Joey Stuckey 0:00

Welcome once again to Stuck on Sound. Man, I have lived such a blessed life and uh so, so grateful to know so many interesting, talented, and above all kind people. And one of my favorites is with us today, my buddy Ross Hogarth. Ross, thank you so much for making time, my friend. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

I'm great, Joey. Thank you for having me and and uh kicking off my week here with you. Absolutely.

Joey Stuckey 0:24

I listen, you it's made my week already, absolutely. You know, I I have to tell you, you uh you have been such an inspiration to me in so many different ways. Um but when we got to meet uh back in the uh long, long past of 2017, um you were just uh such a gracious person with your time and talent and and uh and everything, and and we just became instant friends. And I and I'm so grateful for that. And uh I I love visiting with you whenever I'm in LA and getting a chance to just hang and talk and and visit. And uh one of the things that um I think is so important for people to understand is um you know how how each of these people like yourself with amazing careers got started. Um and um and and and then kind of where where things ended up, because I always find that the the road you start on is not necessarily the road you end on. So I wanted to um to take you back on a journey uh uh and and ask you to tell me about young Ross Hogarth before you were uh an icon in our business and how you ended up getting into this crazy thing we call the music business.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Well, thanks, Joey. Um here, remind me. Did we met originally, you and your father? We met on one of the uh I was teaching, right? And that was Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's absolutely right. 2017.

Joey Stuckey 1:47

You got it, my friend. That was that was that sweetwater.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah, thanks for reminding me. Because yeah, I loved meeting you and your dad, and and uh really appreciated the relationship with you, you and your father too, because that's that's very cool. Um yeah, young me. So without boring you um too much, uh yeah, I was born, you know, when people start conversations like that, you just groan and you go, oh my gosh, you're gonna, yeah. Um, but yeah, I was um, you know, I don't believe that music, I don't often believe that we choose music. It chooses us. And uh yeah, so for me, music chose me. Um I started as a drummer. I was taking all the stuffing out of the couch with soup spoons at some pardon me, at some very young age, you know, um three or four years old. I was already banging on everything, pots and pans and pasta spoons, and you know, and I grew up in New York and you know, they threw me in the basement with uh a Slingerland blue pearl drum kit, which in those days was not expensive. Um I wish I still had it because it was That was my next question. Yeah, man, that's like I have gear uh gear regret over that. Um but um my older uh my father and my older brothers, um, there was a mandolin around the house that didn't have all the strings. My older brothers had instruments and I gravitated to melody. Um, but I was all about the groove. And uh as I got older, I you know I did drum core, but I also started picking on instruments and became uh you know a guitar player. Um there were uh my mother's best friend is a was a folk singer named Pete Seegert. Oh yeah. So uh in that circle there were banjos and fiddles and mandolins and acoustic instruments and uh so all those things, but I was also a classic rocker, you know, because I grew up as a product of the music that was the music that you know my brothers listened to even more so than me at the time, which I gravitated to their albums, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles and Humble Pie and Soul Music and Jazz. Anyway, all of that just became just who I was. I was just a product of every musical influence that I could soak up. And I played um guitar and I played in uh shitty bands, and I also I loved the sound of the French horn, so I learned how to play French horn because I loved um the uh Mozart horn concerto. So all those things my mom wanted me to learn piano, so I, you know, I took piano and you know, music chooses us. It's like what was my safe place amidst um a bunch of chaos, and uh that led to me being about 14 years old, 13, 14 years old, amidst the chaos of New York and the chaos of my life, um, and kind of having this epiphany that I wanted to be part of music, I wanted to work with the greatest, and I probably and may not do it as a player, even though I was a pretty adept guitar player by then already, and uh had some pretty decent skills. Um so what that led to eventually, uh given a couple of circuitous choices like joining the Merchant Marines at 16, I ended up in California, pardon me, and um I by sort of the grace of God connecting with some amazing musicians and amazing people, um I was living in Santa Cruz, which is a beautiful beach town, and I was working in a club called The Catalyst, which is the best club up the coast. Everybody played there, and in that day and age, um Bonnie Raitt, um uh Doobie Brothers and Jackson Brown's road crew were all part of a scene in Santa Cruz which I uh became part of, and I became a roadie, and I became a guitar tech. And uh the people that mentored me were 20 years older-ish, and you know, I did guitars for David Lindley and Wright David Lindley, who was, and for the younger people don't know David Lindley, but he was Jackson Brown's multi-instrumentalist, and he played lap steel and fiddle and bazooki and all sorts of he won the Panga banjo and fiddle contest. He was a multi, like a uh, you know, a total ninja multi-instrumentalist. He plays the melody of running on empty, and he played um, you know, he was Jackson's musical foil. And uh, and I as a drummer, I was able to work for people like Mick Fleetwood and Jim Keltner. And so I was I found my way to uh working with the what I believe are some of the greatest musicians of that era, which I call the Mellow Mafia, and and I learned how to show up. I learned early on um that if you're on time, you're late, um, you say yes to some things that may not um look at that moment like some great opportunity because it's hard work, it's disguised as hard work. And uh I became a guy who you could count on and would show up and would do what was said and needed. And um I learned how to solder from a guitar amp builder um of the highest caliber, a guy named Howard Alexander Dumble. And I sat in his shop wiring up the amps that Lindley and Lowell from Feet and Rye and you know, guys like Robin Ford and Larry Carleton. They were all in and out of the shop, and I became that's cool. Yeah, so I was making Dumble amps, learning how to solder, learning how to fix shit, learning how to, you know, I knew I then needed more electronics understanding. I took night courses and courses in uh in the uh community colleges to become better at um, so I, you know, I didn't ever go to college. I didn't, you know, I barely graduated high school, but I always knew I needed to keep like learning of what I don't know. That's kind of like part of my deal is like, you know, when you start to know what you don't know, that's when you start to become more wise. Um, so that's kind of the short thing because what that all did was lead me into the studio. I was fortunate because I worked with all these um musicians that were, you know, great and making records. When a lot of them went in the studio, I would go in and I would set up their gear and I would be part of the session and just you know, listening and hanging in the corner. And um, what eventually happened was uh one of the engineers on a record wasn't getting out of the chair to go walk out into the live room to go listen to the sounds that were coming, and he was just lazy and sitting there at the desk reaching for EQ and compression and trying to make shit sound the way it was supposed to sound. And the you know, David Lindley says to me, he goes, you know, could you go out in the room, Ross, and check out um, because he wasn't happy with what was coming out of the speakers, and uh, you know, and that's a big deal. Like, you know, if the sound at the source isn't what's right, then that's the problem. But if it's if the sound at the source is awesome, then how it's getting out of the speakers is the problem. And uh so I went out and everything sounded great, and I went back in and told him, and and it still kind of sounded like ass coming out of the speakers, and he got annoyed, and you know, he realized that this engineer wasn't willing to like get up and go listen and come back in and figure out why whatever he was doing wasn't translating, you know, and that's a big lesson I learned very quickly that um if it's not translating and it's happening at the source, it's our job to get it to translate one way or another. So I got thrown in the chair and uh, you know, I became an engineer. I love it. That's awesome. Yeah, so uh great. Yeah, so my my my career started, you know, again by the grace of God, on you know, building on hard work and showing up to musicians and becoming friends with the guys that mattered, um, and uh being on the road and learning a lot about how you deal with musicians and the personalities that you navigate. And uh, you know, I went from being like uh low-level roadie to being more counted on and a production manager and a sound man, um, and uh made my way into the studio on all those things, and that led forward, you know, onward.

Joey Stuckey 10:50

I I love this. And you know, I I've I've always you know told my students and um you know any any interns or anyone that will listen um to be where things are happening and uh and just be part of it. I mean, you know, just just get in there and and and and do something, whether it's it may not be exactly what you wanted to do, but you gotta start somewhere. And you know, you just get in there and and just be part of it and and also you know be open to learn from everybody you come in contact with. Um and I think those are are powerful lessons. And I I remember uh we had dinner one time and you have mentioned to me uh an interesting connection with Georgia, which is where I'm based, um, that you had done some um some some road work with with the Dixie Dregs. So I remember yeah, I remember that. And uh um how now now did did you after that session when you got thrown into the chair, were you were you instantly on on call or were you still doing road like roadie work or how did that?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

No, I I I I stayed being I stayed being a you know that was the first taste of like this is what my future looks like, but how do I actually have a future doing this? Um yeah. And uh going back to the Dixie Drake story, that's like a classic moment of saying yes because that goes back to uh late 70s, it was about 78, I think, and uh I was living in Santa Cruz, hadn't met my wife yet, um, or my girlfriend to become my wife. I met her in 79 in the catalyst in the in the club. But in 78, I was um you know working on and off the road. And when I was off the road, I was at the catalyst and and uh I was doing load-in, I was doing monitors, I was running sound if needed, I was a bartender or whatever, you know, and I was illegal. I wasn't even they didn't even know that I wasn't even, you know, had a fake ID. When I met my wife, I had a fake ID. Oh, nice. It's the one thing she holds against me, you know, is that when I met her, I actually lied about my age because I didn't know if I could tell her because I didn't want anyone to find out. That's hilarious. I was I was renting cars underage. The guy, Marty, at backstage car and truck in North Hollywood would rent me because he it was anyway. That's a tension. But anyway, so the day that the Dixie Dregs came through town, um, the uh awesome and amazing and beautiful uh guy Twiggs Linden, who was the Almond Brothers road manager um back in the day, um, was the one that had taken the Dixie Dregs under his wing and helped had had them, you know, got them a deal on Capricorn and uh, you know, your hometown. And uh and uh so they had come down the west coast um and they were in what was called the Blackhearted Woman, which is the uh the sleeper bobtail truck that the Almond brothers had, where the gear would fit in the back and you still had room for people, you know, to sleep and you know, and uh not enough for the whole band and crew, but the the the the crew would sleep and the gear and everything. It was like very cut-down version of touring. And uh so they come through town and uh Jeff Burkhart was uh he was the Almond Brothers lighting guy, he was on that tour, and a guy named Dave Dopp Calvin, who was a sound guy from Atlanta, and uh Microwave, who's no longer with us, was the guitar tech, and then Twiggs, who you know was the Almond Brothers road manager, and and uh and he this and they came through and Microwave was having a problem getting uh Steve Morse's MOOC pedals hooked up through uh a uh a nine uh you know, through a control voltage thing where he would control it back in the day. There was no MIDI, obviously. And uh and I knew enough how to make that work because they were struggling at soundcheck to make the shit work. And I just kind of stepped up and said, you know, I think I can help you here. Um, you know, I am a guitar tech, but I'm just now uh today I'm your loader. You know, I was doing load-in and loadout. And they were like, Yeah, anything, man. And we just started talking about everyone we knew and little feed and all these people that we had these connections with. And I said to Twigs, I said, you know, I met you in in in uh 19 uh 70 or 71 at the Fillmore East um uh when I was a kid, you know, and uh he's like he remembered um because I was dying to get in to see that um the show that was that became live at Fillmore East. It was like Johnny Winter was the opening act. That's a whole nother story because you know I produced that last record that we won the Grammy on dedicated to Johnny. But anyway, so I I got it, I got the shit working, and then they asked me, Hey, do you want to jump on the road with us and uh take off tonight and be you know part of the crew? And uh I just said, yeah, sure. I went back to my apartment, little crabby little place I was living, and threw a bag together and some clean socks and stuff, and uh and took off and worked on the road on their first tour. They were playing for 99 cents. That was the whole thing. You know, that you know they were charging less than a dollar to come see the Dixie Drags. It was amazing.

Joey Stuckey 16:05

I mean, those guys are just ridiculous. I mean, the the the the talent level is just insane. Uh I mean, you know, Steve's the guitar player is a guitar player. You know, I mean he's he's just he's just uh I they're there it's hard to comprehend how magical those guys are.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

And just to tell just to tell another like crazy story. So cut to 1986, which is right now 40 years, because last weekend was my wife, Chris, and I, our 40th wedding anniversary. Oh, cool. And in 1986, I was making REM's record, Life's Rich Pageant, in Indiana. One of my faves. Yeah, because uh Mellencamp, we had built the studio called Belmont, which John still that's where he makes records and rehearses out of and stuff. Um and when he went on the road from Scarecrow, the studio which had been basically brand new from Scarecrow, Don Gaiman, the producer, said, Yeah, we're gonna go um make REM's record. And uh REM's guitar tech was Microwave, who was the guitar tech back in 1978. Right. That you know, and we had stayed in touch through REM, um, or just through being friends. And uh so now we were in the studio together making REM's record together. Um, it was super cool because when like you know, we started connecting on that, making that record. Um, he was like, I know this dude, I know our engineer, man. You know, he saved our ass back with the dregs. It was really cool. Um that's awesome. Yeah, unfortunately he got cancer and he passed away. But uh yeah, that was you know, these wild things that happen like that, where you know, you just part of everything is connections and you know, being connected and showing up and pardon me, but not being a dick. Yeah, absolutely. And and then somewhere down the road, if I was an asshole, uh you know, and then you know, stepping in the studio with REM, it would have been like, oh man, that guy was a dick. I don't know if we want him around. Um you know, so part of it is like you don't know where anything leads, but you know, you try your best today to to do something that may, you know, have a ripple effect, and you don't know where it goes. But you know, that was one of those cool things. Yeah, and then you and I talk about it because uh yeah, you know, you there you are down there in you know the heart and soul of what was the heart and soul of the Southern music that um was everything, you know, Capricorn Records was, you know, Marshall Tucker and Wet Willie and the audience.

Joey Stuckey 18:46

Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I mean, you know, I I I've always been um uh historian here in my town and and uh spent many years in FM radio and uh you know just promoting independent music, but also you know, the stuff we did in the past. And uh Jimmy Hall and Chuck Lavelle and all those guys, Randall Bramlant, all good friends of mine. And um, you know, they're they're just the talent's ridiculous. Uh I mean it's just so so much talent. Um and and yeah, for for about a decade, this this where we are here in Macon, Georgia was was the hub. I mean, that was that was it. I mean, you know, people and this is when, you know, people there was no internet, there were no, you know, uh you you couldn't you couldn't do things remotely, and people moved to places they felt would advance their career. Um and I don't I don't know if that's I don't know if what do you what do you think? Do you think we still have to do that today, or do you think you can work from anywhere nowadays? Because uh back then, I mean I know Wet Willie like came to Al from Alabama and said we're going to make in Georgia because that's that's where we need to be, you know, and and so what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Well I think there's certain places that have you don't even know why you know you can try to put your finger on why something becomes um you know the hub of something like but you can definitely point to it around the country, you know, you can say you know, Macon, Capricorn Records, you know, you can say Memphis, you can um, you know, you can say Stax Volt uh Soul Music, you can go to Detroit to Detroit, Motown, um you know, you go down and you look at Austin and you look at you know outlaw country and um also just blues, Texas blues, you look at New Orleans, you know, coming down from the Mississippi, and then you look at Chicago, and there are all these different places where I think the truly authentic music that was made there was made there. It wasn't like some guy in his uh hotel room on a laptop in um, you know, who knows where, you know, Minneapolis, you know, um a mixture between prints and like bands like the replacements or you know, you know, so I think there's certain areas, San Francisco, you know, this you know, the spacey good, you know, the the dead and and uh and also just the new wave and the you know just uh LA and the deep, you know, um uh uh amount of it's just I think uh there was a time where you had to go to get into that, to steep yourself in it. Um and uh and if if you didn't you know you may not have gotten the true influences that were there, that were and why that happens, muscle shoals, you know. I don't even know. I think there's something metaphysical that we can't put our finger on, but it certainly exists. You know, it's like the conversations that people have about things that are metaphysical. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. Um and uh that you know goes to like people's conception of God, you know, whatever God is, you know, it's like if if you're only going Going to believe it if you see it, then you may not believe it. But I've seen it, you know, I've seen different things come out of these areas, and you don't know why, but you know, I'll go down to Austin, Texas, and when I'm in Austin, there's something about being there because I produce artists from Austin like James McMurtry and I work with my favorite guitar player, David Grissom. And when we make music there, it's a certain thing. And like when REM came to Indiana and got out a um, you know, um uh sheesh, you know, they're from uh I'm trying to Athens. Athens. When they left Athens and they come up to Indiana, they're gonna make a different kind of music being in Indiana than they are gonna make in Athens. There's just something about it, you know. So I've just seen it. Um it's one of the reasons I don't love working in New York, because it's really hard, you know, to work for me in um a high rise on the 11th floor. Um, and you know, I I love the the ease and comfort of, oh, we need another guitar amp. All right, it's 10 minutes away, or it's 15 minutes away, or you can shoot to a not that you didn't have Sam Ash and Manny's, but in general, getting gear in New York is really hard and getting around New York is really hard. Lugging your gear is really hard. All of it's hard. So there's something that comes out of the making of that music that shows up in that way, where like in your in an area where it's super easy, the grooves are a little easier, the feeling, the vibes a little smoother or whatever. I don't know.

Joey Stuckey 23:44

You know what I mean? I like that. I think I think that all makes sense. I mean, you're right. I mean, you know, I'm a studio owner, and and um uh, you know, I I it doesn't really make sense for me financially, per se, to not be recording at my studio. But that being said, I'm coming to LA uh to record uh the Les Paul studio. And and you know, I'm doing that because there's a vibe and a presence and something I think is gonna you know be meaningful for for the art that I want to make. So I totally get it. I I think that makes total sense to me. I mean, there's you know, different different places have different you know vibes and experiences, and and there's something about you know, I work with people collaboratively over the internet all the time, but there is something about being in the same space together that's magical. There's a there's a there's a transfer of energy. Um you know uh it's hard to explain, but it it's it's always a superior you know experience, I think, when you can get a bunch of guys in the in the room and and and you just make some music together. I love it. I love doing that.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Yeah, I'm absolutely um, you know, I'm of the modern age. I do what I need to do. Um I mix here out of my studio. A lot of people send me files. I never see them in person. We might meet on Zoom or something. I mix the record, I send it. Sometimes it's like living in a vacuum. There's some period of time where I don't get any notes, any feedback. You know, my head starts to tell me that they hate what I'm doing and my mixes suck, you know. Because I love I love the more instant response of like, oh, I love it, or I don't, oh, let's change that or whatever. Yeah. For me, the making of music, I just find when people aren't in the room together, something doesn't happen that can only happen when they're in the room together. Totally with that. You know, what you just said, the transference of energy, the connectivity of energy, the I mean, unless you're a solo musician making solo music, um, which I still believe I've made records with solo musicians where me being in the room matters to them. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. So that the people that engineer themselves that just do it at home because they have to, I'll never tell them not to. But the minute you get someone out of the room, oh out of their room, into another room, and this is I mean, I am just such I all most of all the my favorite music that I ever either listened to or have made was made because people are around other people.

Joey Stuckey 26:28

Yeah, totally, totally. And you know, I love that. And you know, you're right. I mean, sometimes you have to, you know, uh, I got a band in Texas right now. They're uh they you know, they they want to come to to be with me, but they they can't. So, you know, we're we're doing everything remotely, and um and they they send me uh uh a take of their thing, and I'll say, uh, you need to look at the the uh you know the timing of that bass line and also in the chorus the drums are a little busy, and you know, we'll we'll do it you know, stupid text messages, but it you know, it it gets the job done, but it's not the same thing, you know. Um but but they I I I I love I love what you say about about uh you know just experiencing music together, because that's really the whole point, really, is to to be together in a moment. Uh that's what music can bring us, whether we're listening to a record or we're we're making the record. I mean, it's you know, I I remember as as a kid, I don't this didn't really happen anymore. And and maybe you'll have a similar experience. I don't know. But in the I was a kid in the 80s and I was a sick child, very, very sick, you know, from the brain tumor uh that took my eyesight and almost died a bunch, and you know, uh had had times where I couldn't leave the house. But uh my friends would come over and we would all spend our allowances on records. And once a week we get together and everybody bring their new record, and um and we'd all sit there and play it for hours and just you know, just talk about what we heard and you know what it meant and all these things. And I I personally feel like I should have some of Michael Jackson's publishing because I wore out at least five copies of Thriller as a blind kid trying to put the needle on the song I wanted to hear, scratching them all up. So you know, I had to rebuy them. So, you know, anyway, but it it was it was an amazing experience, and and you know I don't think people do that like they used to. Did you get together and listen to records when you were you know with your friends?

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely. Um, and you know, sharing records and you know, the whole the whole experience of the record was and is my history of why I do what I do. I mean, I would sit there with the actual album cover, yeah, and I'd stare at every credit. Yeah, I would read every single credit, and I you know, learn the names of every musician that played on everybody's shit, and you know, and aspired to meet and be around those people. It was very much an album with an album cover is a living, breathing thing, and that's something that is if you're not into like if you're you know, and it happens to me now where I'll you know, produce engineer, mix a record, and I'll give a CD even to one of my nieces or nephews or someone, and then I won't get any feedback or anything about it, and then I'll check in and I'll say, Wow, you know, similarly, like, hey, that really must have sucked. You don't even want to tell me how bad it is. And uh, they go, No, we have no way to listen to it, you know. And so the only place that people now that don't have like a turntable or a CD player is the internet, and the internet has either wrong credits or no credits. That's right. So all of us that do what we do have lost the ability to be known for what we do, and in and often the credits are wrong because there's someone who doesn't care and doesn't understand the value of credits, putting the credits up. There's you know, some assistant to an assistant that just, you know, and and I could just go on and and start to like rub a sore wound that I try to make sure I don't, you know, start calling out people. But um that whole experience of holding a vinyl, you know, holding a cover and reading the credits is what is inspired me to do what I do because I'd started to see, like, for example, someone who I believe um was one of the greatest engineers that we've ever had, one of the coolest people I ever knew, and one of the people that I feel mentored me at times when I was able to be around and talk was the great Al Schmidt. And, you know, we just lost Dave Mason a month or so ago, who was a friend of mine too, I was fortunate to know. And he put out a record in 1970 called Alone Together. It was one of the greatest records ever made. And uh the songwriting and the playing and just that whole record, and when the record, when I got my first Alone Together, it was on Rainbow Vinyl. It was the coolest frickin' Oh wow! Yeah, that is cool. Just the beautiful multicolor vinyl, and I wore a hole in that, and I probably owned probably three copies or four copies of that record because I listened to it until the until the grooves fell off. And uh and I would read the credits and it says, you know, mixed by Al Schmidt. And then a couple years later, Jackson Brown, Late for the Sky, one of my favorite Jackson Brown records. And then, you know, I aspired to work with these guys and to make records sound like this. And then I bucket list, you know, I ended up, you know, and have ended up in my life, you know, checking a lot of the bucket list, you know, those checks, you know, I, you know, it's it's one of those things where I would say to my wife, you know, when we'd go on vacation or something, if I get a phone call from Stevie Wonder, uh Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney, you know, then I'm gonna have to leave vacation to go. But everybody else, I'm gonna say I'm too busy, you know. Yeah. So, you know, you look at the records that I listened to and would stare at the album credits, you know, and Al Schmidt, mixed late for this guy, you know, and here's this record changing my life. And I'm like, someday I'm gonna meet that guy. I want to ask him questions. Tom Dowd. You know, you know, we wouldn't know what Tom Dowd did if we didn't have credits. I mean, yeah. And, you know, Tom Dowd changed the face of recording, and his story is one of the greatest stories ever told about you know becoming something you don't expect. He was a legitimate rocket science scientist. He was a nuclear physicist. He went to the Atoll Islands when we tested the atomic bomb. And he came back to go back to Colombia to finish up, you know, his higher level of um masters or whatever. And he knew government secrets that he couldn't tell his teacher, who was teaching nuclear fission at five years, you know, like he knew five years ahead what that was being taught at Columbia. And it was very debilitating that he was like, I can't continue to do this. I know more than the teacher that's gonna teach and grade me. He was out in a jazz club and he met Nesway and Ahmed Erdogan, who were starting Atlantic Records, and they needed an engineer. They didn't know that they were gonna get uh, you know, like some people go, Hey, I I I'm not a rocket scientist. Well, he was. Exactly, yeah. You know, and yeah, and and uh, you know, and the things that Tom Dowd brought to our recording, not only culture, but the and and uh, you know, it's a it's a shame because these credits and the things that we see on the vinyl covers have changed like the whole like course of many of us that do what we do. Yeah. And I wonder, you know, how that with that, that's one of the reasons that I totally get behind, you know, whether it's a podcast or going to Blackbird Academy and teaching and trying to bring awareness to these kids that are really into doing what we do, but have the are sort of at a deficit of what we call the information age, which is sort of the misinformation age, I think. Preach.

Joey Stuckey 34:39

Yeah, that's right. And you know, that's that's actually uh the two things that annoy me the most uh uh about being blind is uh not able to drive, which is a real pain in the butt. But the other one is I can't read the liner notes, and uh I I so want to. And it it just vexes me. So, but I had an interesting thing happen where uh I was having dinner uh with a with a group of colleagues, and Michael Beinhorn was there, and um, and so I'm sitting there and we're talking, having a good time, and you know, uh you know, as as I try to do, I leave, you know, with new friends. And uh I'm sitting there uh three or four weeks later, and uh an interview comes across Facebook. It's Michael Beinhorn talking about making one of my favorite records, which is super unknown by SoundGarden. And I had no idea that the guy I'd had dinner with uh, you know, did one of my favorite records because I can't read the letter notes. And so it was hilarious. I mean, and I've told him that story that, you know, it's just but but I mean it's it's you know, the you do pick up things, and I will tell you, um, I am with you a hundred percent on these these digital credits. Uh uh I'm a governor with the recording academy and an RPE wing in particular uh has been really preaching and trying to push the boat out to get metadata properly uh encapsulated in every project and so that the the credits go where they belong and and the digital credits are shown. And it's an uphill climb. Uh it it some people are not interested. I don't know why. It just seems fair, it just seems courteous to list all the people that make these things possible and and uh why why it's such a hard push, I don't know, but there are some of us out there pushing for it. So that's that's just you know, that is something that we're doing. And of course, I can't speak for the recording academy. I have to be very careful to say that, but uh, you know, I I can tell you that we are we are we are trying because it's just it's just wrong not to have it, uh, and not and not to have it right.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

And this is something we've been pushing for years now. You know, there the reason that there is the um producer and engineer wing of the Grammys is because um I don't know, I would have to say not yeah, maybe 35 years, somewhere early 90s, you know, Ed Cherney, Al Schmidt, um you know, there's a handful of the leaders of you know, the guys that aren't even around anymore, but they had this idea. Um, Chris Stone from the record plant who created what we ended up becoming, which was the MPGE, the Music Producers Guild. Um and uh we became a guild with a dollar a day due with $365 to be part of it. And that guild, you know, which then encompassed a lot of us uh for a few years, um then were absorbed into and became NARAS producer and engineer wing. And that so the guild, which um there was some photos floating around recently that I had that I gave um one of my dear friends Michael Frondelli, because he was one of the you know, there were guys that were on the forefront of it, and then a bunch of us that you know were the earliest guys had signed up because you know, it wasn't just like the the meta alliance where they have seven or eight guys. No, we had like a lot of a lot of us. There were, you know, a few couple hundred plus, and then just more every year. But one of there were two things that we were really into, and neither one of them have happened yet. And I'm not dishing on the the the the P, you know, the producer engineer wing of Naris, because it's just it's sort of like trying to put your finger in, you know, the story of the finger in the dike, and you just can't stop the flood. Um, there's just too many issues. But we wanted credits. We wanted to make sure, because we could already see with with digital and cds and and what was coming is Napster and downloads that credits were going the way going away. And yeah, and they weren't correct. And and the other was that you know, SAG Aftra has and and you know, movie uh have they have great health insurance. Like my guys that I know that are like grips on the stages have like great health insurance where producer music like even musicians that don't sing um unless they're part of the union, we don't have any help. We all pay independent health insurance and pay a fortune for it, obviously. That's a whole nother story. I'm not gonna just saying, because you know you have you're challenged every day with your health and that's right. And you know, I'm sure the only way you, you know, you pay a fortune for health insurance so you don't have to go bankrupt when you it's ridiculous, right? Yeah. So, you know, and if you were in SAG AFTRA and you were part of that, which I'm not sure you are or not, you'd have better health insurance. It would, you know, that's pretty good, you know. Um, and we just we have pushed on things that, you know, because the issues pile up, um, this one gets lost in the sauce because it doesn't seem like it's that important. But it is because it's the history of the shoulders of the people we stand on, you know, that is what creates who we are moving forward. And when you lose the history, when you don't know, you know, when all you can say is, well, yeah, Al Schmidt won 20 some odd Grammys, but you go, well, what records? I can't find which ones, or Tom Tom Dowd, or you know, Ed Cherney, or you know, all the greats that going back and back and back and back and back. Eventually, you know, those of us who are still alive, um, a lot of us depend on the credit to get the next job.

Joey Stuckey 40:43

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And and it's just a professional courtesy. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just it's just something that should be done because it's the right thing to do. I mean, you know, I I try to I can't I can't force my clients to put credits on anything, but I always turn in a list of credits, especially if I have interns uh working with me, because some of these kids, this will be their first bite at the apple, and a credit on a record is really helpful. And um, and so I I always say, look, I can't I cannot promise that the client will include it, but I will submit it and I will I will follow up and remind them. And I'd say, you know, probably 70% of them put do do what I ask them to do uh and put the kids' names on it, and uh then you know, probably 40% of them actually send me a copy of the record to give to the to the to the intern. Uh, you know, but it's you you do what you can, but it's you're right. I mean, it it is it is something that absolutely has to be done for so many reasons. I have a question for you though, because uh I I knew you played guitar. I did not know you started life uh as a drummer. Uh and and I'm one I know that playing a bunch of different musical instruments for sure helps you as a producer. Like, for example, like I'm I'm a low side of adequate keyboard player. I know everybody thinks the blind guy should play keyboards, but uh because of Stevie and Ray. But uh uh, you know, I I I'm really I mean, low side of adequate may even be too kind, but it does help me, you know, I understand enough about it that I can assist others that are great players. How much do you I'm sure you use your knowledge in that way, but how much do you actually get into uh playing at this point in your career? Do you do you still play your guitar? Do you do you do sessions with it? Do you write? What's going on? Do you ever release your own music?

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Okay. It's funny because I got closer back to it during the pandemic. You know, I brought my more instruments back into my studio and I was doing a lot more playing because we had a lot more free time. Um I I uh was down in February working with Billy Strings, and uh, you know, the song that Edgar and I were working on that we brought to Billy, um, I was learning, um I I ended picking my mandolin back up to kind of come up with, you know, for me, you know, when we were working out like the the song and stuff, um, you know, the the way that a mandolin operates in bluegrass music, um, the mandolin is sort of the snare drum, you know, it's sort of mixture between the hi-hat and the snare drum of of the music, because a lot of bluegrass has no drums, you know. And so the right hand of the mandolin is almost more important than anything. And I have a really good right hand, fortunately, as a drummer. And I have, I mean, again, there's no humble brag going on, it's just telling the truth. I have really good time. I've always had really good time. It's what made me a really good rhythm guitar player, and I became less focused on becoming a left handed shredder, even though I um like to learn a lot of. I I mean, I can't play eruption or anything. I'm not a tapper. Um, and when I watched and when I worked with Eddie, I was always marveling at his right hand and the groove that he and Alex had together. So I'm a very much focused rhythm. I mean, I Have a really solid groove. And uh, you know, when it comes to my own playing, I the music I play is more like uh open tuning Leo Kaki meets um slide guitar or something because I have worked for so many years with slide guitar players and I know lots of open tunings and stuff, but I also love playing uh banjo and mandolin, um, two of my favorite instruments. So when I was working, going to work with Billy, I brushed up on my banjo and mandolin playing. So I, you know, wouldn't be such a hack if I did pick up an instrument. But you know, he's such an incredible, he's an incredible mandolin and banjo player, besides being acoustic guitar maestro. I didn't even want to embarrass myself being around Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, and and uh and and Billy Strings. But oh I I I know exactly what you mean. But I do, you know, I uh throughout my career, I I should have a thing that says on my business card the bridges are free. You know, I've given away a lot of bridges. Um you know, working with a t-shirt. It is, and I I you know, I won't call out any of the artists, but you know, I if they're playing a song and you know, and I'm like, you know, how about we go to the you know the the relative minor or maybe go to the sixth minor, you know. I mean, I know music. I'm a you know, I I I speak the language and and uh and groove-wise, it's something that really helped me with analog tape back in the day. It's one of the things that cemented my relationship with Larry Carleton because he had a foot pedal that he would use to punch in for himself because he could never find an engineer that knew how to get in and out when he wanted to do guitar solo punches. And when we worked together, he didn't need to do that because I could go in and out on a guitar on a Larry Carlton guitar solo and not like wreck it. You know, that was one of the things that a lot of engineers didn't trust themselves would like jump up out of the chair and put a leader in on like the end of the punch so that they never erased the note coming out. But I had such good time. I could and the way that Mellencamp arranged songs is he'd have the whole band play everything. Like, you know, he'd have, you know, back then before David Grissom was in the band, he'd have Larry Crane and Mike Wonchek, the two guitar players, and he had Lisa Germano, the fiddle player, and John Casello, who either played accordion or organ, and he had Pat and uh and and the Crystal playing Shakers and singing, and we'd, you know, the whole song would go down and with all this music, and then he'd come in the control room, and when we got a take, he'd have me erase the parts that he didn't want. And sometimes it'd be like a little fiddle thing that right after that little fiddle thing was the thing he wanted. So he'd have me erase it. And I'd, you know, at first I was like, You really want me to erase it? He's like, Yeah, just make it go away. Now, if I couldn't get out in time, I would have been wrecking what would have been the performance, and that you know, to save and be safe, a lot of engineers who don't trust themselves, you know, stop and put a leader in, cut the tape, actually, on the the point where the out is. But you know, for me, I would have gotten fired. Millicamp would have never had the teaching. Seriously, I would have been out of that chair and home. And so, and I just knew I had good enough time to get in and out. Because on an analog tape machine, you have to anticipate the in and anticipate the out. If you come out on the downbeat, you're out, you're erasing. You know, so it's always like, you know, a 16th or 32nd or 64 note. You know, you have to be like, get out, get it, you know, it's like you know, and and if you're looking at the tape counter, you're fucked. So, you know, when it comes to analog tape and recording on analog tape, where you're trying to, you know, there's nothing about like, you know, Pro Tools being a quick punch where you can just pull the thing around and it's all non-volatile. So, you know, I made a career for myself because of being a drummer and having really good time and being a musician and knowing notes, where the communication is like if you don't, and if you can't communicate, it's like going to some foreign country and not knowing the language, you might be able to get away with it for like, you know, an hour or a half a day, but you're not going to have a career. So, you know, fortunately for me, I've used it through my whole career, and I, and particularly when it comes to producing, I'm very much into the arrangement of how many, like I love odd bars and odd time, you know, like sometimes on folk singers like James McMurtry that writes like seven or eight verses. It you got to do things, have like weird sleight of hand where like you might have a seven, four bar to get back to the next verse, which is hanging just long enough so the listener has time to just digest the lyric. And that seven, four bar, that odd time that makes it hang, just that extra beat or two beats before it goes boom back into like a vocal or a moment, is just enough to create the tension and release and tension release that you need to keep the listener interested. Even though the story is a good story, if it comes off like a run-on sentence, it can lose the listener. Like any good storyteller, the music has to be the storyteller for a storytell. So, um, and like anything, I I I just call it there's sometimes there's good math and sometimes there's bad math. Like bad math is when it's just like a Tetris, the same four, for, you know, eight, eight, eight, eight, or eight, you know, two, two-bar reintro. Every it's always a two-bar reintro, and you always know exactly what's next. I like, you know, when things are a little bit, you know, off. And so that comes from that, you know, having sat behind the kit as a kid and played and understand what it is to create a a dynamic, too, you know.

Joey Stuckey 49:38

That's amazing. Yeah. And do you it what what instrument do you feel the most affinity with? I mean, what what's the one that really you know uh uh informs you the most?

SPEAKER_00 49:48

Um when I when it's electric guitar, it's always going to be a strat. I'm just a strat player. I love my strat. Um, I you know, tellies are cool, but I never enjoyed a Les Paul. Uh, really don't dig playing a Les Paul. I love listening to people who can play Les Pauls and make them sing, but for me a strat is just and acoustic guitar is my favorite instrument. Um, I have a couple of acoustics that are my favorite acoustics. I have a uh um a 12-string guild that has you know some great stories behind it, but ultimately that guitar, every time I pick it up, I don't want to put it down. That's awesome. Um and then I have a uh J45, um, that's a really great, but I have a triple watt Martin. That is my favorite little guy that just he's small and it's just you know, it's a parlor guitar and it's just really fun to play because it's so small and intimate. Um, and those are, you know, and then I love playing mandolin. I mean, mandolin is one of my favorite instruments to play because it's just there's so much music in that neck um that is not obvious, you know, and so it's a challenge for me. And it's a rhythm instrument. I get to play that really purely like a rhythm instrument and like it, chick it, chick-it, you know. It really is something that accentuates my love of rhythm.

Joey Stuckey 51:11

That is really cool. And I, you know, I have a I have a problem with the mandolin. Um, I have one, and the reason I have one is because of REM. You know, that was like, you know, uh, you know, everybody at that at that, you know, remembers uh the moment the mandolin became this big thing in 1991 or whatever it was. Uh, you know, and so I have a mandolin that I that I bought. But uh my hands are real big, and um I have a hard time scrunching my fingers up to fit on the mandolin. And there there I found a mandolin that I could play really well that had a bigger neck, and I loved it until I saw the price, and then I was like, I do not play this well enough to justify this instrument. So we're gonna put this one down.

SPEAKER_00 51:52

So yeah, you might find yourself a tenor, you know. You know, a tenor, you might find a tenor. And uh, but uh you're right, you know, that's one of the reasons I I I owned and had a killer Rickenbacker guitar. I couldn't play it. It the neck was too small. It was it was just too the strings were too close together, and you know, the you know, I because I love the sound of a Ricky 12 string.

Joey Stuckey 52:14

Oh yeah, yeah, man. I mean that's just one of a kind. I actually uh uh had had a Rickenbacker as a kid, and uh and somebody stole the guitar from the blind man, which there's a special place in hell for that. Uh but anyway, uh my guitar got stolen, and uh and I I looked for it for a day and then and then found it in a pawn shop and it's a whole story. But anyway, I I I love that you you know love music and and and you love all of it, and and I feel the same way. And I have to say, I don't know if you remember, uh, but over dinner you played me a little bit of a demo uh that you were gonna take down to Nashville for Gary Douglas and those guys to to play on. And uh it was it was out just fantastic to listen to that, and then uh uh played me over, and and this is what people need to know. So Ross Hogarth's rough mix that I heard over a cell phone where I don't know whose record I it was, I I but it had Joe Bonamasa on it. Uh I heard a little rough mix uh of something, and uh I was like, you know, his rough mix over his cell phone is probably better than my final mix. I was like, this is so good, it's it's just ridiculous. Like, are you sure that's a rough mix? Like, are you sure? So, I mean, your mixes are absolutely just you know masterpieces. I I love them so much. Um, and and there's so many cool things you do that are uh a mystery to me. But um I I I did wonder, like, you know, we we talk about um you know, we talk about the the spirit of music and and and we and you know I I'm a big believer in you know intention, uh inspiration. I think both those things should and can coexist. And uh and and I I I I love all music. I love I think you know you can take an influence from anywhere and and and do something with it. And so, you know, we talk about about the spirit of music, and of course we have all these technical things we worry about, but at the end of the day, what we're trying to capture is that that lightning in the bottle, that pure essence of of joy and and or or sorrow or whatever it is that's being communicated. But uh, you know, I have to I have to talk to you a little bit about gear because uh we're all we're all gear nerds, and I I want to I'm gonna be honest, I probably have a problem that requires an intervention because I do have severe uh mic envy uh and and lustful thoughts about microphones. And uh and you know, I I've I I had a lot of goals when I got in this business, and now my goal is is to die with one more microphone than Sylvia Massey. That's kind of my new goal. So so anyway, I say that tongue in cheek, kinda. Uh, but tell me, you know, with you, like what what is your favorite things that you like to have on a record? Do you have a do you have a certain thing that you like to take with you regardless of what's going on? I mean, do you do you do you feel any any kind of like you know, how do you you prefer plugins or analog or what's what's the Ross Hogarth secret sauce uh from you that that you that you carry with you from project to project?

SPEAKER_00 55:28

Well, you know, I love yeah, I mean I I have the same, I mean, I I have like I talked about selling the drum kit and there's other things that I've sold and other you know we have regret about like, oh my god, I can't believe I sold that back then or whatever. Um but I do have a pretty sweet collection of microphones, and those are my tools. I I look at myself like a carpenter, and uh when I walk into a studio, I look at myself, you know, having done a fair amount of that in my earlier part of my life, you know, carpentry and building. And I, you know, I I wouldn't expect guys to show up at my house and then be asking me if they could borrow like you know, my router or my you know, plane or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'd be like, wow, this guy doesn't have any tools, you know. So generally when I walk into a studio, give or take, um I have a fair amount of microphones that I'm gonna use of my own because I know what they are, I know what they do, and then you know, I'll I'll you know add to it, you know, like when I go to East West, they have M50s, you know. Of course, I don't own M50s, I don't have a decadry of M50s, yeah. But I do have some, you know, great B and K slash DPA omnies, and I have ribbon mics and Royer, you know, it's pretty well documented. My love of Royer and my advocation, like I advocate and have been an advocate for them. And uh so, you know, there's a microphone that they have, which is the tube stereo microphone, the SF24 V, which I love the SF-24, but the V, the tube stereo is like on just about every recording I do, give or take. Um drums or what? Um it could it can, you know, it can be it, it can be drums, percussion, B3, can be guitar room, definitely strings, horns. Um, you know, it's like everywhere. And uh so I have uh I only have one 24 V, but I got two SF24s, and those um to the to the general naked listener wouldn't be able to notice, except maybe on strings and horns and very much a detail. But for me, the 24V has a different reach. Um, same thing with the 122V, which is the tube um, you know, ribbon uh that's the upgrade from the 121 to the 122 to the 122V. We use those on Van Halen's guitars. I use them all the time. But the 121 is like uh go-to on every, you know, if I'm not using something else, I'm using the 121 on every guitar with an added you know dynamic. Um, you know, so there's things that I do and use on every session generally that um just give me the result, give or take. Like I I have a BK5 that sounds really great on guitar, but you can't get it up close enough that it goes in phase with a 57 or something like that. So the BK5 is a great guitar amp mic, but you get it too close, you're gonna blow it, and it also won't be, you know, it just you can't do it. So that's the problem with certain microphones, is that if you want to use more than one of them, you can't, you know, get it in phase, and that's the beauty of the 121, the 122 with the pad, and the 122 V. Um, and I know that you know AEA and other people make mics. I just um it's sort of like there hasn't been enough time in my life to try every single ribbon mic that everybody has now, and I know there are quite a few good ones, and it's not like I'm just advocating for Royer because I'm a shill for them, but it's I've been with that working with John Jennings and and the guys that run that company.

Joey Stuckey 59:11

Dave Royer's a genius. I mean, geez.

SPEAKER_00 59:14

Yeah, Dave Royer designed all the Mojave microphones most of the time. Oh, I know. You know, so initially Mojave was, and you're really good friends, Dusty. Now, you know, you guys play music together. He's a great bass player. Um, and I I I love Mojave's, you know, in place of uh 67s and other such. But my 67 is I have an amazing 67, you know, Klaus Heine, who's probably for me one of the greatest microphone uh he just knows my he's you know one of the last living microphone guys, you know, that knows what a real the sound of, you know. I have plenty of guys that do great work on microphones. I'm good friends with Andrew Mannheim and kind of fair about other guys, but for me, Klaus Heine is the guy, and when he works on a microphone, it becomes the best microphone that I have. Like that 67 will beat anybody's 67 unless it's another Klaus Heine 67. My C12 will beat just about everybody else's C12 unless it's a Klaus C12. Um, you know, so there are these microphones, KM54 is, you know, Sheps. I love the Sheps on acoustic instruments, you know. Um and I have these B and K Omnis, and I also have their uh um unidirectional cardioids, and uh that is the company that became DPA. So, you know, for me, microphones, you know, when you have a great source, the next thing in line, people can get all caught up with the preamp and the EQ and all that. But a great microphone in front of a great instrument doesn't need um, you know, EQ. You just let it let the microphone do the job. So absolutely. Yeah, so a lot of the recordings that I do come from the source to the microphone, and the way we made records for a really long time before consoles and large format consoles started to go away, is we never thought about what preamps because we were on a console. And so whether you were on a Neve, an API, a Trident Series 80, which I made a shitload of records on because a series 80 we had at Rumbo, we had it in Mellencamps, you know, the records that were done on Series 80, Tridents, there's a very neutral, open, it doesn't have the fatness and the thickness of a knee, and it doesn't have the grit and the grind of an API. But, you know, you I you could list like a long list of records from like Guns N' Roses appetite to like Motley Girls to like Mellencamp to like Stone Temple Pilots to like you know, there's like you just go down the list of records that were made on a Trident 80, um, or a you know, or a Trident A, you know, A range, or you know, any number of these consoles, you just made records on the console. You didn't go in and start picking and choosing a dozen different preamps. You just put the cable into the wall and it showed up at the desk and you pushed the data up and you started to check your face and go to work. You know what I mean? Seriously. I love it. I love it. So, you know, people go, Oh, I don't really love the neo tech. Well, that's okay, but a shitload of great records were made on neotech. You know, it wasn't you know a particularly maintenance-free console, but you know, it and MCIs. I mean, MCIs got down in in criterion. I mean, Tom Dowd, you know, he made a ton of records on MCIs. People are like, I don't really love the MCI. Well, that's okay. Do you love the records that were made on it? You know, I mean, do you do you do you like Layla? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I love it. It's like, so I mean, there are a lot of desks that were just the desks, and then there are other desks that have this, you know, somewhat amazing uh history, the helios, you know, the you know, just the it's just you go on and on and on. But for me, it's the source, it's the microphone, and then it's whatever you're gonna put it into. And and uh yeah, I mean, helios sound incredible on electric guitars, they're just great consoles. But would will I take a great microphone over a helios desk? I mean, a helios desk is not gonna solve the problem of a shitty microphone. That's for sure. Just not. Yeah. You know, you're a bad source.

Joey Stuckey 1:03:36

Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, these microphones are our air substitutes. That's what we're using, you know, to capture the sound. I mean, the microphone is is really important to me. Uh I've always thought mic placement was, you know, like my my best skill. Um and and you know, and and and that's the thing. And you know, unfortunately, that's not you know, uh no no disrespect to online schools because I went to Berkeley online and got a lot of value out of it, but uh I went for music business as opposed to the technical side. But um the thing is, I mean, you know, you it's hard to learn mic technique online. Um, so you you really I feel need to somehow get into some sort of studio space and try the scientific method out as what happens when I do this?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:19

Well you asked me what my favorite thing is, and and in the end it's air. Yeah. That's right. I love recording air, I love having air, and and that's why any like amp simulator and all these things uh that do you know great great job of what they do, but they are only simulating air. Right. And there's no there's just there's no replacement for putting a mic up in a room and having air. There just isn't. Now, most people that are making records at home in their closets and this and that, well, they need all the other stuff, you know, and then they have to have their favorite, you know, whatever it might be. Um, I don't have honestly the patience anymore in my life to go through a hundred amp sims to try to find what sounds good on a DI. Man, that drives I'm with you. Yeah. I it just it'll it drives me bonkers. I will take that DI that I'm sent and I'll on my own time and dime, I'll go into a friend's studio and reamp it.

Joey Stuckey 1:05:30

Well, hey, that's I love that. I think that's great. I think that's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:36

Man, I just don't have the the patience. I just don't, you know.

Joey Stuckey 1:05:43

I I'm with you. I mean, I I there there are there are clients that, you know, come into the studio and want to spend 90 minutes paging through reverbs.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:54

Yeah, I take my time sometimes. You know, that's where because I don't any more I don't own a plate and I don't have a chamber here. So I do and have taken the time. Like I have an afternoon, I'll take the time instead of like searching through amp sims and shit. I will go listen to a bunch of different plugins of reverb that I haven't used. And it's one of the reasons that, you know, I'll do a little quick pimp here. But a few years back, you know, six or seven years ago, um, I had this idea when they, you know, the companies were coming out with, you know, the chambers and plates of famous studios. One of my favorite and most favorite studios, and I have a long history and friendship with, is Sunset Sound. And I had this idea for the Sunset Sound, you know, they have their Sunset Sound Chamber one is, you know, this the sound of like, you know, you know, Van Halen and the Doors and lots of great records, and they're awesome. So I had this idea, I brought it to Paul Camarada, and he said, Yeah, run with it. He's the owner. And I went to a couple of different companies, and I ended up having dinner one night with my friend Dave Kurzner, who's the K with his brother of IK Multimedia. IK. And so Kurzner and I had dinner, and I brought him my idea as we sat there, you know, eating sushi. Um, and uh he took it to his brother, and what we did was the uh it's called Sunset Sound Studio Reverb, and that was the first version, and that's the chambers and the plates and the rooms of Sunset Sound of their three studios, one, two, and three. And then a couple years ago, it was we upgraded it where you could move around the room, and it also you could take a room and put it into a chamber or whatever, the same way we do that. And uh so Sunset Sound Studio Reverb 2 came out this last year, and uh, and and that is Sunset Sound. You have the rooms, you have the the ISO booths, you have the chambers and the plates, and uh all in one easily usable GUI, and that works, and that's one of my favorite reverbs, and I helped with the idea and the design and everything. Um and so you know there are some really great plugins because for me I have to use plugins when it comes to reverbs. I don't I do use my pedals and my uh I have a um, you know, I have a um Echoplex and I, you know, often will you be using those for slap, but a lot of the tape simulators I use for for slap. I don't really love them for as much like the tape thing, but as much like the use for like, you know, a 16 uh 15 ips uh slap or something, you know what I mean? So um yeah, that's the deficiency of me mixing here. I do have bricastis. I love my bricastis because that's the closest thing to real chambers and plates because of the definition of the bricasti and the lack of um digital aliasing and chatter that happens on longer reverbs um in in in plug-in domains. So the two bricastis tend to be my dedicated plate and my dedicated chamber, along with you know, some of the ones that really work, like UA, Hittsville, and um Oceanway and Capital Chamber. And you know, it's it's great. We have these, you know. Um, you know, and uh and then when I'm in a real studio, uh like at you know, well, can't go to Capitol anymore, but East West and Sunset. A lot of times I will print the actual chamber.

Joey Stuckey 1:09:35

And that is so cool. I love that idea. That is great. I and I I'm I know what I'm doing when I when I'm done talking to you, I'm gonna go buy some uh IK plugins. So that's uh you you've sold at least one. Um that's uh that's good stuff. I I I want to ask you uh two two final things before I let you go. And and um the the first one is is there a record you made where you're like, okay, I this is it. This is I'm I have I have done something uh that that is absolutely uh a bucket list for me. I have done something that I'm I'm uh just this is this is a realized dream. Is there like a record where you where you just had an epiphany of like, hey, this turned out exactly how I thought it would, how I hoped it would? Uh it is it is uh a testament and a monument to all the years I've put into the business. And it might be the first record you did or the last record you did, I don't know, but is there one record that really stands out for you? Um in in in your I mean you've done so many great ones, but well, there are records there are records we make where in that moment we have no idea that that record is gonna be something.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:51

And I mentioned one of them because it was the year that I you know we got committed to being married, we were planning a wedding, go out back to Indiana, and I'm making REM's life's rich pageant, and there are all these college kids at IU that are freaking out because REM, this college band, this band, you know, that college kids love is in their town. And I was not a college kid. I was, you know, I by then I was already a pretty scuzzed up veteran. Um was already coming into my own as a jaded and sarcastic human. And uh I'm kidding, but um hey, sarcasm gets me through my day. Are you kidding me?

Joey Stuckey 1:11:40

I don't make a friend one, I gotta have something.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:42

Yeah, you can't see it, but there's this meme that shows a salt shaker and it and it says sarcasm, and then the the the tagline is I sprinkle that shit on everything. I love it. That's great. But uh so I was making REM's record, not having any idea what, but just knowing that somehow musically and just everything came together on that record, musically and sonically, and friendship-wise, it was really special. And then cut to, you know, 40 years later, 30 years later, when you see the the the REM fans and they're saying, you know, this is my favorite record. Or, you know, or people come up to me and say, you know, like even a weekend ago, someone came up to me and said, This morning I was listening to REM's Live Switch Patent, I didn't realize that you'd made it. And man, that record changed my life. I was in college, and it was the record that, you know, and uh and I was like, wow, that's cool, you know. So sometimes it's that, it's not the actual, like, so that actually holds a lot of gravitas because it's I came home from Indiana, flew straight into like having to go try on tuxes and make sure that the tuxes were, you know, it was like a week before the wedding, and my wife, yeah, and she'd been planning the wedding with her sisters and her family, and I wasn't even here. And uh, so that was pretty great. That that record's one of them. And uh, and it was the first uh um plaque that they ever won. That was a gold record then, and they went on to sell you know millions of records, but that was their first gold record. That was important. Um yeah, so that was an important thing, and uh and then cut to uh late mid-late mid-late 90s. I connected with a guy named Kev Moe and uh blues artist that you know we'd gone on to become best friends and win Grammys together. And uh I just bonded with him, and we bonded in a time when things were not great in his personal life, and they were a little dodgy in my personal life, and my dad had died. And uh we just came together and we made a record and we cut it live with musicians, and there was such a symbiosis and uh just things going on in the making of that record that just to this day, when I listen to Kebmo Slow Down, which we won Best Contemporary Blues that year, I just feel like we nailed it. I just feel like I nailed it. I nailed the vibe of getting musicians and they're playing in a room, and uh everything you ever want out of a really honest record. And I guess you know, the voters and the Grammys believed it too. Um, and Kev Moe and I have had this ongoing relationship to this day where I just look up to him like a big brother, and we've made other records and we've won like Taj Moe together, you know, nominated for best engineer. I didn't win in 2014. But that but a couple years ago, I feel like I used every, well, and Van Halen's record, I feel like I used every people skill that I had ever acquired through my life on the road, dealing with hard situations and musicians that may not get along. All those are well documented between David Lee Roth and the band and all. But I was able to pull across the finish line a different kind of truth in 2012. And it took years to make that record. But one of the things that I believe was the, you know, I had my ingredient to that record was getting it done. Was that like that thing that you have, that belief in yourself that no matter what, you're gonna finish this. That thing that you when you get up in the morning and you say, Well, today's a really, you know, it's I I you know life's perfect today, and I'm not happy about it, you know, that thing. You know what I'm saying? And yeah, yeah. And and and I, you know, that record, the greatest accomplishment of that record for me is not as much sonically or anything like that. It's about getting it done. And I got it done. And I made what will now be the last Van Halen record and the first record with David Lee Roth since 1984, and all those things that made it really hard to get done. I got done, and with no lack of uh adversity. Um, and then you talk about when it all sort of comes together uh on a lot of different levels. The record I made that we won Best Contemporary Blues for in 22 or 23, I'm not positive what year it won, but you know, I made a record called Brother Johnny, which is a guitar player's record honoring Johnny Winner. And I produced Edgar Winner, who is like another big brother, and we're making another record right now. But that record, I feel we so nailed it, and we nailed it because when it was all done and mixed and mastered, Edgar called me up and said, This is the happiest and the most fulfilling moment I've ever had. And whether we win a Grammy or not, I love this record and I can listen to it. And it was a record honoring his big brother, one of the most iconic blues men in the history of music, Johnny. And we brought in, and I brought in, and I made phone calls to all sorts of people, my friends, you know, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Billy Gibbons, Joe Walsh. We had Ringo and Michael McDonald and Robin Ford and Steve Lukather and my buddy Phil X, David Grissom. And I had Taylor Hawkins, who, you know, isn't alive anymore, but he sang instead of played drums. I called up Taylor, who was a musicologist, and I said, Taylor, I want you on this record. You know, he's like, Oh, I love Johnny. Yeah, I'll play on anything you want. I go, No, I want you to sing, dude. He's like, You want me to sing? Because Taylor is an amazing singer. People don't know that he sang all like behind Grohl, all like it was, he was the like the cornstarch in the roux. If you don't have cornstarch, you can't make a roux, you know, for your, you know, it doesn't work, you know. So he was that thickener in the sound of the foo fighters that you you know that you'll never have again because he's not there. And uh so um, yeah, so that record when it was done, I knew that we had done something meaningful. Um that it was something that um that we I had achieved, you know, um something utilizing you know all the skills that you have in life and you put together and you know picking the songs, creating, casting the artists, engineering it, cutting it, mixing it, and then the artist, uh the brother, the little brother says that yeah, he gets to say, and he gets to be the scorekeeper and say, We won. Sometimes I don't get to be the scorekeeper, you know. You know, I don't get to like and for those who don't know what a roux is, it's what you make gumbo out of, you know. So when you're making gumbo, you gotta make the roux. It's the thing that holds it all together. You're it's got the sausage and the the the rice and the the the shrimp and all of that, but if you don't hold it together with the roux, which is the the the thing that holds it together, you know, as as Joey started our conversation with the gravy. You know, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You gotta, you know, so sometimes I'm the chef, sometimes I'm the waiter, I'm the dishwasher, I'm the cleanup guy, I'm sweeping up, you know, I'm fixing shit that breaks, I'm cleaning up aisle four, you know, all of the above.

Joey Stuckey 1:19:41

And uh always a problem on aisle four. Always a problem. You know what's saying you know, I I I have a memory of this, actually, Ross. I don't know if you'll remember. I believe you were actually uh under the weather uh for the Grammys um that that year that that record won. Didn't you go? Yeah, yeah. And I I uh I actually was there and texted you. You you guys just won. I don't know if you remember that, but but I actually texted you uh when when uh when he when he when Edgar came out and and accepted. Uh and uh I don't know, I think like I said, I think you were under the weather or something, but anyway, um that was that was uh I remember that in 22 or 23. You're right. That was uh I had COVID.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:22

I had a 104 fever. I was lying in bed, I was watching the Grammys on my iPad, yeah, yeah, instead feeling like total ass. And yeah, and when Edgar I was supposed to walk him up there because he, as you, he's not fully blind, but he's legally blind, he's basically blind. Well, he can come to union meetings, so that's good. And he yeah, and he like had a hard time getting up on the stage to go the right direction. Oh, I I understand it well, and I was watching this go down, and I was thinking, man, I'm supposed to be there, I'm supposed to walk him up there. And yeah, it was like, and my wife is in the other side of the house trying to stay away from me with COVID, and all she heard was me whelping like a dog because I had no voice, nothing. But I was like a our our I was like our dog whelping in pain, but out of joy for the fact that we had won. It was really cool, you know. Because you don't, you know, we don't make records to win Grammys, but you'd make them it's nice. It's nice, man. I mean, if anyone says I don't really care about a Grammy, they're lying to you. Oh, of course they are.

Joey Stuckey 1:21:33

You know, well, I I I've tried to steal Alan Parsons, but the the problem with being blind is you can't tell when people are looking at you. And uh I was trying to take his away off the top of the console, but they they saw me. So uh you just need a bigger coat. You know, that may be the secret to the next successful phase of my life. I'm gonna Ross Hogar says I need a bigger coat. I'm gonna get one and see if if things change. Yes. Uh you know, the more the more Grammys you can stuff over your coat, the better things are. The the the last thing I want to ask you, and and uh and I I um you know I I have to ask this because it's it's it's much on my heart and mind uh these days. Uh, and that is I'm wondering what you think about uh AI and the creative music space.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:20

You know, it's it's just a such an interesting time. I mean I mean I'll fess up that when it comes to asking questions of things and like you know, I use I mean, I'll use uh chat GPT, I'll jump to Gemini, I'll go to Claude, you know, I just I'm but I've explored the Suno world, which I think is probably one of the more used um musical AI generators, and uh between you and me there's something that happens when I listen to it. Um it's so damn perfect, it's so damn impeccable. It just there's no way a human could have had any part of that. Um and uh and also it does some really weird things when it comes to like trying to get it to do like I've tried to get Suno to like play in like drop D and like you know, try to get it to play like uh Steven Still's Black Queen, like if you want to get it, like trying to get it to do something swampy and cool and whatever.

Joey Stuckey 1:23:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:33

And it does cheese music pretty well. I mean, it turns like you know, it it turns your it can definitely do, you know, cheese sauce, like you know, but I think you probably and I probably could make a way better homemade cheese sauce, you know. Um, it's just there's something about Suno that kind of freaks me out. And uh the thing that we were talking about a few minutes ago about musicians in a room and the way that people react with each other. I just don't think that you're ever gonna teach it that because um it's sort of like do you really believe that a robot can feel it's like watching like that movie artificial intelligence from like 20 years ago or whatever. Um you know, I don't know where it's going. I if I you know I can't predict the future, but all I know is that when I listen to it, the same way when I listen, I'm just telling you, I have a real problem when people because like I'll just give you an example. Like I make records that I love the imperfections. And I always say to people, don't get rid of all your imperfections. The greatest music that you've ever loved to listen to is imperfect. Musicians are not perfect, we're not perfect as people. People aren't perfect. Don't ever expect people to be perfect, you'll always be disappointed, you know, just everywhere in life. So if you want your music to be absolutely perfect, you'll spend a lot of time, you know, trying to pardon me to your listeners, but fly fuck something, you know, that little fly, you know, it's like um, it's not gonna happen. It's just not you ever, you know, it's no one's gonna ever hear it. But I hear when things are too perfect. So when it comes to like tuning vocals, I will go through and we'll tune the whole vocal, but I'll only drop in the one or two words here and there or a half a line where the performance was awesome, but the pitch was just off enough that it's gonna affect me down the road. Um, but I always love when someone's going a little sharp to get to a chorus, you know. I think that's awesome because it shows that there's some emotion there. And, you know, my I always point to uh to Bill Withers' lovely day. Um if lovely day was made today, on the end of Lovely Day, when he goes and sings the word day, and those days are about you know 10-15 seconds long, and he's running out of air. The pitches on those, you know, he goes lovely day, and he holds day for like forever. Go listen to Lovely Day and think about what that song would be like if you were giving that to your like Pro Tools guy and he was tuning those vocals, they'd become organ notes. They'd be like organ note without vibrato, mmm, like a car horn. Yeah, but what you get out of that guy singing lovely day is a guy who's so emotional about this word day that it just doesn't stay in tune because it's not perfect. But the perfect thing is like when you're having that beautiful day and you're driving somewhere and it's a beautiful day and you just feel great. There's always gonna be like, you know, for you, you have like some physical challenges and you're blind. You know, a lot of people, someone's best day is that just today. Yeah. And it's not maybe the best day they've ever had in their whole life, but it's the best day you're gonna get today. Yeah. Today. So I believe in those things, and I believe that's what makes records timeless is when there's something about them. Like go listen to any Led Zeppelin song. You know, people hated J, you know, like like Robert Plant and even Jimmy Page, you know, he leaves so many like clammy, sort of like finger caught on the fret things on Led Zeppelin songs, but they're freaking awesome. They really are. They really are. In today's world, you just clean all that up and you'd get rid of it all, and it'd be all homogenized. So it's a long way for me to just say I have a really hard time listening to like homogenized, pasteurized music. I just do. It bums me out because it doesn't allow me to feel the full max of feeling. And uh when people give me some Suno stuff and they go, hey, this is awesome, I realize who their audience is. It's you know, oh and I don't mean intelligent like somehow I'm smarter, but I've just listened to more music and I, you know, the odds are that I'm gonna know a little bit more about music than most people is pretty good because I've been doing this so long and listening to so much music. I have an opinion on it. And my opinion is that I will continue to make records with imperfections so that those records stand forward, moving forward. And for the people that want to make absolutely perfect records, that's for them to do. But I'm I don't do that. I can't do that because in in the end, when I close my eyes on any record that I'm making, I want it to make me feel the way that I am intending to feel on that, whatever the song is that I'm trying to deliver. And whether I'm producing, engineering, or mixing it, when people give me, there's certain things that I'll do when I'm mixing. Like often the thing that I do believe in, like when a chorus lands, sometimes I will nudge like the drums or a bass or whatever, so or even a vocal. So when it lands, it goes boom on the chorus, just on the downbeat. So you get that impact of the top of a chorus instead of it kind of going kick and then you know, it doesn't really land. But we did that back in the day by shaving tape. You know, we did drum editing by shaving off little bits of tape. It's not like it hasn't been done for you know basically decades. It's just some people did it and some people didn't do it. But I made plenty of records where the producer would say, Hey man, could you tighten that up a little bit? You know, and we'd shave off a little tape and it'll just go boom. You know what I'm saying? You know, so it's not like we haven't been doing that. It's just it's so much easier to do it now. But in general, when it comes to the the pitch and the time timing and the tuning and all those things that make music sound way more perfect, um, I stay I stay a little bit more in the game of like keep it real.

Joey Stuckey 1:30:12

Yeah, I I think that's a beautiful point. And and absolutely, I mean, the fact of the matter is that uh the struggle, the limitations imposed by the imperfections uh can be quite profound and and beautiful. And uh, you know, I think that um you know for me uh the uh as a human, the struggles I go through uh, you know, just to stay on two feet sometimes uh makes it when I'm making music more poignant, you know. Um and uh I I work hard to be knowledgeable, I work hard to be skilled, but I mean obviously, you know, I'm not perfect, never will be, and that and I'm not even gonna try. I mean, I always want to do my best, but that's not perfection. And uh I I don't I don't know that I believe in the idea of a perfect mix anyway. But uh I I think I think some of the the the the weird sort of things that happen in a mix and and and you know some of the imperfections and the limitations are actually what's beautiful. I mean, you think about the B3 organ, I think grinds and clunks and grits and yeah, and that's part of the charm. I mean, that's that's what we love. Yeah, we love all that stuff. When they when they tried to digitize it in the 90s, nobody wanted to hear that. I mean, you know, so so I I'm with you. I I totally agree. I mean, you want something that moves you and that you can feel you know, there's a presence behind, and and uh I think that's totally true. And you have certainly made uh some absolutely phenomenal records, and uh what a privilege to to get a chance to hear those and and and get a chance to call your friend and and to get a chance to talk with you today on the podcast. I I really appreciate it, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:50

Well, Joey, back at you too, you know, you got a heart of gold, you got, you know, you're you're one of those guys that, you know, when I met you, you're just like, you know, you're inquisitive and you're just trying to keep growing. And uh regardless of life's challenges, I uh, you know, and that's something that I do believe is that, you know. Because I am, you know, someone that uses God in, you know, I love that word, you know, and that God gives us certain challenges that become, you know, our doorways to growth. And and then, you know, you're someone that has taken that on, and uh, you're awesome. And and uh I appreciate giving the opportunity to just like shoot the shit and riff with you, buddy.

Joey Stuckey 1:32:38

It's always a pleasure, my friend. And listen, uh, I I appreciate you so much. And you know, you can go and hear all the amazing guests on the podcast that have something cool to say. They may not all be as cool as Ross, but you can't have it all. He's also a handsome man, so I'm told. But you can always check them out anywhere you get your podcast or at the handy URL, www.stuckonsound.com.