Wilco producer weighs in on the analog vs. digital debate

I was sitting on a comfortable couch at Bayou Studio today, attending Bill Tate's 24-track-tape Americana-song demo session & perusing the latest geeky issue of Tape Op, "The Creative Music Recording Magazine" (Sacramento, CA). I came across a barely legible (why all the small fonts nowadays, damn it!) interview with Jim Scott, producer of such diverse artists as John Fogerty, Johnny Cash, Whiskeytown, Wilco, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Robbie Robertson, Natalie Merchant, the Dixie Chicks, Tom Jones & Santana. He is also the owner/operater of PLYRZ Studios, appropriately located across the street from Magic Mountain, an amusement park in Valencia, CA -- not, of course, the site of Thomas Mann's famous 1924 Swiss sanitorium novel.

Anyway, Mr. Scott had something interesting to add to the revitalized analog vs. digital debate: namely, that analog tape can be combined with digital technology (e.g. Pro Tools) to good sonic effect. Guess who likes to do so? Read on.

"Q: Do you mix to tape much?

Scott: If I have to do any analog mixing I'll rent a tape recorder. Most artists don't. They can't afford it. The only ones lately that have used tape have been WILCO, because they really care and they can hear the difference between tape and Pro Tools. You can't get away with anything around Jeff [Tweedy}. . . On ['Wilco (The Album)'] we tracked everything to tape and then transferred it to Pro Tools. Jeff likes the sound of tape, but he's not anti-anything . . . Pro Tools and tape-transfer just had a little flick that was good."

I knew there was a reason - other than the fantastic songs - why I love Wilco so much. Jeff Tweedy is a retro-perfectionist after my own heart. As analog-champion Jack White says: "Your record player isn't broken." For something truly weird, dig the new cover of Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good" by 72-year-old former rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson, produced by Jack White for Nashville's Third Man Records (see www.thirdmanrecords.com).