For an engineer, recording a band can be tricky.

Paul explains the extreme measures he has taken to capture the perfect track.

My general M.O. that is I will go to the ends of the earth to not fire a band member. The moment you shake that core up you're hurting the overall arch of the band and where they're gonna go. That's where the background of producing and engineering and having a big toolbox full of tricks comes into play. 

If the guitar player’s timing sucks then how do we deal with this well? Let’s hide a DI under the couch, then when he goes to lunch we'll move all of his guitars and re-amp it through his rig, he'll never know! I've actually done that. We’d lock the front door. I've literally had someone posted at the front door and when they see them walking down the street they’d let me know. Replaying someone's parts while they're gone is only in dire circumstances. I don't do this out of ego or anything.

Patience, having a lot of patience with someone and encouragement. Most musicians can do better if they are coached right. There's only been a few times where I've had to really reassess. Coming from the band world and having session guys play my parts, I really value having the band play it. If the band values each other then I'm gonna fight to the ends of the earth to keep that intact because I think it's important. Especially in Nashville where every band is two guys that are really into it and then they have a rotating cast of the rest of the band.That's not a band! I want to see like four or five guys that are do or die. So when I get that, even if one of them is not up to snuff, let's get them there! 

The interesting thing to me about the band versus solo artist is that with the solo artist most of your budget goes to hiring session players. And most of the guys around here can play whatever you throw at them. So a lot of the recording process becomes deciding what the sound of the record is going to be, because we could go any direction with these players. You're not really coaching them, because they do it five days a week. It's more coaching that overall decision about what we want this to sound like and how we’ll get there. With a band they already have the vibe and they've got their parts, they've got a sound. Your job is more how do we get them to play at a level that is exciting? And when you hear it back realizing this is the best of who these guys are.

I like both approaches. I'm probably more a fan of the band projects, but it's also fun to have your buddies that played on records for you in the past come back and dig in on another project!