Grab Your Gun…

Knocked another big item off my checklist of things to do this week – finished mixing the new Ol’ Bill Dollar album, “Grab Your Gun and Bring in the Cat.”  This is the third full length album from Bill.  Here’s a little taste of the new songs.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I was inspired to get back to work on the album after going to a discussion hosted at Drexel University with engineer Kevin Killen (U2, Peter Gabriel, Paula Cole, Elvis Costello).  It was a great presentation.  He brought along his computer with a Pro Tools HD rig, and opened up actual sessions to demonstrate what he’s doing.  His approach is so simple but so effective – get good sounds on the way in and you won’t need to be so heavy handed with plugin processing at mix time.  While he tracks through a nice console, he mixes entirely in the box, which is part of the reason the discussion was so enjoyable.  He’s an extremely successful engineer who’s embraced digital audio instead of being stuck on tape for the cool factor, or whatever else causes people to love tape so much.  I’ll take the Massey Tape Head over a tape machine any day.