This time on #HorrorStories, seven-time Grammy Award-winning producer, engineer and mixer Vance Powell (Chris Stapleton, Jack White, Buddy Guy) shares a story of a tracking session that turned sour when a fight broke out amongst a group of musicians.
#HorrorStories is a series where the world’s biggest producers, songwriters, and engineers unveil the most outlandish blunders of their careers — providing a much-needed reminder that even the greats make mistakes.
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TRANSCRIPT
He just wanted out of there because he was afraid he was going to get shot.
This did not happen to me, but I was there. It involves an artist who has a band and the band tours with the artist and they were cutting a single. And so the band cut the song and everybody was happy and the artist was going to do his overdubs and all that. And so everybody said, cool, we’re off to the airport.
10 minutes after they left, the real drummer shows up and they start cutting with him. 25 minutes later, the drummer and the bass player walk back in the studio because their flight’s been cancelled. Right in the middle of them erasing their tracks and playing over the tracks, new tracks.
The drummer, of course, is like, what the? What’s going on? What are you guys doing? There’s people screaming. And my friend, who is an assistant on the record, Standing in the middle of the room, just pipes up and goes, “We’re out of milk!” And runs out of the room. Just runs through all of it, right out of the room. Like, there was milk somewhere that we were out of.
But he just wanted out of there because he was afraid he was going to get shot.
That’s what was going to happen from the start, is they were going to replace his tracks. So, very tense situation. And it was getting ugly. We’re out of milk. Out the door.
