Quick-Fire Quips is a questionnaire where we get to know people who stand out in the State of Alabama! Today, Alabama Public Radio host Baillee Majors talks with music producer Mick Connolly, who co-owns and operates the Red Room Sound Studio - Recording And Production in Robertsdale alongside his wife Lucinda Rowe.
Baillee: Hey, Mick. How are you?
Mick: Good, Baillee. How are you?
Baillee: I'm doing great. Happy to have you on.
Mick: Thank you.
Baillee: So, the Red Room Sound Studio, it's very different than anything else in Alabama. For people who are not aware of it, give me some general information.
Mick: We're a 100% analog recording studio. Our main format—our only format, really—is a two-inch, 24-track tape machine.
Baillee: We are clearly in a day and an age of digital and AI. So, why bring an analog recording studio to Robertsdale?
Mick: I think now is probably a better time than ever to consider analog recording, because, let's face it: we do live in a world where you can digitally manipulate just about anything, and you kind of wonder what's real and what isn't. But there is no faking this. This format is 100% real and original.
Baillee: I think people appreciate that. It's physical versus digital or AI... It's seems like a rarity.
Mick: There is plenty of studios that have analog capability, but they kind of mix it with digital and it becomes a hybrid—and not that there's anything wrong with that. We've just said, "You know what, we're going to do this and this only."
Baillee: Can you explain digital versus analog?
Mick: Well, digital is obviously done on a computer. The music is stored on a hard drive and it's all basically done—what they call "in the box"—and it's all done with your computer.
Analog is done by separate components. There's tape reels, there's a mixing console, everything is connected by wire. The circuitry is totally different, so it is a completely different thing.
Even though you might listen to the end result and say, "Well, it sounds the same to me, I can't really feel the difference," there is a huge difference. If you really dig deep and listen close, you'll hear it.
Baillee: Alright, we'll talk more coming up, but now that the introductions are done. Let's get you warmed up to answer the questionnaire. To do that, I want you to say "Quick-Fire Quips" three times fast.
Mick: Okay, Quick-Fire Quips, Quick-Fire Quips, Quick-Fire Quips.
Baillee: Here's the first question. What comes to mind when you hear Alabama?
Mick: Actually, what comes to mind—at least where we are—is the awesome music scene that we have down here.
Baillee: Yes, absolutely! What do you like about living in Robertsdale?
Mick: We've been driving through Robertsdale to come and visit family for a long time now, and every time we go through— this place, it's got an old-school vibe, but it's just so cool. It's also kind of right in the middle of everywhere you need to be, so it has that going for it, too, and I think that's really cool.
Baillee: You're from Connecticut originally, is that right?
Mick: Yes.
Baillee: So you were driving through Robertsdale, you liked the vibe, and you were like, "Hey, maybe we'll hang out here, maybe we'll live here for a little bit."
Mick: Yeah, pretty much how it happened.
Baillee: Oh, I love that. Okay, what is a hidden gem in Robertsdale that you think more people should know about?
Mick: I'm going to say Dixie Antiques. It's a little antique shop on Michigan Ave, and they have all kinds of cool, unusual stuff, and they constantly have turnover in there, and anybody should check that out.
Baillee: What is a bad stereotype or something that people get wrong about Alabama?
Mick: You know, from what I can see, there's a lot more diversity here than Alabama gets credit for. Yeah, and we love that, because we meet all kinds of people from all over the country, and really all over the world, and they've kind of settled here. I think that's a really cool thing.
Baillee: Yeah, I think people get really surprised how big the art and music scene is here, and especially on the Gulf Coast and in North Alabama, too. It's brimming with talent and just really beautiful things.
Baillee: Before we get more into the Red Room, I want to talk about you and your wife— Lucinda... You guys are the husband and wife duo of The Heat. Tell me about that.
Mick: We normally perform as a duo, although we can assemble a full band if needed. But most of the shows we do down here are just us, and it's '70s classic rock, and as much as I hate the term "yacht rock," a lot of that stuff too. It's all those tunes that we all know and love, but you don't hear that much anymore.
Baillee: I was reading up about your interactions with The Heat and other musical talent, and it seems like you guys have hosted some pretty famous people—the drummer from Vanilla Fudge, the guitarist for Joan Jett, and just a lot of different, really cool, famous people. How has that been?
Mick: We've actually been really fortunate to have opened for a lot of these huge, legacy bands. We've gotten to know them, and I've had a few of them in the studio.
It's weird; ever since I was a kid, I was hugely into Blood, Sweat & Tears, and all these years later, I'm recording an album with Steve Katz, who was a founding member. So, it's just kind of a full-circle type thing.
Baillee: Speaking of Lucinda, she told me that you guys both are very instrumental in making the Red Room run when it comes to production and engineering and stuff like that. What does she do to help keep the business going?
Mick: There's a lot that goes into the music industry: there's the artistic side and then there's the business side, right? And she's one of the few people I know that actually has both and excels in both.
She knows a lot about the music business and copyrights, and all that kind of good stuff that we all kind of put on the back burner, but, you know, she can get it done.
Baillee: Yeah, copyright and legal things like that—that is really important to know. And I feel like not a lot of people know it, or they kind of gloss over it.
Mick: Yeah, for sure, and she's also in the studio. She's one of the best vocal coaches that you're gonna find. And when it comes down to it, you got to lay in that final vocal; it's make or break, you know?
Baillee: How did you guys meet?
Mick: We met at a gig, of all places. She was playing in a club with her band, and I was in the club trying to get mine booked, and the rest is history.
Baillee: I love that. Wow, that is a true, like, rock-and-roll kind of story!
All right, so let's talk a little bit more about analog and the Red Room Sound Studio... I read online when people talk about analog editing, they say that there's a little bit more of a "warm" tone to it versus when it comes to digital.
Mick: Yeah, I agree with that. Personally, I think it sounds way better and way more natural—a natural sound, sort of like film versus digital... It's warm.
Baillee: Tell me a little bit more about your recording and editing equipment versus what would be found in a more all-digital kind of studio.
Mick: We have a two-inch, 24-track machine, and it's a huge machine—it weighs about 550 pounds.
And we have a quarter-inch mix-down deck that everything gets mixed to. There's a 24-channel console and racks of outboard gear and stuff like that.
Baillee: So, you talked about digital being stored on a hard drive and stuff like that, but people might not understand what tape-to-tape editing looks like. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Mick: It's an art, for sure. You usually get one chance, if you're lucky, to get it right. Sometimes, if you're lucky enough and you got to redo it, you can. But for the most part, you kind of have to use your ears, you got to know what you're listening to, and act with precision.
That's really the only type of editing we can do in this studio.
Baillee: It's literally taking a tape, almost like you would find in a VHS or a cassette, and you're just splicing it together.
Mick: We take an entire section of a song and mark, with like a grease pencil or china marker, where you want to cut out and put the new section in.
And then you kind of fast-forward to the section where you want that to end, you mark that, cut both sides, and then pull that piece of tape out and replace it with the next take, which was, you know, a better take.
Baillee: What is something that you wish more people knew about the music industry?
Mick: Mainstream modern music is perfected to a point where it doesn't even sound real. We all kind of take it for granted when you listen to stuff now, and everything is pitch-perfect and beat-corrected and everything else, and you think that's just the natural way it happens.
But it's kind of what the music industry is insisting that everyone do, and it's a shame, because that's not really what these artists sound like.
Baillee: Speaking more on music, if there was an alien invasion, what are three albums that you would give to the aliens to represent Earth's music?
Mick: Good question. There are so many, it's hard to pick just three. I have probably 100 that I could rattle off the top of my head, but you know, records are heavy.
How about Led Zeppelin IV, and how about The Yes Album? And oh, I know! How about an album by a lesser-known artist called Hard by Trade, by Mick Connolly.
Baillee: Okay, there we go! :et's move on to some questions outside of music. Do you have any superstitions or rational fears?
Mick: I don't ever walk under a ladder. I really won't. I do a lot of construction from time to time; I don't even like reaching under the ladder. I move the ladder out of the way.
Baillee: Fair enough. Okay.
Mick: Weird like that.
Baillee: Tell me something on your bucket list.
Mick: My bucket list? Okay. Well, it's gonna sound strange, but how about a night off where I could go out to dinner with my wife and actually get a day off.
Baillee: Oh, what would you do? Where would you go? Where would you take her?
Mick: Well, I don't know. I don't even know, just someplace where it was just us.
Baillee: I love that. That's so sweet.
Mick: We're that busy.
Baillee: Making good music and giving the gift of analog to the world—it's hard work!
Who was your childhood hero?
Mick: Probably Jeff Beck. You know, when I think back, I was a little kid—I was probably seven or eight years old—and I heard one of his albums, and it was... you just instantly are changed forever.
I know it kind of sounds cliché these days, but it's exactly how it happened. And to this day, he still is.
Baillee: I know you're from Connecticut. What's your favorite getaway spot in Alabama, and why?
Mick: Getaway spot? How about the really cool outdoor beach bars where you can get a mudslide or a bushwhacker!
Baillee: Here's the last question. What does Alabama need?
Mick: Coming from Connecticut, Alabama needs—and I know it would be hugely successful—it needs a Pepe's Pizza. New Haven-style pizza.
It was a pizza place that opened up like 100 years ago or something like that, and it's a small chain now.
It's thin crust, coal-fired... If they open one up down here, there'd be a line around the building all day long!
Baillee: That's it for today's Quick-Fire Quips, a questionnaire where we get to know people who stand out in the state of Alabama. That was Mick Connolly from the Red Room Sound Studio in Robertsdale. I'm your host, Baillee Majors. Find us at APR.org for more Quick-Fire Quips!
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— Mick Connolly
— Lucinda Rowe
