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| Co-producers
Brent Baxter Barrett (left) and Marshall Block during the recording
of Keyna's album at Real II Reel. |
Nestled on a 10-acre plot
of timber on the outskirts of Flint, Michigan, producer/engineer Marshall
Block is beginning to measure success by a different standard, partly
due to the breakout success of one of the artists he’s been
producing and recording for the past eight years.
Singer/songwriter Keyna Darling, with whom Marshall has been working
for nearly eight years, was named the “2006 Breakthrough Country
Artist of the Year” by the influential radio trade magazine
New Music Weekly, and has been cast to sing and provide music in an
animated feature film from Hollywood’s Enteraktion Studios.
Overnight success never happens overnight – it’s the product
of hard work, key contacts, and perseverance. At least that’s
what Marshall has come to learn in the twelve years he’s operated
Real II Reel studios.
What kind of production services do you offer your clients?
Some artists call up looking for me to basically help shepherd them
through the recording process. If they’re a singer, I’ll
assemble musicians and get songwriters together, determine what genre
they are going to go, etc. We’ll discuss up front what their
goals and objectives are going to be for the record. Next, I’ll
put together a budget and basically function as a producer. I will
fly in musicians as needed to augment the local session players. For
instance, I recently flew in Alex Depue, the former fiddle player
in Chris Cagle’s band, to play on a specific project.
At the same time, I’ll contact all my clients that are working
on country projects and inform them that I’ll have a world class
fiddle player coming in and do things that way to spread out the cost
a little bit.
I’ll also go down to Nashville when a project can benefit from
it. I mostly work out of the Sound Kitchen, which is like a fantasy
camp for me. It’s a great studio. I’ll head out to Los
Angeles occasionally, and have made good friends, like TAXI founder,
Michael Laskow, that are a big help.
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| Singer/songwriter
Keyna Darling. |
Keyna Darling’s
success must be very gratifying. How long have you two been working
together?
I met Keyna about eight years ago and I told her at the time that
she wasn’t ready to record. We did a couple songs, and she unquestionably
had the voice. So I advised her to get a band together and to get
out there and work, just get a lot of experience. Learn how to sing
rhythmically with a track, because she had all the talent, but needed
to temper it with experience. Keyna was unique in that she was willing
to try everything I would suggest to her. That’s rare. She is
always a delight to work with.
To me, the function of
a producer is not to dictate, but to recommend. We had gotten some
great sounding backing tracks that she and I co-wrote words and melodies
for. One of these songs, “It’s the Little Things,”
caught the ear of song promoter Alan Young, who had helped make LeAnn
Rimes “Blue” a hit. He ran with “It’s the
Little Things” and pretty soon, the track was being played all
over on the Indie charts and then in Europe. One thing led to another
and Keyna was nominated for leading radio tip sheet New Music Express
2006 Breakthrough Country Artist of the Year Award.
In November we traveled
out to LA for the awards show. Here’s a guy from a small town
in Michigan, in Hollywood surrounded by celebrities and a who’s
who of top radio executives. Sure enough, Keyna was voted the winner,
which was a pretty amazing result! It was kind of a “Twilight
Zone” moment for the little guy, because we all start off with
a dream… and on that night, I was living the dream with an artist
I had helped produce.
Part of our plan was to also use professional image consultants to
help her develop Keyna’s image. We went with established pros
so that everything from the photos to the web site was top quality,
including her debut album, Zero to Ten, which we relied on the Disc
Makers’ design studio to help create.
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| Keyna's
breakthrough CD, Zero to Ten. |
As Keyna’s momentum
was building, Tom Walsh at Enteraktion Studios (one of the leading
independent animation studios in the Los Angeles area) heard “Edge
of Lonely” off Keyna’s record, and fell in love with it.
It’s been exciting to see how the record has opened more and
more doors for Keyna.
(Walsh explains, “A
close friend passed on Keyna’s album to me and her voice definitely
caught my attention. One of the key characters in our new feature
film will sing and I felt Keyna’s voice would be perfect for
the role. The production cycle will run 15-16 months, so it will be
released late in 2008 and be distributed by one of the major Hollywood
studios.”)
It seems a big part of your success in nurturing relationships
in the industry, locally and nationally.
Yes, you have to work from the bottom up. People seem to think that
you need to go to the president of a company right away. I attended
a songwriting seminar many years ago and I asked the teacher, a very
successful San Francisco-based songwriter named Steve Seskin, how
he made it. He told me, “I go to Nashville once a month and
I work with up-and-coming singers and writers, who haven’t made
it big yet. We collaborate and when they break out, we have a track
record of collaboration and often continue writing together.”
I’ve never forgotten that, by helping people when they’re
virtual unknowns, you become a part of their team when they take off.
What advice would you share for a studio owner who is trying
to build his production rep? What should they focus on?
Whatever it is you do, whether it’s mixing, remotes, tracking…
become an expert at it. People will pay money for someone who excels
at one thing. So often, musicians try to do it all. They try to book
themselves, they want to design their graphics, they want to write,
become an engineer, and you can’t make it doing all that.
The world isn’t designed that way… it’s designed
for a group of experts all collaborating, where everyone is doing
what they like to do well. I don’t do artwork or duplication.
I call on experts, but I know guys that will buy all the graphic design
programs and spend time doing art for the CDs they record at their
studios. To me, that’s a formula for disaster.
The second thing is to remember Woody Allen’s quote, “80%
of success is just showing up.” It may not be easy but you have
to be reliable and do what you say you’ll do. I ended up meeting
a woman who became president of Universal Music Group in Nashville
while she worked at a nearby music store. I taught a weekly Pro Tools
class, and I met her simply because I showed up like clockwork at
that store, every single week, during a period where she was helping
to manage the business.
Finally, help as many people as you can. So many people just sing
one note, “me-me-me,” and forget that there are many other
notes on the scale and so many people in the music business. So get
out there and help someone else. You’ll find that it’s
much easier to make it with a team than if you are only pushing yourself.
Nobody wants to work with someone who only sings “me”
all the time.
How long have
you been in business?
I opened the studio in 1995 on a full-time basis. Before that I was
a clinical biochemist for one of the largest medical laboratories
in the country. I’m here 12 hours a day, seven days a week,
but I tell everyone, “I never work a day in my life,”
because I love my job.
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| Real
II Reel's main studio features a large open space with a cathedral
ceiling and views of the surrounding woods. |
Would you take
us through the studio’s equipment set up?
I’m running Pro Tools HD 2 with ACEL. I like the sound that
the Focusrite preamps give me, so I have the Red 7 (mic pre with dynamics),
the Red 1 (quad mic pre) and the Blue ISA 428 pre pack, which has
four high quality preamps that directly interface into Pro Tools.
I also use a pair of Drawmer 1960 dynamics processors and an assortment
of the Waves plug ins.
For mics, I have four 414s, an AKG C-12, and a range of the usual
dynamic mics for use on drums, amps and the like. I have an E-V RE-27
which I like on kick drum and rely on Sennheiser MD 421s for toms.
My favorite new toy is my SSL Duende, it’s basically the guts
of the C-200 mixing system, which I use as my backend for mixing and
summing. It’s fabulous! It offers both E and G channel strips,
the Stereo bus compressor, and full EQ and dynamics processing which
appear as VST/AU plugs in your mix environment. (Editor’s Note:
The Duende has a street price of about $1,695.)
 |
| A
close up of some of the technology that makes Real II Reel Productions
tick. |
My monitors are Yamaha
NS-40 Ms, powered by a Crown Studio Reference amplifier. For reverb
and delay, I’ve got a Lexicon 300 and PCM 91. I also keep going
to my MidiVerb for program 65, the chorus sound, because I’ve
still never heard anything better!
The main room, which overlooks the woods, has a cathedral ceiling
so the acoustics are pretty nice. The studio has a total of five iso
rooms, so musicians can get good separation while they are recording.
A note from the artist…
Singer/songwriter Keyna Darling credits Marshall Block, as well as
some of the other collaborators such as co-producer Brent Baxter Barrett,
with helping her develop her talents to the point where her career
has skyrocketed.
“Marshall is an amazing coach. I was basically singing quietly
behind my piano when we first met,” recalls Darling. “He
encouraged me to form a band and learn how to project my voice. In
the studio, he’ll challenge me to take a song apart, singing
one line like Marilyn Monroe and another like Ann Wilson (Heart).
“I’ve learned that it’s all about the song and how
you present it. He and Brent both have had a huge impact on my music.
And while everyone dreams of making it to the top, I’ve learned
how to enjoy the journey as my career unfolds.”
Marshall also introduced Keyna to Mark Farner, lead singer of the
iconic rock band, Grand Funk Railroad. Darling continues, “We
hit it off and he agreed to sing a duet with me on the album. Later
I got an opening shot playing with Grand Funk Railroad, which was
a thrill.”
Her last word on working with talented producers like Block and Barrett?
“An artist can learn so much by being teachable… listen
carefully to the perspectives your team suggests because you can usually
learn a great deal about the song from them.” |
