Tag: Sam Phillips Recording Studio

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Music Music Features

Sense of Place

CREDIT: Stacie Huckeba

While “The Memphis Sound” was refined and heralded from the 1950s-’70s, attracting artists from all over the world, it lost its drawing power as the last century drew to a close. But lately it’s been on the rise again, exhibit A being the mega-hit “Uptown Funk,” recorded at Royal Studios. I spoke with producer Matt Ross-Spang about recording singer/songwriter Emily Barker’s soulful new album, Sweet Kind of Blue, and why international artists fall in love with not just Sam Phillips Recording Service, but the city and its people.

Stacie Huckeba

Memphis Flyer: Is Memphis attracting more artists who want a certain sound?

Matt Ross-Spang: They’re coming now. I used to joke about this — it seems like they always come and do the one funky track. “We have this one funky song, so we’re gonna go to Memphis.” And that would end up being the coolest song on the record. But really, you should do the whole record here. And you gotta finish it here. You gotta do the whole thing here, or it’s not the same feel.

Emily was looking for a producer. She talked about cutting it in Nashville, but I really wanted her to see Memphis. So we met here and did some songwriting. Of course, I took her to Pho Binh and Gus’s Fried Chicken, and it was over after that. She wanted to do the whole thing here.

It’s funny how this room, but also this city, is like the extra member in the band. It really influences people, the sound and song choice, the way people play. So I’m a big proponent of trying to get everyone I can to come here because it’s such an integral part of what we do.

That sense of place, that sense of a particular room, is part of the magic of older recordings. Even when doing overdubs, you get settled in there, you don’t mail tracks from L.A.

Yeah, I agree. It’s everybody in a room together. Whether they do it at the same time, or in parts, everyone’s there as one unit. The stuff Sam Phillips did, or Willie Mitchell, or Chips Moman, you can tell it’s their record, but they don’t put their fingerprint on it so much that it changes the artist’s sound. They just help facilitate, but at the same time you know that was cut at Royal, or it was cut at American. I love that kind of thumbprint on the track.

So how was Emily’s record put together?

I like to do it all on the floor. I don’t like people to memorize or chart the song before we get there. So she let me put the band together, and I got some of my favorite Memphis guys. We just let, in this case, Steve Potts, Dave Smith, Rick Steff, and Dave Cousar come up with parts, maybe change a chord. And it’s always lovely when an artist is okay to let you get your hands all over their songs. She’d show us the song, 30 seconds later we’re playing it, and there’s no overthinking it. A lot of these were country songs, and they became grooves. She was really great with letting that happen.

There were no rehearsals. Everything was nailed in two or three takes. It’s all live vocals on Emily’s part. The only thing we punched would be a harmony or strings or something. The musicians have all played together many times, but it’s been a while, so it was like a really cool family reunion. And they just killed it. I still get goosebumps listening to “Sister Goodbye.” I think that was the first one we tracked, and it set the tone for the whole record. Emily played and sang live. We went till we got the take. And we all loved the rough mixes that [engineer] Jeff Powell did right after tracking. So I just added a little reverb now and then, and it was done. It was a matter of “don’t ruin it; we already had it.”

Emily Barker plays the Levitt Shell Sunday, October 15th at 7 p.m.

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Music Music Features

Lathe of Heaven

CREDIT: JD Reager

Audio engineer/producer Jeff Powell has been working in the music business in Memphis for over 27 years. He got his start answering phones and running errands at Ardent Studios, working his way up the ranks to staff engineer, and eventually becoming one of the studio’s go-to freelance producers. Along the way he got to work on classic recordings by folks like Stevie Ray Vaughn, the Afghan Whigs, B.B. King, Alex Chilton, and Big Star, among many others.

Powell’s career took a dramatic turn in 2008, however, when he convinced Larry Nix to teach him the delicate art of mastering music for vinyl using the studio’s lathe.

“I had been pestering him (Nix) to teach me for years because I had such a keen interest in vinyl records, the way they were made and the way they sounded, and he kept saying no. He just didn’t want to mess with it anymore,” Powell says.

“One day in the parking lot at Ardent while I was following him to his car talking to him about it and he was inches from a clean getaway, I told him if he taught me, I could cut records at night after he and Kevin [Nix’s son] were done for the day, and he would start seeing a check for renting me the lathe on the turntable when he came in to work in the mornings. He stopped, turned around smiling, and said, ‘OK, let’s do it.'”

And so Nix taught Powell to use the lathe, and Powell (with help from his trusty assistant engineer Lucas Peterson) began cutting vinyl for clients on the side of his usual recording and mixing gigs. Little by little, as consumer demand for vinyl started to rise, mastering music for vinyl started to become his primary business venture and passion.

“I really kind of stumbled into this passion for cutting vinyl records because I care so much how recorded music sounds to the listener,” says Powell. “If it’s done well, it sounds so good and makes me feel the music in a different way.” 

Earlier this year, Powell made the decision to strike out on his own, and, as fate would have it, lucked into an opportunity to purchase a lathe from fellow vinyl mastering engineer Chad Kassem.

“Chad runs a huge vinyl pressing operation in Salina, Kan. called Quality Record Pressings, and they do really good work,” Powell says.

“They had pressed some things for me in the past and had always done a high-quality job. So Chad and I had a nice chat on the phone, I wished him good luck, and that was that. The next day, I just dropped him a short email saying that it was nice to meet him and I looked forward to doing more business with him in the future. He wrote me back and said to let him know if I ever needed a lathe. I couldn’t believe it. You have to understand that there just are not any lathes for sale out there anymore. I mean none. They are extremely rare, and if you do find one, it is probably in really bad shape. Nobody is selling a working lathe these days. I called him back immediately, and he said he had one in a church studio that he owned, that he didn’t really want to sell, but was thinking about it. He told me to give him a number. I did, and he called me back the next day and said we had a deal if I could get him the money in 10 days. I scrambled and came up with the money and wired it to him on day 10 and became the proud owner of a Neumann VMS70 lathe.”

Powell and Peterson quickly rented a 15-passenger van and headed for Kansas to retrieve the lathe — which had to be meticulously taken apart and packed for the journey to Memphis — with the help of expert lathe technician Chris Muth. Around that same time, he struck a deal with Sam Phillips Recording Services Inc. to install the lathe in the room that was once the control room to the B studio.

“It is a very fragile machine with lots of parts,” Powell says. “It took four days in all to get it back to Memphis. It was a great feeling coming across the bridge into Memphis with the lathe.”

Just last week, Powell, Peterson, and Muth finally installed the new lathe at Phillips ­— which, to say the least, was no small task.

“Lucas oversaw the building of the mastering suite and did a remarkable job,” Powell says.  “Again, I hired Chris, the best lathe expert there is, to come to Memphis to help put it all back together and go through every single electronic component and ball bearing on the entire machine. It wasn’t cheap, but it was worth every penny.”
And now Powell and Peterson are back doing what they do best, cutting records to vinyl for a host of eager clients and mastering a once-forgotten craft.
“The lacquers I have cut on it so far sound incredible,” Powell says. “I know a lot about cutting vinyl records, but it is a mountain to climb to know everything about the art of it, the science of it, and how to do it well and be one of the best at it. I am constantly learning as I continue to do this and striving to become one of the best.”

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News News Blog

“Rockwalk” Way-finders Approved for Memphis Music

An example of a Rockwalk sign

  • An example of a Rockwalk sign

The Downtown Memphis Commission’s Design Review Board has approved signage to be placed near historic Memphis music sites, making up an overarching way-finder project called “Rockwalk.” The 12 signs will help tourists and Memphis music aficionados find their way through downtown’s Edge neighborhood.

“I got the idea seeing people stumbling up Monroe [Avenue] looking for Sun Studio,” said Mike Todd, president of Premiere Contractors, who submitted the proposal. “It’s a lot safer to bring them down Monroe and keep them in the neighborhood.”

The sidewalk signage features historic facts and bits of trivia, along with locations like Sun Studio, Hattiloo Theatre, Sam Phillips Recording Studio, and more.

“You’re walking in the rock ‘n’ roll mecca,” Todd said.

“[Signs facing west] also include information about music and other related attractions in the Edge that hopefully will urge tourists to linger in the area and experience its richness on a deeper level,” the proposal reads. “On their return walk, the east-facing side of the signs — ‘Facts on the Edge’ — address some of the history of the buildings, businesses, and their stories of rebirth.”

The Downtown Memphis Commission’s staff report originally recommended rejection of the signs because of the “atypical nature of the request,” as the signs would be privately-owned but on public property. Other concerns included the lack of precedent that had not been set yet by the DMC and the issue of off-premise advertising since some of the signs point towards for-profit businesses.

Brett Roler, the director of planning at the Downtown Memphis Commission, said the board did not agree with the staff report’s “conservative” recommendation.

“This was a case where the approach was a little more conservative — to grant approval for the four signs that have already been constructed and then have the applicant work with the neighborhood to make sure the signs really reflect the consensus about the vision for this way-finding system,” Roler said.

The project itself has been temporarily approved for a year, but the project can be extended.

“The board felt like it was such a good idea that all 12 signs would be appropriate,” Roler added. “The board also made a point that if you only approve four signs, that’s not really enough to serve a complete way-finding function. You need more to direct people all the way through the district.”

Premiere Contractors will maintain the signs, according to the proposal submitted to the board. Now that approval has been granted, Premiere Contractors stated plans to go through fundraising tool ioby to crowdsource funding for the signs, which cost $1,250 per sign to purchase and install. Todd designed the overall signs and superintendent of the contracting company Mike Davis constructed the frames, while Justin Baker of Sign Delivery designed the graphics.

“We hope to have them up in 90 days,” Todd said.