Producing Balance
story and photography by Stephen Faure
Although his work is all musical artistry, his process can be described as part painting, part sculpture, part architecture; there’s even some magic and wizardry in there.
His name is Dave Fortman. He makes rock ’n roll. Big, fat rock ’n roll. On the northshore.
Dave grew up in Covington, and graduated from Covington High School. After his self-described “short run” at Southeastern, Dave and the band he was with at the time hit the road and landed in California. In 1992, Dave joined up with Ugly Kid Joe, a California band that had a big following during the 90s grunge-rock scene, hitting the charts with their cover of “Cat’s in the Cradle” and the song “Everything About You” featured on the “Wayne’s World” movie soundtrack.
Following Ugly Kid Joe’s split in 1997, Dave settled down in the Santa Barbara area. He bought some equipment and began recording local bands, and then decided to move his growing family and business back home.
He opened Balance Studio in Mandeville. “The first good thing that happened to me was hooking up with Phil Anselmo.” (New Orleans native and vocalist for heavy-metal giant Pantera.) “That gave me some street cred with the local bands.”
He went on to record some demos for Mandeville rockers 12 Stones. The band landed a record deal, and their label, Wind-up Records, asked Dave to co-produce their first album. “That was my first job in the big leagues,” he says.
Dave’s biggest hit so far came after Wind-up hired him to produce the first full-length record of another of its artists, Evanescence. Released in 2003, Evanescence’s “Fallen” has since sold over 14 million copies worldwide.
What Does a Producer Do?
As a producer, Dave is hired by the record company to oversee the entire process of creating an artist’s record. On the practical side of things, he has to set a budget, line up studio space, schedule recording times and hire any assistants, engineers and extra musicians who may be necessary to complete the record.
Artistically, although the artist comes into the process with songs written and an idea of how they should sound, it’s the producer who has final say on the sound of the finished product. Sometimes the artist and producer have two very different opinions on this, and it may not just be a matter of taste. While keeping the artist’s vision in mind, in the end, the producer has to have an interest in creating a sellable product.
Dave’s success as a producer has come from maintaining this balancing act. He explains it’s his job to make sure “the band doesn’t feel like they’re getting stomped on and the label feels like they’re getting a good product.”
Going from being a performer to producer “was like going from being a member of a team to kind of like a coach. I had to grow up and give direction.” On the artistic end, Dave says, “I shape the music from my own experience and tastes in music. I’m a pretty obsessive, but diplomatic, control freak.”
The balancing act Dave has to pull off every time he makes a record is reflected in the name of his studio, Balance Productions. Although he’s done a lot of work in his Mandeville facility over the years, he’s had to travel away from home for extended lengths of time to work with some artists. He spent three months in Los Angeles in 2006 producing Evanescence’s latest record, which has sold over a million copies since its release last fall.
Build It, and They Will Come
Although he can probably afford to live anywhere he wants now, Dave chooses to remain on the northshore. He and his wife, Melodi, have three children, ages 8, 9 and 15. Spending less time away from his family was one of the main goals Dave had in mind when he embarked on a project to build a world-class studio on the northshore.
For the new studio, Dave chose a more rural site away from Mandeville. He hired the world’s leading acoustical design firm, the Walters-Storyk Design Group, to design it and supervise the construction. Lead architect John Storyk has been designing the world’s finest studios since building Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios in 1969.
Dave expects the studio to be completed in August 2007. State-of-the-art audio processing and recording equipment, including a Solid State Logic mixing console and a full Pro Tools workstation, are already installed and being put to use.
Pro Tools engineer Jeremy Parker explains that musicians must often record their parts one at a time, and that it’s important for the other band members to have a place to relax and keep occupied while waiting to perform. To this end, a good bit of the studio is dedicated to client services. A large recreation area downstairs and a lounge area upstairs are under construction. Both will feature internet-connected computer stations and large flat-screen televisions.
By offering such top-notch client services along with Dave’s talents and the latest in recording technology, Balance Productions hopes to attract the biggest names in the industry to the northshore.
Daddy’s Making Some Rock ’n Roll!
Dave’s currently in production mixing Mudvayne’s latest album in the new studio. Mudvayne formed in Peoria, Ill. and has been together since 1996. They’ve toured extensively, headlining their own shows, playing on the main stage of Ozzfest 2005 and supporting bands such as Metallica and Korn. This is the second time Dave has worked with these gold-record-selling metal musicians, having produced their third album, “Lost and Found.” Released in 2005, it has sold more than 800,000 copies to date.
Mudvayne’s rhythm section, drummer Matt McDonough and bassist Ryan Martinie, talk about the process of putting a record together, particularly the crucial pre-production period, and how a producer with Dave’s qualities and temperament can come in to complete the artist’s vision. Matt explains, “We prepare, even in our minds as we write, and as a band in our conversations: ‘Alright, this is a song that we know Dave’s going to want to have more input on.’ Or the three of us—Greg, our guitarist, Ryan and I, we might be working on our musical section—we might be looking at each other going, ‘We don’t know what to do,’” Matt smacks his head to demonstrate the frustration, and continues, “Still—we don’t know what to do with it.’ And Dave comes in, you know, just as a sounding board...”
Ryan completes the thought, and says of Dave’s input, “It’s hard when you’re so close to something to remain objective, and having someone who wants what’s best for each individual song and who wants to have the band voiced in the best way is invaluable.”
Dave’s life experiences are as important as his musical abilities in being an effective producer. Ryan talks about the many reasons Mudvayne chose Dave to produce their record. “He’s an artist; a working musician who’s toured, who’s traveled, who’s had to deal with labels. He’s a songwriter, a singer, a drummer, pianist; he’s all-the-way-around a very talented musician. If you haven’t walked a mile in our shoes, how can you really ‘get’ where we’re at? Well, he’s done it, and he’s a very talented person. He’s good enough and he’s diplomatic. He has the nickname of ‘Diplomatic Dave.’”
Matt agrees. “Dave’s not somebody we have to have this judo relationship with, where we’re trying to work our way around it or negotiate it. It’s not like that. He’s a resource that we utilize in our writing now. It’s powerful. Having a good producer can be amazing for a band.”
Working with talented professionals like Mudvayne also makes life easier for Dave. “For me, it’s just a pleasure to work with them. They’re established gold-record artists, one of those bands that are certainly original and super-creative. We’re also huge friends.”
A Glimpse Behind the Curtain
I was lucky enough to be invited to watch Dave at work one day, mixing the Mudvayne record along with Ryan and Matt and occasionally calling on the expertise of Jeremy and assistant engineer Wes Fontenot. (The other Mudvayne members, vocalist Chad Gray and guitarist Greg Tribbett weren’t in.)
They work 10 to 15 hour days, and although it’s obvious they’re doing what they love to do, it’s equally obvious that it’s a tough job mentally. “We’re super-intense about making sure there are no pops or stray noises,” Matt says. The guys spent a good hour tweaking the sound of four beats of a tambourine in a two-second long section of one song, then a couple of hours tracking down a stray noise and correcting some distortion in a 20-second bit of the same song.
Through it all Dave, the musicians, and the crew traded good-natured barbs and filthy jokes while chugging Starbucks and bottled water, stopping to take a break for a late lunch of soup and salad from the Camellia Café.
Technically, what he was doing went way over my head. But watching Dave at work was like watching any virtuoso artist, moving expertly from computer keyboard to the vast mixing console, picking and choosing from individual recorded elements on the computer screen and eventually assembling and fine tuning the final product, a hard-driving, complex and melodic rock tune known at this point only as “Track J.”
Always being interested as much in the artistic process as in the final product, I asked whether what they were doing was more like painting or sculpting. Dave said, “Painting!” A pause, then, “Sculpture!” Ryan said, “It’s architecture, but really, at this point it’s more interior design.”
Matt had the best answer, “I like to think of it as building robots, or golems, even: little clay men coming to life.”
To learn more about the band Mudvayne, visit www.mudvayne.com.
