Couch in L.A., Heart in Austin

Without any hint of collusion, both Michael Fracasso and Billy White -- two artists who couldn't be more musically dissimilar -- cite exactly the same qualities that make Dave McNair their producer of choice: his "fine-tuned ears" and thorough attentiveness to exactly what part of the mix is working well at any particular moment. As a result, Fracasso's When I Lived in the Wild and White's Sistershootingstar and Illucination records all sound similarly "big," while maintaining an overall sound of clarity that's radio-ready without being either unaffected or overly polished. When you also take into account McNair's consistent club searches for producible talent, both signed and unsigned, and his well-paced, two-decade evolution from musician to engineer to producer, ultimately you discover McNair's something rare for Austin, Texas: a world-class producer.

Management, along with studios and the producers who turn those knobs, sit atop the music industry pyramid -- an infrastructure many say Austin has never fully developed. But even with Austin's late-Eighties boom in quality studios, local recording experts say that the small budgets and accordingly short sessions of most self-released and small indie recordings have limited both the quality of the product and the collective experiences of those ultimately behind the direction of a band's recorded statements -- the producers. Interestingly, the bulk of McNair's early work came in engineering projects in Los Angeles and New York. Although he's a Corpus Christi native who'd spent time in Austin in the early-Eighties, McNair says it's the techniques and tricks he picked up in his bi-coastal experiences -- working with studio giants like Nick Lowe, Daniel Lanois, Little Steven, and T-Bone Burnett -- that he relies most heavily on today.

In essence, McNair has seen how the big boys do it and brought that experience back home. And yet with a local client list that in just the last year reads like a cross section of Austin's who's who -- Kelly Willis, Ian Moore, Seed, Little Sister, and Prescott Curlywolf, among others -- the practical demands of economic recording make it necessary that McNair still maintain a Los Angeles residency for quickie sessions. But even with a couch and toaster in L.A., it's apparent McNair's heart is in Austin.

"I simply enjoy the projects here more than working with some lame L.A. band that doesn't care about anything more than selling a bunch of records," says McNair, who's currently working on Prescott Curlywolf's Mercury debut. "And it's not like Austin's teeming with unbelievably artistic and ground-breaking music, but at least it's soulful and honest. There's a musical and personal sensibility here that I feel closer to than the typical L.A. project, which ultimately helps a record when the artist and producer can share fairly similar visions and work together to achieve ideas."

In fact, McNair says he attributes much of that shared vision to the fact that he rarely works with artists that he hadn't originally admired from afar as a clubgoer, and that he started his ventures in music as a guitaristv -- calling playing an "absolute prerequisite to production." Subsequently, McNair's standard line to bands he's about to produce is, "I won't be dictatorial, I won't tell you to do something you don't want to do, but you have to at least let me play tambourine on one song." As such, Ian Moore recently gave McNair credits for both production and percussion on his cover of the Who's "Magic Bus."

Had it not been for the failure of his first two Corpus Christi bands -- later remembered as early vehicles for the Reverend Horton Heat's Jim Heath and Teddy Roddy -- McNair's own magic bus might have taken a different route long ago. As it was, those bands' disintegration proved the catalyst for McNair's interest in home-studio engineering and his eventual enrollment at New York University's Institute of Audio Research. After dropping out early to string together engineering stints in both New York and Los Angeles, McNair became homesick and began his quest for regular work, which brought him back to Corpus' Hacienda Studios in 1982 as a staff engineer for the studio's brisk conjunto output and after-hour demo production. Shortly thereafter, McNair began commuting to Austin for sessions at Third Coast Recording, and eventually settled here for good to help build Arlyn Studios. After a year and a half at Arlyn, where he helped local acts like DaDa Curve and Zulu Time, McNair met visiting producer Dick Wagner (Lou Reed, Alice Cooper), who helped land him a job at the Hit Factory in New York.

"They don't generally hire staff engineers, but I had too much experience to be an assistant engineer, so I agreed to do odd jobs around the studio and work when needed," says McNair. "It was odd, because I'd be answering phones one day and mixing something with Phil Ramone the next." In 1988, with the opportunity to work on Bruce Willis' second blues record while at the same time cutting lead vocals and mixing Stevie Ray Vaughan's In Step in Los Angeles, McNair settled in Los Angeles for the stint that basically continues today. And despite the upheaval of a career thus far defined by constant address changes, McNair says the resulting industry contacts and opportunities to work with so many other musicians and producers have made his transition to producer and Austin resident a success.

"I've been fortunate enough to work with so many cool musicians that I get into production situations and think `What would someone else do here?,'" says McNair. "I have a big vocabulary of sound and techniques that I've learned from the great producers, and a good idea of what not to do from watching the shitty ones just as close. I kind of have my own vibe now, but I used to look at things I did in the past with other producers, isolate the cool points and repeat them. It's kind of like playing guitar, learning your favorite Keith Richards riff, and then making up your own."

That McNair feels so strongly about staying in Austin appears to be good news for Austin musicians, from the big-name, major-label talent to fledgling acts for which he's done pro bono demo jobs, like Ant Man Bee or Hollowbody.

"On the level that I'm doing records in Austin right now, I could continue indefinitely with small to moderate budgets," says McNair. "But I'm extremely optimistic about a lot more major label activity and bigger budgets. Even the indie label scene is pretty healthy in that [most records] are both a labor of love and have the potential to turn profits. Gold and platinum records, and the responsibility as a producer to keep creating those hits, isn't the motivating factor for me now. As long as I can make enough money to keep doing what I'm doing; that's the whole thing."n