Listen Up!

April 1, 2019

Producer, mixer, and engineer Mark Howard has had a storied career recording some of the great musical artists of our time, from Bob Dylan to Tom Waites to R.E.M. Thankfully his diligence and attention to detail have served him well in recording memories as well as music. When Howard left school in the ninth grade, his guidance counselor told him he'd end up in prison. Instead he became a Grammy-winning producer, and his memoir, cowritten with his brother, painter and author Chris Howard, is an education in itself. Howard is a brilliant, driven producer, and although he recounts plenty of entertaining tales about the habits and eccentricities of some of the most successful musicians of the last 30 years, his accounts of the studios he's created, his methods of drawing out the best from the artists he's recorded, and the minutiae of the instruments and recording systems with which he works are just as captivating. Like the perfect album side, this is one of those books readers can't put down, and Howard has perfectly calculated the effect to linger after the last note has ended. VERDICT This title, like much of Howard's recorded work, sets the perfect tone. Highly recommended for music lovers.--Bill Baars, formerly with Lake Oswego P.L., OR

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 29, 2019
Canadian producer and recording engineer Howard, writing with his brother Chris, entertains with this collection of anecdotes of making albums with a host of A-list musicians. Working for producer and musician Daniel Lanois in the late 1980s, Howard converted a lavish five-story apartment building in New Orleans into a studio, in which he recorded songs for the Neville Brothers’ 1987 Yellow Moon album (Howard, who considered himself a rebel, had the Confederate flag hanging in his garage with his Harley motorcycle, and Cyril Neville lectured him on the flag’s racist history; Howard immediately threw it out). Howard describes the details of recording Willie Nelson’s album Teatro at the Teatro Studio in L.A., in which he got the sound from the group by setting them up in a big circle with Nelson in the middle. Neil Young would only record in the three days leading up to a full moon, and, in their first sessions together, Howard captured Young’s sound by trapping “his guitar sound and throwing back at him and he would play on top of it.” Howard’s insider music history will be of equal interest to music fans and those who sit behind the mixing board.