Dave Jerden has engineered, produced and mixed some of the most cutting-edge, ground breaking records in studios all around the world. Just take a listen to his engineering and mixing of Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Talking Heads' Remain in Light and Herbie Hancock's Future Shock. As an engineer, he has worked with some of modern music's greatest producers such as Bill Laswell, Michael Beinhorn, Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite. Jerden is a technical master, unconstrained by conventional thinking and confident yet humble. As a producer he has helped artists like Public Image Limited, Jane's Addiction, Alice in Chains, Social Distortion and The Offspring make stunning records. Currently, he co-owns Tranzformer Studios in Burbank, California, with his long time engineer Bryan Carlstrom (Tape Op #28). The studio is managed by Annette Cisneros (who has also engineered alongside Jerden and Carlstrom for many years) with assistant engineer duties going to John Nuss. Dave Jerden and I sat in the patio lounge at Tranzformer Studios for a pleasant conversation covering a multitude of topics.
A few years ago, I was at the winter NAMM show, the insane dog and pony show of musical madness that it is. If you've never been, it's hard to imagine the spectacle of it all; death metalers...
Matt Rollings has been music's best-kept secret for some three plus decades, but that's slowly changing. A live and studio keyboard ace who has played on thousands of recordings and anchored the bands...
So many of the people we talk to have had a similar story to tell. You know, they were in a band, built a studio, started recording local artists and made a few records people noticed. The story of...
Hardly known, yet everywhere at the same time, Bryce Goggin has managed to help create seminal albums for Pavement, Spacehog, Evan Dando, Elliott Sharp, The Lemonheads, Kim Deal's Amps, The Apples...
The name Aspen Pittman is synonymous with vacuum tubes. But it's one thing to hawk a product, and another to understand the physics behind its performance. While working as a salesman in the first...
Though Emitt [see interview this issue] wrote the songs, played every note, and acted as his own engineer and producer, when mixing time rolled around the tapes were whisked away to Sound City where...
Educated in music and voice at the University of South Dakota and having made himself a mainstay of the Los Angeles recording business, Bryan Carlstrom has garnered a reputation for working with...
Archiving the recorded audio history of the United States? The National Recording Preservation Foundation is just getting up and running, with some familiar folks on the governing board. I had to know...
With production credits like Missy Elliott, P.Diddy, and Beyonce, Karriem Mack — "K-Mack" — is coming back at the washed out music industry by carrying new artists with an old school...