From Guy's Tour Diary:

"It's Wednesday morning and I'm a little tired. I finished tracking the album last night and afterwards my manager Titus and I did the car listening test... We drove all over Memphis singing along to all these great Memphis songs in disbelief that this all came together.

The idea didn't come along that long ago and it's all happened so quickly. I expressed what my dream way of recording this album would be and just kind of left it up in the air as just that – a dream with the realisation that, of course, I couldn't pull it off by getting the highly sort after soul musicians that played on the actual track.

Alec Palao has produced what is likely to become the definitive portrait of the '60s Bay Area rock scene. Chronicle photo by Paul Chinn

via SFGate.com

In many ways, Alec Palao is the least likely character to wind up the chronicler of the San Francisco rock scene that he has become.

He was 4 years old during the Summer of Love. He grew up in North London and was a first-generation punk rocker. He says he has never taken any drugs, not so much as smoked a joint. And he was never, ever a hippie.

On the other hand, Palao thinks he might be even more qualified than someone who lived through the era in San Francisco.

"I wasn't there," he says from his El Cerrito home, "so I don't have any nostalgia or personal connection. I don't care that Janis was queen and Frumious Bandersnatch was fifth on the bill."

In any case, Palao has produced what is likely to become the definitive portrait of the '60s Bay Area rock scene: a four-CD boxed set, "Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970," accompanying a 120-page coffee-table book filled with previously unseen photographs and memorabilia, most drawn from Palao's collection. Palao also wrote the extensive text, essentially his version of the history of San Francisco music. The set will be released Sept. 18 on Rhino ($64.98).

Grammy-winning graphic designers Hugh Brown and Steve Vance made the package more book than record album, with the CDs tucked in the rear flap almost incidentally. The volume is a triumph of scholarship, a culmination of the work Palao began when he moved to the Bay Area in 1988 to become a part of the San Francisco music scene.

John Fry

A very special guitar is being signed by Stax related folks and will be auctioned to raise funds for the museum and music academy. Check out these photos by Mike Cromer. He is married to Novella Smith Arnold, former production director at Stax, and they are the organizers of this project.

We'll post a link to the auction as soon as it goes live!

View the Photos!!!

Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian has just wrapped up his first stint of time here at Ardent Studios. He was here with Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, and Steve Potts of Booker T and the MGs, as well as studio musicians Lester Snell, Rick Steff, and Dave Smith. Curry Weber was the engineer on the session, with Alan Burcham assisting. Guy plans on returning with Cropper (who is also serving as producer on the project) next month to move on to the mix phase of the record. Following are some photos from Guy's time in Studio A:

Guy with Steve Cropper on day one.

Guy getting set up in the studio.

John Fry, Terry Manning, Steve Cropper and Guy Sebastian.

From Left: Drummer Steve Potts, Guy Sebastian, keyboardist Rick Steff, bassist Duck Dunn, organist Lester Snell, producer/guitarist Steve Cropper, and engineer Curry Weber.

THE MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL
September 17, 1967

"On The Record"
by James Cortese

SINGLE DISK ADDS UP TO HOURS

"People would be surprised at the hours that go into a two-and-a-half minute record."

The studio was "torn up" most of the past week, but before the work began Sam the Sham came in to cut a single from New York using Memphis musicians.

This article was taken from this forum

Users noted how much $14,000 was in those days:

Stax Records 50th Anniversary Trailer

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Big Star drummer and Ardent Studios manager Jody Stephens was given a unique opportunity at the recent Wilco show at the Snowden Grove Ampitheater in Southaven, Mississippi. He was asked to sit in, and played tamborine on"California Stars" and then moved to the drum kit for "Box Full of Letters." Read more about the band and their tour at http://www.wilcoworld.net/.

Standing, from left: drummer Steve Potts, bassist Leroy Hodges, keyboardist Lester Snell, Alvin Youngblood Hart, guitarist Teenie Hodges, engineer Jeff Powell, vocalists Susan Marshall and Jackie. In the front row, from left: producer Gilly Roswell, choir director Billy Rivers, and Sharon Jones.

Music producer G. Marq Roswell returned to Ardent Studios and Memphis to finish tracking and mixing music for the upcoming Denzel Washington film "The Great Debaters."

Sharon Jones stepped up to the mic, Jeff Powell (Afghan Whigs, Big Star, Tonic) engineered and coordinated the players. Included in these are some of Memphis' finest: Steve Potts (drums), Dave Smith (bass), Lester Snell (keyboards), Susan Marshall and Jackie Johnson (backing vocals). The Angelic Voices of Faith gospel choir nearly ripped the roof off of Studio A...WOW! Jason Gillespie and Jonathan "Stump" Sterling assisted on the project.

John Hampton was recently featured on the burdgeoning Memphis based Web site culturegrits.com. The article, which featured Hampton mixing a project for Ardent Studios client John Cody Carter, is entitled "Mixing it up at Ardent Studios.

From the article:

This is the second part in a series documenting the journey of an album. This edition showcases a mixing session at Ardent Studios with revered producer/engineer John Hampton.

What’s the most important attribute of a music engineer? My first guess was a finely tuned ear. According to Ardent Studios producer/engineer John Hampton, I’d be wrong.

“I’ve never had good hearing,” confesses Hampton, who won a 2006 GRAMMY award for mixing The White Stripes’ “Get Behind Me Satan.” He says a prerequisite to being an adept engineer is “knowing a bridge, verse, and chorus, and at the same time having good people skills.” Although, it’s safe to say song structure knowledge and a friendly personality aren’t the only characteristics that have brought Hampton the success and notoriety garnered in his 29-year career. He’s engineered and/or mixed albums for the Gin Blossoms, Robert Cray, Afghan Whigs, Soundgarden, and the Vaughn Brothers.

On a recent Saturday morning, he’s working with Nashville recording artist John Cody Carter, a preacher and collaborator with country music sages Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. It’s day seven of their sessions, mixing Carter’s 13-track traditional country album. Adam Hill is assisting on the project, which generally takes an entire day - oftentimes a 10-hour day - to mix one song.

It’s close to noon and the trio has been working since 10 a.m. in Studio B nestled in a corner of the Ardent Studios brick building on Madison Avenue. Currently, the focus is on lowering the intro, a bongo arrangement, of the song “Ride ’em Cowboy.” Carter, who looks the part of the cowboy he croons about with his white-blonde hair combed back in a pseudo-ducktail and a matching goatee, is sauntering laps around the U-shaped console, stroking his goatee and listening intently.

Although Hampton works on the bongo intro for roughly 45 minutes, two hours later Carter opts to omit the bongo intro entirely. It’s the nature of the beast that is mixing a record - constantly tweaking sounds, levels, instruments, vocals. They are using 24 tracks of the 56-channel mixing console “with a bunch of other channels for all the effects,” says Hill, including echo chambers and analog effects. The main mixing board is roughly 12-feet long with a single computer keyboard at its center. Sitting atop an adjacent computer desk is a 24-inch iMac flat screen monitor, keyboard, mouse, and stacks of speakers.

“I had to get glasses,” Hampton laments, nodding at the computer screen. “After five to ten hours a day looking at this stuff, it takes its toll.” He’s referring to the jumble of boxes, columns, colors, and lines that somewhat resemble an abstract painting on the screen.

Since his hearing isn’t the best, Hampton says he relies upon visual indicators including spectrum analyzers that bounce up and down atop of the mixing board in bursts of bright orange. He gets plenty of mileage out of the black, vinyl rollaway chair as he moves from computer to mixing board, always on the edge of his seat with his back never touching the chair. He responds to every one of Carter’s requests.

“Is the guitar a little hot?” asks Carter.

“I think it’s a good little loop, but if you’re worried about it we’ll take it down,” Hampton responds.

Hampton makes adjustments that seem extraordinarily miniscule to the untrained ear. At one point, he says he’ll take the guitar part down one-tenth of a one bel (yes, it’s spelled bel). A bel is equal to one-tenth of a decibel. Later he confesses that he must bring the dual guitars closer together in timing, a 56- to 65-milla-second difference.

The chorus is repeated. And repeated. And repeated again.

“Ride ’em cowboy/don’t let ’em throw you down/cause you’re the toughest cowboy in town.”

Hampton closes his eyes while listening to the end of the song, bobbing his head up and down to the beat while occasionally throwing out some air guitar. “I’m diggin’ it, man,” he proclaims. “Time to burn a truck CD.”

After each track is mixed, Hill moves over to the controls to burn it on a SA-CD (Super Audio CD) for Carter to listen to in his truck. It’s a process Carter describes as failsafe because he can hear subtle nuances in an environment he’s comfortable in. “It keeps you from having to come back after the mix has been printed,” he says.

It’s an arduous process at the very least; one that’s also contingent upon the recording engineers work or “shit in, shit out,” as Hill says. Carter recorded in Nashville, but said he chose to come to Memphis to mix his next album for myriad reasons.

“My last album was mixed here,” he says. “I like the way John does what he does. He has a reputation for giving a record a little more beef. He allows artists to do what they envision.

There are 300 engineers that can mix in Nashville. I prefer to get out of the quagmire of Music Row. You don’t have to ask somebody to think out of the box in Memphis, because they’re not in the box.”

For more on John Hampton, Adam Hill, and Ardent go to ardentstudios.com. John Cody Carter’s website is johncodycarter.com.

Press Release

In a coda to this summer’s critically acclaimed Mods & Rockers Film Festival in Hollywood, the new Otis Redding film documentary Dreams To Remember: The Legacy Of Otis Redding will receive its World Theatrical Premiere at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood, on Monday, October 8 at 8:00 p.m. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Zelma Redding (Otis’ widow), Wayne Jackson of the Mar-Keys, Grammy® Award-winning Stax historian Rob Bowman and the documentary’s directors David Peck and Phil Galloway.

Tickets for the premiere cost $10 for the general public, $8 students and seniors, $7 American Cinematheque members and are available through the festival website www.ModsAndRockers.com or at the theater box office in advance or at door.

The screening coincides with three notable events relating to Otis Redding. It heralds the release of Dreams To Remember: The Legacy Of Otis Redding as a DVD on the reactivated Stax label. It takes place as Stax Records marks its 50th anniversary. And it serves to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Redding’s tragically early death on December 10, 1967.

Produced by Reelin’ In The Years, Dreams To Remember: The Legacy Of Otis Redding features a wealth of staggering complete performances filmed throughout America and Europe, beginning with Otis singing one of his earliest hits, “Pain In My Heart,” and progressing through the artist’s Stax/Volt career. Included are complete performances of “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and a host of others; “Try A Little Tenderness” and “Respect” were taped at a local Cleveland television show less than 24 hours before Otis’ death.

The film also contains in-depth interviews with those who helped Otis write and create his incredible music: Steve Cropper, who co-wrote with Otis and played guitar on virtually every record he made at Stax; Wayne Jackson, the trumpet player for the Mar-Keys/Memphis Horns who also played on most of Otis’ recordings, and Jim Stewart, the founder of Stax Records, who gave his first interview in 13 years for this film. And there are stirring reminiscences from Otis’ wife Zelma and daughter Karla. These tender and insightful interviews paint a portrait of an amazing singer, artist, songwriter, and family man. The saga begins with memories of his first amateur talent contests and concludes with the touching recollections of the final days leading up to the tragic plane crash on December 10, 1967. In between are stories about Otis writing songs, recording at Stax and performing on stage (including the historic Monterey International Pop Festival).

For Dreams To Remember: The Legacy Of Otis Redding every effort has been made to locate the best possible sound and video; each of the performances has been re-transferred and re-mastered from the best-quality, original masters (some resting in the television vaults for more than 40 years). In the case of lip-sync performances, the original Stax master recordings have been used, replacing the original TV broadcast audio and making for a much more enjoyable viewing and listening experience.

The World Theatrical Premiere of Dreams To Remember: The Legacy Of Otis Redding is one of the highlights of this October’s Mods & Rockers mini-festival of music-related films. The short season also includes premieres of films featuring Jimi Hendrix, Nick Drake and Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. The screenings take place at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.

Following the premiere of Dreams to Remember and the Otis Redding panel discussion will be a screening of the recently discovered Stax/Volt Revue Live in Norway, 1967, featuring legendary live footage of classic Stax stars including Redding, Sam & Dave, Booker T & the MGs, Eddie Floyd, Arthur Conley and the Mar-Keys.

Martin Lewis, Co-Founder/Producer/Host of the Mods & Rockers Film festival: “Otis Redding was a towering talent in the music world whose achievements in just six short years continue to inspire. He was also a pioneer in breaking down racial barriers. I am thrilled that we are saluting him and his legacy with a World Premiere at this special season of the Mods & Rocker Film Festival. It’s also a personal thrill as I still recall the exhilaration of seeing Otis perform live in London in April 1967 — a memory I always cherish.”