Friday, July 17, 2020

Give credit where credit is due

This is circa 1992. I'm in this recording studio in Franklin, just outside Nashville on invitation from a music producer friend who said - quote "Hey Jim, come here for a week just to be a fly on the wall to see how an album is produced." So Adri and I and the kids pitched a tent on Billy Simon's property for a week (google him...).  I was a studio rat, absorbing the technical and creative aspects of this project, helping out here and there.  ("Hey dude - your mandolin is out of tune!" - Shit like that).

While Adri and Angela pitched our recently released tape "Daughter of Denim and Lace" to various A&R agents and distribution companies, I learned the ropes of a professional recording studio. Early in the setup, Don ran into a number of software errors in his DAW that he had never seen before. They spent hours troubleshooting, with no results. I'm thinking "These guys are the experts, I won't intervene..."   Don says, "Hey Jim. you're a computer guy, can you help out?"

We played around for a couple hours, with no resolve. I got the support line contact info from Don for his software/hardware DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) plug-in, and in about an hour of real-time troubleshooting figured out that the plastic shoulder of the physical DAW module was stopping it from being plugged in all the way. So not all contacts were making.. well - contact.

This was a vanity album project for a christian pentacostal dude, who after me fixing his technical glitch and saving him literally multiple hundreds of dollars, turned his face to the sky, started speaking in tongues thanking god for saving his ass.  Not a word of thanks to me, no mention in his liner notes for my help, though he went out of his way to thank Jesus.  The delusion is astounding.

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