Production

• Experience
• Current Projects
• Skills as a Producer
• Music Samples

PRODUCER CREDITS:

• Ginny Mitchell: A Wild Rose

• Robyn Helzner: Clap You Hands, A Fire Burns (RAH Productions)

• Slavek Hanzlik: Spring in the Old Country, Summer Solstice, Fall of My Dreams

• Ginny Mithchell: A Wild Rose

• Robyn Helzner: Clap You Hands, A Fire Burns (RAH Productions)

• Slavek Hanzlik: Spring in the Old Country, Summer Solstice, Fall of My Dreams

• Special Consensus: Roads and Rails, Strong Enough to Bend, Our Little Town, 25th Anniversary (Pinecastle Records)

• Carla Gover: Hush My Restless Soul (JuneAppal Records

• The Fiddle Puppet Dancers: Lift Up Your Wings (Yodelahee Records)

• Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble: Footworks Live (Yodelahee Records)

• Scruj McDuhk: Road to Canso

• The Duhks: Your Daughters and Your Sons (Sugar Hill Records)

CURRENT PROJECTS:

Mark is currently producing a record of original songs by Kristin Andreassen. Here's his update on the experience:

I’ve finally taken the plunge into digital multi-track recording. I acquired a Mac Powerbook G4 in the summer of ’04 and installed Digital Performer on it. Lots of friends recommended Pro-Tools, but Footworks already owned DP (thanks to a grant that member Kristin Andreassen procured) so I went with that.

It was the same Kristin who approached me in the spring of this year to produce a CD for her. This seemed like an ideal opportunity for many reasons. First, Kristin is a very talented singer/songwriter so I would be working on a project with artistic integrity. Second, Kristin herself was familiar with DP so she could act as a guide. Also, between the two of us there were a lot of friends to call for advice. It was also understood that I would be learning as I went along which was okay with Kristin. Fortunately I didn’t lose too many files in the course of the project.

I got up and running on the software by a tutorial I did with Cathy Fink who offered to help me out in exchange for a few bass overdubs. She and her partner, Marcy, have been recording with DP for years and she gave me a very concise and pragmatic primer. She was very generous with my many follow-up calls as well when I would get stuck. I still refer back to the notes I took in that session.
At this point in time (6/05) we’ve managed to get an EP out to take advantage of Kristin’s summer and fall touring with the various bands she plays with including Uncle Earl (check out their new release on Rounder) and Sometimes Why. We’re well along to having the whole project complete and will hopefully have that released by late fall or early winter.

It’s been an intriguing process. I had produced enough CD’s and watched enough engineers operate to have a pretty good hands off understanding of how digital editing worked. So it was largely a matter of learning which buttons to push to implement the recording concepts that I already largely understood.

Artistically it’s been a very creative and gratifying process (as you can see from our production meeting – see above ;-). Kristin and I both have strong opinions and production concepts, but there’s a good level of mutual respect so it’s been a productive collaborative process. The material ranges from a forlorn love song with a fretless banjo playing off of a regular banjo with feet keeping slow time to a honky tonk rendering of a story about a guy who keeps getting tempted to regress to his old wild ways. This one is livened up by the spirited saxaphone lines of Annapolis’s own Del the Barber who at one time played with Elvis. Go figure.

I’m hoping that my next recording venture will be a project with my new wife (we got married in Dec of ’04 after fifteen years together), Eileen Carson/Schatz, who’s got one of the most versatile, expressive and full toned voices of anyone I know. I’ll keep you posted on this.

PRODUCER SKILLS:

Here are some of the ways Mark can help a recording project:

• help find and choose material
• do musical arrangements
• work up a budget for a project and keep accounts of costs
• locate and book a studio
• hire outside musicians
• oversee all tracking and overdubs, including comping vocal tracks
• supervise editing, mixing, and mastering
• interface with label

MUSIC SAMPLES:

To hear samples, of Mark's production work, download either of the following mp3 sound files (approximately 3 minutes of play time each).

Country/Bluegrass/Old Time sample mp3:

1&2) Ginny Mitchell
3) The Fiddle Puppet Dancers
4) Carla Gover
5 & 6) Special Consensus
7) Slavek Hanzlik

Swing/Contemporary Folk/Ethnic/Celtic Fusion sample mp3:

1 & 2) The Fiddle Puppet Dancers
3) The Duhks
4) Robyn Helzner
5&6) The Duhks