by Andy Langer
Without
any hint of
collusion, both Michael Fracasso and Billy White — two artists who couldn’t be
more musically dissimilar — cite exactly the same qualities that make Dave
McNair their producer of choice: his “fine-tuned ears” and thorough
attentiveness to exactly what part of the mix is working well at any particular
moment. As a result, Fracasso’s When I Lived in the Wild and White’s
Sistershootingstar and Illucination records all sound similarly
“big,” while maintaining an overall sound of clarity that’s radio-ready without
being either unaffected or overly polished. When you also take into account
McNair’s consistent club searches for producible talent, both signed and
unsigned, and his well-paced, two-decade evolution from musician to engineer to
producer, ultimately you discover McNair’s something rare for Austin, Texas: a
world-class producer.
Management, along with studios and the producers who turn those knobs, sit
atop the music industry pyramid — an infrastructure many say Austin has never
fully developed. But even with Austin’s late-Eighties boom in quality studios,
local recording experts say that the small budgets and accordingly short
sessions of most self-released and small indie recordings have limited both the
quality of the product and the collective experiences of those ultimately
behind the direction of a band’s recorded statements — the producers.
Interestingly, the bulk of McNair’s early work came in engineering projects in
Los Angeles and New York. Although he’s a Corpus Christi native who’d spent
time in Austin in the early-Eighties, McNair says it’s the techniques and
tricks he picked up in his bi-coastal experiences — working with studio giants
like Nick Lowe, Daniel Lanois, Little Steven, and T-Bone Burnett — that he
relies most heavily on today.
In essence, McNair has seen how the big boys do it and brought that experience
back home. And yet with a local client list that in just the last year reads
like a cross section of Austin’s who’s who — Kelly Willis, Ian Moore, Seed,
Little Sister, and Prescott Curlywolf, among others — the practical demands of
economic recording make it necessary that McNair still maintain a Los Angeles
residency for quickie sessions. But even with a couch and toaster in L.A., it’s
apparent McNair’s heart is in Austin.
“I simply enjoy the projects here more than working with some lame L.A. band
that doesn’t care about anything more than selling a bunch of records,” says
McNair, who’s currently working on Prescott Curlywolf’s Mercury debut. “And
it’s not like Austin’s teeming with unbelievably artistic and ground-breaking
music, but at least it’s soulful and honest. There’s a musical and personal
sensibility here that I feel closer to than the typical L.A. project, which
ultimately helps a record when the artist and producer can share fairly similar
visions and work together to achieve ideas.”
In fact, McNair says he attributes much of that shared vision to the fact that
he rarely works with artists that he hadn’t originally admired from afar as a
clubgoer, and that he started his ventures in music as a guitaristv — calling
playing an “absolute prerequisite to production.” Subsequently, McNair’s
standard line to bands he’s about to produce is, “I won’t be dictatorial, I
won’t tell you to do something you don’t want to do, but you have to at least
let me play tambourine on one song.” As such, Ian Moore recently gave McNair
credits for both production and percussion on his cover of the Who’s
“Magic Bus.”
Had it not been for the failure of his first two Corpus Christi bands — later
remembered as early vehicles for the Reverend Horton Heat’s Jim Heath and Teddy
Roddy — McNair’s own magic bus might have taken a different route long ago. As
it was, those bands’ disintegration proved the catalyst for McNair’s interest
in home-studio engineering and his eventual enrollment at New York University’s
Institute of Audio Research. After dropping out early to string together
engineering stints in both New York and Los Angeles, McNair became homesick and
began his quest for regular work, which brought him back to Corpus’ Hacienda
Studios in 1982 as a staff engineer for the studio’s brisk conjunto output and
after-hour demo production. Shortly thereafter, McNair began commuting to
Austin for sessions at Third Coast Recording, and eventually settled here for
good to help build Arlyn Studios. After a year and a half at Arlyn, where he
helped local acts like DaDa Curve and Zulu Time, McNair met visiting producer
Dick Wagner (Lou Reed, Alice Cooper), who helped land him a job at the Hit
Factory in New York.
“They don’t generally hire staff engineers, but I had too much experience to
be an assistant engineer, so I agreed to do odd jobs around the studio and work
when needed,” says McNair. “It was odd, because I’d be answering phones one day
and mixing something with Phil Ramone the next.” In 1988, with the opportunity
to work on Bruce Willis’ second blues record while at the same time cutting
lead vocals and mixing Stevie Ray Vaughan’s In Step in Los Angeles,
McNair settled in Los Angeles for the stint that basically continues today. And
despite the upheaval of a career thus far defined by constant address changes,
McNair says the resulting industry contacts and opportunities to work with so
many other musicians and producers have made his transition to producer and
Austin resident a success.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to work with so many cool musicians that I get
into production situations and think `What would someone else do here?,'” says
McNair. “I have a big vocabulary of sound and techniques that I’ve learned from
the great producers, and a good idea of what not to do from watching the shitty
ones just as close. I kind of have my own vibe now, but I used to look at
things I did in the past with other producers, isolate the cool points and
repeat them. It’s kind of like playing guitar, learning your favorite Keith
Richards riff, and then making up your own.”
That McNair feels so strongly about staying in Austin appears to be good news
for Austin musicians, from the big-name, major-label talent to fledgling acts
for which he’s done pro bono demo jobs, like Ant Man Bee or
Hollowbody.
“On the level that I’m doing records in Austin right now, I could continue
indefinitely with small to moderate budgets,” says McNair. “But I’m extremely
optimistic about a lot more major label activity and bigger budgets. Even the
indie label scene is pretty healthy in that [most records] are both a labor of
love and have the potential to turn profits. Gold and platinum records, and the
responsibility as a producer to keep creating those hits, isn’t the motivating
factor for me now. As long as I can make enough money to keep doing what I’m
doing; that’s the whole thing.”n
This article appears in November 3 • 1995 and November 3 • 1995 (Cover).