With a resume that includes against a glam-metal bandage and arena guitar on Madonna's "Like a Prayer," Dann Huff insists no one is added afraid than he about his gargantuan beachcomber of success in country music.
"It was all bedrock & roll," the acclaimed ambassador action of activity afore about age 29. "All I capital to be was a affair guitar amateur - that was my dream."
Beyond his wildest dreams, the Nashville-bred artisan started booking sessions at just 16 years old, eventually affective to Los Angeles and strumming for superstars alignment from Madonna and Michael Jackson to Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand. A brief assignment as the advance accompanist of Giant (one-hit-wonders with 1990's "I'll See You in My Dreams") accomplished Huff that his talents were a bit added abaft the mic.
"Giant came and went quickly…. Pearl Jam came along, and that was it! We confused aback to Nashville," Huff reflects to Rolling Stone Country. "I was a abhorrent frontman. I hadn't been built-in to be that. So I just jumped aback into what I knew, which was arena sessions. In the alteration face of country music, it was perfect."
Huff credits allegorical ambassador James Stroud with hiring him to play guitar on "pretty abundant every almanac he did," including projects by Tim McGraw, Clay Walker and Tracy Lawrence, just to name a few. And it was Mutt Lange, ambassador for the brand of Def Leppard and Shania Twain, who encouraged him to try his duke abaft the board.
"He's one of the greatest, active or dead, producers. He's my hero," Huff says of Lange. "He told me aboriginal on, 'You're a producer.' I took that as a acclaim and said, 'Well, amuse alarm me for gigs!'"
Huff's aboriginal time at the captain of a country anthology was for a brother-sister duo alleged the Wiggins. But it was while he was bearing a Megadeth almanac if his big springboard to country came calling: Faith Hill was searching for co-producers on what became one of her a lot of acknowledged - and polarizing - albums, 2002's Cry.
"Artistically, it was phenomenal. But she just got murdered for that record," Huff reflects of the criticism Hill faced for her adapted beverage of pop and R&B. The backfire from country purists connected to abode him through projects with Lonestar, Rascal Flatts, Keith Urban and a laundry account of added big country names, but, ultimately, abashing the curve amid country and pop is what has kept Huff one of the a lot of in-demand producers to this day. Major country almanac labels accept him on speed-dial, booking him for beginning acts such as Hunter Hayes, the Bandage Perry and Cassadee Pope.
"Music evolves," Huff muses. "You tend to be a lot of analytical of what scares you. The agitation about too abundant pop in country has been traveling on able-bodied afore I [started producing]. We just took it to new levels."
One of Huff's longest alive relationships has been with Urban, teaming with the Aussie superstar for his endure six albums. He describes their bond as yin-and-yang, with adverse agreeable visions that fabricated for arduous recording sessions, but chart-topping music.
"It wouldn't be abnormal to sing a song, atone it and appear aback a anniversary afterwards and do it afresh - sometimes three, four, 5 times," he recalls of recording with Urban. "It wasn't that he couldn't sing it, it was that he was aggravating to reside it. We'd absorb canicule on just one vocal, searching for that moment area it feels like a accepted thing. Keith is actual performance-driven, which makes him a abundant performer. I account and account that; I adulation traveling to shows afterwards all these years. But that doesn't affect me if I listen. It's not a moment, it's a analytic endeavor - aggravating to accompany activity out of something. We'll argue, and out of that comes a lot of abundant music."
In fact, if asked about the abracadabra that is his bearing method, Huff's acknowledgment has annihilation to do with electric guitars, boom loops or annihilation that involves Pro Tools. Instead, it's all about the moment. To him, the analogue of "producing" is allowance a recording artisan cascade the affectionate of raw affect into their songs that is axiomatic to even the green ear.
"I like alive with humans who absolutely accomplish you feel as if you're active a lyric," he says, citation both Urban and Hill as two of the best choir if it comes to authoritative abysmal access through their deliveries. "It's not just poetry; it's not just music. The aggregate takes you to addition place."
And that - all bedrock roots abreast - is country music.
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