AI Legislation, Grammys®, Vanguard Mic Rodeo, Gear, Sessions and more!!!
Updated: 3 hours ago
I'll start with an update that impacts everyone reading this - or - at least all creators/songwriters/artists, musicians, etc. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. It feels a lot like the .com surge in the 1990s early 2000s in some ways but this one is also a bit different. While AI provides us with many tools to handle mundane tasks, online research, and enhance pretty much every facet in the business world, it also feels like the Wild West (not just because we reside in Wyoming) for creators. To that end, the Recording Academy (of which I'm a proud voting member for nearly 30 years) is quite active in Washington DC lobbying for our collective artists' rights. Once a year, members mobilize and meet with their local US Representatives. I had the privilege (along with one of my colleagues - an awesome electronic music artist from Cheyenne named Mingo) to represent three bi-partisal bills to protect creators in various and specific ways. They center around compensation, protecting name/image/likeness, tools to help us detect when our assets are used in AI 'productions' and the ability of independent artists to unite together to negotiate fair compensation. I won't go into much further here, but I encourage you to read up on the legislation and ask your representatives to support the bills. On October 6th, we met with US Rep Harriet Hageman in her Cheyenne, WY office. She absolutely listened to our issues, is familiar with our asks and is supportive of our overall positions. We remain hopeful that she will add to the chorus of 'yes' votes in the US House of Representatives when the voting is scheduled.
In our now 10 months of operation, I was able to enter several albums into the first round of Grammys® this year for the first time in a while. Box of Rocks, wAHb, Jason Clark and, of course Soul Rash. While it's nearly impossible to be nominated in the larger categories like we all are, it's a healthy process to go through as I believe in the work the Recording Academy does (all of the great stuff that ISN'T the prime time TV broadcast). Competitors in our specific categories include The Rolling Stones, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Foo Fighters, etc. It's Hard to compete given the popularity and marketing budgets in our categories!
Our event with Vanguard Audio Labs back at the end of August was awesome. We had our friends from Box of Rocks performing, two dozen spectators and of course our friends Derek and Judd from Vanguard. It was a fun day of music and we exclusively used the entire product line from Vanguard. All are excellent mics hand built by Derek and are really fantastic high quality microphones that I feel will be considered 'classics'. Each one is a work of art as far as I'm concerned and are some of the finest available and are underpriced in many ways. I was especially lucky to be able to try every mic including their V14 and V24! It was like Christmas morning when all of the boxes arrived!
A close friend of ours brokered a purchase that we made. We picked up a 1965 Fender Bandmaster amp head and speaker cabinet. Vintage stuff that still sounds great! Wow!
Our new friend Dan Karleen of Wyoming Soundlabs built us a custom subwoofer system for our alternate monitors. He's a super talented guy and painstaking collected data and measurements to find the optimal placement of the sub as well as optimal components and cross over point. It's a cool addition to the control room!
We've had several sessions since our last blog post. A couple that I'm excited about is a great project with our new neighbor Lisa Somodi. She is an accomplished musician and composer and now lives right here on the ranch just up the hill. We recorded her beautiful 1939 Steinway piano and her amazing voice on a composition she wrote with an upcoming film in mind. Best of luck to Lisa in her pitch and we look forward to working with her on future projects.
John Laux has been in several times working on his upcoming new album. He's a very talented singer/songwriter and we're pleased to be working with him and his band. Everything is sounding great and we look forward to finishing this one up over the next month or so. Congrats to John on this record. We look forward to many more.
We also met another nearby neighbor Julie Southwell. A talented violinist and songwriter. So much talent within a couple miles of the studio. I'm sure we will work on future projects together! As a bonus she introduced me to the co-founder of Men at Work, Ron Strykert. We had a great hour long phone conversation about music, audio, what we've seen in the last 40 years or so in the industry and what's ahead. Who knows where that will go?
We had a visit from the CEO of Mara Machines (the company that restored our Sony/MCI 1" 8 track machine) Chris Mara. He stopped by on his own tour between Seattle and Denver and was nice enough to stop by to check out our place. A great hang and a great conversation about workflow and creative ways to use our acquisition!
That's all for now. Thanks to everyone for your interest and so many of you reaching out with nice comments. Please help us spread the word. Follow and like our socials, tell your friends, etc. Come to Wyoming to make your next record. Get out of the cities/suburbs. Get away from the noise. Make records the 'right' way (I'll show you how if you don't already know!).
Until next time! - Jim
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