Just Us Folk

Colin Linden has always been fascinated by records. From the design of the labels to figuring out who wrote the songs and where they were recorded, Colin was always searching for more information.

“Our cousin lived with us for a few years, and he was deeply into the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly,” Colin said at last year’s Mariposa Folk Festival in Orillia.

“Roy Orbison’s records sounded like they were otherworldly. So, I was always fascinated by the environment music was made in.”

At the young age of five, Colin wanted to make records. He even designed his own record labels.

Of course, Colin would soon start playing guitar and quickly immersed himself in a variety of music styles starting with the blues of Taj Mahal, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Howlin’ Wolf on the way to becoming considered a child prodigy on the instrument. At the age of 11 Colin was able to spend a few hours talking with Howlin’ Wolf in Toronto. At 13 he started performing at the Fiddler’s Green Coffee House with his older brothers Jay and Harley. By the time he was 20, Colin had released his first album, Colin Linden Live!!!!.

In the 80’s he began producing records for other artists like Mendelson Joe, Morgan Davis and Jackson Delta. Since then, he’s produced Bruce Cockburn, Blackie & The Rodeo Kings (of which he’s a member), Ray Bonneville, Sue Foley and Keb’ Mo’ along with being the music producer for the Nashville TV series and co-producing super-producer T Bone Burnett’s latest album, The Other Side.

So, what if anything do all of these people have in common from an artistic point of view that made Colin want to work with them?

“Well, I appreciate that they had faith in me!” he said. “That’s the main thing. But I think most of the records I make capture performances.”

To Colin’s way of thinking, it’s the difference between posed photography and candid photos. He sees his job as catching someone unawares in the studio.

A small example of his method is when he produced Susan Werner’s 2001 album, New Non-Fiction. Susan had recorded herself singing “Everybody’s Talkin’’ onto her answering machine, which she then sent to Colin. Once in the studio, Susan went to get lunch while Colin prepared the band to record the song. The bass player, Dave Roe, asked to hear how Susan was going to sing the song, so Colin played what she had recorded through his Walkman.

“It sounded so cool coming through her studio microphone, but it had this kind of disembodied character that I thought was appropriate for what the song is saying. The song is all about being disembodied. So, when Susan came back from lunch the song was done.”

Colin is someone who always has many irons in the fire at the same time. Last summer, he was working with Meredith Moon on her next release after having already produced Adrian Sutherland, Julian Taylor and his brother Jay. How does he find time to fit it all into his schedule?

“You kind of get a handle on how long something’s going to take,” he said. “You find a way to do it. I like to have a certain amount of workflow going on all the time.”

What’s helped is something he learned from working with Keb’ Mo’ on the album Oklahoma, which won a Grammy for Best Americana Album of the Year.

“Kevin (Keb’ Mo’s real name) said, ‘This is how it’s going to go. We’re going to work from 12 to six every day. We’re not going to take a long lunch break but you’re going to have a life before you come in, and you’re going to have a life when you go home. And we’ll get a lot of work done.’”

Since then, for the most part, that’s the way Colin has worked. In fact, the Western Swing Authority loved working that way so much they named their latest album 12 To 6 Central.

“If I’m home, and I don’t have a project in the studio, there’s always something I can do,” Colin said.

Dealing with the pandemic lockdown was a challenge Colin was able to work around courtesy of new technology.

“We did seven to nine records remotely using Audio Movers,” he said. “It allowed us in our studio to audit another studio’s control room in real-time.”

The Weight Band featuring Jim Weider, who was in the later version of The Band, and former members of Levon Helm’s band, recorded their album Shines Like Gold at a studio in Rhinebeck, New York while Colin was at his Pinhead Recorders studio in Nashville.

“I communicated with them using my iPad, and I could ask the engineer in Rhinebeck to hit the pre-amp a little harder on the tom-tom mics, as an example. Or I could work with the players or the singer individually as if I was in the studio with them.”

Working this way was revolutionary for Colin.

“It kind of broke the back of the idea that you have to do something one way or another,” he said.

Colin’s experiences in movie and television work, from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? to Nashville also taught him valuable lessons he’s been able to utilize in his own studio.

“It made me realize that music in those environments doesn’t have to be any less ‘real,’” he said.

“In working with T Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller on Nashville we had to record to a click track, and now I’m totally not fazed by that. I love working like that. I understood that like anything else, it’s a good tool.”

As busy as he is in the studio, Colin is still able to find time to perform live. Besides appearing at the Mariposa Folk Festival last year, he also had a gig at Hugh’s Room in Toronto with his brother, Jay, and accompanied T Bone Burnett for a concert at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK. He even performed at the White House in 2015 for a Burnett-produced gospel music concert. Coming up are shows in Ottawa, New York State and British Columbia for April and May.

“I don’t plan it out so much but I’m at my happiest if I have at least a handful of shows every month because I love playing live,” he said.

For more on Colin Linden including his 2021 album bLOW, go to https://colinlinden.net.