Behind the Boards: Nashville

By Jake Brown

If you're a County Music fan, you've seen glimpses perhaps of it on TV shows like Nashville and movies like Walk the Line, but never before have fans of music's biggest-selling genre been invited inside the heart of the creative nerve centers where their favorite # 1 hits are brought to life, the recording studio! Inside the pages of BEHIND THE BOARDS: NASHVILLE, Country music fans for the first time ever are given a front-row seat inside Music Row's most famous recording studios on tours narrated by the town's BIGGEST record producers. Volume 1 includes Dann Huff, Tony Brown, Michael Knox, Clint Black, James Stroud, Ross Copperman, Byron Gallimore, Josh Leo, Norbert Putnam, Jody Stevens, Frank Liddell, Songland star Shane McAnally, Jim Ed Norman, Dave Cobb, Justin Neibank, Zach Crowell, Chris Destefano, Josh Osborne, Luke Laird, Jimmy Robbins, Nathan Chapman, Paul Worley, Jeff Stevens, Bobby Braddock, Don Cook, Frank Rogers, Joey Moi, Ray Baker, Ray Riddle, Jimmy Robbins, and more.

and Jesse Frasure!

Collectively, the book features over 300 # 1 hits by Country's biggest stars, including Taylor Swift, Luke Bryan, Lady Antebellum, Chris Stapleton, Carrie Underwood, George Strait, Jason Aldean, Miranda Lambert, Clint Black, Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville", Florida Georgia Line, Reba McEntire, Lionel Richie's Tuskegee album, A Star is Born Soundtrack starring Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper, Brad Paisley, Sam Hunt, Blake Shelton, Trisha Yearwood, Kacey Musgraves, Brooks & Dunn, Keith Urban, Alabama, Jason Isbell, George Jones, Jewel, Rascal Flatts, Tim McGraw, Toby Keith, Willie Nelson, Lori McKenna, Midland, Faith Hill, Steve Earle, Hank Williams Jr., Lyle Lovett, Thomas Rhett, Dierks Bentley, Vince Gill, Brett Eldredge, Martina McBride, The Dixie Chicks, The Band Perry, Shooter Jennings, Jake Owen, Big & Rich, Jon Pardi, the Nitty Gritty Band, Scotty McCreery, Darius Rucker, Mo Bandy, The Eagles, and the great Merle Haggard among others.

 

Critical Praise:

 

Country Music Television – "A new Jake Brown book, Behind the Boards: Nashville…goes deep."

 

SoundslikeNashville.com – "A new book by music biographer Jake Brown takes fans into the recording studio to tell rarely-heard stories of their favorite hits. Collecting thoughts from 30 of Nashville's top producers like Dann Huff, Shane McAnally, Michael Knox, Joey Moi, Buddy Cannon…there's much more to discover in BEHIND THE BOARDS: NASHVILLE."

 

Mix Magazine – "A skilled writer and music biographer, Brown brings the reader into the studio by seamlessly oscillating between narration and interview, weaving together the history and context surrounding these classic recordings with the voices of those who were there, behind the boards. Behind The Boards is a fascinating collection of tales of the technical and human elements behind some of the greatest music of all time."

 

Music Row Magazine – "A new book Behind the Boards: Nashville by biographer Jake Brown pulls back the curtain on the Music Row hit-making machine and the producers who create the music. The book explores the in-depth relationships between artists and producers while revealing the compelling stories behind some of the biggest hits to come out of Music City."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jake Brown
• Release date: Jun 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781733025140

Jake Brown

Award-winning Music biographer Jake Brown has written 50 published books since 2001, featuring many authorized collaborations with some of rock’s biggest artists, including 2013 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees Heart (with Ann and Nancy Wilson), living guitar legend Joe Satriani, blues legend Willie Dixon (authorized w/the Estate), country music legends Merle Haggard/Freddy Powers, heavy metal pioneers Motorhead (with Lemmy Kilmister), country rap superstar Big Smo, late hip hop icon Tupac Shakur (with the estate), celebrated Rock drummer Kenny Aronoff, legendary R&B/Hip Hop Producer Teddy Riley, late Funk pioneer Rick James, and Mopreme Shakur.  Brown is also author of a variety of anthology series including the superstar country music anthology ‘Nashville Songwriter’ Vol I and II; the all-star rock producers anthology ‘Behind the Boards’ Vol. 1 and 2; all-star Rock & Roll drummers’ anthology ‘Beyond the Beats,’ and the ‘Hip Hop Hits’ producers’ series among many others. Brown recently released the audio books BEYODN THE BEATS and DOCTORS OF RHYTHM under a long-term deal with Blackstone Audio, and has also appeared as the featured biographer of record on Fuse TV’s Live Through This series and Bloomberg TV’s Game Changers series, in all 6-parts of the BET “The Death Row Chronicles” docu-series.  His books have received national press in CBS News, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone Magazine, USA Today, MTV.com, Guitar World Magazine, Billboard, Parade Magazine, Country Weekly, Fox News, Yahoo News, etc and writes for regularly for Tape Op Magazine (including the 2015 cover story feature with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan). In 2012, Brown won the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards in the category of Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.  Visit him online at www.jakebrownbooks.com

Book preview

Introduction:

The record producer has long been among the unsung heroes of the record-making process. In fact, there’s only a handful of Producer awards vs. those for artists, for instance, and perhaps as appropriate as it’s the artist or band’s name in lights. Still, however small the producer’s name may be on the back of a record compared to the much larger name of the artist they’re recording, they in fact play a far grander role in launching those artists into stardom. Most stars themselves will tell you their name would never be in lights without their producers working behind the scenes and boards in the studio helping create the music that makes them shine at # 1 in the first place. A responsibility that spans all way from often finding the hits in the first place, bringing those hits to life in the studio musically before the artist has often even stepped inside the vocal booth to record, and many times, sonically supervising the recording, production, and mixing of those hits all the way to the point they’re handed into the label and take off up the charts. A record producer indeed wears many hats and should appropriately be crowned an inextricably important part of the record-making process, period.

Take the Beatles and George Martin as one example in Rock & Roll, or Glyn Johns and Led Zeppelin, or Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones in Pop, or Mutt Lange and Def Leppard in Metal, and you’ll find the story is much the same in Country Music: Tim McGraw and Byron Gallimore; Keith Urban and Justin Niebank or Dann Huff, who has had similar run with Rascal Flatts; Kenny Chesney and Buddy Cannon; Luke Bryan and the father-son Jeff/Jody Stevens team; Chris Stapleton and Dave Cobb; Toby Keith and James Stroud; Jason Aldean and Michael Knox; Midland and Shane McAnally/Josh Osborne; Brad Paisley and Frank Rogers; Florida Georgia Line and Joey Moi; Taylor Swift and Nathan Chapman through the majority of her Country era; Brooks & Dunn and Don Cook; Miranda Lambert and Frank Liddell; Thomas Rhett and Jesse Frasure; Sam Hunt and Zach Crowell; Dierks Bentley and Ross Copperman; and George Strait and Tony Brown among countless others.

For the first time and book of its kind, BEHIND THE BOARDS: NASHVILLE takes country music fans across multiple generations over the past 40 years and 300+ # 1 hits that have made up the proverbial Soundtracks of their lives up close and personal with the record producers who co-created them in the studio. Along with all of the aforementioned legends, listeners can stream along with their favorite hits and over 30 producers in total, additionally including legendary country star/producer Clint Black; Lady Antebellum/Dixie Chicks/Martina McBride producer Paul Worley; Hank Williams Jr. producer Jim Ed Norman; Carrie Underwood producer Chris DeStefano; Alabama/Nitty Gritty Band producer Josh Leo; Blake Shelton producer Bobby Braddock; Merle Haggard/Moe Bandy producer Ray Baker; Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville producer Norbert Putnam; Big Smo producers Ray ‘Orig the DJ’ Riddle and Jon Conner; Country music’s biggest mixer Justin Niebank; Jimmy Robbins; and Kacey Musgraves producer Luke Laird among others.

Collectively, the book features over 300 # 1 hits by Country’s biggest stars, including Taylor Swift, Luke Bryan, Lady Antebellum, Chris Stapleton, Carrie Underwood, George Strait, Jason Aldean, Miranda Lambert, Clint Black, Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, Florida Georgia Line, Reba McEntire, Lionel Richie’s Tuskegee album, A Star is Born Soundtrack starring Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper, Brad Paisley, Sam Hunt, Blake Shelton, Trisha Yearwood, Kacey Musgraves, Brooks & Dunn, Keith Urban, Alabama, Jason Isbell, George Jones, Jewel, Rascal Flatts, Tim McGraw, Toby Keith, Willie Nelson, Lori McKenna, Midland, Faith Hill, Steve Earle, Hank Williams Jr., Lyle Lovett, Thomas Rhett, Dierks Bentley, Vince Gill, Brett Eldredge, Martina McBride, The Dixie Chicks, The Band Perry, Shooter Jennings, Jake Owen, Big & Rich, Jon Pardi, the Nitty Gritty Band, Scotty McCreery, Darius Rucker, Mo Bandy, The Eagles, and the great Merle Haggard among others. So pull up your Spotify, iTunes, Youtube, Smartphone, iHeartRadio, XM or wherever your favorite place to listen to music begins, turn the volume up, and let’s get started…

Music Titan! – Melodic Rock.com

CH1

Chapter 1: Dann Huff

TOP GUN

Highway to the Danger Zone has a famous guitar solo that lifts the song at precisely the right moment when Tom Cruise’s F-14 Tomcat takes flight from the air craft carrier in TOP GUN. The same soaring moment arrives in Whitesnake’s signature # 1 hit Here I Go Again as David Coverdale hits the high range of the song’s famed chorus, cheered on by the unmistakable six-string work of the legendary Dann Huff, who amazingly nailed the solo in ONE take! Years before he ever imagined he’d become one of Country Music’s most celebrated record producers, he was already living his dream as a teenager working in the recording studio as a session guitarist:

From an early age, 13 years old, I went to my first recording session, and that’s what I wanted to do. The scope of my world was probably pretty small, but to me it was all-encompassing. I didn’t want to be in a band, I wanted to be a studio guitar player: that was IT! My dad, conductor/arranger Ronn Huff, used to take me along for some sessions, and being around all these session guitar players, I knew these guys were obviously the crème of the crop, just because they could come on not exposed to what was getting ready to happen and come in with a blank slate and within a couple of hours, make some kind of music. That kind of just wetted my appetite, I thought that was cool, probably a lot like other kids my age who saw their first rock concert and said I want to do that, I want to be on stage with people cheering me. That didn’t even occur to me, it’s weird, but it drove me through my teens doing sessions. I would get done with school and head straight to the studio and start recording, and I had a lot of luck because of my proximity. I lived in Nashville and even when I was in high school, I met some students who were attending Belmont and they had access to the recording studio, and heard me play and the currency was all free because nobody was getting paid for any of this stuff but it was experience.

At an age when most teenagers were bargaining with their parents over date and party curfews, Dann had worked out a sweet pact with his reflective of the prodigal talent and passion they saw and heard pouring out of their son where the deal they made with me was, as long as I kept my grades at a decent level, and I didn’t have any bad habits in high school, my parents were really open to letting me stay up all night recording 12 to 6 AM at a studio with a bunch of college kids. So that’s kind of where I cut my teeth. Even though he came from a long line of accomplished musical lineage, Dann never felt music was forced on him growing up by his family as an expectation of any sort, even though

both my parents were musicians, my mother was an accomplished classical pianist, and my father was a pianist, but more notably an orchestrator. He did records from about the mid-70s to about 2005, everything from contemporary Christian music, which he started in, and worked with Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith – everybody in that genre who was of note – and branched out and worked with Shania Twain all the way to Megadeth when I was producing them. He kind of got around! (laughs) He was a wonderful musician and I was raised in that environment. I started taking piano lessons when I was 10, 11 years old, but my parents weren’t heavy-handed about it, in fact, they didn’t push music on me at all. It was just the opposite, it was everything but music, and music was the way of negotiating the world, that was his job and was always part of our life, but they did what they could to try and balance it out the other way.

After tinkering around with piano for a bit – a humorous default gateway for many musicians who go on to excel in other instruments – Dann went through just such a transition when he wrapped his fingers around a fret board for the first time, sharing his fond memory that I got a Wurlitzer acoustic guitar – which I’ve never seen since then – around 9 or 10, and my first electric when I was 13 years old. It was an Aria, which was a Japanese copy of a Les Paul. After a solid year locked away in his bedroom learning everything he could lay his ears on, Dann remembered knowing what he wanted to do with the rest of his life

when I was 14, that’s when I really hunkered down and knew I wanted to be a guitar player was 74, and whatever records were lying around the house influenced me. I remember Bill Wither’s Live at Carnigie Hall, so the guitar player Melton Watson was a humongous influence on me, and Asia and Steely Dan came out then, and that led me of course to Larry Carlton. Al Di Meola had just put out his first couple big solo records, so it was probably R&B and slight fusion that was the most interesting thing to me. I liked rock music, and I remember when Joe Walsh’s So What? album came out, that was a big record for me. I would say that was probably my first foray into guitar, and that was a heavy load because if you just take that guy by himself, harmonically-speaking, he was pushing into some new areas kind of with a rock touch but from a Jazz harmonic standpoint. For a 14, 15 year old kid, that’s a lot to bite into, it’s not "Johnny B. Goode."

The first time Dann plugged his guitar into a professional band setting came in 1982 when he took on lead axe duties with brother David Huff on drums, rounded out by Billy Smiley and Mark Gersmehi on keyboards, Gary Lunn on bass, and Steve Green on lead vocals in Whiteheart. Instantly a hit within the Christian Rock arena, the band soon found themselves selling out venues that size based on the strength of their first two studio albums White Heart and Vital Signs, both co-produced by Huff and Bill Smiley. Marking some of his first official studio credits, Dann remembered the group’s formation as a natural extension of his first road gig as a touring guitarist, which he recalled landing after

a friend of my dad’s who was a large voice in Christian music, Bill Gaither Trio, who were very popular, and were touring arenas back then in the 80s, needed a guitar player, and it wasn’t my style of music, but it was a paycheck and some independence. I moved up to Indiana, and consequently through that, there were two other musicians in that back-up band and we just started a little band in Indiana. They wanted to write and all I wanted to do was play, and the subject matter they were writing was kind of religious in nature because that’s who they were, and we just started recording them. We found a little studio that would let us come in and work after hours, and out of that, the band White Heart was born, we got signed and started making records. The band stayed around forever in a bunch of different incarnations, they were all really good, but I got out within 2 years.

Knowing instantly he preferred the comfort of a recording studio to that of a bunk on a tour bus and the constant grind of the road, Huff agrees that there was no contest for me between being on the road and being in the studio! By this point, I was starting to play sessions in Nashville, and a snap opportunity then presented itself to me to move to the West Coast and I said goodbye unceremoniously to the band, and my wife were 21 and 22, packed our car and moved West. A rocker at heart, Dann moved to Los Angeles just at the right time in 1985 when a new generation of rock guitar was wailing its way across a stylistic spectrum from Hard Rock to Pop, Dance, and every sub-genre on the Top 40 in-between, offering Huff a unique space to plug in and play without being typecast to any one of those styles:

Being a session guitarist was my dream, and there was always a bit of terror involved at first, but I was quick on my feet, and so the whole thing was like college, the whole thing. That was the end game for me though, I wanted to be the guitar player who made a living playing on everybody’s records, and that was happening, but in retrospect, it was like just a master’s class of producers. It was like I had a scholarship going to a really good college, I got to sit there, front row with some of the greatest producers, and some really bad ones too, which were invaluable in learning the craft. You learn what to do but you also learn what is ineffective.

It was happening in real time, and it was happening at a speed that I didn’t anticipate, and I don’t think anybody else anticipates either. It just kind of was what it was, it wasn’t a normal trajectory, but I was prepared, and all my homework had been done. It was an exceptional circumstance, so the opportunity presented itself and I knew what to do, even though I was such a kid. You have to have a series of really lucky moments where you get to sit in the room, and all of those moments happened and I treated them with respect and everything worked. So that decade was just like Disneyland, meeting people from every walk of musical life, in the Pop world, and Rock world and the R&B world, and there was movies and television, I was just a good enough leader to not be totally disqualified.

Suddenly finding himself in the room with the biggest stars of today and tomorrow circa the roaring 1980s, one of Huff’s first big-break moments on pop radio came when he played the guitar solo on Chaka Kahn’s chart-topping rendition of Prince’s "I Feel For You, Whitney Houston’s first # 1 hit, How Will I Know, which took radio by storm in 1985, followed by his now-legendary solo in the Top Gun theme Highway to the Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins in 1986 and Bob Seger’s now legendary Chevrolet Like a Rock commercial and album. He heard himself on the silver screen with scoring work on Little Shop of Horrors and Labyrinth, and the same year, helped Wang Chung take # 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart with his 6-string work on the party hit of 1986 Everybody Have Fun Tonight. In 1987, Huff would return to # 1 on Belinda Carlisle’s break-out solo smash Heaven is a Place on Earth as well as teen sensation Tiffany’s biggest hit, I Think We’re Alone Now, Whitney Houston’s So Emotional, Paula Abdul’s multi-platinum debut album Forever Your Girl on hits like Straight Up, Cold Hearted Snake, Opposites Attract and the title track. Madonna’s monster # 1 hit Like a Prayer, and perhaps most ironically on Whitesnake’s radio single version of Here I Go Again." In perhaps his biggest acknowledgement that he was on the right career path, found himself sitting face-to-face in the studio with the biggest music star on the planet, Michael Jackson in 1987, decorating his guitar solos all over the multi-platinum BAD album:

Everybody’s obviously as intrigued about that as I was, I got a call on an answering machine, which was still pretty new technology in the 80s, somebody from Quincey Jones’ office called, and the first time you hear those words, We’d like to book you for a couple sessions with Michael Jackson, your stomach does a little back flip and you realize you’re in the club. If you get invited to that party, you’re doing something right. The first day I showed up was actually a real tracking session, it wasn’t an overdub, and he was there, and invested in every bit of it. He was extremely inquisitive and kind. I played a Strat and my probably biggest influence at that time of session players was Steve Lukather, who absolutely was the king of studio guitar players at that time. He kind of abdicated that position when Toto started, and when I saw he was using a Stratocaster with a Humbucker, that was good enough for me. By the time I was doing sessions with Michael Jackson, it looked like NASA ground control in the studio, racks and racks of equipment, amp heads and what-have you. It was pretty impressive, and the antithesis of what I would do now.

Quick on his feet whenever he found himself sitting in the studio with a new star and their producer looking for their own original bit of the same Dann Huff 6-string fire, Dann remembers the kind of PhD-level education for any future-producer that he not only got for free, but was in fact getting paid handsomely for to learn from the best in the business day in and out about the art of record making: As a session player, you’re there ultimately to make that artist and that producer, the combination, successful in that endeavor of that piece of music you’re hired to do. I guess for me, the analogy is: you’re a sub-contractor, you’re responsible for what you’ve been assigned, and if you do it great, you’re going to get a chance to come back and do it again and again and again. Usually, because it’s such a small world in music, word travels fast: ‘Hey, here’s somebody who can do this, you should check them out!’ Or people will read credits, ‘Who played on that hit song?’ Everybody wants that secret sauce, you know, and you kind of develop without knowing it, a reputation for being part of that secret sauce. ‘You want to make hit records? These are the guys.’ In this business, everybody wants a sure thing, that just is what it is.

Wandering back down his halls of wisdom for a few moments, Dann underlines the following advice as fundamental for any musician new to Music Row or any other studio where work-for-hire-based recording sessions happen, beginning first and foremost with the note that I think obviously when I was young, I didn’t know how to communicate this, because basically you just wanted to be asked to be there and do something that makes whoever that person was ask you the next time they go into the studio. So you want to become indispensible to somebody. The biggest thing is realizing that it’s not about you, certainly you have to hold your own and be proficient enough to be noticed, but as a person whose been sitting on the other side of the glass for so many years, I realize now why I was successful doing what I did: I had some kinks in what I did. I was obsessive compulsive and assumed I had more power to ask to do it again and again and again when, a lot of times, producers liked what I did the first couple times. They negotiated that with me. I think they just saw a young, hungry musician who wanted to deliver better and better. When I look back, I can’t believe how annoying I probably was at some point, because I just wouldn’t accept an answer of yes, I always was like ‘I can do it better.’

Missing the itch to be on stage playing with his brother after so many years in the studio, Dann ventured out once again on the road in 1989 with his own hair metal supergroup, appropriately titled GIANT. Joining his brother David Huff on drums, Mike Brignardello on bass and Alan Pasqua on keyboards, the Last of the Runaways LP introduced the world to a band where Huff’s multi-talented instrumental range was on full display as lead singer and guitar of the band, taking them into the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart with their signature hit, "I’ll See You In My Dreams." Putting Dann in front of not only the microphone but also the camera as front man of a band that he admits he started out of a bit of creative complacency:

I don’t know if it was because of boredom or burnout, but that started the next frontier, like If these guys can do it, we can, started a band and got signed and started another chapter. I do like playing live, I do absolutely love performing, but with Giant, the driving force was, if you play on records day in and out for years, you’re always finishing somebody else’s song, and it’s a natural evolution to want to say something yourself. Look, it was the end of the 80s, and the melodic rock type thing was going on, and there was a lot of musicianship involved in it. You grew your hair out a little bit and looked like you were part of the crowd, and I found out in the meantime I could sing a little, and was with a bunch of guys – including my brother David – who I loved hanging out with, so we just started doing demos.

There was no money changing hands, we were just in the studio at night after our sessions during the day, and low and behold, somebody took interest in it, Are you guys a band? So we had to play catch-up, for one thing, I don’t think we were really good live, but we were good enough, and damn sure knew how to make a record. We holed up over in England with a wonderful British producer Terry Thomas, and made a really good record. I don’t think we had anything to say lyrically so much, it was all over the map, but musically it was nice. For me, I wanted a vehicle where I could just solo all the time and play what I wanted to play, I played so many notes on that record, I think I spent every note I had.

Blabbermouth.net in later years would credit the group as "one of the most respected trademark bands of the melodic hard rock scene. Following countless live performances, the band recorded the follow-up Time To Burn (Epic, 1991), an album still regarded as a main source of influence for many melodic and hard rock bands nowadays." Still, seeing the end of the hair band era coming around the corner given his unique perch playing on so many different studio sessions with so many different bands where he had his finger on the pulse of what was happening – and about to happen in some cases – in the business, Huff wisely exited GIANT in 1991 and returned to his home base, in the studio. Thankfully, after so many years playing on records for both pop and rock artists, Huff also smartly and strategically played on a select smattering of Country records among his catalog like Amy Grant on her hit 1984 album Straight Ahead, Kenny Rodgers’ What About Me album in 1985, They Don’t Make Them Like They Used to in 1986, I Prefer the Moonlight in 1987, Dolly Parton’s Rainbow LP, Reba McEntire’s REBA album in 1988 and Rumor Has it in 1990, Hank Williams’ 1991 Maverick, 1992 Pure Hank albums and Glenn Campbell’s Show Me Your Way LP in 1991.

With that track record, Huff already had a ticket back home and into the top of the Nashville session world without having to wait in line, crediting two major names in helping him get there in James Stroud – who, according to Rolling Stone magazine, Huff credits…with hiring him to play guitar on pretty much every record he did, including projects by Tim McGraw, Clay Walker and Tracy Lawrence, just to name a few. That wish-list on the part of any session player in town known or otherwise included many of the biggest new stars of 90s Country sound like Clint Black on the Hard Way, No Time to Kill, and One Emotion albums and Shania Twain, bringing Huff into contact with the second name on his gave-me-a-shot list of none other than legendary rock producer Mutt Lange. First working with Lange on 1995’s 12-million-selling The Woman in Me and 1997’s 20-million-selling Come on Over albums for Shania Twain, alongside his observations working with James Stroud in the studio, Huff points to Lange as his primary teacher in the production realm as he began to pick up more and more of the craft of working on both sides of the glass with an artist or band:

Mutt’s philosophy was to start with everything and peel back, you can’t work with somebody – not just of his musical caliber, but his personality – and not be drastically affected. It wasn’t a shock to work with him because I heard music very similar to him, I wouldn’t compare myself with him, but working with other producers before him could at times be a little disconcerting because they didn’t listen to music with that kind of patience to go for those moments. Some people make music a different way, where its more impressionistic and off the cuff, Mutt was NOT off the cuff at all, he wanted every moment to be the perfect brush stroke, and was absolutely willing to wait for that. So maybe the biggest take away was, Mutt could work with anybody, and ultimately make them sound fully realized. I’ve worked with a lot of producers where its a lot easier to work with super-accomplished musicians, so basically you say a word and its done. Mutt could work with anybody, and he would just wait out the process because he knew where he was going to end up, and that confidence that he had would elevate the room. He elevated every room he was ever in.

As he helped Lange light up the full brilliance of iconic # 1 hits in Twang’s catalog like "Man! I Feel Like a Woman, That Don’t Impress Me Much and You’re Still the One among countless others, he recalled as consistent with urban recording industry legends of Lange’s perfectionist nature as a producer in the studio wherein Mutt’s expectations were high, and he was a guarantee that you were going to not only reach but exceed those expectations. He was the conductor, and that’s a heavy, heavy thing because all of a sudden you’re not dangling in the wind. He knew how to communicate on every level, way better than I’ve ever communicated as a producer, and he made you know, not just feel but know that you were going to deliver for him. To me, that’s the most powerful tool a producer has, because all of a sudden, when someone’s not playing from a point of insecurity but from a point of confidence, you become more than you can be. Obviously you have to have the musical ability and foresight and knowledge and confidence in yourself, but he knew how to get that."

Even working his magic powers of persuasion on Huff when it came time for him to step up to the plate and take a shot behind the boards, vs. starting out with a country act, Dann wound up cutting his teeth in the producer’s chair with metal band Megadeth on their 1999 RISK album. Knowing he was taking one himself professionally, Huff remembered feeling genuine shock when Lange first proposed the idea to him of stepping into the role himself once he felt Dann was ready: It was more kind of shock that he would say that, because I’d never even considered that. The way he said it, ‘You should NOT be a studio guitar player anymore. You have the chops to do this,’ and I was in Nashville at that point too, and as a session guitar player, had been a part of a lot of people’s record making process, but it was hard to transition out of the one and into the next, especially production. Producers back then had a pretty tight hold in Nashville, but he was insistent. Whatever it was, it got me thinking, and as a result of it, I do remember around that time my manager for GIANT was managing Megadeth, and he said ‘Would you consider working with them in the studio?’ They were trying to survive in a different record era and wanted to do something a little more melodic, so my manager said, ‘You’d probably be a pretty good person to work with them.’ So I said yes, figuring I could do it, and the offer was very generous, so it made sense.

Once he’d taken his maiden dive with Megadeth, eager to turn his ears back to opportunities going on in his own hometown, Huff remembered his next job almost falling in his lap when within a month or two, I had another offer from an artist named Mayfield that I had been playing with in the studio. She was looking for a new producer because she and her original producer were also romantically linked and engaged, and they’d broken off the engagement. So they weren’t going to work together in the studio, and as a result of that, my name got put in the hat, and they made the suggestion to her, and she hadn’t even considered that because I was a guitar player, but I produced that along with Tim McGraw’s producer Byron Gallimore, another producer I used to play for. So I was thrown into that too and it changed the paradigm of my status in Nashville in the course of a year.

Stepping next inside the studio with Faith Hill to co-produce her third studio album, the pressure couldn’t have been higher for Huff as he helped Hill produce the smash hit "Let Me Let Go, Dann’s first showing at # 1 as a producer on the US Hot Country Songs Chart. Billboard would note in their review of the single that the production is a little more pop-driven than on her previous ballads, but radio seems to be firmly behind this deserving artist, and are willing to stretch with her. Proud of the hit as the first record of real note I did with Faith, Huff modestly contends of his contributions to the track that I wasn’t her main producer, Byron was her main producer, I just kind of the rhythm producer. I think, and you could trace this back to me working with so many great producers, that I didn’t come in with a methodology, other than it needed to be really good. So that with the fact I’m very patient, and what I love about Faith is she had a particular vulnerability that translated just out of her mouth, just the way she formed the words and the sound of her voice. She never sings anything the same way twice, so there’s a lot to work with. As Billboard further celebrated Hill’s success vocally in covering new territory where her intimate, vulnerable vocal illustrates why she’s one of the genre’s top female talents," to get her vocal performance to that recorded result in the studio, Dann revealed a challenging process where

"Let Me Let Go at that point was probably a tough song for her to sing, she got really frustrated and we probably sang that thing 4 or 5 different times, and she would get bummed, but she’s a bit of a competitor, so after she’d get bummed, she’d say Let’s go back this week, let’s try that again." I always saw that Faith wore her vulnerability just on her sleeve, and I think that’s what made her such an attractive singer, she had a great voice, but she was always in the moment of what she was doing. Boy, there were some times where you’d capture just some startling musical moments, and you’d have to be there.

With any singer, as anybody would, you’d rather get it in one take, that would be fun, but that’s not the job. The job is you’re making a musical painting, that’s what you’re doing, and it’s supposed to be representative of that song. It’s not a performance. So you’re having to define it as you go, and at certain threshold, say Okay, that sounds true, that sound honest to what we meant to say, and as a producer, I’m trying to not only get something to a standard that I think is commercial but that people will also want to engage with it. But my job first and foremost is to help that artist or singer say Yes, that’s exactly what I meant to say, and my stamp of approval is on this. So how you do that, with all these different personalities, it’s never the same day. Everybody does it differently."

Proof of Huff’s ability to bring his cross-over touch from the pop world fluidly into that of Country and open radio and fan’s ears and minds to new trends he was starting to set within the genre, the producer agrees looking back that that was one of those hits that wasn’t just a hit but it moved the dial? Whatever was in that piece of music got people to stand up and notice, and once you’ve been doing this a while, you never take for granted a hit record, NEVER, because that’s hard enough and involves so many people. But I would say there are different categories of hits: there are hits, and then there are ‘hits’ and that was one of those exceptional hits, and it wasn’t the result of any one thing, it was the result of a lot of things, but the net result is, when your name is listed as producer, the implications are pretty massive. It legitimized me in a whole new genre of music.

Following the success of his first time behind the boards working with Faith Hill, as Dann began to make his official transition into the more full-time roll of producer, even as he would continue playing on his future productions, Nashville felt he’d made enough of a mark on the past 10 years of Country Music that official acknowledgements were due. Music Row Magazine in that spirit ran a special career-in-review and salute where they argued that "looking at even a partial discography of Dann Huff’s session work (as a guitar player) makes one realize that every iconic producer from Quincy Jones and David Foster to Phil Ramone, Mutt Lang and beyond have all hired Huff to play on some of the most significant records of our time. Those are some serious teachers, and likely accounts, in-part, for Huff’s move into production from session work." That beloved catalog of Country artists whose albums fans had grown up listening to Dann’s guitar playing on spanned the genre’s biggest stars, from Wynona Judd, LeAnn Rimes, Martina McBride, Alabama, Deana Carter, John Michael Montgomery, Highway 101, Tim McGraw, Pam Tillis, Mindy McCready, BlackHawk, Tracey Lawrence, Collin Raye, Tammy Wynette, Billy Ray Cyrus, Trisha Yearwood, Lonestar, Trace Adkins, Tanya Tucker, and Merle Haggard and on the Pop side simultaneously, everyone from Neil Diamond to Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, Mariah Carey, Michael Bolton, The Temptations, Kenny G, Boyz II Men, Etta James, the Neville Brothers, and Celine Dion among countless others.

By 2001, a mere record or two after his first foray into producing his first full album, Mix Magazine would impressively report that two years ago, Dann Huff was just making a name for himself as a producer in Nashville. His credits included Faith Hill, Lonestar and newcomers SHeDaisy, as well as two Megadeth albums. What he couldn’t have predicted was that Lonestar and SHeDaisy would become award-winning acts selling millions of albums. As their careers took off, so did Huff’s. Today, he ranks among Music Row’s most in-demand producers, and his resumé lists Bryan White, Chely Wright, Rebecca St. James, Billy Ray Cyrus, Collin Raye, Trace Adkin, and follow-up efforts from Lonestar and SHeDaisy. Those early production credits for Huff would lead to a call from folk-pop star Jewel, with initial plans for a stand-alone single "Standing Still," which wound up becoming the promo for hit television show Dawson Creek. Huff welcomed the opportunity to step into the pop arena in an audition of sorts he reasons he got in part because

I think one of my strengths as a producer is that I’ve never really had much of an ‘agenda’ in production, so with Jewel, I remember she was trying out a lot of different producers for that project. Somebody asked me if I’d be interested in doing a one-off with Jewell, and maybe it was just an audition, and I said ‘Sure!’, and came in blind. I hired a band that I knew was pretty versatile, and didn’t much care for the song, I remember that, I thought it was okay, but who’s going to pass up a chance to work with Jewel! I asked her once we got in the studio, How do you hear this song?, and we just started the conversation like that. I guess with my history of playing on so many commercially successful records, you have an opinion about what makes something relevant, commercial, whathaveyou, and so when somebody asks you, that’s what you do, you go with your instincts, and when a collaboration comes in, and what has been really successful for me, is I don’t just go, ‘Okay, this is the way we will go…’ Its more, ‘Okay, this is what I hear, talk to me, how do you react to that?’

Then, out of those reactions that I get from an artist and the musicians who are collaborating together recording it, and the engineer – because it’s all a big collaboration– that spurs on new opinions and perspectives feeding off of itself. So basically, you’re kind of the conductor of all these thoughts, and when you keep your ego kind of toned down, it heightens your ability to listen to the room. It can be extremely satisfying and exciting for musicians too, because all of a sudden, you have all these talented people being able to converse in a way where everybody is in it to become great. If you create that kind of environment, especially with me being a musician too and taking part of that conversation, and suggesting things musically that I think are going to help – kind of as I would just do as a guitar player, but now I’m talking about every little aspect. So as a result, with Jewel, she liked what she saw so just kept inviting me back, and said ‘Hey, I’ve got 2 or 3 songs, would you like to try these with me?’, and I just kept saying ‘Yes’ and we kept fitting them in between other projects I was doing, and all of a sudden, we had a whole album.

In 2002, Huff would begin a multi-album collaboration that became among his most successful and made both he and the artist he was co-producing superstars in their own right when he and Keith Urban entered the studio to begin their journey down the Golden Road together. Resulting in 4 # 1 hits on the US Hot Country Songs Charts with "Somebody Like You, Who Wouldn’t Wanna Be Me, You Look Good In My Shirt and You’ll Think of Me, in spite of its smash success, Urban admitted to Rolling Stone Country to being initially skeptical of working with Huff: I’d done half an album already. I was writing all the songs, finding all the songs, I recorded them with Justin Niebank engineering. And then someone said, ‘You should work with Dann Huff.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t want to work with a guitar player, because I think he’ll just be telling me how to play.’ He listened to us run ‘Somebody Like You,’ and he’s like, ‘Okay, change this arrangement here. You do that over there. Change that sound over there. Come in over there.’ Their musicianship just went to a whole other level, I was like, ‘Holy hell! This guy’s really good, like really good.’ That started a very mutually beneficial relationship." Excited to be working with a fellow master of multiple 6-string instruments, Dann revealed that for as many as he’d handled in the studio over the previous 20 years,

I never even knew what a ganjo was till I met Keith, it’s a piece of meat that thing! He dug the sound, and its 6-string, so he didn’t have to develop any technique, and that was the hook riff to "Somebody Like You. He was out in California with John Shanks and they wrote that song, and it’s the first time I went in the studio with him, and basically I was being tried out and he had the same band in the studio for three days. He brought me in on the 3rd day after his record label suggested he work with me, and he just said Choose a song you want to do and we’ll do it, kind of like Let’s see what you bring to the table."

So I walked into a 3-day-old session, but I knew all the players and actually brought my guitars because I thought I might play a bit part in it, and we just started hammering out the song, and it just happened to be that song and we absolutely just nailed it. Everything lined up, all the suggestions, it was a collaboration too, because Keith, he doesn’t need a producer, and never has needed a producer. But with he and I, I think the strength over the years has just been the Ying and Yang of our personalities and of our ability to collaborate with one another.

Heading back in to the studio together in 2004 to repeat the magic with Be Here, the BBC would complement the guitar-slinging duo for indulging "their love of driving guitar riffs from the outset. But they’re commercially minded enough to not leave it too long before dropping in the ballads aimed at the female fan base, including ‘The Hard Way,’ and the piano-led ‘Tonight I Wanna Cry’ with its soaring ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ type chorus. The album’s 4 # 1 singles included Better Life, Days Go By, You’re My Better Half and Huff’s personal favorite chart-topper off the album, Making Memories of Us," which he remembers became a bit of a battle in the studio to convince Urban to record, underlining the importance of a producer’s role in fighting for a song if he believes it could be the kind of hit the latter one became:

I say this tongue and cheek, but what I would most attribute to that beautifully simple and beautifully written piece of music was extreme pain! (laughs) This is what made the collaboration work, # 1), he didn’t like that song, and when Keith records somebody else’s song, I have not met anybody else who is as committed to honoring somebody else’s work, he delivers the best of why he chose that song. So with that one, the final record sounds effortless, but it just didn’t come down that way. We went back to that one so many times, and there’s more on the editing floor than there is on the record.

Again, that’s his unwavering quest to save that thing, and I guess my ability to hang with that and continually try to refocus it and figure out that thing he couldn’t quite communicate. That’s where I think some of the real meat of what we did happened because of that, because I think a lot of times, the tendency when you get in those awkward situations where something is just not happening and there’s frustration is to say Ah, fuck it, we don’t need this. But somehow, between what we were both able to bring to the table as collaborators, we never let go. We could withstand the extreme awkward situations, and it was tense because you’d get frustrated, of not bringing it home, and all of those things drive creativity. I think sometimes some of the better creativity comes out of more tense situations.

A lighter day came when we were doing "Days Go By, and somebody gave him a mandolin as a gift, and we wanted to track it and I remember sitting in the control room and came up with this little part, and he came in and said What’s that?, and I told him I think this could go on this song! Keith said Let’s track it, and it was never tuned up, and we got some cheap microphone that distorted it, again with the same thought at the time, We’ll replace this, we’ll do it properly down the line," and it never happened. That mandolin take became the hook of the song, and then they wrote another song based off that riff.

By their third and fourth outings together on 2006’s Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing and 2009’s Defying Gravity – where Huff won the Academy of Country Music’s Producer of the Year award – and produced two more # 1 hits for the Huff/Urban team with Sweet Thing and Only You Can Love Me This Way. One element to the winning formula within Urban’s sound they kept consistent was the presence of his backing band, which Dann confirmed was very much by design for a while, so for the first 3 or 4 records, we used a lot of the same people, a couple different drummers, Chris McHugh played a lot of it, but it was the same band, because once you have success, the first rule of thumb is ‘Let’s not change too much, we got a good thing going!’ By the time of their 5th album together in a decade, 2010’s Get Closer, which produced 3 more # 1s on the US Country Airplay Chart with "Without You, Long Hot Summer and You Gonna Fly," Huff felt the pair worked so well together because of their varying approaches to record making that pushed each other and new boundaries for Country in the process:

I can do everything on a record production, but I enjoy and prefer the collaboration because I feel that’s the way you find something beyond yourself. So if I were to characterize that collaboration, there’s some phenomenal stuff because of two distinctly different musicians and life perspectives. With everything about us, we come from polar opposite situations, and I give him way more credit than I do myself. He’s an artist who pushes towards trying not to repeat, when you have as many records and hits as someone like Keith, there’s a real fear in becoming a one-trick pony. He’s very articulate about that, so that’s what he’s going to do, and the collaboration when I come in is about helping him make his music and both our ability to pivot. So he can throw out an idea, and I can say Yeah, we can do that, or that might inspire me to say Let’s try this.

Keith Urban, Rolling Stone Country: "We butted heads because Dann likes to do things over and over and over again. I remember distinctly doing this guitar solo on ‘Somebody Like You,’ and I swear Dann had me do it a thousand times. I was going insane. And Dann’s like ‘Excellent! One more time!’ And I’m like, ‘I’m going to kill someone here in a minute.’ And out of sheer frustration, instead of playing a solo, I played what became the end of the song. And that came from Dann driving me again and again and again…The results were really good and I felt like a lot of the times my way of being within that process needed to mature…As my confidence in Dann grew, my feeling of ‘I have to produce these on my own’ got less."

Understandably, after a decade of making albums together and in part at Huff’s urging, Urban for the first time brought in a variety of producers on 2013’s FUSE LP, reasoning the move made sense because "Keith’s a wandering musical soul, which all great artists are, and at a certain point, any collaboration with anybody’s going to reach its zenith, and then start to kind of repeat. He and I did that for three records, and on FUSE, his whole situation with me, I remember him saying ‘We shouldn’t do the same thing over and over again, I don’t want to do that,’ and it was that intuitiveness that he was kind of pulling against, and he wanted the challenge out of that. And out of that, came some really interesting and different things on it, certainly that record with the little Waltz on it – that’s something you would have never normally heard come from us. So that was kind of a result of that, and I think the carry-over was the ability to wait out some songs, because that wasn’t something you’d naturally do. Now adays, I work with him on a smattering of songs here and there, and he knows he needs different input in what he does, so he works with a lot of producers and a lot of different musicians at this point. Embracing the album’s spirit of shaking things up within the production on the # 1 hit Somewhere in My Car, which TasteofCountry.com congratulated as distinctively modern," Huff did as all smart producers do and let the song tell them where its production needed to go:

When an artist says I don’t want to do the same thing, what does that mean? It’s one thing to say it, but how do you do it? Well, obviously, first you have to find a piece of music that will take you in that direction, and then we went into a studio we hadn’t worked in before, found a new engineer and totally started the record-making process ass backwards. As a producer, if you’re lucky to be around it for a certain bit of time, you realize your role is going to shift at different stretches, and sometimes you are so in the driver’s seat you are in control of every aspect, and in my case, that means totally musically, and then there are times when I’m taking other roles. Sometimes I take counselor role, the job as a producer – when people ask What does a producer do? – is to make sure that it’s right and that it achieves the goal. Obviously, the goal of the publishers and record labels is, they want success, and however you get to that goal, it’s really kind of your job. So you have to learn to be a lot of different people, because the needs are going to change with everybody, and that’s really the only way you stay in the business. If you’re good at one thing, you can ride that while its en vogue, but if you’re going to be around a little longer, it takes on other forms.

In spite of Urban’s decision to dramatically broaden the production pallet of collaborators on Fuse, by the time he headed back in to make Ripcord in 2016, the country superstar decided to bring Huff back to the boards for nearly half of the album’s tracks, notably including two # 1 hits with "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16 and Blue Ain’t Your Color. The kind of iconic Huff productions that maintain the fundamental composition of an artist’s sound while expanding its pallet instrumentally through what CountryUniverse.net argued as a result of the latter # 1 was the best vocal showcase that’s come Keith Urban’s way in a long time," an area of focus where Huff remembers being blown away by

how legitimate Keith was singing that! I’d say the biggest thing I did on that song was tell him he needed to go after it, because the demo was a singer who had just come off The Voice, and Keith could not unhear that. And all I could hear was a much more straight path to what that song was about anyway, so probably the biggest thing I did on that song was being honest, and just keeping him from giving up on the song. Instrumentally, he was convinced that he didn’t want real drums on that, it was so funny. We were sitting in the studio and we had Matt Chamberlin on drums and Pino Palladino on bass, talk about an underuse of two great musicians! (laughs) Pino was playing something and Matt ended up sitting there programming that little groove, and then I ended up sneaking him on later, just behind the drum machine.

Embracing and utilizing the hybrid production norms that had become Nashville’s by this point in his near 20-year career behind the boards, Huff repeated this formula in the studio when he and Urban were producing the smash single "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16, celebrating their fusion of the past and present in what fans wanted to hear both on radio currently and continued on from Urban’s past as what Huff regards as his very punk-rock spirit." Granting themselves the freedom to throw out whatever recording rules they wanted at this point in the superstar artist’s studio sojourns, made especially possible by both’s mastery of multiple instruments to push any of their boundaries they wanted, Dann described this amazing discovery process as one where

looking back at some of the strength of what we do, its kind of a process: we’re open to where the proverbial spirit leads in the studio, and sometimes if it’s not played by somebody whose proficient at it. So consequently, when we play piano or synths, we both play anything, even maybe record a set of drums ourselves. We didn’t go in with a band, we shaked everything up, and in our collaboration, we pass guitars back and forth, and by this point, it was kind of like Well, you play that… Or We need a bass on this, you pick it up… The song "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16" was a great example of that, we worked with a programmer.

Congratulating the pair on the heels of Urban’s 2017 win for Favorite Country Album and Favorite Country Song for "Blue Ain’t Your Color, Rolling Stone Magazine credited as a driving force for their continued success the consistent yin-and-yang of their creative relationship with opposite musical visions that made for grueling recording sessions, but chart-topping music. Highlighting as a secret to his head-spinning success that blurring the lines between country and pop is what has kept Huff one of the most in-demand producers to this day," his mastery in maintaining a balance between the two led to a 9-11 call of sorts from the biggest country superstar of the time when Taylor Swift’s RED album title track and lead-off single was in need of a set of fresh ears after

an intense collaboration she’d had with Nathan Chapman and she was growing, morphing, changing. I think it was probably the victim of looking at a picture too intensely, and at a certain point it paralyzes you where you can’t see it clearly anymore. So Scott Borchetta from Big Machine came to me and said We can’t land this thing, there’s something here, and so it was just fresh ears and I remember he brought it over to my house and kind of played me where they were at, and asked What would you do? So I told him, and it really wasn’t an option, that they needed to re-record the vocals. The vocals were really good, but she had been touring forever and you’ve got to realize too, for Nathan to hand something like that, that doesn’t happen often. The measure of respect for him I have couldn’t be higher.

Working as always in concert with whatever collaborators he shared throughout the recording process with as a conductor of sorts, letting everyone’s individual talents shine through in service to the song, including on the title track RED, inspired TasteofCountry.com to argue add depth to the young star’s catalog, while SPIN singled it out as perhaps the album’s best pop song. Huff’s specific studio sidekicks this time out as Taylor spread her creative wings were Swift herself and Nathan Chapman as they worked to deliver both the latter hit and the # 1 smash hit "Begin Again" to its eventual Grammy nomination for Best Country Song:

Nathan Chapman, God, the respect I have for that guy, talk about a guy who can wear a bunch of different hats! I’m lucky to be around guys like Mutt Lange and Nathan Chapman, I’ve been able to reinvent my career in new directions by just being in the room with these guys. I remember Nathan told me, Don’t worry about it, I want this record to succeed. I’m going to send you what I I have and you can use any, all or none of it. So there was no agenda other than making the songs they sent me sound like singles. So I just kind of did what I would do, as if that was the first round, and obviously I used the vocals because I didn’t have a lot of time.

Taylor Swift, USA Today: I chose the producers because I like they’re style. I didn’t choose them because I wanted to force my style on them; I chose them because I wanted to learn from them. So they’re true collaborations…It’s a real mixture of the two influences. Going into the studio with producers I had never worked with before was definitely my way of stretching musically.

Turning to another of Dann Huff’s signature long-term recording relationships with the Rascal Flatts over a decade of albums the team began making together in 2006 with the 5-million selling Me and My Gang, Dann remembered being excited to hit the field with a new team of players. Drawing on his own band background as a session player on the band’s previous albums in the coaching style he took on with the group, seeking first and foremost to involve them more in the record-making process than past albums: They were totally different band to work with. I started with them when I was a studio musician playing on the records, and they wanted to make a change and I brought up the idea that they should maybe be playing more of their instruments, because they weren’t encouraged to do that as much on the first couple records. Who wouldn’t want to play on your own records? So we really worked on Joe Don Rooney’s guitar presence, and Jay DeMarcus is a wonderful bass player. Now he produces the band, and when you have a voice like Gary LeVox’s that is a primo commercial voice, it’s not hard when you’re attracting songwriters like they did to be a hit-making machine. With them, it was kind of an invitation to a party where you can have anybody you wanted, and that were more hands-off, and just the opposite as say Keith, but the results were the same. Isn’t that interesting?

Crediting Huff with