Smitty: (Laughs.)
PB: He was with Warner Bros. for 35 years and he finally retired, but he’s still doing some mastering at home, so I just thought it would be great to work with him, and we still play golf all the time and we’re very close.
Smitty: Oh, that’s cool, man. So now when you went in the studios as a producer assistant….
PB: Yes?
Smitty: .…did you just throw the drums away or did you.…
PB: No, I still played a little bit and I had been playing guitar as well, but, you know, I was basically just drumming, I was doing studio work and bands and stuff.
Smitty: Yeah.
PB: And I used to work with this English blues guy, Long John Baldry, for a few years, so I was doing what I thought was good, you know? I never thought I would really do anything else but that.
Smitty: (Laughs.)
PB: And then I found a real comfort zone in the studio engineering and producing, and so I just kept doing it.
Smitty: Yeah, you’re in a sweet zone, my friend. Talk to me about Mr. Norman Brown, switching gears a little. He did Just Chillin’….
PB: Yes!
Smitty: .…when you produced that record and it was a Grammy hit.
PB: Yup.
Smitty: When you’re working with these great guys and young ladies, can you feel any touch of “Hey, I think this is the one” or is it just “This is a great track, I know we’re gonna get some radio play, and I know it’s gonna be really cool, the fans are gonna love it,” but do you ever feel something that says “I think this is the ‘G’ song or the ‘G’ record”?
PB: Almost every time.
Smitty: (Laughs.) You just nail it.
PB: Yeah, I mean, and there’s definitely the one that’s the obvious choice that you either spend a little more time with or just make sure that you’ve got everything you need, and then there’s other songs that are clearly album cuts that maybe you can be a little bit less critical with and just let them sort of be, so, I mean, there’s definitely those choices as you go along on a project, but it’s funny how when you have ten songs for a project and you start the project, certain songs, like “Oh yeah, this is gonna be the one,” then you get in the studio and the musicians play and “Now this one really sounds good.”
Then you get to the mixing stage and then you mix it, then you go “Ooh, I really like this mix. This song is the one,” you know? And then again in mastering when you hear it all together and you’re like “You know? I think I like this one.” So you gotta do what you think is right along the way, but usually the single jumps out. I mean, it was funny on my last record with “Winelight,” I never thought that was gonna be a single and it turned out that Paul Goldstein over at The Wave just started playing “Winelight.” The record company never asked him to or anything else, so he started playing it and he started to get phones ins on it and he just kept playing it and everybody just kinda followed suit and that was the number one song of the year last year.
Smitty: Wow, amazing. It sounds like Paul heard something special about the track and he was dead on!
PB: Sometimes you never know.
Smitty: Yeah, yeah, you don’t. That’s pretty cool. So now the street date for this record, White Sand was 27th of February?
PB: That’s right.
Smitty: That’s exciting! Yeah, and you’ve found a new home.
PB: Yeah, Peak Records.
Smitty: Yeah, you’re over there with some great people, Andi Howard, a good friend.
PB: Yeah.
Smitty: And you’ve got some great musicians in your camp over there as well.
PB: Yeah, it’s like a little happy reunion. (Both laugh.) It’s great. Everybody seem to be very into it and they seem to have a lotta good ideas and keep my fingers crossed.
Smitty: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s a great label and a lotta great people with some great visionaries over there, and you’re connected with Concord and all those people.
PB: Exactly.
Smitty: And then you’ve got one of my good friends that is so talented, who’s on the record, by the way, David Benoit.
PB: Oh yeah.
Smitty: Yeah. He’s a golfer too, isn’t he?
PB: Um, you know, I don’t know if he golfs. If he does, he’s kept it a secret.
Smitty: Well, You’ve got two golfers over there, I know, and that’s Russ Freeman and Gerald Albright.
PB: That’s right. Gerald told me he’s a golfer and I’ve never golfed with either one of those guys.
Smitty: Yeah.
PB: One of these days.
Smitty: Yeah, you guys may have to go on tour.
PB: Yeah, golf tournament coming up.
Smitty: (Laughs.) I’m totally diggin’ your new record, man, and the diverse flavor of it is as well. Bobby Caldwell, when you said that you laid down the track [Mercy, Mercy, Mercy] with him in the studio.
PB: That’s right.
Smitty: That’s a classic song, man. I know that when you’re doing a record and you’ve got a voice like Bobby Caldwell in the studio, it’s gotta be so much easier to do that track with a voice that just fits the record so well.
PB: Well, yeah, he certainly did that. I mean, it was funny ‘cause he was supposed to come that night after rehearsal and he called me and he said “Man, my voice is blown out, I can’t sing and I gotta leave tomorrow at ten o’clock in the morning” and blah-blah-blah. I said “Well, just come over in the morning.” So at 8:30 in the morning he showed up at my house and sang that down and basically just killed it the first time.
