted a school tour that included a drum circle for a sixth grade class. I divided the class into three groups with each drumming a different rhythm at first, and subsequently all playing in unison. Towards the end of the session we were “grooving.” The room we were in had a half-glass wall and there was another class waiting to do a drum session. I noticed that four or five girls from that class were dancing to what we were putting down. I pointed that out to my group and you should have seen them pounding those drums! Tito Puente would have been proud.

Cowboys. Red Steagall came to MIM with 30 of his people, all wearing cowboy hats. Red is a musician, actor, and poet who, for the last 31 years, has been hosting an annual three-day Cowboy Gathering in Fort Worth, Texas. He is the Official Cowboy Poet of Texas. I gave a tour to half the group, including Red.

Red’s folks were incredibly warm, friendly people and I heard several great stories. One person related some history of one of MIM’s guitars which he had owned at one point in time. As part of the tour, I took the group to the museum’s Jazz Exhibits. When I mentioned the word syncopation (a key element in jazz music), Red offered that Willie Nelson is a master of syncopation, and I have taken note of that every time I have heard Nelson sing since then.

I finished the tour in the Artist Gallery and personally took Red to view the country music artists on display: Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, and others. Campbell suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and deteriorated very slowly until his death in 2017. When I brought him to that exhibit, Red got choked up and I thought I saw a tear in his eye as he said, “Glen Campbell was a very close friend of mine.”

Yes, Sir! A military institute came to MIM with a very large group of cadets, all involved with music in some way. These were mostly high school-aged people with some in junior college, all wearing their cadet uniforms. I conducted a school tour for about 20 cadets.

An important element in school tours is free exploration time in each gallery. The tour guide spends a few minutes with the entire group after entering a gallery, and then roams around interacting with various subsets of the group during free exploration. On this tour, there were two cadets who glued themselves to my hip the entire time, peppering me with really good questions (some of which I could not answer). Without exception, every sentence ended with the word “sir.” I am not exaggerating when I say that I was probably called “sir” more times on that two-hour tour than in all the years I have existed. I kept having flashbacks to growing up in the 1950s, when one of my favorite TV shows was Leave It To Beaver. That’s where the older brother, Wally, often addressed his father and other adult males as “sir.”

Famous People. I sometimes encounter individuals in the tours who are related to famous people. I met the daughter of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Rogers and Evans were wonderful people who had lost a very young child and, subsequently, adopted a number of children. She was one of them. I also met the wife of one of the members of Bill Haley’s group, The Comets. She told tales of lots of partying. On another tour, I met a woman who was extremely knowledgeable about jazz. I asked her how she knew so much about it and she replied, “My great uncle was Duke Ellington.”

Laos. During a fifth grade school tour, the class was engaged in free exploration of the Asia Gallery. One of the boys in the class sought me out and asked me to accompany him to the Laos Exhibit. He explained that his mother was Laotian and proceeded to tell me about his trips to and family in Laos. He was very proud that his grandfather was a musician who played a lanat, the traditional Lao xylophone. He made sure that I watched one of the Laos Exhibit’s videos which featured a lanat. However, the boy registered a complaint that most of the videos depicted the music of rich people, and we should have more videos of “regular people.” I think he may have been a little disappointed that we did not have a video of his grandfather.

A ranat ek or traditional Thai xylophone, similar to a lanat. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Paul_012.

The Navy. I conducted a tour for a group of retired US Navy sailors who all served on a long since retired destroyer. Prior to the tour, they conducted a memorial service in the museum’s conference center for their deceased compatriots. The ceremony featured a color guard and a bugler. They read off the name of every person from their ship who was no longer with us and after each one, there was a single note from the bugle. The ceremony concluded with a playing of “Taps.” It was extremely moving. The lifelong camaraderie among these elderly people was quite apparent during the subsequent tour.

Ego Tripping. I sometimes get applause at the end of a tour. I conducted one for a group of retired CEOs from Southern California, about 10 people in all. These were bright, sophisticated people. At the end, I received as feverish a round of applause as I have ever had. One person said that it was the best tour he ever had. I was stunned and could barely get the words out as I thanked them. I conducted another tour for a local LGBT social club. After the tour, one of the participants told the museum’s coordinator for adult tours that I was “the Lamborghini of museum guides.”

Dementia. Various studies have found that music can be quite therapeutic for people with dementia. MIM has programs targeting that population and the museum has provided appropriate training. Accordingly, I have given a number of tours to people with dementia. One such tour was for a memory unit at an assisted living facility. Very shortly after that tour began, I realized that most of the participants were hardly listening to a word I was saying. This group was at a more severe dementia level than any I had previously encountered.

So, I changed my approach and spent less time talking and more time having them listen to music. There was one woman in the group who had the blankest of expressions on her face the entire time. She dutifully followed the group from exhibit to exhibit and never smiled, frowned, or said a word. I ended the tour in the Experience Gallery, where guests can play a wide variety of instruments. I brought the group to a large gong and had them engage in an activity where one person would hit the gong and others would put their hands on it to feel the vibrations. The expressionless woman did not engage in that activity but she watched it and smiled. I will never forget that moment!

Gong at the temple of Don An, Laos. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Basile Morin.

The late, great John Prine understood dementia:

“So if you’re walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes
Please don’t just pass ’em by and stare
As if you didn’t care, say, ‘Hello in there, hello’”

The yellow brick road took me to the Musical Instrument Museum. I found my Wonderland.

Header image courtesy of the Musical Instrument Museum.

The New York Audio Show returned after a bit of a break, and it was nice to get back to a local event I had attended for the first time in 2017. It was NYAS that inspired me to fly to Colorado for one of the last Rocky Mountain Audio Fests. RMAF was huge with many rooms, and even with a two-day stay, I was unable to see everything. The recent New York show at Manhattan’s Martinique Hotel on Friday September 9th was a very different affair: 15 systems could be evaluated and revisited in a single day.

While the brands were interesting, musical selections were generally terrible. It was hard to pry a rock tune, let alone a hard rock track out of an exhibitor unless the room was completely empty. I try not to be annoying with my musical requests, so I thought the Police’s “Walking on the Moon” would be a fair test for one particular set of speakers and tame enough not to offend audiophiles. The gentleman with an iPad put on something completely opposite of the Police with absolutely no bass line to showcase the subwoofers.

I got a chance to ask The Audiophiliac, Steve Guttenberg, for his opinion on the threadbare worn out musical choices. He pointed out that audio show attendees are so accustomed to hearing the same tracks by Stevie Ray Vaughn, Norah Jones, and Diana Krall that they have become standard reference points for sound quality. The risk of playing anything too different or raucous threatens to repel that demographic. Unless it’s for work, I never listen to female jazz artists. While I love Stevie Ray Vaughn, he might account for five percent of my listening. The next 15 percent is dedicated to big orchestral pieces and blues, and all the rest is Van Halen, Sepultura, AC/DC, et al. So, how does Norah Jones help me imagine a system playing my music in my space? We should also assume that people born between the years of 1980 – 2000 have vastly different references, and their music shouldn’t be ignored either.

Aside from finding great equipment, my secondary mission was to seek out a young population, and I was pleasantly surprised by a diverse group of people that included women and people in their 20s who are musicians, studio engineers, DIY hobbyists, and new audiophiles who had never attended a show before. During our chat, Steve Guttenberg also pointed out that are plenty of young audiophiles with money to spend, but they are not necessarily reading print media or going to events with astronomically priced aspirational stereos like their older counterparts. The audio industry needs a new way to reach these consumers, perhaps with more video material like Steve’s YouTube videos, and by effectively presenting their gear to a wider audience. Brands and exhibitors need to show equipment in a way that highlights its ability to accommodate its listeners’ varied tastes. If a system is really an “audiophile one trick pony” (an apt term used by an exhibiting speaker maker), then make sure the preferred genre is stated clearly in the marketing brochure.

That is the end of my post-show gripe-fest. Below, is just a smattering of excellent systems I heard, although every room sounded good. Systems came in a variety of sizes and some were wisely scaled down to fit the urban spaces of New York City. My goal for this show was to find systems I clicked with both sonically and aesthetically, price and size notwithstanding, and to branch out beyond the more famous manufacturers.

The biggest system was the magnificent four-piece GT3R speaker system by GT Audio Works powered by industrial-cool Manley Labs Neo Classic 250 watt mono blocks for $16,599/pair. The full range reference speakers each have 72-inch-long planar and ribbon drivers all handmade by Greg Takesh using no crossovers or filters – just direct connections into the amp. Supplementing the main speakers were two stacks of four 12-inch subwoofers, which can be customized for smaller rooms. The total price for the speakers is $59,900 but well worth a serious listen for anyone seeking a grand experience. And Greg welcomes auditions. Make an appointment, get yourself to JFK, and they’ll bring you to the showroom to listen to your music your way.

Not inexpensive, but GT Audio Works gives you a lot for your hard-earned cash. Courtesy of Harris Fogel.

Haniwa Audio from Japan presented a completely different four-piece speaker set. The 20-20 SuperWoofer System comes with a pair of subs, an integrated Digital Phase Control amplifier, and two full-range floating drivers mounted on cast-aluminum pedestals, comprising a unique all-in-one system with an artistic flair for $28,000. Just add your desired sources and get ready for spacious 3D time-aligned music.

Haniwa Audio’s system utilizes dedicated components, all matched to each other. Courtesy of Harris Fogel.

Volti Audio and its Razz-LE tower speakers ($6,500/pair) were paired with a BorderPatrol P21EXD 20-watt push-pull 300B amp with Western Electric tubes ($18,000). At 97 dB sensitivity these 40-inch-tall speakers opened up beautifully as the 12-inch woofer, horn midrange, and 1-inch compression tweeter lit up the room. I’ve always appreciated Volti’s traditional yet elegant design and was happy to finally hear a pair.

Although I am a fan of boxy old-fashioned cabinet speakers, several attractive models of open-baffle speakers stood out. Spatial Audio Lab presented the X4 Ultra with 12-inch midrange woofer, 12″ woofer, and a dipolar tweeter. As equipped with the Ultralam finish and Gaia footer option, the X4 Ultra costs $8,500 per pair. They were powered by the Linear Tube Audio 51-watt z40+ integrated amp ($7,650). The combination sounded fantastic, and I would have stayed longer if it wasn’t so crowded.

The Volti Audio room says, have fun! Courtesy of Harris Fogel.

300B heaven: the Border Patrol P21EXD tube power amplifier. Courtesy of Harris Fogel.

The Spatial Audio Lab exhibit. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

The Linear Tube Audio Z40+ integrated amplifier. Courtesy of Harris Fogel.

Pure Audio Project showed their entry-level Duet 15 Prelude with Voxativ AC-1.6 full range 8-inch driver and 15-inch woofer, starting at $5,990 per pair depending upon options. The modern minimalist speakers each weigh 33 lbs and measure 39 inches high by 21.25 inches wide by 10.63 inches deep, and are perfect for smaller and medium-sized rooms. However, their footprint belies their generous rich sound. Powered by the Pass Labs INT-25, a Class A 25-watt amp ($7,600), “Echoes” by Pink Floyd came to life.

The Pure Audio Project room. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

Topping off my open baffle line-up at NYAS was Treehaus Audiolab speakers and electronics which look like they are part of a layout in Architectural Digest. The speakers feature beautiful wooden slabs of approximately 24 inches wide and 52 inches tall, in live-edge walnut or elm. The core system of speakers, tube amp, pre-amp and associated power supplies cost $61,000 and that’s before you add sources, wires, and a solid-state amp to power the woofers. Nevertheless, for a well-appointed house, Treehaus offers beautiful design and sound as natural, substantive, fine-grained, and detailed as the wood that suspends the Fostex supertweeters and Atelier Rullit field-coil woofers and full-range drivers. [To learn more about field-coil drivers, follow the link to Tweek Geek.]

Treehaus Audiolab showed a striking display of speakers and components. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

I also want to acknowledge two of my favorite world-renowned audio brands. Harbeth’s brilliant 30.2 XD 2-way speakers ($6,690/pair) were combined with the striking 110-watt per channel Luxman L-507Z Class AB integrated amp ($8,995). Add Luxman’s D-10X SACD player ($16,995), PD-151MK11 belt drive turntable ($6,490), and LMC-5 moving coil cartridge with Shibata stylus ($2,695), and you could walk out with a complete system for $47,550, Luxman wires included.

I was just about to leave when a young couple I had been speaking with during the course of the day directed me to a room playing rap music. No, that can’t be; this is an audio show! But there was Audio Note UK playing rap, Latin, electronica, rock, and classical music. I came for the music but stayed to learn more about a complete system built by Audio Note UK – including wiring. The stars of the room were the wondrous AN-E-SPe HE loudspeakers in a Palisander finish retailing at $12,453/pair. Driven by their Cobra integrated EL34 push-pull amplifier ($5,458) and set into asymmetrical corners of the room, the 31-inch high, stand-mount, bi-wired speakers energized listeners with 1-inch tweeters and 8-inch bass drivers.

Judging by several lengthy passages, I must have been there about 45 minutes and left only because I felt guilty about taking up space while a line formed for seats. The collective mood was relaxed yet riveted as  Daniel Qvortrup and his colleague Leonard Norwitz, a friend of Peter Qvortrup’s (Daniel’s father and founder of Audio Note UK) who acted as a musical co-director, spun a variety of discs on the CD 4.1x integrated Red Book CD player ($14,331).

Forget the guys in suits and ties! I want to hear what Daniel Qvortrup is playing. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

The AN-E-SPe HE speakers in the Audio Note room. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

I thought compact discs were going the way of 8-track tapes and expected the show to be dominated by streaming, turntables, and even reel-to-reel tape decks, but CD players are not going anywhere just yet. In fact, Audio Note is further refining the technology and developing a belt-drive CD player.

What’s the point of this report if you can’t experience the equipment yourself? Don’t take my word for it. As of this moment, Spatial Audio Lab, Treehaus Audiolab, GT Audio Works, and Audio Note UK will be exhibiting at Capital Audio Fest, November 11th – 13th, 2022 just outside of Washington, DC. Getting to the venue in Rockville, Maryland, is a metro or taxi ride from Union Station. Please note: Capital Audio Fest’s exhibitors, system configurations, and prices may vary.

A selection of Luxman components. Courtesy of Harris Fogel.

Editor’s Note: Part Two will feature additional show coverage by Harris Fogel, with more photos, people, companies, and gear.

Header image: the Linear Tube Audio Z40+ integrated amplifier. Courtesy of Harris Fogel.

Over the last several episodes, we have traveled to different parts of the world to look at the different engineering cultures in different times and places, all sharing a common goal: the recording of music on round disks in the form of modulated grooves. The approaches have been quite different, even wildly so at times, and the different record cutting lathes all had strengths and weaknesses.

The beauty of disk recording and mastering lathes lies in the inherent simplicity and modularity of the technology. On the playback side of things, it was (and still remains) common to purchase a turntable, fit a tonearm made by a different company and then try out a few different cartridges, made by other manufacturers, before settling on the combination that appears to sound best on that particular system. Then comes the phono stage, either standalone or part of a preamplifier that has one built in. This will take the small signal coming out of the cartridge, apply the RIAA de-emphasis, amplify it into a line level signal and drive a power amplifier with it. The phono stage or preamp and the power amp could of course be made by separate manufacturers, none of which have anything to do with the turntable, tonearm or cartridge used. Then we have loudspeakers, crossovers, speaker cables, room acoustics… Each one of these items is worth writing a rather thick book about.

However, without needing to necessarily know how to design such components from first principles, the seasoned audiophile will be very familiar with what each of these components do in a system. They can mix and match until they are satisfied with the result, or just keep on trying out different combinations eternally, convinced that the real reward is the journey and not any particular destination.

Similarly, the components of a disk mastering system can be mixed and matched ad perpetuum and it was just as common to do so for many decades, up until Neumann made it their main selling point to provide a complete system, so you wouldn’t need to worry about figuring out how to mix and match the various components. Admittedly, this kind of mixing and matching of lathe parts is significantly more complicated than the equivalent on the reproducing side, with far fewer products to choose from, a far lesser degree of standardization (read as, “nothing will just bolt right on”) and no magazines explaining in simple terms how to adjust things.

Still, all a disk recording system is, essentially, is a platter rotating at the right speed with a means to clamp a disk on it, a mechanism that advances a cutter head across the disk surface, and a cutter head capable of wiggling a cutting stylus to modulate the groove. The first two form the transport and the last part constitutes the audio portion of the system. The lathe bed would, in very broad terms, keep the platter spindle and the carriage slide system at 90 degrees to each other without transmitting vibrations from one to the other. All Neumann lathes, all Scully lathes, all Western Electric lathes and a couple of Presto models (the 8D/8DG and the 14B) featured machine-tool beds, similar in design to the beds found on screw-cutting lathes, but with a vertical spindle instead of a horizontal one needed to make screws. All other disk recording lathes had “beds” that were more like the plinths found on reproducing turntables, where everything was bolted. Both approaches could be made to work exceptionally well, but the machine tool bed approach dominated the disk mastering market.

Scully lathe, shown in its original configuration. Courtesy of Artone Studio, Haarlem, The Netherlands.

Detailed view of the original Scully belt-drive system. Courtesy of Artone Studio.

By the end of the 1960s, there were very few other lathes to be seen in a mastering studio, besides Neumann and Scully models. But this primarily refers to the lathe bed, as everything else could be mixed and matched, so a Scully lathe did not necessarily need to have much more than just the Scully bed, with parts made by other manufacturers bolted to it. Despite the best efforts of Neumann, their products were also frequently modified. By now, with no OEM support or replacement parts to be found, most disk recording and mastering lathes in active service are built like hot rods, using the highest-performance components that can be found to squeeze the last drop of fidelity out of the system.

Most lathes had main bearing units that bolted onto the bed, so these too could be replaced, as could the spindles and the platters. David Manley built up a mastering system consisting of a Scully lathe bed with a Neumann vacuum platter, and several other Scully lathes are wearing Agnew Analog vacuum platters now. Most Scully lathes were originally belt-driven, but some were modified to be driven by a Lyrec SM-8 direct-drive motor, while others were modified to be driven by Technics SP-10 turntables on the floor under the lathe (Bernie Grundman is using this configuration). David Manley was using a Technics SP-02, and a few are using the Agnew Analog Type 631 direct drive motor. Floorstanding direct-drive motors and turntables of course needed a custom driveshaft to transmit motion to the platter.

An extensively modified one-off Scully lathe, fitted with a Neumann vacuum platter, driven by a Technics SP-02 motor, with a Westrex cutter head driven by Manley Laboratories tube amplifiers. It was put together by David Manley. Courtesy of Manley Labs. Note: Manley does not currently build or modify lathe systems.

The mechanical assembly of the carriage usually relied on a separate motor to drive, or on a power take-off from the main drive system for the platter. This could be endlessly modified, replacing the motors and the control electronics to create all sorts of automation systems. Even though Neumann lathes had some of the most sophisticated control electronics and automation systems of the time, fitted from the factory, the majority of them have by now been replaced by aftermarket pitch control systems, with several options available. Many Scully, Presto and Fairchild lathes did not come with any automation, but many of these have been retrofitted with modern control electronics.

Suspension units for the cutter head came in many flavors. Floating cutter heads had different particularities to those equipped with an advance ball (which would ride ahead of the cutting system to control the depth of cut; see my article in Issue 162), so the suspension units were usually designed to better suit one of the two methods of holding a cutter head. The more advanced suspension units had electronic depth control systems (for floating heads), electronic head drop/lift systems, and various other bells and whistles. On Neumann and Scully lathes, the suspension unit was attached to the end of the carriage arm, and it was a very simple procedure to remove it and replace it. On other lathes, the suspension unit was integral to the carriage, making it more complicated to entirely replace it, but possible to modify as needed.

The Scully lathe carriage. Photo courtesy of Artone Studio.

The cutter head itself was almost as easy to replace as the cartridge on a tonearm, with the difference that there was no standardized mount that was common to all lathes. By the 1950s, each lathe manufacturer was using their own proprietary (and entirely incompatible with anything else) cutter head mounting system. Fortunately, adapters could be easily made, making it possible to fit pretty much any cutter head to almost any lathe out there. By far the largest and heaviest cutter heads were those made by Westrex. Scully lathes were designed to carry these, so they could handle any cutter head you wanted to use, with no issues. A Neumann stereo head was about four times lighter than a Westrex stereo head, but around four times heavier than an RCA mono head. A Neumann lathe could easily take any lightweight mono head but needed some modifications to handle a Westrex head. A Scully or HAECO suspension unit could, however, be fitted to a Neumann lathe. The HAECO suspension unit was a popular aftermarket option for Scully lathes. Scully lathes have been equipped with all kinds of suspension units and cutter heads. Most often seen with the Westrex cutter heads, they were frequently also fitted with Ortofon and even Neumann cutter heads, sometimes with the Neumann suspension unit as well.

Scully lathe with Westrex 2B cutter head. Courtesy of Artone Studio.

The LP artwork of Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Colleagues, Volumes I, II, and III all feature photographs of Scully lathes with Neumann cutter heads held on a rather intense-looking custom suspension unit. By 1978, the artwork of the Sheffield Lab direct-to-disk recordings of Wagner’s works, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, show several Neumann lathes, with modifications.

Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Colleagues, Volume III, album cover.

Unlike driving loudspeakers with power amplifiers, the cutting amplifier rack intended for driving a cutter head was a little bit more complicated. Not only was each cutting amplifier specifically designed for a particular cutter head, but even then, two seemingly identical cutter heads of the same make and model were not interchangeable on the same cutting amplifier rack. This was due to the use of motional feedback, using signals generated by dedicated feedback coils within the cutter head to correct errors and linearize the system, as well as sophisticated instrumentation for cutter head protection, current metering, and remote temperature sensing, accomplished by means of a resistance bridge (sensing variations in the DC resistance of the drive coils due to temperature, without affecting the AC audio signals driving these coils).

At best, with two identical cutter heads, the electronics would need to be recalibrated when switching from one head to the other. Alternatively, circuit boards could be swapped along with the head, having a set of pre-calibrated boards matched to each channel of each head.

When entirely different cutter heads had to be used, significant modifications were often required to “convince” a cutting amplifier designed for a particular model of cutter head to work with another. Not only was this done, however, it was not uncommon for mastering facilities to modify and upgrade their cutting amplifiers, building their own from scratch, or using high-end amplifiers intended for loudspeakers, with additional circuitry, to drive cutter heads.

A certain culture of fiddling and hot-rodding has always surrounded disk recording systems. It was perhaps due to this culture that the advances in sound quality kept on happening over so many decades. It keeps things exciting and sustains the notion that great rewards come with great effort, which has kept the disk medium alive and well since Emile Berliner’s early experiments. There are certainly simpler ways to record and reproduce music. But are they as rewarding?

Header image: a heavily-modified Scully lathe, at Organic Music, Obing, Germany. It has been converted to direct-drive with a floated Vinylium SC99 cutter head, driven by amplifiers! Courtesy of Thorsten Scheffner, Organic Music.

From being born into a house of classic rock royalty to becoming darlings of present-day indie blues-rock, Graham Whitford’s rock and roll journey was a matter of destiny.

As the son of Aerosmith guitarist Brad Whitford, the guitar was ingrained in a young Graham Whitford’s DNA from birth. Though Whitford’s dreams weren’t initially of the six-string variety, everything changed when his father gifted him a Les Paul at 17.

With guitar in hand, the world moved fast for Whitford. The young player developed his chops quickly and began to forge his signature style. While honing his chops, a chance meeting with fellow up-and-comer Tyler Bryant would change the trajectory of both guitarists’ careers.

An immediate kinship was apparent between Whitford and Bryant, and it wasn’t long before Whitford joined Bryant’s namesake group, Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown, forming a blistering blues-rock duo arguably not seen since 1990s-era Black Crowes lineups.

High praise? To be sure. Valid? You better believe it.

Now five records in, the Shakedown has settled in as a crème of the crop band, proof of which can be found on their trio’s most recent studio affair, Shake the Roots.

Graham dug in with me to run through his early leanings, how he met Tyler Bryant, the formation of indie label Rattle Shake Records, the enduring influence of Aerosmith, and a whole lot more.

Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown, Shake the Roots, album cover.

Andrew Daly: What are your earliest memories of the guitar in your life?

Graham Whitford: I have been surrounded by guitars my whole life. However, I started my musical journey on the drums. When I was three, my parents bought me a small drum set for Christmas. I played nothing but drums until I was about 11 or 12. I moved from Massachusetts to New York City when I was 13. We moved into an apartment, and I naturally gravitated to playing more guitar and quickly became obsessed.

AD: What sort of influence has your father had on you as a player? Have you felt the need to shake that influence as you’ve moved forward?

GW: When I was 11 or 12, my dad taught me how to play over 12-bar blues, and after that moment, I couldn’t put the guitar down. During most of my formative years as a guitar player, my dad lived in North Carolina while I was in New York. I was primarily self-taught, learning by watching and listening to my favorite guitar players and trying to mimic what they did. As I became more and more consumed with the guitar, I began to truly appreciate what a special guitar player my dad is. To this day, I learn so much by just watching him play. When someone tells me that my playing reminds them of his, I take it as a great compliment.

AD: How did you get connected with Tyler Bryant?

GW: I met Tyler at a radio interview in New York City. I had recently become friendly with the photographer Robert Knight, who was working with Tyler at the time. Robert and I met early one morning in the city to take some photos. I brought a guitar with me for the shoot. After the photo session, Robert invited me to come with him to a radio interview with Tyler.

I was a big fan of Tyler’s music, so I was excited to meet him. I still had my guitar with me from the photo shoot, so when I walked in, [I’m sure] Tyler thought, “Who is this kid coming to my interview with a guitar?” Robert introduced me as the guy that was going to put Tyler out of a job. Because of this, I don’t think Tyler was too keen on me at first, but we exchanged info and started talking and sharing music.

Not too long after, I competed in a Guitar Center King of the Blues competition and made it to the finals. Tyler was one of the judges. This was the first time we really connected, and we became fast friends. In the summer of 2010, Tyler invited me to go on tour with the band, opening up for Pat Benatar and REO Speedwagon. In early 2011 I moved to Nashville and have been playing with the band ever since.

AD: What led you to join Shakedown officially?

GW: The first thing that really hooked me was the hang. The first time I hung out with Tyler and Caleb, I thought to myself, these are the kind of guys I want to be friends with. There was an immediate attraction to their energy. After I played with the band for the first time at The Ryman [Auditorium] in Nashville, opening up for Heart, I knew it was something special, and I felt that I fit right in.

AD: Your latest record, Shake the Roots, has just been released. Tell us a little about it.

GW: Shake The Roots is going to be the very first release on our brand-new label, Rattle Shake Records. We are very excited about starting our own label and are proud of this new record. We have always taken a grass roots, hands-on approach as a band, and creating our own label seemed like a natural progression.

With this record, we wanted to try and get back to our roots as a band. We reflected on some of our early music from [the] Wild Child [album], and I think we craved the youthful and raw energy that the record had. We also wanted to really let our blues roots shine.

Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown. Courtesy of Freeman Promotions.

AD: From a production standpoint, what was the band’s approach?

GW: The approach to this record was different in that we didn’t really realize we were making a record until we had all this music recorded that we were really proud of. Most of the songs on it were demos that we turned into masters. We would get together, write a song, record it in Tyler’s studio, and then move on. We felt really strongly about certain songs as we were writing and demoing them, so we treated the [process] like we were making a record. We didn’t set aside two or three weeks to make a record like we normally had in the past. It was slowly put together over time.

AD: As the band’s rhythm guitarist, how do you view your role within the band’s music?

GW: I believe a great rhythm section is a foundation of a great band. Guys like Malcolm Young inspire me. He is the secret ingredient that makes ACϟDC’s music feel so good. As a drummer, I’m fascinated by a great groove, and my goal is always, how can I contribute to the groove and make it groove even harder? I am also attracted to [strong] dynamics, so I try to pay attention to them in my own playing.

AD: What led to the shift towards a more blues-rock sound?

GW: We were trying to boil down what authentically feels like us as a band. At our core, we have always been a blues-rock band, and we wanted to make that the focus of this record. I am always trying to sit in the pocket with my playing. I actively try to play slightly behind the beat. I think you can hear this in songs like “Ain’t None Watered Down.”

AD: Let’s touch on Rattle Shake Records. Why form your own label? Does being without major label support worry you at all?

GW: We wanted to have more control of our own music. And we want to release more music more frequently. We never stop making music as a band, and we want to share more of that music with our fans. Many assume that once you sign a deal with a major label, you hit the big time. That’s not necessarily the case. You still need to put in all the hard work. We felt we had built up enough of a grass roots following at this point that we could succeed at building it on our own.

AD: I recently asked [Aerosmith lead guitarist] Joe Perry if he felt that rock was dead, and he immediately referenced your band as proof of otherwise. Does the music of Aerosmith play a large role in the songwriting process for the Shakedown? I would think it would have to loom large as an influence.

GW: I am very flattered that he would say that. It means a lot coming from Joe. I grew up around Aerosmith’s music, so whether I like it or not, it’s in my DNA. I do believe that I have learned a lot from just hearing it my whole life. I definitely look to Aerosmith’s music for inspiration.

AD: What does the Shakedown need to do to continue to gain traction in an increasingly competitive scene? Where do you see yourself and the Shakedown in five, 10, or 20 years?

GW: We just keep building it. Keep making records, continue refining our songwriting abilities, and touring and making new fans. Hopefully, we will be playing bigger shows and establishing ourselves as a headlining band. In the meantime, we’ll be doing our best to keep rock ‘n’ roll alive for years to come.

Header image courtesy of Michael Heeschen.

From December 2013 and for several years afterward I worked as a project manager in the UK for the Academy of Music and Sound, managing MIRTAS: the Music Instrument Retail Apprenticeships Scheme.

This was a new and exciting program, one which had successfully and uniquely won a grant for 1.3 million pounds sterling, specifically to support the music instrument retail sector. It should be made clear that there were many sectors competing for this funding, and it was not a pre-allocated music industry-related government fund. Competition for the grant came from many sectors within the UK, including engineering, science and technology and so on. To win this for the music instrument retail sector was quite significant.

Up until that time, there had never existed any industry-specific retail qualifications to represent all the knowledge and skills that highly-capable staff were gaining in their field. Sadly, they had nothing “official” to show for their abilities to any future employer. For many young people starting out in music instrument retail, this was a great hole in the education world, one which MIRTAS would seek to remedy by developing two new industry-specific qualifications. These were the BTEC (Business and Technology Education Council) Level 2 in Music Instrument Retail Knowledge (for year one, progressing to Level 3 in year 2) and, Music Instrument Retail Skills NVQ (National Vocational Qualification). These qualifications were developed by the MIRTAS team, including myself, and were then introduced via the Pearson Edexcel education and examination body.

Logistically and technically, this was a mammoth national project and also a rewarding one. It was my job to find reputable and eligible retailers from throughout the UK that would be willing to take on an apprentice for at least the initial year. Next, I had to find suitable apprentices that both qualified for these limited golden opportunities, and had the ability to consistently physically attend their placement in store, based on their catchment and travel arrangements, should they qualify. It was necessary to have basic good grades in math and English, and have access to a laptop for online training and be able to count on a dependable commute.

After the MIRTAS qualifications had been developed, I trained to become an Assessor, trained two national regional mentors to likewise become Assessors, assessed the apprentices, and delivered the qualifications to the qualifying apprenticeship students. Additionally, the role included interviewing applicants; replacing those that did not continue on with the program; sourcing and delivering funding; handling promotion, marketing, and training; and keeping up to date with each student’s modular progress within their qualifications – all according to the fast-moving academic timetable to keep the students on track.

You may still visit the original MIRTAS Facebook page at this link, and check out just some of the music stores we worked with.

MIRTAS partner Manson’s Music Shop, Exeter, UK. Courtesy of Manson’s Music Shop.

It was an incredible project, with many hurdles to overcome, and new ground to pioneer. In total, we placed over 120 apprentices throughout the UK, ranging in age from 16 upward. The stores were wide-ranging in nature and included dedicated electric guitar and bass shops, brass and woodwind retailers, piano companies, chains, and independents. If you left school at the age of 16 at the start of this project and loved music and musical instruments, this apprenticeship program was made for you. It proved to be very popular. How so?

Well, this brings us back to the question posited at the start of this article. What’s in a name? If I said to you, “I worked for MIRTAS,” that would likely mean nothing to you – until you found out about the project and importantly, its reputation. Along with a huge amount of initiative, countless hours of communication and hard work, the MIRTAS project garnered success largely due to the good reputations of the stores involved. That, and the passion people have for music, young and old alike.

But just how important is reputation? How seriously do people take what’s in a name?

Perhaps this example may provide some small insight. Returning briefly to my own retail years in the early “noughties,” I still recall to this day one particular customer. I can’t remember what he had purchased, but I do remember filling out the invoice and asking his name. “It’s mister Aughneans,” stated our customer. “Could you spell that for me please, sir?” I asked, just wanting that bit of clarity, you know. “Of course. It has an apostrophe,” he said. “O, apostrophe, capital N, e, a, n, s.” “Oh! Mister Onions,” I delighted. “No!,” he retorted. “It’s O’NEANS!,” placing additional emphasis on the O. “Thank you very much Mr. O’Neans,” I concluded and wrote out the rest of the invoice hoping for no further complications with phonetically nightmare encumbered address details. I resisted the urge to compliment him with, “You must really know your…” nah – bad idea. He was happy – I was happy.

Yes, it mattered to Mr. O’Nions how you pronounced his name. It mattered a whole lot. And rightly so. His view of himself and how others view him were significantly important to him, and he wasn’t about to have some young staff lad misrepresent him as some common garden vegetable. His reputation would surely suffer and we didn’t want that!

Call any vegetable…courtesy of Pexels.com/Anna Shvets.

By subtle contrast, I once worked with a Ms. D’eath. She was one of the most alive, industrious and hard-working people I can think of. She always had a project underway at home and in her spare time spent hours doing volunteer construction work. Tough and kind. She pronounces her name D’eath and not Death but isn’t particularly hung up about it either. No pun intended.

So, again, what’s in a name? When MIRTAS started it was an unknown, but thanks to its rapidly-publicized notoriety and the reputation of the stores involved, the name grew rapidly. Perhaps not like wildfire, but within the family-like network of music instrument retailers, combined with the press we received in industry trade magazines, shopkeepers and business managers really got behind the scheme. In fact, it would have been almost impossible to keep a lid on it, as the sector was crying out for affordable and reliable staff. Our store managers believed in helping to give young people a new and exciting opportunity in the musical instrument world by training them on the job, and now, they would have legitimate qualifications to take forward in their future careers, something to give evidence to their initiative and their achievements.

MIRTAS partner Hartnoll Guitars, formerly Griffin Guitar Center, Plymouth, UK. Courtesy of Hartnoll Guitars.

In some way the MIRTAS project would become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the vacancies were identified and then filled, for either year one or year two starters, and eventually all our cohorts would complete the syllabus. At the time, distance learning became retitled, to the newer term you may recognize today as blended learning. This meant our regional mentors could contact our apprentices both in-person for video and audio-based assessments, and aid with additional consultations online for further support when and where needed.

The project ran its natural course and was as sustainable as the funding would permit. Most apprenticeship placements would run for either 12 or 24 months, during which time, the supporting retailer could continue to be eligible for drawing down funding on a quarterly basis.

Given that the cohorts filled most of the identifiable vacancies nationally really went on to show how much of a need there was for affordable staff. As these positions became filled, (or in frequent cases were created as new opportunities), MIRTAS assisted the UK music instrument retail sector in reducing their operational staffing costs. Largely this program came to completion as a result of a finite amount of funding.

For me, the greatest highlight was seeing our young apprentices grow in their own confidence levels, take ownership of their roles and responsibilities, and provide meaningful assistance to the general public. They really came into their own stride in a field that they cared about. Observing the transition from introverted and shy to confident, informative and representable young adults was a real privilege. They were on their way to making a good name for themselves – their reputations.

MIRTAS partner Musicland, with locations in Bromley and Romford, UK. Courtesy of Musicland.

Vinyl fans, take note: Octave Records has added three titles to its growing roster of LP releases: Ragtime World by melodic rockers Augustus, The Moon Leans In by singer/songwriter Tom LaFond, and Things Worth Remembering from pop/rock band Clandestine Amigo. All are available in limited, numbered editions on Octave Records’ premium 180-gram vinyl.

All of the LPs are pressed on 180-gram virgin vinyl using the highest-quality Neotech vinyl compound, NiPro Optics electroplating, and GrooveCoated stampers from Gotta Groove Records. State-of-the-art temperature control is maintained during the manufacturing process using a closed-loop heating system. Each record is scrupulously hand-inspected and listening tests are conducted to ensure the ultimate in pressing quality. All of the LPs are cut from the original Octave Records Pure DSD high-resolution masters.

Ragtime World offers Augustus’ distinctive blend of melodic indie, alt-rock, post-rock and other not-quite-categorizable music. Their core two-guitars-bass-drums-vocals sound is spiced with a variety of electric and acoustic guitars and amps, lap steel guitar, mandolin and even a Mellotron. Featuring Colin Kelly (guitars, keyboards, vocals) and Jim Herlihy (guitars, mandolin, Mellotron) with John Demitro (bass, lap steel, percussion) and Forrest Raup (drums and percussion), Ragtime World offers an ear-catching and thoughtful variety of songs and moods, from the rockers “Carry All the Weight,” “Past Life” and “Leave the Lights On” to the spare, fingerpicked acoustic guitar of the title track and the ethereal “Daisies.”

Augustus, Ragtime World.

As Colin Kelly noted, “Recording Ragtime World was eye-opening in terms of getting such a high quality of sound in capturing the music. A big part of our sound is working out guitar textures that are distinctive yet complement each other, and that really carried over into the sessions.”

Thom LaFond’s The Moon Leans In features a broad range of moods and styles, from stripped-down acoustic instrument-based songs to upbeat cuts, and even some early jazz and swing influences. Thom goes for a vocal-centered, conversational style, with Thom on electric guitar, vocals, synthesizer, piano and acoustic guitar, accompanied by Enion Pelta (6-string violin, backing vocals), Chris Duffy (5-string electric bass), Forrest Kelley (drums), Zea Stallings (backing vocals) and Katie Mintle (backing vocals). “To the Moon” and “So Busy in the Wild” showcase Thom and an acoustic swing quartet playing live in the studio, including Michelle Pietrafitta (drums), Octave’s Jeremy Mohney (alto sax), and John Heiland (acoustic bass).

Thom LaFond, The Moon Leans In.

“When I play acoustic guitar, I get more intricate with the arrangements, and when I’m on piano I tend to lean more towards a swing kind of improvised jamming feel,” said Thom. “Most record labels insist that you reign in your music to one ‘brand.’ Octave wasn’t interested in that, and encouraged us to experiment.” When asked how he came up with the album’s title, Thom noted, “On some nights, when the moon is close, it seems like it’s kind of coming in to listen. I like to play music for people, but sometimes I just like being alone, and playing music for the moon is something that feels good to me.”

Things Worth Remembering is the second album by pop/rock band Clandestine Amigo. The album finds singer/songwriter/pianist Jessica Carson, singer Giselle Collazo and the band stretching their musical and lyrical boundaries with the addition of vocalist Katie Mintle and an expanded ensemble sound. Carson notes, “when I’m writing, I usually start out with a feeling and try to find chords, music and lyrics that match that feeling. And people’s feelings and experiences are complex.”

Vocalist Katie Mintle adds a smooth, sultry element to Clandestine Amigo. “Her lead vocals really fit what the songs are trying to say,” said Carson. Mintle is featured on three tracks, “I Wish,” “Things Worth Remembering” and “Let It Be.” In addition to the core band of Jessica, Giselle, Michael Wooten (drums) and Kyle Donovan (acoustic and electric guitar), the record features guest appearances from Gabriel Mervine (trumpet), Bradley Morse (upright and electric bass), Tom Amend (organ, flute), Jonathan Sadler (vibraphone), Eben Grace (pedal steel) and Jay Elliott (tambourine).

Clandestine Amigo, Things Worth Remembering.

Jessica recorded her piano parts on a Yamaha 7-1/2-foot concert grand piano. The album has a warm yet detailed, spacious, yet inviting sound that artfully combines her compelling songwriting with stunning audio quality.

All three albums are also available on gold SACD with a DSDDirect-mastered CD layer, and in a choice of download formats up to high-resolution 24-bit/352.8 kHz and DSD256.

Header image: Thom LaFond.

Continuing our 60^th anniversary celebration of A&M Records, our journey will now take us south of the border. A&M’s foundation was built on music with a Mexican flavor – the sound of the Tijuana Brass was founded on a single, “The Lonely Bull,” that drew its influence from the mariachi bands that performed in the bullrings in Tijuana. The spinoff group, The Baja Marimba Band, also used Mexican touches in their music but eventually leaned towards instrumental pop and even ended their A&M run with a bit of jazz.

Yet, a true taste of south of the border music would hail not only from Mexico, but also from Brazil. While bossa nova was still going strong in the mid 1960s, Herb Alpert had discovered the music of Sergio Mendes, and he and Jerry Moss signed him to the label. Mendes’ earlier albums were based in small-group jazz and bossa nova, arguably peaking with the Capitol album by Wanda Sá entitled Brasil ’65, which featured the Sergio Mendes Trio (with bassist Sebastiao “Tiao” Neto and drummer Chico Batera) along with guitarist Rosinha de Valenca, and Bud Shank on flute and alto saxophone.

Sergio’s band for A&M, Brasil ’66, combined all of his prior influences with modern pop, jazz, and, as the liner notes said, “a little sex.” It became famous for their debut album’s leadoff track, “Mas Que Nada.” For the group’s fourth album, Mendes changed the line-up, keeping Lani Hall on lead vocals but adding Karen Phillips as the second vocalist, as well as his long-time bassist from Brazil, Sebastiao (Tiao) Neto. One arguably unfortunate direction was the heavy use of strings and other accompaniment (arranged by Dave Grusin) in addition to the combo, which watered down the Brazilian sound.

When the band was renamed Brasil ’77, Lani Hall had left, and Gracinha Leporace took her place. (Gracinha has been Mendes’ wife for decades.) While their albums usually were a mix of Brazilian, pop and jazz, their atypical album Primal Roots, Mendes’ final album for A&M, was an exercise in pure Brazilian music, and has been long been highly regarded by fans of both Mendes and Brazilian music in general. Here is “After Sunrise” from that album.

While the later Brasil ’66 had shifted course, Mendes produced a group confusingly called Bossa Rio (as Mendes himself had named one of his earlier groups Bossa Rio). The group featured Gracinha Leporace as the co-lead singer with popular Brazilian vocalist Pery Ribeiro. While much of the album sounded like a Brasil ’66 knock-off, some of the best tunes on the album were the Brazilian-based tracks. Below is “Boa Palavra” from the A&M album Sergio Mendes Presents Bossa Rio. Bossa Rio recorded a second album, Alegria, that repeated the same formula as their debut but for Blue Thumb Records instead of A&M.

Sergio Mendes would later rejoin A&M and record the Top 5 hit “Never Gonna Let You Go” in the 1980s.

One of the most important composers to come out of Brazil in the early 1970s was Milton Nascimento. Nascimento came to the attention of many in the jazz community thanks to his appearance on Wayne Shorter’s 1974 album Native Dancer and has since collaborated with artists such as Quincy Jones, Sarah Vaughan, Paul Simon, George Duke, Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana, and Cat Stevens, among many others. He has won five Grammy Awards as well. Nascimento had a couple of albums released on A&M, including the self-titled Milton which gave us this classic: “Raça (Hasa).”

Another important composer, Edu Lobo, has had his songs performed by many other artists in the A&M stable as well as on other labels. His career started later in the bossa nova era, but he would become a major composer in the Música Popular Brasileira (MPB) movement that followed soon after. Among the many artists who have covered his songs, Earth, Wind & Fire dedicated nearly an entire side of an album to the song “Zanzibar,” and below is Edu Lobo’s version, from the album Sergio Mendes Presents Edu Lobo. Any of Nascimento’s Brazilian albums are worth seeking out, especially his promising debut on the Elenco label, A Musica de Edú Lobo Por Edu Lobo, featuring the Tamba Trio as his backing group.

A&M was also home to Argentine Latin jazz saxophone player Gato Barbieri, who recorded a handful of albums for the label. While beginning as a jazz player, he eventually incorporated the sound of South American music into his style. Barbieri is well-known for his Grammy-winning score for the film Last Tango in Paris. His fiery style can be heard on the following track from his A&M album Caliente!, a cover of Santana’s “Europa (Earth’s Cry, Heaven’s Smile),” one of Gato’s best-known recordings.

AyM Discos was a division of the A&M Records label for Latin America, and operated from 1982 to 1988. One of the label’s most popular artists through the mid 1980s was María Conchita Alonso. Her album Maria Conchita from which the single “Noche de Copas” was taken, was her first album nominated for a Grammy award. Most of the album’s tracks were composed by Juan Carlos Calderón, with José Quintana producing. Alonso would also enjoy an acting career in addition to recording music throughout her career.

After the Tijuana Brass disbanded, Herb Alpert veered into many different styles of music. After an obscure, self-penned album, Just You and Me, he recorded two Afro-jazz albums with African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, then topped the Hot 100 with “Rise” in 1979 and continued in a “funk lite” theme for his next few albums. Arguably most fans’ favorite post-Tijuana Brass album was Fandango, an album Alpert recorded partly in Mexico City. It shares a similarity to the aforementioned Maria Conchita album in that it was co-produced by José Quintana, and many of the tracks, including the following hit “Route 101,” were composed by Juan Carlos Calderón.

Actor, musician, composer and activist Daniel Valdez has the distinction of becoming the first Chicano to have an album released by a major record label; A&M, in this case. The album, Mestizo, was released in 1974. Valdez later appeared in films (such as Which Way Is Up? and The China Syndrome), as well as on Broadway in his brother Luiz’s production “Zoot Suit.” He also served as musical director of the Richie Valens biopic La Bamba. Here is a track from his A&M album.

While Paulinho da Costa was born in Rio de Janeiro, his appearances on so many American recording sessions have made him one of the most recorded musicians of all time. Despite having played on so many tracks, he has recorded only five albums under his own name, one of them being the Breakdown album from 1991 which was released on A&M. Here is “Let’s Stay Friends” from that album.

Our next part of the A&M 60^th Anniversary overview will begin dipping into the many jazz recordings released on A&M and its associated labels.

Header image: Gato Barbieri, promotional photo.

Previous installments appeared in Issues 160, 161, 162, 165, 166 and 168.

On October 12, 2022, fans of 20^th-century British music will have something to celebrate: the 150^th birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 – 1958). Stretching back to the Middle Ages, Britain has always contributed a distinctive richness to musical harmony and arrangement; Vaughan Williams took that mantle and wore it proudly. Few composers of any time or place have had a better handle on how to use an orchestra for powerful emotional effect. Several recent recordings demonstrate the birthday boy’s particular gifts.

One of the moving forces behind a couple of these projects is the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, which is determined to keep its namesake remembered and relevant by sponsoring recordings of Vaughan Williams’ lesser-known works. They found ideal voices for that goal in the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, distinctive not only for its excellent singing, but also because it is a smaller choir than one usually hears singing this composer’s music. The group, under the direction of William Vann, is accompanied by organist Joshua Ryan on Earth’s Wide Bounds, an Albion Records release.

The album features two Vaughan Williams world premieres. The composer wrote an arrangement of his own Mass in G minor specifically for Anglican worship, calling it the Communion Service in G minor. And then there is the trilogy of Walt Whitman poems, set as Vaughan Williams’ Three Nocturnes, discovered just over 20 years ago. This recording includes the second nocturne, “By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame,” haunting, achingly dissonant, and full of the quiet fear of wartime between battles.

But the Communion Service takes up the bulk of this album. The seven-movement work opens with a reading (by Rowen Williams) interspersed with choral verses. The remaining movements use the text of the Ordinary of the Mass in the Anglican sequence (the Gloria is delayed as compared with the Catholic Mass). Vaughan Williams has the touch of a Renaissance sculptor who takes a huge, rough slab of marble and magically draws from it profound emotional nuance and detail. The Chapel Choir singers, with Vann crafting patient and expressive phrasing, provide an intimate sound with exacting intonation and dynamic control that’s essential to the composer’s use of dissonance.

Although Vaughan Williams’ choral writing is a source of great British pride, he also devoted much of his career to composing for solo voice. Songs of Travel is a nine-part song cycle included on the new album Songs of Travel and Home by baritone Julien Van Mellaerts with pianist James Baillieu. This Champs Hill Records release also includes the fascinating Ornithological Anecdotes by New Zealander Gareth Farr as well as works by Frank Bridge, Maurice Ravel, and others.

Like most of the best art-song specialists, Van Mellaerts has a theatrical style and exceptionally clear diction. In other words, he’s a good storyteller. Thus, he’s perfect for Songs of Travel, much of which has a folk-like character, as you can hear in its first song, “The Vagabond,” which gives more than a little nod to Schubert.

The texts of these songs are taken from Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1896 poetry collection Songs of Travel and Other Verses, in which a narrator muses on places he’s been. Appropriately, the song cycle touches on a number of styles. “In Dreams,” for example, takes sorrowful, late-Romantic tone. The doubling of the voice in the piano right hand lends a hollow loneliness to the timbre despite the atmosphere of bustling, swelling chords.

If you like Benjamin Britten but are not familiar with Vaughan Williams beyond his most famous sentimental orchestral works like the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, I urge you to get to know this clear predecessor to Britten’s solo vocal writing. Vaughan Williams’ relationship with the English folk song tradition was an important influence on the younger composer.

Happily, there’s easy access to this segment of Vaughan Williams’ output, in the form of a 4-volume (so far) set of English folk song arrangements featuring baritone Roderick Williams, soprano Mary Bevan, and tenor Nicky Spence. Not surprisingly, all these singers have performed a lot of Britten in their careers as well. William Vann on piano is the same man who conducted the Earth’s Wide Bounds album mentioned above, and that’s no coincidence. Both recordings are on Albion Records as part of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society’s efforts to capture and disseminate as much of the composer’s music as possible.

Like Britten in the next generation, Vaughan Williams took advantage of the burgeoning of folksong scholarship going on in England and Scotland in the 19^th century, especially that of song collector Cecil Sharpe. Sharpe published notation of his field recordings, inspiring many musicians to try out this rich repertoire and make it their own. Vaughan Williams clearly cherishes the beauty of the traditional melody lines while finding ways to enhance them through the classical idiom. As can be heard in Roderick Williams’ stately singing of “Bold General Wolfe,” that interpretation was embodied in both the harmony and the rhythm of the accompaniment.

Vaughan Williams’ interest also stretched to the traditional songs of Newfoundland. A collection of 15 such songs is preserved in Volume 4 of the Albion Folk Songs set. Sung with fluidity and sadness by Mary Bevan, “Sweet William’s Ghost” demonstrates both the British (specifically Scottish in this case) influence on Newfoundland’s music and the understatement Vaughan Williams could employ when he didn’t want to get in the way of great material.

Nicky Spence has earned a reputation as a Vaughan Williams expert. He is also featured on a new album from Hypérion, Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge, Four Hymns, The House of Life. Be warned that you can currently only listen by downloading the tracks or getting the CD; there are no streaming options, not even on the hi-res sites. But it’s worth the effort to get your hands on this album. The three song cycles mentioned in the title are some of Vaughan Williams’ most beautiful and poignant, and the performance by Nicky Spence, pianist Julius Drake, and the Piatti Quartet are superb.

Drake, perhaps the best pianist these days for accompanying vocalists in 20^th-century British music, doesn’t so much support as collaborate. His fleet, ever-moving lines intertwine with Spence’s, giving the melody texture and shape, as in the crystalline Four Hymns, which adds a viola obbligato (Timothy Ridout). But the true gem of the album is On Wenlock Edge, for tenor, piano, and string quartet. Spence’s voice is clear and thrilling, and the orchestration brings the poems by A.E. Houseman to Technicolor life.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

Martina McBride has always been a spokesperson for the downtrodden, particularly women. The Nashville star defied stereotypes that said country music was centered on the perspectives of men and a conservative America. Because of her courage to write against expectation, she has inspired many. Ironically, the co-opting of her music in ways she never intended has inspired even more.

McBride’s biggest hit, 1994’s “Independence Day,” has been used by GOP politicians like Sarah Palin and right-wing mouthpieces like Sean Hannity purely for its title and the surface meaning of its chorus, “Let freedom ring!” Never mind that the song is about a woman risking everything to escape an abusive relationship. Politics loves a skin-deep read, like the way Ronald Reagan used Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” a song about a disenfranchised Vietnam veteran, as if it were a patriotic rallying cry.

Born in 1966, McBride (née Schiff) grew up on a farm in Kansas, where there was always music in the house. Her favorite were records by female country stars like Reba McIntire and Patsy Cline and some with more of a pop sound, like Juice Newton. Her dad had an amateur country band; after years of imitating the records, McBride started singing with the band. She started her own group in the late 1980s and married her producer, John McBride, in 1988. Soon after they moved to Nashville, they both found work with a Garth Brooks tour: John as sound engineer and Martina as opening act. (John and Martina McBride are co-owners of Nashville’s famed Blackbird Studio; see John Seetoo’s article in Copper Issue 125)

She signed with RCA Records in 1991, and by 1992 had her album debut, the traditionally flavored The Time Has Come. “The Rope” is a beautiful folk-inspired song by Stephanie Davis (who has written for Brooks, Waylon Jennings, and other country luminaries) and a good introduction to McBride’s sweet voice and lyrical phrasing.

While The Time Has Come sold decently, with the title track cracking the Top 40, McBride’s real breakthrough came in 1993 with her second album, The Way That I Am. That record gave her two Top-10 singles: “My Baby Loves Me” and “Life #9.” Although “Independence Day” only hit the No. 12 spot, it was destined to become her best-known song. It also got her the first of 14 nominations for Grammy Awards, a prize she has never won.

That track came about through serendipity. Gretchen Peters, who wrote “Independence Day,” had been hired by Tree Publishing to add more female storytelling to their offerings. Sony Music bought out Tree Publishing around the time McBride was signed to the Sony-owned RCA Records. Raised on 1960s folk revival music like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, Peters admired Nashville non-conformists, so she was happy to have McBride record her song. What happened to it after that, of course, was beyond their control.

One of the elements that helped sales for The Way That I Am was that McBride was beginning to let in more pop-influenced sounds in her arrangements. That can be heard on the album-only song “Goin’ to Work,” in the longing of its country-style vocals against rock-inspired accompaniment, especially in the drumming style and the electric guitar solo toward the end.

McBride’s popularity continued to grow. By the time she made Evolution in 1997, she was able to release fully half the album as successful singles. Two of them, “Broken Wing” and “Wrong Again,” reached No. 1. An appealing aspect to this album and its singles were some duets – one with country star Clint Black and one with pop singer Jim Brickman.

The wildly popular Evolution was McBride’s first truly cross-genre country pop album, a trend that was also buoying the careers of Faith Hill and Shania Twain. She also mixed in touches of the sentimentality of Christian rock (although not specifically on Christian-themed songs), as in her performance of the Michael Smith song “Some Say I’m Running.” One of McBride’s vocal strengths is her detailed control over dynamics, which is particularly evident in this song.

The 1999 album Emotion is interesting for its varied track list, ranging from the often-modulating rock song “Do What You Do” to the old-school feel of Matraca Berg and Randy Scruggs’ “Anything’s Better Than Feeling the Blues.” Against a landscape of fiddles and snare drums, “This Uncivil War” (by Gretchen Peters, composer of “Independence Day”) uses battlefield fighting as an analogy for family strife.

McBride got a chance to record a song by someone she’d long admired, Patty Griffin. “Goodbye” finds McBride using a breathy version of her voice to express loneliness and regret, leaping up to pitches that fade off into the ether.

Going back to basics with classic country numbers, 2005’s Timeless proved to be another big success for McBride. She tapped into Nashville’s motherlode of great songs by artists like Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, Buck Owens, and Loretta Lynn. Country fans must have been hungry for a return to the genre’s roots.

McBride shows her mastery of traditional country vocal phrasing. Despite the potential power of her voice, she doesn’t over-sing. That self-control – emotional understatement – is an important element of early country recordings. You can hear it on her version of Don Gibson’s “Today I Started Loving You Again.”

There were some important career developments for McBride on her 2007 album Waking Up Laughing. For one thing, it was the first record she produced by herself. It was also to include her compositional efforts after decades of only singing other people’s songs. She is listed as co-writer on two of the songs, including the hit single “Anyway” which she composed with Brad and Brett Warren.

Her other songwriting contribution is also a collaboration with the Warren brothers, called “Beautiful Again.” The song is an interesting paradox, the music giving the illusion of brightness and optimism while the lyrics tell of layers of intense struggle in a woman’s life and the hope that keeps regenerating in her in spite of those challenges. McBride clearly tapped into the factor that most drew her to country music in the first place: its knack for storytelling.

Having left RCA, McBride jumped around smaller labels, including having her own label for a while. Her 2016 studio album Reckless came out on the boutique label Nash Icon, which has a tiny but exclusive artist list: McBride, Reba McIntire, Hank Williams, Jr., and Ronnie Dunn. The album reached No. 2 on the country charts; it’s a testament to the depth of a performer’s fan base when they stay devoted for her entire career.

Hailey Whitters wrote “Low All Afternoon” and had recorded it herself. McBride’s version is more sorrowful, less angry.

McBride’s most recent release was 2018’s It’s the Holiday Season; there will likely be another studio album soon. Meanwhile, she’s the subject of an exhibition by the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum, Martina McBride: The Power of Her Voice. It celebrates the singer’s “substantive, socially aware country music” and “anthems of personal empowerment.” Country music has come a long way, thanks to artists like Martina McBride.

Header image courtesy of Red Light Management.

When photography was in the process of being invented, two brilliant gents, Ferdinand Hurter (1844 – 1898) and Vero Charles Driffield (1848 – 1915), using a sewing machine and a candle, discovered what is known as the characteristic curve. It’s the representation of the ideal combination of film, developer solution, time, temperature, and agitation to properly develop a properly exposed piece of film. Their discovery has guided all analog photography ever since. They almost singlehandedly created the studies of sensitometry and densitometry, which every photographer who has ever developed a roll of film has since relied on. It was all about measurements. Measurements that many photographers have learned to ignore when necessary.

What does this have to do with audio, you ask? When Driffield and Hurter announced their discoveries in May, 1890, in the Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, their article opened with an amazingly prescient quote: “The production of a perfect picture by means of photography is an art; the production of a technically perfect negative is a science.”

I can’t think of a more apt analogy in which to consider the conundrum that audio reproduction finds itself in. Some folks believe in numbers, tests, stats, and measurements, while others trust their ears. Perhaps the majority embraces a mix of both. Ever since its invention, a slew of technological improvements and techniques involve the recording process itself, but in the end, it’s an art. The NAMM Show (NAMM is short for the National Association of Music Merchants), was and continues to be an emphatic celebration of that art. We have all heard stories of a musician choosing an odd location, like a specific bathroom, to record in. It is because of the room’s measurements? I think not. Every aspect of music is an art, as it every attempt to preserve it.

I’m thinking that few audiophiles have heard of or attended the extravaganza known as NAMM. It’s a twice-yearly conference aimed at musicians, manufacturers, engineers, educators, music business lawyers, and others in the industry. The main conference is held at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, and from the wood used to make instruments, to the tubes that are found in amps, preamps and recording studio gear, it’s all here. And yes, there are audiophile companies, especially from China, showing off their wares; everything from Class A amplifiers to DACs, transports, headphones, speakers, and more.

NAMM wouldn’t be NAMM without the famed Undertow Mermaids, who made their first appearance at the annual Pro Audio Pool Party. Their siren song is tough to resist!

NAMM’s origins are based in connecting instrument makers with customers, such as your local neighborhood music store. Representatives from K-12 schools often check out the wares on display at NAMM as they select instruments for their music programs. The official show description is, “Founded in 1901, NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) has a mission to strengthen the music products industry and promote the pleasures and benefits of making music.”

Over the years it’s grown to become an industry-only gathering of all things related to music. The annual TEC (Technical Excellence and Creativity) Awards, which gives out awards for “the best in audio and sound production”” is joyfully aware of its geekiness. This year’s host was actor, comedian, musician, and producer, Fred Armisen, who made fun of NAMM with skits about the types of people and gear you see during the show. He also laid down some great work on the skins. (You don’t have to be a drummer to enjoy his excellent Netflix documentary, Standup for Drummers.) Music underpins everything, and the love of it helps define what an audiophile is.

Want some stats? First, it’s worth mentioning the impact that COVID-19 has had on the show. I attended the 2020 show, just as folks were being made aware of COVID [19], so the numbers illustrate the difference a couple of years make.

2020: “The Show welcomed over 2,000 exhibiting member companies, representing 7,000 brands, across all areas of The NAMM Show campus. Of the 115,888 NAMM member and invited registrants, international members accounted for nearly 20 percent growth over two years.”

2022: “With a desire to reignite industry relationships, business and launch new products, the Show welcomed over 1,000 exhibiting members representing 3,500 brands across the campus of the Anaheim Convention Center. As a smaller yet truly global affair, the mix of 46,627 registered attendees represented 111 countries and territories.”

After the pandemic, it took many trade shows and conferences some time to get rolling again, but 46,627 registered attendees representing 111 countries and territories isn’t something to sneeze at. In fact, I thought it was just the right size.

The first time I attended NAMM, someone asked me, “Hey, do you want to have some fun? Just head down a hallway in the Hilton or Marriott, and listen for music.” They weren’t kidding. Musicians are everywhere, in the bars, bathrooms, by the pool, in the convention halls, local venues, you name it. Go around a corner in one of the halls, and you’ll see row after row of gorgeous guitars. Walk into another hall and prepare for an onslaught of drums, cymbals, and more percussion instruments you can shake a stick at (sorry, couldn’t resist), and God help you, don’t come to NAMM with a headache or hangover! It’s one giant cacophonous mess, which is what’s wonderful. Still, you would hope that more drummers would get a collaborative groove on at times.

There are concerts and private parties all the time. This year Gibson wasn’t there, which was a shame, because they usually have one of the best ongoing stages in the show, with top-flight musicians who use Gibson gear performing all day and into the night. A few years ago, for example, D’Angelico Guitars had Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, Gibson had Robby Krieger from The Doors, and visitors could watch them from 10 feet away. Outside, an even larger stage, The Yamaha Grand Stage just drips with talent – this year’s performers included the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, jazz vocalist/pianist extraordinaire Kandace Springs, Saddleback Worship, and urban praise and worship artist Fred Hammond.

One the treats of the TEC Awards is always the house band, this year led by Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, performing with astonishing ease on stage. Baxter is not only one of the best guitarists on the planet, he has also lectured Congress on missile defense systems, and is associated with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. Next time you cue up Steely Dan, just think of Baxter, and how curious it is that his side-hustle, defending the country is a real thing, all while holding a Telecaster. My son Thomas Fogel and I found it incredibly inspiring. Among this year’s TEC honorees were the amazing bass master, Carol Kaye, who received the Les Paul Innovation Award. Musician/producer/performer/impresario Peter Asher was inducted into the TEC Hall of Fame, and later led the crowd in a singalong to Peter and Gordon’s smash hit “World Without Love,” which he explained was given to him by his roommate, a certain Paul McCartney, who kinda tossed it his way after deciding it wasn’t right for the Beatles. To learn more, click here. You can sample Kaye’s and Asher’s performances on YouTube.

Peter Asher, famed music producer, performer and writer, leads a sing along of “World Without Love,” a song given to him by his roommate Paul McCartney. The song became a worldwide hit for Peter and Gordon. Asher was being inducted into the TEC Hall of Fame.

Thomas Fogel and Jeffrey Allen “Skunk” Baxter after the TEC Awards show.

One of the best things about NAMM is that at one moment, you are gazing at a Disney-approved Haunted Mansion handmade guitar, and the next minute you find yourself standing next to a 75-year-old metalhead, complete with tattoos, studs, piercings, and a mohawk, who is happily chatting with a Lutheran church choir director from Minnesota (don’t ya know) and a 20-year-old who plays industrial music, and they’re all discussing a new speaker from Focal. The audiences for the music performances are equally diverse.

While the United Nations claims to bring peace to all, I think NAMM does a much better job. Like most professional conferences, NAMM isn’t just a trade show; however much fun that aspect might be, the show offers far more. There’s NAMM University, where I’ve heard David Solomon of Qobuz hold forth on the future of high-resolution audio, and luminaries of the audio engineering discuss in nitty gritty how they recorded an album. And I mean nitty gritty, from what mics and favorite mic preamps were used to stories about the sessions and how the mixing was done, down to the exact Pro Tools plugins used

Did I mention parties? Yes, lots of fun parties, from small meetups with great music to more lavish events, like the Gibson-sponsored party at the City National Grove of Anaheim concert venue in 2020, known simply as The Grove. That party had the amazing lineup of guitarist Jimmy Vivino (Conan), drummer Kenny Aronoff (John Cougar), and bassist Darryl Jones (the Rolling Stones). Other stars of the night included Slash (Guns N’ Roses), Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick, Don Felder (formerly of the Eagles), Richie Faulkner (Judas Priest), Chuck Garric (Alice Cooper), Lzzy Hale (Halestorm), Marc Labelle (Dirty Honey), Jared James Nichols, Celisse, Andy Vargas (Santana), Toby Lee, Tash Neal, and…you get the idea. In the courtyard between the Marriott and Hilton hotels, the large Yamaha Grand Plaza stage holds free concerts.

The Grand Rally for Music Education featured special guests including composer/conductor Eric Whitacre, and Gateways Brass Collective. Whitacre brought a live and virtual performance together in “Sing Gently,” featuring Ashley Ballou-Bonnema, creator of sINgSPIRE, a virtual choir for individuals with cystic fibrosis. The event was presented in collaboration with Conn-Selmer, Hal Leonard, JackTrip, and Yamaha.

To say that the audio mixes at these events were superb is to understate it. When you are mixing for a crowd with many of the best live-performance engineers in the world in the audience, you’re not going to do a bad mix. The above listing of performers and events, is just a glimpse of how varied the top-level talent at NAMM is.

Many of the best recordings ever made, including a number of Beatles albums at Abbey Road Studios, were done with Neve mixing consoles.

Recognizing that not everyone can attend, the show’s new digital extension, NAMM Show+, provided a platform for attendees to connect with each other, and enjoy nearly 100 livestreaming sessions, events, and performances. We tried it and it worked wonderfully. Also, many conference apps are meh, but the NAMM App worked well.

Normally the show takes place in January, but COVID-19 caused the cancellation of the show in 2021, and it was touch and go if the show would occur this year, with the rising rates of COVID infection in Southern California threatening large events and gatherings. Fortunately, the show did go on in June, which everyone seemed to enjoy. Over the next two years NAMM is planning to get back on their twice a year schedule (they also normally have a smaller show in Nashville over the summer, but this year it’s didn’t happen. The dates for the 2023 show will be April 13 – 15, so it’s slowly moving back toward its normal Winter NAMM date in January.

Enjoy these additional photos of The NAMM Show, with more to come in Part Two.

Baskim Zuta, founder of ZUTA of Sweden, makers of amplifiers, pedals and other gear, with a group of admirers from around the globe. We were all forced to share free beer together in the spirit of world peace.

It’s not the size of the booth that matters, it’s the creativity! Third Man Hardware, a division of Jack White’s Third Man Records, offers some unique pedals, and they had their look down with these two friendly representatives.

Søren Høgsberg of DPA Microphones, and colleague, toasting the release of the 4055 kick drum mic, a new dedicated microphone for bass drum.

Ever wonder what the inside of a Chord amplifier looks like upside down? Here’s a look at the the underside of the professional version of the Ultima 3 mono power amp.

Thomas Fogel holding the new Chord Mojo 2 DAC/headphone amplifier, with the help of Tom Vaughn and Mitch Duce of Chord and some sweet Audeze headphones.

Dynaudio is a company with involvement in both pro and consumer audio. Otto Jørgenson and Stephen Entwistle gave away swag with a smile, while explaining some of their new audio initiatives.

Larry O’Connor, founder of storage providers Other World Computing (OWC), pointing out high-speed storage solutions for audio use.

Universal Audio won several awards at the annual TEC Awards show.

David Przgoda (CEO of OmniSpeech) and audio PR ace Ari Morguelan hang out at the Audeze headphones booth.

All photos courtesy of Harris Fogel.

Header image: there were ukuleles everywhere at the show. These folks couldn’t resist trying some from Ohana Ukuleles, led by Jeff Linsky.

Collective Soul burst on to the rock scene in 1993 with the single “Shine” from their debut album Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid. It was a remarkable record from a band that had only formed a year earlier. They were soon compared to acts like Pearl Jam and artists like David Bowie. But across their 30-year career they have built as loyal a following as can be found in the world of rock. This has been fueled by a body of music that is cohesive, with limitless energy, and appropriate amounts of attitude.

While they have seen turnover in the lead guitar and drum roles, Ed Roland (vocals/guitar), Dean Roland (rhythm guitar), and Will Turpin (bass/background vocals) have formed the backbone of the band since day one. Jesse Triplett (lead guitar/background vocals) and Johnny Rabb (drums/background vocals) round out the band and have been in their respective roles for almost ten years. Together this fivesome sounds like they have been together since the beginning – especially on their latest release, Vibrating, the band’s 11th studio recording. The first single, “All Our Pieces,” is about as perfect as any hard rock song can be. It’s no wonder that the record is already charting, a remarkable feat at a time when mainstream rock has become almost invisible.

We caught up with founding member Dean Roland about how the band continues to beat the odds and create music that seems as timeless as their biggest hits; what they have seen being back on the road after a long hiatus; and how he and his brother Ed have avoided the rivalry and feuding that has unraveled so many sibling acts like Oasis, The Kinks, the Beach Boys, the Black Crowes, and more.

Ray Chelstowski: For the last three years you have been charting again, which is a rarity in the world of rock. How does it feel?

Dean Roland: We’ll take a step back and reflect every so often, but for the most part we take it in stride, being really grateful for what we are able to do for a living.

RC: For those who say rock is dead you give us hope.

DR: I don’t know. Trends come and go. My take has always been that rock and roll is something that is steady. Our approach has never adhered to trendy stuff. We make music that we feel good about and we try to be as authentic as possible.

RC: The previous album, Blood, was originally going to be a double. Instead, you decided to split the list of songs in two.  How did you pick what song would go where?

DR: That’s a great question. Initially Blood was going to be a double album. One disc was going to be guitar-driven, while the other was going to have arrangements that were more melancholy and vibey. But when we did Blood we decided that we had too many songs and we didn’t want to over-inundate ourselves or our fans with material. So, we just went with what worked together. It’s just a feel. It really is.

RC: When did you know that this record would do as well as it has?

DR: You go in to the studio and you follow each idea to what you think is its fulfilled concept. Some end up good, others don’t work for you. We really felt like we had some good stuff on this one. We really have felt great about everything for the last few years. Ed’s been writing some really great words and that approach is just working.

Collective Soul, Vibrating, album cover.

RC: Ed writes most of the songs. How do you all help shape what he has written?

DR: We don’t put any barriers in place. Sometimes Ed comes in and he has very clear ideas about how the song will work out, both lyrically and melodically, and we just add our fairy dust. And other times we can be in rehearsal and we just start jamming on a drum groove. So we really try to not put ourselves in a box because you want that creative spark to light whenever it’s offered.

RC: Your entire catalog definitely ties together sonically. Do you enter the studio with that in mind?

DR: We’ve never taken that approach. Selfishly it’s been about what we are happy expressing. We never chase an appeal or an appraisal. Hopefully people hear it and like it; I say that with the utmost gratitude for people who do like it.

RC: You have often been compared to Bowie and I can hear that on “Back Again,” but the back half of the record has a real Paul Weller feel to it with songs like “A Conversation With” and “Just Looking Around.” Do you have people in mind when you start recording?

DR: I’ll take that as a compliment! When you go into the studio you can acknowledge the influences that arrive from everywhere. But I’ve never heard that one and that’s a cool reference. Thank you!

RC: I saw you last at Irving Plaza in October of 2015. King Washington opened the show and their guitarist George Krikes was a real prodigy at the time. Is there anyone similar opening for you on this tour?

DR: Well right now we are touring with Switchblade, and they don’t need any introduction. They’re an amazing band in their own right. Then there’s Jay Jackson, a solo artist with a gorgeous voice, whose talents are to be celebrated.

RC: At that Irving Plaza show the audience was completely engaged in the music. Who is the “Collective Soul fan?”

DR: It’s hard for me to describe it. But I hope that it’s someone who appreciates good music (laughs). If I were to sum it up they are “song-oriented folks.” It’s people who appreciate what we do and there’s an emotional connection that ties the songs into their lives. It could be that they are going through a difficult time, or a happy time like meeting their wife or having their first child. It just comes down to the song.

RC: Is there any special gear that you are bringing out on this tour?

DR: I did just get a Gretsch Penguin seafoam sparkly blue/green guitar and I love it. But most of my setup is what I have been doing for so long. I’ve been playing the same Les Paul for almost 30 years. That’s my workhorse and I just love that thing. It feels like my buddy when we get on stage and we have fun.

RC: You are well into your current tour. Any particular highlight you’d love to mention?

DR: We spent two years where our industry was in complete lockdown. It’s just good to be back out seeing people laughing and singing. That’s where our head and heart is right now.

RC: You have had very little turnover in the band. What’s the key to that success?

DR: Well, I think you have to have a passion for music along with a gratitude for being in the position we’re in. You also have to respect each other, and each other’s space and talents. It’s simple to say but relatively difficult to apply. Once you find that groove it’s just about the music.

RC: So few bands with brothers seem to be able to avoid clashes and feuds. How have you and Ed avoided that?

DR: We still have to answer to our mother (laughs). We just respect each other’s role. We obviously butt heads here and there but we realized a long time ago that we have this common goal, and two different approaches. Sometimes we fight it out, but not really. It’s about love and respect. Ed’s my buddy, my friend, so we’re locked in on that level.

Header image courtesy of David Abbott.