Producer

Singer Jolene Landygo and LWC listen to a playback

Choosing a producer for your project is a very personal thing. You’re entering into a relationship that involves long hours, hard work and heightened emotions, during which you’ll sometimes feel like your very soul is being laid bare. You need to completely trust the person with whom you share such a journey.

I’ve been calling myself a producer since the mid-’80s when I lived and worked in Vancouver, Canada. It all began with my opting to produce singles on local singers as a means of getting my songs heard on Canadian radio. When a couple of those singles featuring a singer named Lori Jordan attracted a lot of airplay and attention, a funny thing happened: my phone began ringing with prospective clients wanting to know about my rates, studios and players of choice, whether I would critique their songs, perhaps even co-write with them, etc. Not one to run from such a provocative challenge I summoned my nerve, dealt with the questions as best I could, and, figuratively speaking, hung up the newest “shingle” in my burgeoning music career: Larry Wayne Clark, Producer. Had a nice ring to it.

One of the first singers I worked with in this capacity was a teenager with an eerily mature voice named Lisa Brokop. I produced a single (written by my friend Ron Irving) called “Daddy Sing To Me” which became a mid-sized Canadian country hit. Other projects — singles and albums, demos and masters — followed. For four consecutive years (1991-1994) I was voted recipient of the British Columbia Country Music Association’s Producer Of The Year award.

Gradually I became totally comfortable in the studio environment dealing with charts, musicians, endless re-takes and the grueling but oddly satisfying process of mixing. I began to see production in a completely organic way, a natural connecting of the dots that begins with writing the song and ends with delivering it to the public ear, through records, airplay and live performance, and hopefully all three.

Lightfoot

One of the most exciting things to happen in my production career was when I was hired by Gordon Lightfoot’s Early Morning Productions to produce new demos of 15 Lightfoot songs in a contemporary Nashville style, using singers and musicians of my choosing. I had been a Lightfoot admirer all my life and perhaps the biggest bonus of all was getting to know the legendary singer-songwriter personally during this project (see my Gordon Lightfoot interview on the Music Journalist page).

Field recording, 1916

Nowadays, spending much of my time in Nashville, I have access to the best studio musicians on the planet, a host of splendid studios and state-of-the-art engineers. Brainchild Music has a catalogue of a couple of hundred great songs as well as access to many thousands from our friends on Music Row . . . in other words, everything required to make recording a joyful process lies at our fingertips. I would love to discuss your project with you. Call me or send an e-mail. It would be my pleasure to discuss scheduling, budgets, and songs with you.

More production questions? Check out my Production FAQs.