This is my ninth studio album (not counting short projects like demos, yeah, I'm that old), and the…read morefirst time I've recorded with Jason Shavey. I can not imagine a better experience.
Frankly, when I found out he'd worked with Heart and some other big names, I was a little worried. My experience is that a fair number of folks who work with big names never let you forget it, or forget how lucky you are to be in their august presences. Jason turned out to be the opposite of that. He seems to really get excited about what's in front of him and when you're in there working with him, you're basically the only person he's interested in. In the course of a two weeks project, we all felt incredibly comfortable and respected every minute.
The studio itself is gorgeous. You open this nondescript black door in an industrial building on Aurora and bam, beautiful woodwork, skylights, soothing lights, (even lava lamps if the mood calls for them), and gear for days and days. There's a fat baby grand sitting gorgeously in one room, and the drum room is bristling with so many amazing mics that Tommy, our drummer, damn near got his sleeping bag and moved in. I've sang lots of places and gotten lots of results, but I've never been happier than the tones Jason got for me with a great Neumann mic and some subtle use of various reverbs, in a comfortable little vocal booth with nice wood and glowy amber lights. The console is roughly the size of a landing strip, and the room it is in sounds phenomenal.
On Jason: We showed up unready. That's all there was to it. We still needed to write parts to four of our songs. Life happened as it will do and that was what it was. Because Jason was so conducive to the process, and made us so comfortable in so many ways, and expressed no dismay whatsoever, and because he made great suggestions in a really laid back way, we were able to create some of the best stuff we'd ever done right there in the studio in no more time than it would have taken us to track a prepared song anywhere else. Jason is, in fact, the most laid back, chilled out, patient guy in a studio anywhere, with a wonderful sense of humor that kicks in right about when a lot of other guys would start clenching their teeth and muttering at the console.
When it comes to skill, Jason is something of a virtuoso at the console. He's got so much gear it's nuts. You wonder if some of it isn't there for the love of having gear, until you see him use just about everything in the console room at one point, with as much mindless familiarity as a master chef grabbing from his selection of knives. He absolutely brings no ego to the process, either; I know some of you will know what I mean to say that it really means something to work with an engineer who is willing to let you hear the things you want to hear, even if he's not really married to your idea. And the guy is a straight up work monster; he gets in the saddle and works 10 hours and you leave for the night realizing he only took a few minutes for lunch the whole day and you kind of feel bad. He's fast as all get out, too. The product you wind up with is fantastic.
I'm over the moon about this experience. If you're looking for a place to make that heavy investment in your music career that is a full length studio album, and you're anxious because there a million studios and its hard to know which one is the right one, I will tell you that you can not possibly go wrong here.
