a full-time electric guitar player for the
band, so I could just focus again on singin’
and playin’ the acoustic guitar… it’s really
hard to play the backup fills that the guitar
needed to play while I was singing. So,
going from mandolin to Tele was quite a
challenge but I loved it—I really did. I miss
it, I miss playing the electric guitar.
But we have just released some of my old
country hits from CBS/Epic, and we’re
re-releasing all of them on Skaggs Family
Records, so I’m probably going to end up
draggin’ my ‘ 57 Tele out and startin’ to play
it again, and I’m lookin’ forward to that, I
think it’ll be fun. We’ll still be doing bluegrass... but instead of doing bluegrass as
part of the country show, we’re gonna do
some country as part of a bluegrass show!
Let’s talk about recording. You’ve gone
from the simple, standing-around-a-mic-with-four-guys-completely-live, to major
productions in big studios with every
kind of gear imaginable. How has that
whole spectrum influenced the way you
record now?
Well, I have learned a lot over many years
of recording. I’ve done it both ways. I first
started recording with Ralph Stanley when I
was 16. We went direct to quarter-inch tape,
direct to stereo. If we got a good take, then
that was the cut; if we messed up, we’d do
it over. But we wouldn’t labor over it—and
the band was good, especially Ralph and the
guys. Keith [Whitley] and I was the add-ons,
the new kids, so God help us to not mess
up! I guess once I got with Boone Creek,
our music was changing and evolving, and
we started doing more overdubs there. We
were wanting more separation, so that if
someone did mess something up, we could
go back and fix it without destroying the
integrity of the track.
I guess it was probably when I went with
Emmylou Harris that I started growing as a
producer and studio musician. Emmylou’s
husband at the time, Brian Ahern, was a
brilliant producer. I learned so much from
him, watching what he did. It wasn’t that
he was telling me stuff, I was just always
watchin’ and trying to learn why he made
this choice, why he made this decision
musically. He was like a P. T. Barnum, calling it out, “You play this… you play this…
if you play this together with him, it’ll create this sound, and drums you stop here
and go to high-hat…” I was learning so
much from him, musically and sonically, the
mics he was using and that kind of thing.
But after leaving Emmylou, I came to
Nashville. I had produced all this music
for Sugar Hill Records in NC, a small indie
label. I was sittin’ on an airplane next to a
major label exec, and I played him some of
my stuff ‘cause he asked to hear it, and he
flipped out. He played it for the execs at
Capitol in Nashville, and they loved it, but
the guy in Los Angeles who had to sign off
didn’t like it. So, the guy from the Nashville
Capitol office made one phone call to Rick
Blackburn at Epic. And so I drive down
the street half a block and walk in at Epic
and play the stuff for him. He said, “Who
produced that?” “I did.” “It’s great. I love
it.” I said, “That’s part of the deal. I want
to be able to produce my own music, if
that’s possible.” Here was this brand new,
unproven, unheard-of artist, and so I had
