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BRING YOUR ‘A’ G A M E WORDS PAUL WATSON
R
enowned American guitarist and songwriter, Johnny A, was born in Malden, Massachusetts, and grew up in the North Shore area, cutting a career playing out of Boston’s reputed rock clubs in the ‘70s, a time when the city had a buzzing and remarkably eclectic music scene. This self-confessed guitar nut, who grabbed himself a number one single on his first album, was recently inducted into Boston’s Music Hall of Fame, and although he’s grateful for the accolade, he admits the city’s musical roots are getting worn and tired, and opportunity for up-and-coming artists is lacking. Sadly, there are very few decent places left for Boston’s rising talent to play, and gone are the days of WCBN’s Rock and Roll Rumbles: giant battle of the band events put on by the now legendary radio network where 25 (yes, twenty-five!) of the city’s local artists would compete against each other, round after round, engaging the musical community, and providing a competitive and exciting scene. So where is this city’s next Aerosmith or J Giles Band coming from? Well, if all Bostonians adopted the Johnny A way of thinking, perhaps they might not be a blue moon away... His latest album, Driven, was written, recorded, and mixed by the man himself, in his homemade studio, Thanks to a lot of hard work, and a stupendous crowdfunding campaign, it’s been received fantastically well by the music press, and, wait for it... It’s making money! Yes kids, it can still be done – and without major label backing. Yes, Johnny A has toured the world, and he’s no stranger to a major, but this period in his career, I think, might be his most important – and certainly most creative. Despite being, as he puts it, “just an independent musician playing in a pretty tough scene”, he gives real hope to the next generation. So all aspiring hit record makers, sit back, and take note, from the man who knows how, in today’s game...
“MUSIC IS COMMUNICATORY - IT’S SUPPOSED TO EMOTE...” BOSTON I’m now living some 35 miles north of Boston, in the New Hampshire area, but it was in Boston that I made my name, and my living, playing music. Is there still a scene? Well, yeah, kinda, and oddly enough, I am getting inducted to the city’s Music Hall of Fame this year... Maybe that two bucks will get me a cup of coffee, I’m not sure, but it’s nice to be recognised, all the same. In the mid-to-late ‘70s, there was a lot going on; I was on the same bill as The Cars before they got their deal, and what was really great about the Boston scene was its unbelievable musical variety. Boston has always been a jazz city because of the Berklee College of Music, and it’s always had that heavy duty blues thing, and it’s also had a great singer-songwriter scene thanks to the likes of James Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, and even Van Morrison for a while. Then there was the rock stuff, like the J Giles Band, and I remember Aerosmith breaking
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through in ‘72; and then there was this punk scene with bands like The Neighborhoods... I could go on, but it’s fair to say it was a seriously eclectic place to be. RADIO KILLED THE RADIO STAR Back then, we had WBCN, this amazing progressive radio station which was very supportive of local acts. We also had a lot of clubs, indie labels, record stores, all of which would support the independents. We’d have a thing called Rock and Roll Rumble which WBCN did, which started with 25 bands, and would whittle down to two winners. It was so competitive, exciting, and healthy. It’s not like that anymore, as venues have closed, and local radio doesn’t support acts like they used to besides, what is radio anymore? It’s rough to be an independent musician today. I remember my first solo record after I left Peter Wolf, it got some organic legs that kinda grew, and I got picked up by Steve Vai’s label, which was distributed by Sony Red, and it gave me a hit record and the number one song across the country on that first album. Then I made another album, and I left the label, and I’m back to being an indie artist again. Thing is, these days, people don’t even want to pay for music, they think it should be free, and it makes it tough for any serious artist making a real living to have a career in the arts or music, you know? GO DO IT! I’m on all of these streaming sites: Music Choice, Pandora, Spotify, Reverb Nation; all that shit, and I never see any money from it. After my second album, Get Inside, it took me a while to get more out. I released an album in 2001, another in 2004, and then when I left the the label, I wanted to do a live album, but I had a ‘no re-record’ clause, so I couldn’t record my own songs for five years... As a result, my live project came out in 2010, The One November Night. I had success with that, which you don’t expect with a live record compared to a studio release, but I did sell enough to be profitable, which was great. And now, my new album, Driven, which came out in June, is going great guns. I did a very successful Pledge Music campaign, and managed to raise $40,000, so I could promote it, get a publicist - I even got Bob Ludwig to master it! It’s a top-shelf release, but it is self-distributed, through my own company, and online. I’ve been approached by some labels, but I’m cagey around those guys, man - I own a house, I have kids, and I have to make money. I can sell a CD (yes, a CD!) at a show for $20, or a download online for $12. I have my manufacturing costs and production costs, but honestly, you can sell 10,000 records and make $200,000; and between all that, and what you pay for your fees, you may be able to realise $16-17 out of that $20 bucks, and if you sell 10,000 units, you can actually net $160,000 before taxes, and live to fight another day.
DRIVEN TO SUCCEED I love producing my own discs, and when I was with Peter Wolf, I co-produced his first comeback record that he did for Warner Bros. which was on Reprise Records. With this record, I took it a step further. I have never been an engineer, and I have never had my hands on a console; I guess I was the architect of tone, but with Driven, it was all different. I installed a studio in my house, which started as a place to track my stuff, as I record everything direct – I don’t like amplifiers, and the only thing I ever miked up was the drums, and I didn’t even do that on this record! So I didn’t need a live room, but I needed a different sounding room, so when I could play back, I would get an accurate representation of what I was hearing, and the more I worked on tracking, the better it started to sound. TESTING, TESTING! I have a 1,400 sq ft. space, with 8.5 ft. ceilings, and it’s broken up by lots of half-walls, curved walls, and crazy standing waves, so I got the guys from Genelec in to have a look. Paul Stewart came up with Will Ecclestone, and we all listened to the room, to see what we could improve. They thought that with a little treatment, the room was actually fairly accurate, which is pretty amazing considering I had never intended on it being a studio; it’s a rec room with a pool table, an entertainment centre, a couch, and a bar! So, I did the tracking, it sounded really good, but when I went to mix, I realised there were limitations. I wanted an analogue feel, even though I was recording on Logic [at an 88.2 kHz sample rate]. There were limitations in playback, as I was working in the box, and I wanted to use external EQs, compression, and preamps, even though I have all the plugins I could ever need. So, after tracking, we disassembled the whole studio, and I ended up buying an SSL new AWS bank 48 console, and it made all the difference in the world. As soon as I was up and running, even a stereo playback through the console was light years ahead of what I could have come up with – and that was just the circuitry. When Genelec came up, they tested the room, and what they like to see is no more than plus or minus 5dB at any frequency when they’re doing their calibrations - anything within that is within spec, and acceptable. My room seemed to have an excitement at about 5k; the bass was manageable, but I needed to buy some acoustical panels to run along the back and side walls with the console, and I put some clouds above the mix position. The guys then came back and recalibrated it where the monitors sat, and I was in spec at every range except for 110dB on the left-hand-side, was -6dB, so within 1dB at every frequency range, I had a flat response, which was amazing, considering it’s just an otherwise untreated room within a house!
TAKE YOUR BRAIN TO ANOTHER DIMENSION I have worked in a ton of top studios, I have good ears, I am diligent, and I am anal, but if you hear Driven, it was all done in my house, and to be honest, if someone came along and wanted to distribute my record and re-record it, I don’t think I would do it anywhere else. It was that fantastic. I also believe in your own space, you have that extra luxury of experimenting. I am a big Beatles fan in every way, and I like to look at this as my Revolver. That [Beatles] record had so many ‘firsts’, where they used effects like looping, which are commonplace today, for the first time, and they used the studio as a tool, a real experimental tool. That’s how I see Driven, and that’s how I set about making it. I did this using two sets of excellent studio monitors: Genelec 8260s, which are threeway monitors; and Genelec 8020s, smaller models for my nearfield. One thing I can tell you about the Genelec tone print is, if you put yourself – your head, or your ears – in the same listening ratio from the bigs to the smalls, it’s just amazing how much those speakers sound alike. As a matter of fact, the thing that I found is in the midrange – let’s say it’s the lead vocal or a centre guitar - when you switch back and forth between the two sets of monitors, that does not move; it stays in the same physical space. That is a phenomenal advantage when mixing, as when I listen to music, I visually see the mix; front to back, left to right, and top to bottom. I was striving for dimension and depth in the mix from top to bottom, and for my first time as an engineer and producer, I was really proud and happy with the results of what I was trying to accomplish from that original depth of field, using the Genelec monitors and the SSL console. I don’t know what the point of vanity studios are these days – they’re certainly not for people like me, because I can’t afford them. And to be honest with you, as proven, I don’t need to be in a studio like that. I have got the best bass sound I have ever got on a record, and even Bob Ludwig said to me they were exemplary guitar tones. He said they were some of the best he had ever heard, and this guy has mastered everybody, you know? Music is communicatory – it’s supposed to emote. Just like when you’re looking at a painting or you go to a movie or you read a book, it’s the same thing... You can still make a successful career in the music industry today, you just have to think a little outside the box. www.johnnya.com www.genelec.com