[Over 10 years ago I first encountered Lou
Whitney as a free-lancer doing a story for Springfield, Mo's Community Free
Press Midweek. Over the years Lou became more than an interview subject - he
became a friend. The tall man in the engineers chair, leaning back with his
chin resting comfortably on his hand, is
how I remember him most in physical appearance. But there was so much more to
Lou than that - his incredible grasp of history, his ability to talk intelligently on a wide range of subjects, his unique and defining sense of
humor. His manner of speaking in rhythmic sentences and part sentences - the
first clue that he was a bass player that understood where the pocket was. His
no BS approach. Whether talking as an interview subject or just as two friends,
you never got the image of a man. You got the man himself. The last time I
heard from Lou was during the early Fall when he sent an inquiry about a photo
he needed to track down - one of him in downtown Springfield that somebody
wanted to use for an article. I knew the one he was talking about - it graced
the cover of CFP for the issue that contained this interview. I didn't know who
took the picture, but gave him a starting place to look. The thought crossed my
mind that Lou's wife is a photographer and could easily replicate or even
surpass that image. "Probably needs a period photo" was my
conclusion. I made a mental note to get my ass downtown for a visit - something
I hadn't done in a couple years. I never got the chance. What Lou didn't tell
me was that he was in the final stages of cancer. Lou passed away last month.
Unpacking boxes from a recent move, I found the article this week. So, after 10
years, here it is for the first time on the internet. It still stands as a
pretty good picture of who Lou was and a lot of still pertinent information for
any budding musicians.]
OLD SCHOOL CODGER - THE LOU WHITNEY INTERVIEW
-by Bill Glahn, first published in the February
4, 2004 edition of Community Free Press Midweek-
"I think the conclave around Springfield is
important, even if not on the level of mainstream success. Lou Whitney and D.
Clinton Thompson are wonderful musicians and, to some extent, visionary in
their perspective on what matters in rock and roll. The artists that have
worked with them - most recently, Hadacol and Kristie Stemel - are remarkable
talents that are far under appreciated." (Danny Alexander, associate
editor of Rock 'n' Rap Confidential)
Lou Whitney's recording studio, called simply
enough, The Studio, is the epicenter for much of what gets recorded by local
and regional artists around Springfield (MO). When I stopped by The Studio to
arrange an interview with Whitney, I quickly found out that music wasn't the
only thing that flowed through his blood. Whitney spent his childhood in
Phoenix, Az., the grandson of a mayor and the son of a politically active
lawyer. A simple introduction quickly evolved into a two-hour discussion on
national politics, Whitney staking ground somewhere left of center and
proclaiming that the left owns humor these days. I wish I had a recorder on for
that conversation, because it would, no doubt, have made a fine entry into the
CFP Opinions page. As it turned out, my interview on Whitney would eventually
turn to politics anyway. It can't be helped when two old codgers get together.
Bill Glahn: How did you land in Springfield, Mo.?
Lou Whitney: I got into juvenile delinquent-type trouble in
the '50s. So they sent me off to live with Step-relatives up in the mountains
of East Tennessee. So it was quite a culture shock. I went from Phoenix, which
was sort of a test-market L.A. in 1958 to 50 miles from the North Carolina
border where they raised hogs and I went to school there. It was either that or
go off to a reformatory. I went to high school there and back to Phoenix for
college. Then back east to finish college. When I finished college I took a job
in Springfield.
BG: When did you first start playing in bands?
LW: I first started playing in bands in college. I started recording at home.
With a couple of reel-to-reel tape recorders and bouncing track back and forth
making home recordings... writing and singing songs and making demos back in
the '60s. My first record, an independent thing, came out in the late '60s.
BG: The first thing I was aware of was The Morells' Shake & Push record in
1982.
LW: Yeah, well that was the first thing that ever did anything. Everything else
was kind of local bands making records where you paid for everything yourself.
We had a little support on that record. But I was playing for a living before
that. When I first came to Springfield I only lasted a year in that job before
I drifted back into playing. I played lounges... traveling around playing
Holiday Inns and Ramada Inns, wearing jump suits doing Top 40 songs and disco
things. But always gravitating towards different guys that had more of an
interest in... I always liked rock-a-billy and I would buy all kinds of
records. I'd listen to Commander Cody and old Sun reissues. I'd see a Liberty reissue
of Eddie Cochran's stuff. And I would buy that at the same time I would buy a
Uriah Heep record. The Morells were probably the first band of mine that gained
national prominence. We put out a record that sold about 10,000 records
independently through distributors. It got four stars in Rolling Stone.
reviewed in Playboy. It made noise. We got gigs. It got a lot of airplay in
Chicago and Minneapolis and places like that. The first brush we had with
anything interesting, I guess, was Donny Hobson and I... We recorded some
sides, home recordings, and one of them was called "Driving Guitars."
We were out playing with Steve Forbert. He had hired us [as his touring band].
We gave a copy of the record to Vince Scelsa of WNEW [influential New York radio
station] and he started using "Driving Guitars" as the theme music on
his concert hotline that he used to do for WNEW for seven or eight years! Then
we did a cover of "Double Shot of My baby's Love" in a band called
The Symptoms that pre-dated the Morells. It got picked up by a little
independent label called Ambition Records out of D.C. and New York. It did
pretty well. I mean pretty well for us. It got airplay. We got gigs! This is
1980. We were doing this type of thing - just oddball goofy surf-a-billy stuff.
People liked it. Around then I met Donny [D. Clinton] Thompson. Playing lounges
was getting kind of old. Brewer & Shipley hired him and he went out there
with them and saw kind of how things worked out there in the real world. And he
comes back and says, "You know, I think we can maybe put together a band
that doesn't have to, like, just play lounges." We would always spice up
our lounge act with things like Kool & the Gang, then we'd do a Who medley
from Tommy. Or we'd do "Double Shot of My
Baby's Love." And people liked it.
BG: That was a pretty popular way to approach it back then. I remember going to
clubs in New Jersey back then and there would be some pretty good bands doing
hits and familiar stuff that people would want to dance to. But all the really
good ones always used to play something out of left field and...
LW: And people would accept it! And that's how you kinda learn that the crowd
is going to accept things that are not necessarily mainstream, if they're
presented well. So we kind of got into that mode. Donny was the guy that had
more good ideas. I'm more of a team player. He had good ideas. I just followed
along when he played. Well, you saw those guys play last night [backing Brian
Capps at the Outland]. How good do you want a couple of guys to be? Donny's a
good guitar player, right? Lloyd's (Hicks) a good drummer.
BG: When did you start The Studio?
LW: The Morells went about as far as we could go. We were offered a record deal
and as soon as we were offered the deal, like on a Wednesday... We were supposed
to finalize the deal on a Monday and the guys that signed us got fired on a
Friday. It was literally like that. It was like, "Oh, we've got it
made." Then it was like, "Shit, you mean we've got to start this all
over again?" We had a record out. We were starting to work on records and
this and a lot of other things came up. So we just hung it up. Where we
recorded the record, and the guy that helped us out, a guy named Jim Martin...
I was hanging around the studio that he owned at the time. They had an
engineer that ran off. So I'm one of those guys - I said, "I'll see if I
can help you out." I started learning my way around the studio,
freelancing. And I just went into that after The Morells broke up. And I worked
for those folks for about 5 or 6 years. That kind of fizzled and the folks that
owned it split up. I just took advantage of an opportunity and bought the
studio and then wound up moving down here with the stuff around '93 or '94.
I've been here ever since doing records regionally.
BG: You do a lot of producing. How does that work? Do you seek out the bands?
LW: It works like this. They come into The Studio. They want to record. They
know that I have a studio that has done some things that have made it to
labels. And they know I'm reasonable. So they just come down here to The Studio
and they get me (as engineer). And I'm in there and I'm one of those guys. I'm
going to stick my two cents in. So a lot of the time, at the end of the day,
they'll say, "We want to include you in on the production of this thing
because you've chipped in ideas and we think you've helped us." So it is
production. I'll join the band! I'll say, "Let's take a look at this
bridge. Maybe we can change the beat right here. Maybe we can rock this up a
little bit. Maybe we can cut that guitar solo in half." The kind of things
that producers do, mostly on the music end of it. Plus the engineering, so I'm
wearing every hat. Now if they don't want my input, I'm still not going to let
them trip. So "production" is a term that gets thrown around a lot. I
get hired to produce some bands and get a fee for it on occasion. But not that
often.
BG: I think if you ask ten different producers what their job is, you can get
nine or ten different answers.
LW: There's a definition of the term "producer" in the record
industry. The term has definitive duties. Number one, you're usually hired by a
label. Let's go back to a definitive time. A label signs a band because they
think they can sell some records. They want them to make a commercial
recording. So they engage a producer, a guy who knows all about the record
business, to help this band select their songs, come up with a studio that is
affordable, a budget to work within, an engineer that fits within the budget,
an arranger if need be, keeping track of things that need be, like getting a
budget together for strings & sticks, food, lodging.
And overseeing the project to make sure the
engineer doesn't screw up. But mostly, optimally, it's musical. Helping the
band get a good record out. And then keep track of the credits and then get all
that information along with a commercial master back to the record company by a
certain date.
That's a producer right there. A producer in the
modern day and age? It usually means a guy paid for something, but,
"producer" nowadays is a term that gets thrown around a lot. It can
be anything from a guy that lays on the couch at the front of the console and
wakes up every 30 minutes and says, "Sounds great! Need more donuts?"
or a guy who tells everybody every note to play. Optimally for me, it's a guy
who joins the band for awhile.
BG: So this is your career now? Running The Studio and producing?
LW: (laughing) Let's talk about the term "career." This is a tough
business. I play around quite a bit with Brian Capps. I need that playing
money. This is what I do though, yeah. The Studio - I try to keep it afloat.
BG: I would imagine that all this new technology, these affordable digital
boards that bands can set up in their basement, a million dollars worth of gear
that's now reduced to a thousand dollar computer program...
LW: On the surface you would say, "Yes, that's hurt me." A lot of
guys come in here and spend several hundred bucks on doing some recording and
they say, "Man, if we just add another 300 bucks to that we can buy a
Sound Turret 880 and we can record at home." But they don't realize that
there are other things that go into it like expertise, how you mic things, a
good bunch of microphones, and a room that sounds good.
There's a learning curve. What you record on,
that's not really that important. It's how you do it, what it sounds like. It's
a results driven business.
BG: I think the problem with some of these homemade CDs is that you get some
bands that haven't even reached first base yet and they're already putting out
a CD. Many have never worked their material out in front of an audience yet.
LW: I'm 61. When I started playing nobody wrote their own songs. The bands that
played were the bands that did the best renditions of the popular songs that
you heard on the radio.
So if your band played Otis Redding songs and
Beatles songs better than any other band, you worked. I learned early on...
who's the good singer? Who's the good guitar player? What gets the job done?
You know, a bass player tries to surround himself with these kind of folks. My
strengths in the band are that I've always been a good P.A. guy. I learned at a
fairly early time about how to make a band sound good. If you sound bad, you're
screwed. Everything I say, you've got to underline "codger." Because
I realize when I listen to myself talk, I'm a codger. I'm an old school fuck-head
codger. That's what I am. But that's ok.
BG: A lot of artists that have recorded at both The Studio and other places say
they like the sound that comes out of here.
LW: I've got a good room to record in and I've kind of got my drill down. My
thing is - I got it out of my system pretty early on - the need to put my palm
prints, my DNA, on everything that comes out of here. I've learned to listen to
a band and take advantage of the effort that they put into it. Let the
quantitative analysis set in. Get familiar with it. Come up with options
instead of gripes. I'm pretty organic. Drums sound like drums. Guitars sound
like guitars. So it may not sound like the flavor of the month. If I can
capture what this is all about and get it down, and not in the way of it, then
it's up to somebody else to decide if it's up to the moment or not. On the
production side of it, if I hear something that... "hey, it might be cool
if you went with this here or that there," and they accept it and
incorporate it then... Great! Maybe it's something they didn't think of or that
they're so close to it that they can't step outside the arena and take a look
at it. The main thing with a professional studio is that you can take the
entire band and set them up with their equipment and let them play their way
completely. We can record everybody all at once and still maintain a degree of separation that allows us to go back and do it with a live feel. They learn
their songs live. They rehearse live. So I set them up much as they would
rehearse. Make them comfortable. Everybody can play at once. I've got enough
microphones, high quality cabling and wire in the building, and tracks on the
machines to make that work.
So they can come back and listen to it and mix it
to their discretion. That's what separates a professional facility from a
project facility. Digital-analog converters come into play because a lot of the
stuff is recorded digitally on a computer.
Those converters can range in quality from a pair
at a mastering lab that cost in excess of $20,000 for just two, left and right.
Or you can buy a sound card that has eight of them in it for $125. But that's
not what they're used to hearing on the radio and that's not what you're used
to hearing on professional recordings. Professional gear, together with people
involved in the chain that mix for a living, record for a living and master for
a living... those are the recordings that wind up making it to the radio. Some
recordings that are made at home do make it to record. But that's pretty rare. That's
a person that has some savvy and some intuitive drive to get the project done.
BG: I get a lot of recordings for review that are made-at-home projects that
strike me as vanity recordings. Like vanity publishing. My advise to some of
the artists that send out these CDs would be to get out and play. Learn their
craft first, before even thinking about making a recording. How do you feel
about that?
LW: I would say that would be really good advise. But also that it would be
considered old codger advise because that is not the norm for today. I kind of
like this term about "doin' business." I'm rubbing my fingers
together right here in the international cash sign. Doin' business. Can you
draw three, four, five hundred people to see you play on a given Friday or
Saturday night in Springfield, Mo., at the Rockwell or some other fine
establishment? Well, that's doin' business.
That means people are listening to what you've
got to say. Right now there's only a couple of [local] bands doing that. Big
Smith. Happy Endings. That might be the only two. There's a lot of people back
in second place, but they're way back. You've got to be able to blow people's
dress up just by playing. Because, bottom line, it's the music business. Not
the haircut and attitude business. Not the video business. It's not the
posturing business. It's not the anything business. It's the music business. My
advise to young band if they want to record? Go get The Beatles at The BBC.
Listen to that!
BG: Or their Hamburg tapes.
LW: Yeah, listen to that shit! And when you're that good maybe somebody at EMI
will... Shit, they were playing six sets a night. SIX sets a night for two and
a half years! Playing everything from "Besame Mucho" to Al Martino
songs to waltzes to polkas to covers of American blues stuff. They played it
all. Listen to those guys. Listen to those harmonies. Listen to those guys
play. And they were just,
like, a band at the time. There's more bands these days, but there aren't any
more people that are that good. There's no more gifted people now than there
has been at any other time in history. It's genetic. I know it.
You can teach yourself to do anything, really.
That's the great thing about being a human being. If we work at something we
can even become good at it. But we'll never be gifted.
Being an old codger is like being a bottom line
guy. When the electricity goes off, can you still pick up a guitar, sing a
handful of funny songs, entertain some people on the corner enough that they'll
throw some money in the box so you can buy a sandwich? Can you fall out there
with, like the Marx Brothers, on the sidewalk and do something to knock
people's hats off? Be creative. Be an unbelievable, fantastically organized
act.
BG: Final thoughts?
LW: I'm 61 years old. I keep waking up every day and think that the Republicans
are going to make what I do for a living illegal. You'd be amazed at how much
conservatism has crept into rock music. And Libertarians? The mugwumps of the
21st Century.
BG: Maybe you have a question for our Ask the Mayor column.
LW: I'm acquainted with the mayor. I got a lot of respect for the guy. You
can't be a raving liberal and get elected in Springfield. But I know Tom is a
good guy. Let's see (laughing)... I would like to ask the mayor, "did the
city council breath a collective sigh of relief when the Assemblies of God
dropped their request to change the name of Booneville to Ashcroft Blvd?"
