"The Sound Architect: A Conversation with Andreas Werner"

Published Oct 11, 2024, 7:00 AM

Join @thebuzzknight for an enlightening conversation on this music interview podcast with Andreas Werner, the multi-talented music producer, songwriter, and composer who shares his musical journey from Switzerland to the heart of music in Nashville and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. You will gain insight into Werner's creative process in the recording studio and his various collaborations including Jason Isbel and The Blind Boys of Alabama. 

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Taking a Walk, you know, to think for us, we really revered that music. We're just, you know, kind of fans and fairly knowledgeable about the kind of music, so it probably resonates with us quite a bit. It's almost like I look at it a little bit as a conversation. You know, the studio is one thing, but then the studio meets your heart or your knowledge, and you're being in a certain way. And I think when the person enters the studio, that's when the magic cap.

Welcome to this episode of the Taking a Walk podcast, the podcast where Buzz Night talks with musicians, songwriters, and even producers like Andreas Werner, Buzz's guest on this episode. Andreas has worked with many of the South's great country and Americana roots performers like the Blind Boys of Alabama, Jason Isbel and many others. Joined Buzz Now with Andreas Warner.

Is Werner, thanks for being on the Ticket of Walk podcast, and thanks for ticket as inside your unique world as a musician, songwriter, producer.

I want to hear how a man.

From Switzerland who's still in Switzerland at this moment but also has roots in Nashville and Alabama and muscle shoals and a love of roots music.

Tell me about your journey and how it all happened.

Well, I grew up in Switzerland and fell in love with American music. I guess in the very beginning it was just whatever music you know, you would hear. In my case, it was MTV. You know, that was the very early nineties. I guess when I really got interested in music, and from there I will go down rabbit hole. So maybe there was like an Aerosmith video where they're like, oh, well, Aerosmith also recorded this old like Beatles b cy call I'm down and like, oh, I got to check out the Beatles, And then Beatles did Chuck Berrying Little Rich and I'm like, oh, it's even better. So that's how it started out for me. And then I just tried to digest all sorts of books that were available. It was a different time. Now it's everything seems to be available. There's a lot of books and documentaries, but for me it was not that much. But somehow all my roads led to muscle shows. And there was a great book called Sweet Soul Music by Peter Gerolnik that was kind of my bible. And I guess that's kind of how the whole universe of you know, southern soul opened up for me.

And Peter's a Boston guy, I know.

Yes, he's been spending a lot of time in Nashville too, teaching there, but he's.

About Yeah, I know, he's friends with another friend, this guy Peter Wolf from the Jay Giles band, who happens to be from this area.

Well, lives in this area as well.

But all roads connect back to everybody being connected through music.

That's the beautiful thing, right Andreas?

Yeah, absolutely, And I mean I didn't even know what was in store for me when I just kind of fell in love with it. I would, you know, would have never thought that it actually would lead to me being collaborators with these people, because that seemed so far out of the possible that I wouldn't even dream that.

So You've worked with this amazing roster of people deep into roots and country and Americana and rock, and it's just this really incredible group. We could probably talk for hours on them, and there's an interesting group of characters that you've been with in this process. But I've got a couple I wanted to focus on to start, certainly, tell me about how you came upon working with and what it was like to work with the Blind Boys of Alabama.

Okay, So the first time I worked with the Blind Boys was for a show I put together for the bi centennial of the State of Alabama. They commissioned me to put a show on in front of the Capitol Building in Montgomery at the end of twenty nineteen, and I contracted all sorts of artists to be part of it that had a significant Alabama connection, including the Blind Boys of Alabama. So that's the first time I worked with them. And then I used them on a Sherman Homes of the Holmes Brothers album to sing in harmony. The next project was some Blind Boys tracks for different projects of mine, and I hope I can keep it going. It's they are in a very transitional phase right now too, with the last of their longtime members retiring, so I don't quite know what their future is gonna hold, but I think they'll keep it going.

So will they be bringing in different members in that process? Is that what you think is going on?

Or well, that's what they've been doing forever. I mean, I think the original like quartet and quintet, there was like they started nineteen I don't know, you know, in the forties. So even Jimmy Carter that's been singing with them since last year, he went to School of the Blind with those guys, but he was one year too young to be an original member, so he sang with them in school, but as soon as they started recording, they couldn't use him because he was not old enough. But then he joined later and he was like the last original era member. And whenever one of the guys passed away, I think it was usually passing away unfortunately, so they have to bring in somebody, know, like you know, like the Temptations, would you know, because out of necessity really right?

And so who do you think the youngest of the Blind Boys is?

Well, right now, the youngest is probably in their fifties. I mean Jimmy is I think ninety two. He's still around. He lives in Atlanta, but he retired from the from the touring lineup.

So there must be a very special aura when you work with somebody like that.

Oh yeah, I mean for me as a as a fan and really you know, appreciating that kind of music. It's just like when you hear him sing there's a lot of depth to it. There's a lot of like the whole spiritual element is it's heavy, it's beautiful. But even besides it, they're just like great guys. I mean, that's like the beautiful thing about this. It's like they're just all my friends and all even if they were not my friends, they're just like really beautiful people. And I love making good music with beautiful people.

Well, there's another one who has made some great music and continues to make great music. I'd love to hear your experience working with Jason Isbel.

Okay, So that's also kind of goes back a little bit to the earlier generation, because I really got my footing in Muscle Shows working with members of the Muscle Shows Rhythm section and the Muscle Shows Horn Section, and the songwriters coming out of there like Dan Penn and Donny Fritz and Spooner Roldam, And then the next generation, if you will, is to Jason Isbel's or David Hood was the bass player in the Muscle Show's rhythm section. His son, his name is Patterson Hood, who has a band called the Drive By Truckers, and Jason Isbell was a member of the Drive by Truckers before he started his solo career, and so the way it came about with Jason was he wanted to put together a show that is basically him and his band, the four hundred Unit, but he wanted to have his musical heroes like David Hood and other like muscle shows type of people be part of the show and seeing some kind of known as the guy who hurts cats, because making a live record is kind of like making a record in the studio or producing a show for PBS is also very similar. So they reached out to me and asked me if I would help produce it, and then that show we put on became a live album as well.

What makes your.

Specialness in hurting cats and bringing musicians together? What is your special X factor that makes you good at that?

Well, maybe I'm like a check of all trades, master of non time person. I think I'm very organized. Also, like growing up in Switzerland and having a lot of different interests, and like graduating from a college is not music necessarily. It's like I'm I think I'm quite versatile and a lot of us musicians are our great specialists, but maybe it's not necessarily Therefore, tee to like organize, but somehow I just always done that, and that's kind of part of my role around Muscle Show. Whenever we get asked to put a show together or or you know, play in Italy or something like that, I'm just always the guy who kind of puts it all together on our end.

Well, I see behind you, you've got a poster there of Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, a like a tour poster there. And I know from our communication via email too, you had sought out the episode with Mark Ribbler, who is the musical director of the Disciples of Soul, among other things, And so I just wondered, do you know Mark? And because I sort of feel like you have. You guys are kind of synced up in common in very many regards in terms of the way you bring people together and your abilities to kind of, you know, hear the music.

No, unfortunately not. I met him briefly actually at this show. But there's a few other, you know, guys in that band that's that I'm more directly contacted with. But you bringing up Steve van sand He's somebody else kind of like me, and not that I want to compare myself to him, but it's like the people that do a lot of different things. Another one that comes to mind is Alan Tucson. That's just like you know, they're rather producer, engineer, performer, arranger, and growing up, I kind of thought you have to be great at everything, and it took me a long time to find out that it's not really what it's Usually it's like, you do one or two things well. But then when you're Stevie Wonder or Prince or Brian Wilson or some of these get there are your heroes are like, well, I guess you have to do everything well. And maybe that's kind of a little bit why I started doing all the things, because I thought that's what you have to do.

So take us inside the nuthouse recording.

Studio in Muscle Shoals. What is that like?

How would that experience be if we were walking in there to the nuthouse recording studio?

All right, well, let me just preface it a little bit, but you know that there's a whole lot of recording history in Muscle Showals, mainly coming out of two studios called Fame and Muscle Shows Sound. And then the nuthouse is like the natural successor if you will of that. So now when we go down there, that's where we like to work. It's a great studio. It's owned and operated by Jimmy Nutt, who is a Grammy winning engineer who I love working with. It was in an old bank building. It's quite a large tracking room. Still has to save in there, which is a great booth we can use. We can even put one hundred people in there and record a live album if we want to, or if you want to film something for TV. I love it vibe. And now when you know the Chasing Isbel's and the Blind Boys and the Britney Howards and John Paul White, those kind of people, you know it's one of their favorite studios in the area for sure.

And then tell us about the Creative Workshop in Nashville.

What is that like, Well, that's a time machine. It was opened in nineteen seventy till just now, still owned and operated by your namesake Buzz Casin, who's best known for writing the classic song Everlasting Love. And it was kind of the counterculture in the seventies to the Paul Nashville country sound. So you have to imagine this that there's a lot of like wood and bark and how you would, you know, imagine an old recording studio a very like warm sound. And back in the seventies, the Doobie Brothers recorded there, Jimmy Buffett got his started there pretty much, Elvis the Faces and Leon Russell and many others you know, And so it has a lot of those vintage vibes and it's a great piano. That was the piano it was on the Johnny Cash TV show when they filmed that the rhyme and in the early seventies, so even before the piano was there, it was you know, played by Ray Charles and Jerry Lee Lewis. And there's some some ghosts in there somehow.

Oh that's amazing.

We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk podcast. Welcome back to the Ta A Walk Podcast.

I recorded an episode of Taking a Walk at two of the studios in Nashville. One was the Curb Studio, the Old Curb Studio, and the other with Mike Porter there over at the quantct Hut Studio. Yeah, so two legendary places, both of them. But when you first stepped into the quantcet Hut, what was that experience?

Like for you, well, same thing.

You know, it's like whoa, hello, Halls.

You know.

It's unfortunately the outside looks very different now because they basically built you know, new building around it. But on the inside the structure is largely unchanged, so you can make out a lot of the you know, grooves and a lot of the just kind of the picturesque quality to it like it used to be when they opened it.

You definitely feel something of another world there, you know.

Yeah, I don't know if it's.

The spirit of Patsy Clined getting aggravated at somebody in a session or Bob Dylan coming in there at the wee hours of the morning to start recording.

But you definitely feel something.

I mean, Bob's alive, so I mean very much alive, but Patsy isn't. But you definitely feel something at the quantt Hut, and I think the Kurb studios as well.

You know.

Also to think for us, we really revered that music. We're just you know, kind of fans and fairly knowledgeable about the kind of music, so it probably resonates with us quite a bit. It's almost like I look at it a little bit as a conversation you know, the studio is one thing, but then the studio meets your heart or your knowledge and you're being in a certain way. And I think when the person enters the studio, that's when the magic happens.

Yes, sir, so you did a production of the fortieth anniversary of The Last Waltz, the Great Concert by the Band. I think what twenty seventeen is that when you did that?

Am I correct?

Sixteen? I believe? I think. Let me see, it's a Thanksgiving I think of sixteen, I believe, or seventeen. But anyway, whatever the fortieth anniversary was, I know the movie came out in seventy eight, I think, but they did it like a year or two before.

Yeah, so what was that production like of the fortieth anniversary?

So what I didn't quite want to do is just like play all the songs, but I wanted to get a band together first of all that could do it justice. So I asked my friend Bones Malone to the horn section basically lead the muscle shows horns and bring the original charts because he was on the Last Walltz. So we had that. My rhythm section was Paula Sola, who was levon Helmspace player towards the end of Levan's career. So we had a really good band and then all the guests had a connection to Levon or the band because Levon went down to muscle shows to record quite a bit in the eighties and nineties. He did one and a half of his albums, and then he played on other people's albums as well and became friends with some of the muscle shows guys Colin Linden who somebody we had. He was kind of part of the extended band and he worked with Garth and Rick and Levon in the nineties. Jimmy Hall was singer of Billy and Jeff Beck's band, and just we had all that connection, and then we did some of the songs that Levon recorded in muscle shows as well as part of the show.

Did he have the rso all Stars?

I think there was that session that came out of some of the muscle shows connection.

Am I correct about that?

Well? That actually even predate most of that, But then he funny enough, it's a little convoluted because he had two albums titled lev On Helm. I don't ask me why, but like so the one leave On Helm album was co produced by Doc Dunn, and some of that was done in Muscle Shows, and then the next one half of that was also done in Muscle shows with largely the Muscle Shows Rhythm Section, and then they went on the road for a little while in eighty two as Levon Hellman the Muscle Shows All Stars, and that was based him members Randall Bramlett and a couple three members of the Amazing Rhythm Aces and the Rhythm Section who later became the Garth Brooks Rhythm section on all of Garth's hits, which is Milton's Sledge and Mike Chapman, and so they just did like West Coast date and the one gig in Alaska, and Jimmy Johnson of the Muscle Show's Rhythm Section did their front of Hound's House sound. There's a great bootleg I have somewhere, but I think that's about all that's still like around from that particular era. But then he came back because he was a was a friend and he just fell in love with the Muscle Shows guys. So he would drive down from Woodstock and somewhere in Virginia. He had this smoked ham guy that he would always buy a ton of smoked hams and bring him to a small for shoals friends and just put the drums in his in his back and come down and drum on a record or sing on a record, or double drum with Joe Roger Hawkins because he loved doing that.

Oh I love it well.

I got to put you on the spot here as a fan of the band myself, and we've certainly talked of the band on this this podcast with other guests.

So I think two.

Of the most you know, quintessential albums, you know, most influential albums and music history would have to be Music from Big Pink, the first band album, and then the second band album, you know, self titled the Band.

I don't know if.

I would think you would disagree on that first, but I think you'd agree, right, Oh I would you would agree right wholeheartedly.

Yeah.

So so from I'd love to hear from a producer's bird'seye view the way you listen to something and sort of imagine how a session was and how things came together and were created and then became these two brilliant masterpieces. If you would, can you first with music from Big Pink and then the second album sort of take us inside your view as an expert in this field.

Well, I don't know about that, but my take on it, it's kind of two things. First of all, it was very anti climactic, if you will, if you compare it with anything else that was really put out at the same time. So that's what's amazing about it. That's like, well, that's not really a precedent, although the music sounds very old in many ways and just kind of the bravery that comes with putting something out like it. And I think from a creative standpoint that time, like coming off that Bob Dylan tour and just kind of hunkering down a big pink and just kind of becoming a unit as a band around Bob Dylan. I think Bob Dylan was in many ways kind of a accelerator, and I think mostly because he was like the driving force in many ways in the beginning as far as the song ideas, and I think they all learned a lot from Bob, but then they brought all their influences to it, and I think it's kind of a perfect storm of all these talents in one room. You know, the band wouldn't be the band without Robbie Robertson that kind of had the ability to kind of lead the charge to a certain degree. He needed like the joyful spirit of Rick Danko, he needed the soul of a Richard Manuel, and he needed the musical excellence of Garth Hudson for it to all come together. And we must not forget that during the basement tapes, Levon Helm wasn't really there because he left the band, went on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and then they finally kind of had him back, and I think he was like the missing piece. He was kind of the heart of the whole thing and the gravel in his voice. So as soon as the five of them were together, magic started happened. But even then there was one link that was extremely important, and that was the presence of John Sime And I don't think we should ever, ever, ever underestimate his role as a kind of a facilitator and a auxiliary player. You know, they needed a horn. He could play the horn, they needed another keyboard. He could play it. But he also had like the mellow personality that would not clash with the others. And I think the six of them they made those two albums, and without any one of those it would have never happened the way it did so beautifully.

So the first album, it's some impossible to answer this, but what are your favorite songs off of music from Big Pink?

My answer would be every one of them, but.

Talk in some specifics of some of your favorites, if or all of them.

It's fine.

Well yeah, I mean I agree, but it's like there's a lot of variety. But also as an album it really works. I mean, we talked about it being very different for the times, just to starting a record was a slow song that was pretty much unheard of, and I mean Tears of Rage is heartbreakingly beautiful. That's what I'm my favorites. I don't know chest Fever, this Wheels on Fire. I love the Weight, but it's not my favorite version of the Weight on this album. Actually, I don't know. You know, it's kind of its whole album that's bigger than its parts for me, anyway.

What is your favorite version besides that version of the Weight?

Oh, one with the staple singers.

Off of the Last Walls, Yeah yeah, oh yeah, for me.

It is maybe maybe this is probably about my favorite singer too. So for them to come together, it was just another perfect storm for me. And we all know it was not even part of The Last Walls. It was filmed on the soundstage, but still it's the climbax of the movie.

So then the second album comes along and they do it so effortlessly again with the same amazing cover to cover excellence. It flows brilliantly. But feelings on the second band album.

Well, I have to agree with you that it really feels organic again, and there's one but knowing what went into actually it's putting together. It wasn't quite that way because they started it at different studios. They rented Sammy Davis's poolhouse in LA and then finished it out there. And you know, you wouldn't necessarily think that when you just listen to that album, because to me, it feels like you just kind of, you know, peeping in for an afternoon and that's it. You see, what you see is what you get. And I think that's another beautiful thing about it. It's so organic and it sounds so live, and a lot of it was cut life, don't get me wrong, But still to me, it feels like, you know, there's no production now when you look into it. There's actually a lot, you know, that needs to work and a lot of arrangement that goes into it to get it to where it needs to be. But what's great about it is it sounds so effortless that you would never know unless you really dig in and analyze.

And just like music from Big Pink, it's still you know today holds up so brilliantly every song on it. Once again, so many favorites. What are some of your favorites there?

All right? Well, for me, I really love Rag Mama Rag for its energy, and I love King Harvest look Out Cleveland, But my favorite is Cripple Creek. Maybe that's the best groove.

I love all of those And in fact, a confession to make when that came out, somehow I can my parents into the fact that they would let me go to the Woolworth's store and get a jaw harp, which probably yielded dental problems to this day that I probably still have as a result of the band.

Well it was worth it, right.

Darn right, darn right.

You know another one that off of that second one that I just absolutely love is when You Awake.

You know, Oh yeah, Rick Danko amazing it is. Yeah, well again, it's just such a great album. You know, it's almost hard for me again to single loud songs, but yeah, I couldn't agree more.

And what's interesting too, we had Elliott Landyon who did the photographs you know, for the band and Dylan and yeah, I hear, and during that period the band was so in a groove and jiving together and those photos that Elliott took were just so innocent and so natural as well, and you know, just made you know, such beautiful accompaniment you know to the music.

And then, as we know, after those first.

Two then even though they produced great music, after that, things started getting a little gnarly with the band, you know.

Yeah, and that's that's really too bad, I guess. But it was just like almost too good to be true, you know. And it's a lot has been talked about, you know, why it went south, but the fact that it actually kind of was balanced for a couple three years there, that's probably what we have to celebrate. And that's probably quite unique that it was possible at all.

Well, I agree. Listen.

In wrapping up, I wanted to ask you, would you come back and do an episode where maybe we could dig into five in your mind of the most influential albums and music history.

Would you come back for an episode with that?

Oh, I would love to do that. In fact, you know, we talked about two of my favorite albums, but we have not even mentioned my favorite band album.

Okay, a good teaser that for that episode. Good, well, we'll get you back. Andreas Werner.

Thanks for being on Taking a Walk, sharing your your story, your love of.

Music, and your your deep appreciation for the history.

Thank you so much and I thoroughly and joy talking to you today.

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