1. When did you first set foot in a studio?
1971 Phoenix, AZ. A Quonset hut in a dry river bed.

2. Will you describe the break that got you where you are today?
I made an independent vinyl 12" E.P. on $5,000 borrowed from a friend's credit card. It's now a 2X Platinum Album called "Guitars, Cadillacs, ETC. ETC." The artist is Dwight Yoakam.

3. What's your all-time favorite studio experience?
Making "Short, Sharp, Shocked" with Michelle Shocked.

4. What's your all-time nightmare studio experience?
Trying to get Steve Forbert to let me finish "The American in Me."

5. What one piece of advice do you give bands on their first recording session?
Leave your ego at the door; the song is king. All decisions are subservient to the song!

6. Which bands influenced you more than you influenced them?
I hope it's a 50/50 thing - I try to learn from every project and every artist or band I work with. I think it's "learn" more than "influence."

7. What is the single biggest lesson you've learned?
A producer should always subjugate his ego. No ego allowed. I am not the artist.

8. Have you ever encountered real genius?
Yes, Don Reed, a fiddler from Canada. He won the Canadian men's fiddle championship so many times by the age of 17 that they asked him not to enter anymore.

9. Wouldn't you rather be a rock star?
No.

10. When does friction get better results than friendship?
When you are fighting for a musical idea that you believe in.

11. How has making records improved since you began your career?
Technically with Pro Tools. It lets you do things we have been doing for years so much faster.

12. How's it gotten worse?
Pro Tools, because it allows people with little or no talent to make records.

13. What three luxuries do you take into the studio with you?
My sense of humor, my non-ego, and Pro Tools.

14. What's the best record you ever made and why?
"Short Sharp Shocked" - it was so easy and so fast, an aura of magic surrounded the whole project.

15. What's the next big thing?
The collapse of corporate-owned record companies, back to the days of mom & pop type, owner-operated labels ... Sam Phillips, SUN ... Barry Gordy, MOTOWN ... Herb Albert, A&M, etc. More music from music people. If you don't have a skill, you won't survive