I'm working on a blues archive, a collection of 1/4" analog tapes recorded in the 1950s, 60s and 70s at various clubs (Gerde's Folk City, Sugar Hill, the Ash Grove), in a few professional studios, in people's living rooms. Most of the tapes have minimal labeling, which means I have to figure out the tape format: is it 1/2-track stereo, 1/2-track mono, full-track mono, some other configuration? Is it running at 15 ips (inches-per-second), 7 1/2 ips, 3 3/4 ips, oh please not 1 7/8ths ips? Is it heads out or tails out? Some random combination of all of the above? (It happens!) Then there's the musical content, the juicy stuff. When I don't know the song titles, I google lyrics. Which means, today, my search history looks like this:

he moans when i'm sleeping, wakes me 2am

i've got a man down by the sea

awful morning blues

hard time in monkey town

church on sunday and cabaret on monday

dreaming of you, that's all i do

don't you rock me daddy-o

there's many a girl can go about

which way does the red river run

by 4 o'clock in the morning you know it's a lonesome town

don't play police when you knock on my door

Have fun analyzing that, Google!

Leap Day seems like a good day to catch up on fun stuff like invoicing, accounting, responding to emails, backing up hard drives. What fun! Okay, how about highlighting some new releases?

Stupendously proud to have mastered Michael Daves‘ double album Orchids and Violence (Nonesuch). The first disc is a traditional take on mostly bluegrass standards, recorded live to tape in Old First Reformed Church (a block away from my former Brooklyn home!) and featuring heavy hitters Mike Bub on bass, Brittany Haas on violin, Sarah Jarosz on mandolin and Punch Brothers banjoist Noam Pikelny. The second disc takes those same songs and twists them through a raw and experimental lens with Daves on electric guitar, mandolin, keyboards and drums and Jessi Carter on electric bass. Both discs were mixed by Vance Powell at Sputnik Sound and mastered by me. If I were still in NYC, I would not miss the trio of release shows at The Rockwood, The Knitting Factory and The Bell House. (Seriously, I considered flying across the country to go to these shows).

Also newly released – this gorgeous project by Brad Loving aka You are Lightning, You Are Lovely; Elisa Peimer’s Inside The Glass, Original Salvation by 19 (+/-) piece New Orleans Orchestra / cabaret group Vaud & the Villains. (Those last two records were mixed by the marvelous Ted Young!)

Manufactured Recordings just put out this record of sexy soul-flavored jams, the California Playboys’ Trying To Become A Millionaire, which I restored and remastered from original vinyl and which was originally released on San Francisco’s Loadstone Records in 1976.

From the Awesome Tapes label, check out DJ Katapila’sTrotro, an intensely danceable mix from the Ghanian DJ known for his epic sets. This one got a nice write-up in the NY Times.

Happy Leap Day!

58th GRAMMYs - Jocelyn Arem, Geri Allen, Steve Rosenthal, Jamie Howarth (not in this picture) and I walked the red carpet and celebrated with our fellow nominees at the 58th GRAMMYs this weekend. We lost the statue to Bob Dylan but had a wonderful time with friends and colleagues from the Magic Shop, Sony / Legacy, Octave Music, Coast Mastering, the GRAMMY Foundation and lots more. It truly is an honor to be in the company of other great mastering and restoration engineers and reissue producers. Only regret: I didn't get a chance to tell Taylor Swift that my kids think her collaboration with Kendrick Lamar is called "Bad Butt." I'm happily back in the studios at Coast with a stack of analog tapes to catalog, preserve and digitize and a 30-something-year-old cassette recording to resuscitate and reinvigorate. Back to work!