So, A wee while ago I mentioned that Steve and Cathi and Dorothy (and a few Spanish coffees) convinced me that I needed to make an album. Knowing how bad (read “Pernickety or even Persnickety”) I am when I do my own recording, I knew I needed to get help. Steve Behrens (67 Music) had given me a list of potential studios, so I checked out their websites then called the one I liked best which was also closest to my house in Washington, Nettleingham Audio
I drove the 15 mins to Kevin Nettleingham’s studio – which was an add-on to his house, It was a “Doctor-Who” type of experience, from the outside it was a fairly normal looking house and garage. You enter the garage and it turns into this large expansive music-zen wood and acoustic tile lined area that somehow managed to fit behind that humble garage frontage. Entering along the woody-smelling corridor with guitar on stand, sofa, nice coffee machine, nice pictures leading to massive space shuttle-worthy soundproof doors leading to a large control room or the vocal room which in turn (through another wonderful sealed door) leads to a large band recording room. Nice, Nice, Nice.
The next question was Kevin… would I like him, would he like me, did I think we could “make sweet music together”. After he had shown me round his audio palace, he fired up his computer system and let me hear some of the things we was working on with other artists. I heard maybe four different snippets of songs – enough to tell me that Kevin is a craftsman who believes in high quality and no messing! I loved what I heard – knowing that if mine turned out half as good, it would still be 1000 times better than anything I could do on my own. We got on very well, he was easy to work with and we felt comfortable with each other. We agreed prices, agreed to spend 2 x 3days recording with an extra day for mixing and mastering – we shook hands, set the dates in December and off I went to get ready.
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