Steve Marcantonio has worked with numerous artists, like Taylor Swift, Ronnie Dunn, Steven Tyler, Keith Urban, and more. He earned his title of GRAMMY® winner at the 58th Annual GRAMMY Awards with his win in the Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media category for his work on the Glen Campbell documentary, I’ll Be Me. We had the chance to sit down with Steve Marcantonio and chat about his career, working with Audio-Technica gear, staying busy during COVID-19, and more.
What inspired you to become a producer/engineer?
Well, my family. Now, I lived downstairs from my cousins, one of whom became the bass player of the Four Seasons. There's always been music in my house, for as long as I can remember. When the Beatles came out, I was what, four years old, seven years old? No, it was ’63, so I was six years old. I would say my family and the Beatles encouraged me because I was into sound when I was a kid. When I was a little, little boy, I was into the sound of things. That's what inspired me.
Can you tell us more about some of the artists you’ve worked with throughout your career?
Well, at the record plant in New York I was still an assistant engineer, but I got to work with projects like The Blues Brothers soundtrack, which took almost a year to make, and I can write a book just on that alone. I have my beard to prove it, because I grew up during that process. The J. Geils Band. Those are the two main ones. Nashville, obviously. Well, it's not obvious to anyone, unless they read and they know about me, but everybody from Vince Gill, who I can still call today on the phone and he'll answer, to Reba to Taylor Swift.
I worked with Brooks & Dunn at a studio here in Nashville that Sheryl Crow owned at the time, called Talentshop Recorders on a track titled “Building Bridges.” Which leads me actually to Ronnie Dunn. I got involved with Ronnie about three years ago when he was doing something for Spotify. They wanted him to do a couple of Pop Remixes, called Re-Dunn. He went a step further, did a whole album of pop remakes. Then Spotify loved it so much, they said, "Do some country remakes." We did like 20-something remakes, country and pop. He calls it Ronnie Dunn Re-Dunn, almost like reboot, like redone. I got to be close with Ronnie over the years, and I don't know how old Ronnie is. He's got to be a little older than me, but he has one of the best country voices.
Now I'm doing another record with Ronnie. Over these last few years, I got to be really close with Ronnie, and he is incredible to work with man. I'm having some of the most fun I've ever had making music with Ronnie. That's definitely a good point.
In addition to singing, do you play a musical instrument?
No, I don't, I don't play. When I was a kid, I used to have a really good singing voice. I played the Artful Dodger in Oliver when I was, I don't know, nine, 10 years old, but I don't read music, I don't play, I don't know anything about notes and chords. I will say this, that anybody reading this or hearing this, who's starting out – the modern-day sound engineer, you can't have one like me that doesn't know music. You must know music in order to be recording music. Because I'm one of the old-school engineers that still just records and mixes. I don't play or do anything else. The modern engineer is the songwriter, the producer, the artist, and so on.
It’s not every day that we get to talk to a GRAMMY Award winner! Can you tell us more about the award-winning record you produced, Glen Campbell’s I’ll Be Me?
Well, I had worked with Glen years ago in Arizona. I did a record for Tony Brown's old label.
I did a double album with Glen, and unfortunately it didn't come out. Later a producer by the name of Julian Raymond came here to Nashville from California and was working with Big Machine Records. He solely took on this project and worked with Glen for possibly a couple years in making that movie, I'll Be Me. I cut a few songs on that soundtrack and one of them was “Remembering” by his daughter: "Don't you worry daddy, I'll do the remembering."
When you cut a song like that, even the most seasoned veteran musician who has heard everything and has played everything, they hear those words, they know what it means. It was a hard day to record that and listen to those lyrics, but I'm grateful to Julian, because there were several engineers that worked on that album. I don't think everyone got a Grammy. I'm grateful for him to put me in there as the person that got the Grammy for that album. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
What's your favorite audio equipment to work with?
I love the AT5047 large-diaphragm condenser. That microphone is a great acoustic guitar mic. I work often with Ilya Toshinsky, who is one of the top acoustic guitar players in town. He wants to buy an AT5047 badly because after we recorded with it, he just loved the way his guitar sounded. That microphone, besides being great on acoustics, sounds great on vocals. I have a sound booth here at my home studio (MusicHouse), where I use that on vocals, and it sounds great. Warm, punchy, bright, all of the adjectives used to describe a killer microphone. It’s really great. Speaking of recording acoustics, the AT4081 ribbon microphone has become one of my new favorites. I’ve been using it on acoustic and electric guitars. For acoustics, I place it right where the bridge meets the sound hole, about six inches away. I like to point it towards the higher strings and not the lower ones. Everyone claims to want that really big, thick acoustic sound, but generally when the guitar player is strumming it, and the part usually gets doubled, and there’s also piano and B3 on a song, the thickness gets sort of washed out, and you just get the sound of the strings. But with the AT4081, you can really achieve a full-bodied sound on acoustic. And proper placement of that mic avoids muddiness in the sound. I just roll off some low end on the EQ, and I usually use an Empirical Labs Distressor on it. That's my acoustic sound. I use it all the time. And for room ambiance for drums, I’ve been using the AT4080 ribbon microphone. It’s not very bright – just warm – and it works perfectly.
We know the pandemic has been stressful for so many musicians and producers. What have you been doing to keep busy and creative?
That's a great question because my wife, Carrie, is a VP personnel manager of the Cleveland Orchestra, and in March, she came home. We set up an office for her, right opposite my control room here in my house, and having her with me last year or over this coronavirus has been instrumental. I could not have done it without her being here. We've been married 31 years and we're having a good time, if that's possible during all this strife. But I would have to point to my wife being here as the answer to that.
I've been busy, yes. Thanks to my client in Arkansas and other producers. Dann Huff hires me to track his stuff every once in a while. That's cool.
Even with the current COVID-19 situation, I’ve had the most fun in my career this past year, because I worked on music that was not influenced by anybody other than the people that wrote it and produced it. It has been for all the right reasons. I can’t even explain it, but my point is that during COVID, in the last year, I have done so many different projects and different kinds of music that were really rewarding artistically. It made me feel good about music again. And even though I’ve been doing this for so long, I now have a new energy about music, and the recording process — it’s still what makes me get up in the morning, and I feel so lucky to be able to say that.
As a GRAMMY Award winner, what advice would you give to aspiring engineers and producers?
I would say that you should never stop doing what you're doing. Don't listen to people telling you that you can't do what you want to do. Anything is possible today in music. As long as you have a laptop and DAW, you can create whatever you'd like to. Whatever you're inspired to do, because no one can tell you what you're doing is wrong. There's no such thing as wrong in music. At Blackbird Academy, I always encourage the students to go for it and don't listen to anybody else.