Steve Taylor's Solo Album :: Russ Long
Steve Taylor, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and songwriter. Russ recounts working with Steve and buying the gear that every engineer dreams of.
Steve, I mean, and we worked, Steve and I worked really well together so we just… he decided this was, we're going to keep doing this and then Chagall was still on hiatus, so Steve decided he was going to do a solo record and we went in and did three songs to pitch to two or three songs to try to get a deal because he didn't have a deal, so we do these demos and I mix them and everything, and then he gets a deal and we go in and so we record a whole record again with Steve.
And then at that point, well I can tell you after the first record the Newsboys record, before we jumped in and started Steve's soul record, Steve went over the budget with me and he goes, “hey I'm looking back at the budget. I'm trying to figure out how next time we we do another record how we could be a little smarter and put money in better places to make either it easier for us or the record better” or whatever. And he looked and we spent twelve thousand dollars I think in rental equipment rental throughout that record. Rented vocal mics and rented different pieces of gear and all this kind of stuff so when it was time to do his record he goes, “you know what why don't you take that twelve thousand dollars buy the gear we'll co-own it and um and let's do a record without renting anything.”
So we did that and I bought a GML EQ that i still use all the time today. I bought a Sony c800g that i still use all the time about a Hardy M1 mic pre that i still use today and all this gear that I still use all the time now was bought for that record.
And then we start uh the next record, we do the same thing again and start buying some more recording studio gear and I'll try to think what record... that was Steve's record we did that.
Well then it was the next record, I guess, which was another Newsboys record called Going Public, and Steve was talking at that point… we did the same thing and looked at budget again he said, “man we spent this much money on a studio. Would it make sense for us to try to get into a studio situation?” So I was like well maybe. So we started.
I was looking at buying a house anyway, so The Carport, which was my home base studio for, how many years from 94 to, 22 years it was my home base recording studio. Steve and I were partners originally and we built it. And we did it solely to do that record and I mean we paid for a big chunk of the studio with that one record and had the whole, I mean all the gear and everything paid for within just a few years.