Shawn Mullins interview

There’s so much going on all over this album—scratches here, guitars there and strange effects zooming in and out, yet none of them get in the way of the songs. Who helped you do all this?
“The first four songs on the record Julian Raymond and I produced, and those were the songs that were recorded in Los Angeles at the old A&M Studios. We had Vinny Coliauta on drums, John Pierce on bass, Michael Ward from The Wallflowers on guitar and Luis Conte on percussion. It was pretty magical because it was the ideal band.
“The rest of the album was produced by Anthony J. Resta and myself in Atlanta. I basically used a lot of Atlanta, Nashville and a couple of Boston folks—more of a Southern kind of vibe. I needed a lot of musicians from Atlanta to do that.
“To record most of the songs we started with an acoustic guitar or piano, then loops were built with Anthony, who worked with [Collective Soul], Duran Duran and Missing Persons—he’s a great keyboardist and drummer. We did a lot of that together incorporating old keyboards. We used an old Prophet, the Old Prophecy and even older than that we used a Mellotron and Chamberlin. Then we layered it pretty good and tried not to stack it too heavy.
“It’s kind of chaotic in the sense that there’s a lot going on and that’s because...there’s a lot going on! For me spiritually speaking and humanly speaking, I just had to make a record like that at this point. I think the next one will be just me and a guitar.”

When you go out on the road are you taking a huge crew with you, or will you have a stripped-down band?
“Well, it won’t be like Lauryn Hill’s band or anything, but it’ll probably be like a five-, six-piece group. A couple of good singers and a band and really great, multi-talented instrumentalists.”

How did the cover photo come together?
“We drove about four hours outside of Los Angeles into the desert. It’s basically me in this weird pin-striped suit with everything pin-striped; the shirt, tie and jacket. And there’s this little pink shed. It’s a little mysterious—you don’t really know what it is. I think the photographer just dug that little pink shed thing because he used it throughout a lot of the pictures. It looks like, ‘What the heck is going on in there, man?’ We shot for 10 hours in the desert, but the best shot ended up coming right as that sun was setting. It was just beautiful so we liked most of the shots from later in the day.”

This record is really great. You should be really proud of yourself.
“Thank you, I really am. I feel like it’s one of the best things I’ve done and maybe the best—who knows? But I feel like I’m going in an upward manner with the music and that’s the main thing.”

So when you’re not driving through the desert, cruising up Highway 1 or playing shows across the country, where do you end up?
“Well, I grew up right here in Atlanta, pretty much real close to the same neighborhood I live in now. It’s right out of a little town called Decatur, which is a suburb of Atlanta.”

And now that you’ve gotten married again, I assume you’re a little more settled down.
“Yeah. Kelly and I got married last year, but we’ve been together for six. She traveled a good bit of the road with me. We’ve got a pretty cool house here, kind of on the edge of the hood and a decent neighborhood, so we get a little bit of both worlds and that’s good.”

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