Buck Brown Interview
Q: You grew up in the ’60s. Can you talk about your musical history?
A: What an incredible era it was! I had a portable transistor radio with a single earpiece, and WABC in NY was the premier music station. I listened as much as was possible in between school, church choir, piano lessons/practicing and sports. I started in 3rd grade with popular piano…hated it, well, hated the practicing part. But I got pretty good at the “swing bass” left hand approach and with reading. The church choir I was in was really good…so good that we got paid and were picked to be the choir that sang for the opening of Lincoln Center with Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic. Pretty cool! We also sang in the opera Carmen at NY City Center. So I was getting all this “classical” training while at the same time knowing my heart was with “pop” music.
It was inevitable that sooner or later I would get in a band: The Beasts! I got a Hohner Pianet N and we did some original music as well as covers. I also started playing guitar on a $5 nylon string trying hard to figure out Travis picking and never getting there at the time. We spent a lot of time after school recording on a Sony Tapecorder…which somehow magically did sound-on-sound. We’d transfer to another machine and bring it back to the Sony to make more overdubs. Crazy!
I worked in the summers so I could afford a Martin D12-35, and played keys in a rock band and 12-string in a jug band. These bands clearly got in the way of school work during the year so my folks sent me to boarding school in Massachusetts where I promptly got in a band! Played the Hohner Pianet and a Vox Jaguar and still worked on folk guitar songs. Ultimately got to college where I finally figured out Travis picking and got in a folk trio. And during that time, stayed connected with my high school buddies and ended up in a band that had a short contract with Capitol Records/Belwin Mills publishing…produced by Ralph Murphy (current VP at ASCAP).
After college, I formed an acoustic quartet: three acoustic guitars and a percussionist and we played a lot around DC and Virginia for a couple years. Ultimately, I ended up back in New Jersey and started studying jazz guitar and playing fretless bass in theater productions in Jersey and off-broadway while at the same time teaching music in a private school, then in a community college.
In ’83 I got involved with the National Guitar Summer Workshop and worked that for ten years while teaching and playing bass and guitar as a sideman during the rest of the year. In ’91 I got hired as a composer at SoundWave Post in DC and did that for a number of years writing for FoxTV, PBS, Political clients, etc., also working as a sideman for a number of local acts and finally got the gig with Nils Lofgren playing keys, guitars, mandolin and touring a lot. Got married, had kids, moved to Nashville and kept playing and teaching. So here I am now doing the solo performing songwriter thing.
Q: How did you approach your two albums Cruise Control and The Slow Lane differently?
A: I really didn’t approach them differently at all. I had and still have a large catalogue of songs that had never been “released” in any form. A friend of mine turned me on to a great website for manufacturing cds and I just pulled the trigger on getting these made. The Slow Lane was first and Cruise Control was second…simply because I wanted those 28 songs to be heard. So I finalized the mixing and mastering and then thought through the song order for each one and there you have it.
Q: You did all recording, mixing and mastering on the albums? It sounds exceptional. Can you give any pointers about how to get a pro sound in a home studio?
A: It is so nice to hear that the records sound good…that of course is my biggest concern. I know the writing and playing is solid, so the recording and mixing process was the hardest to learn. It takes a long time of study, trial and error and good ears! I have been studying this art form since the ‘60s!
I don’t have the greatest gear and the gear is in a “bonus room” in my house. Some auralex on the walls and lots of book cases, etc. in the room. I think the way to get a decent sound is to first have a good front end going into the computer. I have a RME Fireface 800 into my PC (not a mac guy! And that was strictly a financial decision). Then I think one needs a good separate preamp. I have a couple but use the UA 2-610 a lot.
A couple of good mics, small diaphragm and large diaphragm condensers and some decent monitors and you probably can sound pretty good. I use Sonar as my DAW: easy, and powerful as all get out. For FX I use Slate, Waves, SoundToys, Brainworx and a few more. Mastering with Wavelab. Of course all this is worthless if you a.) don’t have good material and b.) can’t record it and/or play it really well! So I would say first, make sure the initial recordings are really clean, noise free, at the correct volume (like -18 or so, doesn’t have to pin the meters any longer!). There is a lot of debate about loudness in the final product. I try to stay around -12 in Wavelab and I always record at 24 bit and usually 44.1. and I make sure that I leave a lot of headroom on the master fader so that when I get to Wavelab, I’ve got room to play with.
Q: Can you talk about your writing process?
A: Here in Nashville, if you don’t co-write, you get no action. Really. The first question you are asked here when you say you are a songwriter is, “who do you co-write with?” I don’t co-write with anybody at this point. I have tried it and it seemed artificial to me. Everybody has their way of doing things and I make no judgments about that. I only know the way I do it. Which is this: I get some sort of idea, either musical or lyrical…and I don’t really know where those ideas come from. Sometimes from something I’ve read or heard, sometimes just out of the blue. I suppose one could say the ideas can come from something/someone greater than I. Not sure about that. But I do know that when an idea grabs me, I get taken over and the writing happens pretty quickly. And yes, there is the “crafting” part after the basic writing is done. And then playing the damn thing over and over until it starts to feel like it is good. I don’t sit down every day to write…but I do play a lot and playing often leads to some new ideas. I also write down everything I hear that sounds lyrically evocative in any way. And I do craft actual guitar “parts” that move the story forward. And I write stories; ostensibly about someone else but usually really about me. You write what you know…what experiences you’ve had or ones you wish you had. And I’m not that interested in blathering on about my personal relationships. Those things creep in sometimes but the perspective is usually away from me and more universal I hope. I do like to fool around with lots of different grooves. Part of my job as a songwriter is to explore different areas: Irish tune, blues tune, bluegrass tune, reggae tune, jazz tune, etc. I have one of almost everything!
Q: You grew up in the ’60s. Can you talk about your musical history?
A: What an incredible era it was! I had a portable transistor radio with a single earpiece, and WABC in NY was the premier music station. I listened as much as was possible in between school, church choir, piano lessons/practicing and sports. I started in 3rd grade with popular piano…hated it, well, hated the practicing part. But I got pretty good at the “swing bass” left hand approach and with reading. The church choir I was in was really good…so good that we got paid and were picked to be the choir that sang for the opening of Lincoln Center with Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic. Pretty cool! We also sang in the opera Carmen at NY City Center. So I was getting all this “classical” training while at the same time knowing my heart was with “pop” music.
It was inevitable that sooner or later I would get in a band: The Beasts! I got a Hohner Pianet N and we did some original music as well as covers. I also started playing guitar on a $5 nylon string trying hard to figure out Travis picking and never getting there at the time. We spent a lot of time after school recording on a Sony Tapecorder…which somehow magically did sound-on-sound. We’d transfer to another machine and bring it back to the Sony to make more overdubs. Crazy!
I worked in the summers so I could afford a Martin D12-35, and played keys in a rock band and 12-string in a jug band. These bands clearly got in the way of school work during the year so my folks sent me to boarding school in Massachusetts where I promptly got in a band! Played the Hohner Pianet and a Vox Jaguar and still worked on folk guitar songs. Ultimately got to college where I finally figured out Travis picking and got in a folk trio. And during that time, stayed connected with my high school buddies and ended up in a band that had a short contract with Capitol Records/Belwin Mills publishing…produced by Ralph Murphy (current VP at ASCAP).
After college, I formed an acoustic quartet: three acoustic guitars and a percussionist and we played a lot around DC and Virginia for a couple years. Ultimately, I ended up back in New Jersey and started studying jazz guitar and playing fretless bass in theater productions in Jersey and off-broadway while at the same time teaching music in a private school, then in a community college.
In ’83 I got involved with the National Guitar Summer Workshop and worked that for ten years while teaching and playing bass and guitar as a sideman during the rest of the year. In ’91 I got hired as a composer at SoundWave Post in DC and did that for a number of years writing for FoxTV, PBS, Political clients, etc., also working as a sideman for a number of local acts and finally got the gig with Nils Lofgren playing keys, guitars, mandolin and touring a lot. Got married, had kids, moved to Nashville and kept playing and teaching. So here I am now doing the solo performing songwriter thing.
Q: How did you approach your two albums Cruise Control and The Slow Lane differently?
A: I really didn’t approach them differently at all. I had and still have a large catalogue of songs that had never been “released” in any form. A friend of mine turned me on to a great website for manufacturing cds and I just pulled the trigger on getting these made. The Slow Lane was first and Cruise Control was second…simply because I wanted those 28 songs to be heard. So I finalized the mixing and mastering and then thought through the song order for each one and there you have it.
Q: You did all recording, mixing and mastering on the albums? It sounds exceptional. Can you give any pointers about how to get a pro sound in a home studio?
A: It is so nice to hear that the records sound good…that of course is my biggest concern. I know the writing and playing is solid, so the recording and mixing process was the hardest to learn. It takes a long time of study, trial and error and good ears! I have been studying this art form since the ‘60s!
I don’t have the greatest gear and the gear is in a “bonus room” in my house. Some auralex on the walls and lots of book cases, etc. in the room. I think the way to get a decent sound is to first have a good front end going into the computer. I have a RME Fireface 800 into my PC (not a mac guy! And that was strictly a financial decision). Then I think one needs a good separate preamp. I have a couple but use the UA 2-610 a lot.
A couple of good mics, small diaphragm and large diaphragm condensers and some decent monitors and you probably can sound pretty good. I use Sonar as my DAW: easy, and powerful as all get out. For FX I use Slate, Waves, SoundToys, Brainworx and a few more. Mastering with Wavelab. Of course all this is worthless if you a.) don’t have good material and b.) can’t record it and/or play it really well! So I would say first, make sure the initial recordings are really clean, noise free, at the correct volume (like -18 or so, doesn’t have to pin the meters any longer!). There is a lot of debate about loudness in the final product. I try to stay around -12 in Wavelab and I always record at 24 bit and usually 44.1. and I make sure that I leave a lot of headroom on the master fader so that when I get to Wavelab, I’ve got room to play with.
Q: Can you talk about your writing process?
A: Here in Nashville, if you don’t co-write, you get no action. Really. The first question you are asked here when you say you are a songwriter is, “who do you co-write with?” I don’t co-write with anybody at this point. I have tried it and it seemed artificial to me. Everybody has their way of doing things and I make no judgments about that. I only know the way I do it. Which is this: I get some sort of idea, either musical or lyrical…and I don’t really know where those ideas come from. Sometimes from something I’ve read or heard, sometimes just out of the blue. I suppose one could say the ideas can come from something/someone greater than I. Not sure about that. But I do know that when an idea grabs me, I get taken over and the writing happens pretty quickly. And yes, there is the “crafting” part after the basic writing is done. And then playing the damn thing over and over until it starts to feel like it is good. I don’t sit down every day to write…but I do play a lot and playing often leads to some new ideas. I also write down everything I hear that sounds lyrically evocative in any way. And I do craft actual guitar “parts” that move the story forward. And I write stories; ostensibly about someone else but usually really about me. You write what you know…what experiences you’ve had or ones you wish you had. And I’m not that interested in blathering on about my personal relationships. Those things creep in sometimes but the perspective is usually away from me and more universal I hope. I do like to fool around with lots of different grooves. Part of my job as a songwriter is to explore different areas: Irish tune, blues tune, bluegrass tune, reggae tune, jazz tune, etc. I have one of almost everything!
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Q: Both albums deal with driving in some way in the title. What was the inspiration for that?
A: Funny how that happened. I recently worked as a delivery driver for a wine and spirits company…hey, ya gotta make a living somehow to pay that child support and anybody over about 45 knows that it is damn near impossible to get a job at all! Anyway, once a week I drove from Nashville to Memphis which is a three-hour or so trip each way. The Slow Lane came during one of those trips as did Cruise Control…it appeared to me that not many people used cruise control at all…I can’t live without it! So the titles of the records just seemed to resonate that way and I figured the car analogy could be a sort of through-line that might be compelling. Q: What changes have you seen in the musical landscape over the last forty years that a younger person might not be aware of? A: I’m not sure that younger folks are un-aware of any changes simply because we who lived through them are always talking about how it used to be! And how much “easier” it is today. The biggest change has been in the technology area and I’d guess that younger folks probably don’t have much awareness of working with tape and only having limited tracks for example. It also seems to me that a lot of the younger guys I meet, don’t know the history of rock/popular music. Maybe it is because they don’t have the time or desire to study/listen to Elvis, Buddy Holly, Miles Davis, Ellington, Coltrane, the Beatles, etc. And it also seems to me that the scope of what they listen to is pretty narrow. But then again, it may be just who I’m meeting and not so universal. On the other hand, I recently got a reply to one of my posts that said, “it’s too bad your style is out dated and boring would be better if you played music that was not so lame just saying get with the times.” Oh well. The landscape of today is much bigger and wider than it was decades ago. Mostly because of the Internet, social media and the continually changing technology. But music is music and however it is made and whatever it sounds like, it will always move somebody in some positive way. |
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