Transcription of Making Music #269
Speaker 1: “You are listening to Love Maine Radio, hosted by Dr. Lisa Belisle, and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine and acupuncture in Brunswick Maine. Show summaries are available at lovemaineradio.com. Here are some highlights from this week’s program. ”
Speaker 2: “What has been very difficult in the music business is watching the executives, the record companies try to make the old model work. If you can’t sell records, how can a record company exist? Like I said, it’s about taking somebody else’s work, and making it as good as it could possible be. It’s like being a focusing lens.”
Lisa: “This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to Love Maine Radio. Show number 269, making music. Airing for the first time on Sunday November 13th, 2016. Maine is home to a rich and evolving music scene. Today, we speak with two music makers who have called Maine home, for decades. Portland based, and nationally acclaimed singer-songwriter and producer Spencer Albee, and one of Maine’s leading producers and recording engineers, Jonathan Wyman. Thank you for joining us. ”
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Lisa: “One of my early memories from the radio show was a musician who had been up all night, and came in the next morning, I think he was a little bit late. He wasn’t so lively. I wasn’t really sure about this guy, because I had heard about him. He was pretty nationally known, and his name had been out there law. I went ahead and interviewed him anyway, and he has since become actually a good friend of mine, and of the magazine, and he has really impressed me. This late-night musician Spencer Albee who went on to become our audio producer for Love Maine Radio is actually here in the studio with me today, and I’m going to officially interview you again today Spencer. So that you can have a chance to show us more of your stuff then you were able to bring forward that day, that fateful morning when you grow just a little tired.”
Spencer: “This is my makeup game?”
Lisa: “This is your makeup game. Today I have with me officially Spencer Albee who is a Portland-based and nationally acclaimed singer-songwriter, and producer. It’s 1995 he has toured internationally, signed multiple record and publishing deals, and worked with artists ranging from David Bowie to Delasoul. Today he can be found finishing up his 20th studio album Relentlessly Yours. Curating events like his annual Beatle’s night, and producing Love Maine Radio for Maine Magazine. Thanks for coming in, again.
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Spencer: “Well, I was here.
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Lisa: “That’s right, every Tuesday morning when we do Love Maine Radio, you and I get to hang out together.
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Spencer: “That’s right.
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Lisa: “It’s interesting that somehow we have managed here in Maine Magazine to get such an auspicious individual to be doing our audio with us. The fact that you’ve done 20 studio albums, I mean how many people can say that?
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Spencer: “It is a lot. I kind of did a spotify check on another artists, and it really is a lot of records. Since I’ve started professionally, and it’s almost a record a year. 21 years about that I’ve been doing this.
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Lisa: “You were born here in Maine?
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Spencer: “I was, York.
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Lisa: “You grew up in York.
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Spencer: “Well, technically I was born in Dover New Hampshire, but.
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Lisa: “Well, we will still let you be-
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Spencer: “Thanks. Do I qualify as a native?
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Lisa: “Yes, since you probably cross the border at a few days of age I would imagine.
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Spencer: “It wasn’t my choice.
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Lisa: “Yes. I was just down in York for the York Hospital fundraiser, and it was interesting to have people in the audience come up to me afterwards and say, “I knew Spencer when?” One of them was your piano teacher.
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Spencer: “Yeah, Ray DiMarco.
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Lisa: “He was doing piano for the event, and he was very excited to have me mention your name during the presentation that we gave. Then also somebody that you went to high school with who was a radiologist now with York Hospital.
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Spencer: “Yep, Jenny Cotz.
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Lisa: “You’ve maintained some strong relationships over the years with your hometown.
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Spencer: “Yeah, I still feel very connected to it. I go back, I was recently asked to speak at the honors dinner. Which was for kids who have maintained was it a B+? Yeah, B+ or higher. Overall, like no C’s, not an average, just like all grades B+ or higher. Which is really impressive. It was also very curious that they had me speak at it, because I had a little bit more of a creative approach to my high school education. Leave it at that I guess.
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Lisa: “Well, yeah, it seems like they still when they think of Spencer Albee, they think of a person who has made a success out himself.
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Spencer: “Yeah. Yeah, they’re very kind to say so. It actually kind of gives me pause, because I feel like if I were to look at where I’m at now through the eyes of my eyes at 18, maybe I’m not where I thought I would be, or in the specific terms of success as I defined it then. To kind of look back now at 40, and realize I’m still allowed to be a musician, I’m still allowed to primarily do what I feel like I’m born to do is very fortunate. There is a lot of people who are not that fortunate, they’ve had to take jobs that maybe they don’t like, or aren’t as inspiring. It comes with its own struggles for sure, but ultimately though, I feel very lucky.
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“Having those moments like some of my high school friends, or former teachers, or Ray DiMarco for instance had the unfortunate task of prepping me for USM. Because I didn’t know how to read music, I still don’t, I mean I understand the fundamentals of it, but some people you can put sheet music in front of them, and they can play beautifully, and I just can’t make the connection between the written note, and my hands. It gets stuck somewhere behind my eyeballs. Yeah, I do feel very fortunate, it is a good community to be part of. For sure. There is a lot of people up here involved even with the magazine Matt Cosby, he is from York, Derek Lombardi who is also my manager, and there is a lot of us, and we still kind of band together in a really fun way.
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Lisa: “I honestly had only ever passed through York, and had never been to the town itself. It’s a really nice little area, beautiful harbor, there’s a cliff walk. There is this fascinating there’s Long Beach, which starts with a couple of very nicely maintained mobile home parks at the entrance.
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Spencer: “Yeah, if you’re coming up from the harbor. Yeah it’s funny, my dad grew up there, so I have another set of stories associated with each of those areas, so as we see them now, my dad has a different version of what it used to be. Lots of local references, like the running gag. Over down by the Maggie Nielson Road, that’s like not a road, it’s just where this woman Maggie Nielson lived in 1952. It was certainly very fortunate to grow up in a town that had yes, like such beautiful beaches, you had … The way York is organized. I’m actually from Cape Neddick which is just south of Ogunquit. Cape Neddick even though it has its own post office, went to the York school system which involved York Beach, York Harbor.
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“Then just the town of York, which extended little more west. There is a lot of resource there, we grew up going to the beach that was incredible. It’s different now because of the way the sands have changed, and stuff, but you had a small beach. Then about let’s say 50 feet of water when the tide was out. 50 feet of water that was about a little below your knee, so the kids could play. Then as you get a little older, you can go past the rock formation there is the deep hole. All this stuff, that someone from New Jersey would work all year long to gather up enough vacation time, and resource to come up here and have that just for a few days, and it was just kind of our backyard. Pretty fortunate. We had a mountain, I mean I use that term loosely, it’s more of a-
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Lisa: “That’s Agamenticus?
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Spencer: “Yeah, big hill.
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Lisa: “You have a little light house?
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Spencer: “The most photographed lighthouse in the world.
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Lisa: “So small but mighty.
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Spencer: “Small but mighty, indeed.
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Lisa: “Being that we were there in a late September, it was really striking to me how busy it was. That the town was filled, the beach had all kinds of people walking up and down. There really was an interesting pride. When I say nicely maintained mobile home park, people they had their lawn chairs out front, they had their flags. I mean this was something that absolutely as you said, this was something that was such an important part of their lives. To be at their little bit of beach for however often they were able to get there. It seems like people returned year after year.
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Spencer: “Yeah, the way you are referring to are like Luca Cedan that’s a funeral home, the campground. The name is escaping me, but these are people who have their plots, and they come back every summer. Likely you’ve got a sect of people who are maybe retired down in Florida, but as soon as it warms up they are back up in Maine. A lot of people are from there, a lot of people from Massachusetts, and a way they come to enjoy that beach. It does stay busy up through Columbus Day. I think that’s really the end of the tourist season down there. Has always stayed pretty busy. Certainly up until Labor Day you have to know the back roads if you want to get anywhere on time.
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Lisa: “I think the reason why I keep talking about this is just because it’s not unlike other places in Maine, I mean I’ve lived in Maine most of my life, my family is all from here. Yet, I will visit places and I will think to myself, “Why did I not even know that this place existed?” I think York was like that for me. York was a place that I knew was there, but I had no sense of what the town itself was like. I think a lot of people believe that because it is getting so close to the border of Maine, Southern Maine, they just think, “Oh, it’s northern Boston.” That’s really not the vibe that I got.
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Spencer: “No, York, the old jail is the oldest existing structure built by settlers I think, is that right? In the 1600s. The downtown is very well maintained and that all of the historic buildings have been restored to the 1700s specs. We have this beautiful church downtown, the first parish church which used to face the other way, got turned around, I mean there is so much history to the town. There is a statue downtown in the center of York Village that is commemorative Civil War statue. Which if you look closely, the soldier is actually a mistake, the soldier is a Confederate soldier. Which there was a lot of talk about removing that and changing it, but at this point I think everyone is just kind of behind, it has been there for so long that I think that’s kind of a neat thing too.
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“It’s a very very old town, there is a lot of names, there is still town names, families that have been there that are original settlers, which is pretty interesting. We had historic days, old York days, I think they called it where you are assigned a character that was alive at a certain point in history, and you research them, and you can go visit their gravestone. It’s pretty interesting. It does get the North Boston wrap. There is some truth to it, because a lot of people who work in Boston, you can either go up in New Hampshire, over towards the coast, and York is certainly a nice town, and so in the 80s there is a really big boom in development. A lot of developments went in. Some folks from town viewed that as not a great thing.
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“You know, people who lived there a long time, they hate to see change, but the flipside was that I was able to get not just me, anyone who went through the school system was able to get a great education as a result. For instance, my second grade teacher, I found this out all after the fact, but my second grade teacher whom I loved, and we had such a great time, that was my favorite year of school, second grade. I feel like I learned more in that year than any other year prior, or since. He was on sabbatical from Harvard. It was all like a series of called in favors, because Holly McAdam was also there. She really essentially took a ginormous pay cut to be there, because she felt like she could make a difference within the school system, she and her husband worked together to bring in people so that the elementary school system at that time, well there is only one school, now there is two. It was really a great place to be. Really up through high school. Just very arched forward.
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“Like I said earlier, I was surprised to speak at the honors dinner, because I certainly didn’t graduate, well, I did graduate with honors, but not because every class … I didn’t do well in every class. I kind of recognized my junior year when they are starting to put pressure on you, get your transcripts ready for college, I’m like I haven’t really done very well here and here. Well, I ran for class president and won. That helped, and then I was able to create my own independent music studies course, because I recognize that there was an independent studies course and all of the other liberal arts except music. So I wrote my own curriculum, which I didn’t take it easy on myself. I stuck to it, was graded well, and then I did graduate with honors. Which was a huge surprise to the administration when I walked up to get my gold sash.
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Lisa: “You have an interesting mind.
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Spencer: “Yeah, tell me about it.
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Lisa: “I mean it is truly fascinating to me, but I think that the first time I ever interviewed you, and again, it was very early on in the radio show which is now 5 years old, we’re in our 6th year, you and I have been doing this together for a year. One of the things that I was completely intimidated. I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, this guy, I mean he is a musician who has been on the Portland scene, and national scene for years.” It wasn’t until I started to work with you more that I understood that you were connecting with things that other people just wouldn’t connect with. From an auditory standpoint, you would be hearing things that you would say, “Hey, hand me the headphones.” You would say, “I’m totally geeking out on this. I’m being on audio geek, but I want you to listen to this.” It’s such an interesting reminder to me as to how people’s intelligences vary. That a school system may not necessarily, not through any fault of theirs, but they may not necessarily bring out those intelligences.
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Spencer: “Right.
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Lisa: “They might evolve later in one’s life.
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Spencer: “Yeah, when I was in elementary school it was suggested all within a very short time, A: Ritalin was very big at the time, so our word get thrown around. Our parents weren’t too keen on that. Then, it was suggested that maybe I would be held back a year, and then that I would be advanced a year. They just didn’t really know what to do with me, and I ended up in a lot of the special ed courses I guess, and Holly McAdam ran one of those. Where instead of me being in class, you are being distracted, or distracting the other students. They would take me out and have me do my own special thing. It was like management I guess, I don’t know. I took a lot more from learning how to build an electric motor from wire and cork, then I did being in the class, it kept me more occupied, and had my mind working harder, and also allowed the other students to get their education without me being a distraction.
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“Yeah, there are some courses that there is certain styles of learning, that for instance, if you were to hand me a manual, and say, “Learn this program.” I mean I can reference it for sure, troubleshooting absolutely. To really take it in and learn something, that never worked for me. If I were to watch you do it, then I would take it all in. Any lecture course, or teaching by example. That always worked well with me. That’s why music class is you are with an instructor, they will show you how to do it, as opposed to biology, you know, is just pointing at the chalkboard. It’s just like 45 minutes of that tone. I’m out. It’s not to say that I wasn’t smart. That just wasn’t my style. You mentioned Jennie Cotz earlier who is … She does have that type of intelligence, she is brilliant, she always has been.
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“Yeah, I know we do, because we actually interviewed a couple guys earlier in the year that work with a program called Odyssey of the Mind. That still to me is the best, that’s the best education I’ve ever got. I did it starting in fifth grade, and up through eighth grade. We did four years, and for those who don’t know, it’s a creative competition, they have several categories. I’m spacing on the third, but we were in more of the theatrical one, and there was an engineering one where they would build … You were allotted an X amount of balsa wood, and X amount of glue, and you have to build a structure that will hold the most weight. The theatrical one was it’s almost troubleshooting, you have A, B, and C, that’s all you’ve got for resources.
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“You need to do X, Y, and Z within a certain period of time, and has to fit into these parameters. You get the rules, but then you have to come up with your own solution to the problem. We did so with creativity, and song. There was also another part that was brainstorming as a team. Even though Jenny Cotz and I, both of a reasonable intellect, but totally different styles, we are now sitting around a table, and they put an object in front of you, and you are just going to say what you think that is, or the most creative thing. That could be practical use, that could be something humorous. Learning how to work with other people. Working in a team setting with people of different skill sets, and mindsets to achieve a goal.
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“Also, some people I feel like go through life and when a problem hits, they get very like *sigh* about it, or wish I had … If I had a wrench, I could fix that. Okay, well we don’t have a wrench, we do have a stick of bubblegum, and a paperclip, and a AAA card, what can we do with what we’ve got? That really put me in a good position to problem solve, and I can’t tell you how many times throughout my adult life, traveling all over the country, being in arguably dangerous situations over and over and over again. With a team of people, that would be my band, and everyone just kind of staying focused on here’s our goal, how do we get there. If you run into trouble, you work with what you’ve got to get out of that trouble, and into safety. Yeah, what was the question?
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Lisa: “You’ve answered it. We talked about different sorts of intelligence.
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Spencer: “Oh good.
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Lisa: “I think it’s useful to have that conversation, because so often as parents we are given feedback about our children based on other people’s children. Now, if your kid falls in line with all the other scholar athletes, if your kid doesn’t fall in line with the other scholar athletes, and then as a parent, my children are mostly grown, except for my 15-year-old. I feel like I’m kind of on the other side of it, but I remember acutely feeling this oh no, what have I done wrong? What should I be doing differently? I think to speak to an adult who is able to say, “Well, my experience with education worked in a slightly different way, and I came in on the other side, and I’m well-adjusted, arguably. I’m a musician, and I’ve managed to do things to create a life.
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Spencer: “Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think some people can get frustrated by their educational experience. Understandably so. If they are constantly in trouble, or getting bad grades, or disappointing themselves, their teachers, or their parents, and just not being understood for who they are, that can be very frustrating. I was lucky in that even though it was frustrating for me, and can remain frustrating, you just kind of keep your eyes on the prize, and figure out a solution. That’s all everyone is doing, and even if you went to school, and you are super book smart, and you have your own frustrations too. That’s the other thing too, is like being more inclusively forgiving of everyone around you. Everyone in life is just kind of bumbling around, and bumping into things trying to figure it out. Even though you might have come out of high school with tremendous grades, and gone to a great university, you might on the other end be like, “Ah!” Still just trying to figure it out too.
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Lisa: “What are some of the favorite things that you’ve continued to put your energy towards in the last year?
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Spencer: “Starting in 95, when I started playing professionally, up through about 2000, the music business was in really good shape. It almost bubbled, it was a balloon. Then the balloon popped, because no one saw Napster coming. What has been very difficult in the music business is watching the executives, the record companies try to make the old model work. Rather than recognizing that the old model is now failed. That’s hard, because these companies have agreements that span years, and time moving forward with artists already. How do they make that work? If you can’t sell records, how can a record company exist? Be that in the form of CDs, downloads, whatever. Because by and large, people don’t buy music. Not like they used to.
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“When the start of that in the early 40, and now 40 change horses in the middle of the stream has been incredibly challenging, but to answer your question, the one thing that I still love to do, is to create. That’s my favorite time, to be in the studio, to be writing, to be pushing yourself to do something new. That moment where you have a song in your head, and you don’t know exactly what it is, but you can kind of just hear what it is going to be. You know what you wanted to be at the end, and kind of like pushing yourself to get to that point, and take chances. Then sometimes fail miserably, and you listen to a song afterwards, like “That is awful. I’m going to delete it, now.” I never do, just because I want to go back and embarrass myself.
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“That actually sometimes they are good ideas, and they just need to be pulled out of the bad idea. When it works, and you know you’ve done it, it used to be I think when I was younger, it used to be you would write a song, with the band, you played out, the audience reacts to it, you put it on a record, and it goes on the radio and if it’s a hit, and if someone reviews it, then there was some sort of justification that it was good. As time has marched on, that has become less and less important to me. I’m always grateful that people react to it. To me, when it comes off of my recording desk and I’m happy with it, then it is done.
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“That’s a nice feeling, that confidence. You are saying I’m making videos, one bad thing about when the industry was bustling, was that if you wanted to make a music video, I mean that was just to say music videos, was like saying $75,000. Because there are people with cameras, and film, and developing, and crews, and all this stuff. Now you can legitimately shoot a beautiful piece, as long as you have vision on an iPhone, and edit it on your laptop. On this one laptop to my right, I record this show, you can make a record on it, you can edit videos. It’s really astounding that if you want to push yourself, if you want to learn, I’ve never been in a better position to create than I am now. I always try to remind myself of that, and take advantage of it.
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Lisa: “If people want to hear more of your music, or if they want to see you perform live, or they just want to know more about you, what’s the best place to find out?
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Spencer: “Well, I have a website which is it has a selection of videos and stuff that I’ve done, it links to music. I’m on Spotify, I’m on all the online outlets. I have an artist’s profile on Spotify, but to even kind of get to know me a bit more, my Instagram is kind of where I live. Just Spencer Albee.
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Lisa: “We will have your website on the show notes page. I hope people do take advantage of really the wealth of things that you’ve created, and sent out into the world, because it’s nice to see that something that you so enjoy can be enjoyed by other people as well.
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Spencer: “Very lucky.
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Lisa: “Yes, it’s a fortunate thing that you have.
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Spencer: “Very much so.
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Lisa: “We’ve been speaking with our audio producer, but more importantly, a Portland-based and nationally acclaimed singer-songwriter, and producer, whose name is Spencer Albee friend of mine, friend of the magazine. I appreciate your taking the time to revisit our early conversation from so many years ago, and also taking the time to really be a part of the family that we’ve created here with Love Maine Radio, you’re doing a great job.
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Spencer: “Thanks. Thanks for having me here.
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Lisa: “Today I have with me in the studio Jonathan Wyman who has spent most of his adult life in recording studios, and now operates out of the Halo recording studio in Wyndham. Since returning to Maine to focus on independent records, he has collaborated with artists and labels from all over the country, and the world. From northern Maine, to Chennai India. Nice to have you in here.
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Jonathan: “Thank you for having me.
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Lisa: “Did I pronounce that correctly? Chennai?
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Jonathan: “Chennai?
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Lisa: “Chennai?
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Jonathan: “Yeah.
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Lisa: “I’ve never heard of it, but-
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Jonathan: “I think it’s on the east coast of India. It used to be referred to as Madras.
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Lisa: “Oh, that makes sense.
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Jonathan: “I got really super excited, it was a fun record to do, but I got really super excited to do an Indian traditional record, and it turned out to be totally Western pop, it had nothing to do with Indian music aside from the guy who was singing.
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Lisa: “It wasn’t like a Bollywood thing?
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Jonathan: “No, not at all, just a straight up pop record.
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Lisa: “I’m interested in what you do, because I think most of us have a sense of okay, if you are a singer you sing, if you are a guitar player you play guitar. Your instrument is multivariate. You are working with a lot of sounds, bringing them together. Creating something new out of them.
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Jonathan: “Yep, exactly. That’s one facet of it too, and the other facet of it is the organizational side of it, which can be just as time-consuming, and often more taxing. Coordinating multiple people, multiple opinions. Even just multiple schedules these days, a lot of the artists I work with are independent artists who are still holding down jobs, so getting people in the same room at the same time can be tricky, but as far as the technical side of it, yeah, the point of what I do is to take somebody else’s work, and bring it to its fullest potential, I think that’s the best description of it.
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Lisa: “How did you become interested in doing this?
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Jonathan: “When I was about 19, well, I guess even earlier, I would rent multitrack cassette recorders from daddy’s junkie music, or Wurlitzer in Boston. Like over a school vacation, I would go and the Monday of vacation I would go and pick it up, and drop it off the Friday, and spend the whole week sort of hold up with a little cassette four track in the attic, and working things out. That probably would have been when I was 14, or 15. There wasn’t an Internet, you didn’t know how to do it, you just had this somebody behind the counter shoves this equipment in your hands, and you go to it. In college, was in a band, we decided to make a record, and go into a real studio, and to offset the cost of it. I was a grunt, I was a runner.
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“That turned into being an assistant, and then that turned into having my own sessions, and I was still in college at the time, and then after college came down to a commercial studio just outside of Portland. It just clicked, it seemed like the way that I could be making music all the time. I wasn’t the best player, I don’t think I could make it as a player. I felt good, and I felt like I could participate. Sort of like being a little part in every band. I could participate in making music all the time in a studio situation.
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Lisa: “Do you remember when you first were impacted by sound?
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Jonathan: “Sound, or music?
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Lisa: “Sound, go with sound.
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Jonathan: “That probably would have been getting into teenage years, recording, there is a thing that happens when you start recording, and you focus more on the technical side of it, and the sounds than you do the actual emotional content, or song content at least for me. I know a lot of people have had a similar sort of thing. Yeah, I think that would have been when I started again, experimenting with those cassette 4 tracks, and learning that I would always be in headphones, because I couldn’t disturb anybody else in the house. You had this really really accurate representation of what you are hearing, you could hear everything, and I would move the microphone around a little bit, around a guitar, amplifier, and you could hear the differences in sound these tiny little movements made. I think that’s my first obsessive moment I think.
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Lisa: “What about music, it’s interesting that you divided it out?
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Jonathan: “Well, like I said, I think that people in my field can divide the two terms, and you can be really into things that sound good, but have no musical impact, or no emotional impact. I definitely got into recording sound because I’m a musician, because I love music, and as a way to I don’t know, broadcast is the wrong word, but just capture and translate. I think translate is the right word, translate music into the best form possible. I’ve been involved in music forever. Singing, playing instruments, I went through a whole slew of the gradeschool instruments, playing cello, that wasn’t right for me, and saxophone was a disaster, and it wasn’t until I was 12 or 13, and then picked up an electric guitar, I was like, “Okay, I get this. I understand this.” So.
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Lisa: “I have two questions, one is: is that your definition of music, is something that has an emotional impact?
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Jonathan: “I think so, yeah. Good music, music that I enjoy, people always ask what kind of music do you do, and that’s a hard question. My boiler plate answer is always just rock and roll because it’s so broad. It can be anything as long as it makes you wiggle, as long as it connects with you on some level. That’s what I consider good music. It can be hip-hop, it can be metal, it can be just regular old rock ‘n roll. As long as it makes you react, and makes you feel something, that’s good music to me.
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Lisa: “That leads me to my second question, which is if it wasn’t the cello, and you knew that, it wasn’t the saxophone and you knew that, why was it the electric guitar? Do you have any idea?
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Jonathan: “In middle school we had this thing called stage band, and it was almost like jazz band. It was terrible, but you had to audition for it, it was the better players, and I remember watching this guy play a guitar solo, and I was in the back of the auditorium, I was in the regular band, probably playing saxophone terribly. I watched him play a guitar solo, and my memory of it is he was the greatest, he was Jimi Hendrix, and Jimmy Page, and Andre Segovia all rolled into one, and in actuality, it was probably semi-teenager limping through a mediocre jazz arrangement solo. That was kind of the moment, that was when I said I want to do that.
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Lisa: “I always wonder what it is about a specific say sound, that so captures someone. I wonder how it is that someone’s brain is wired, they can hear that. Something wells up inside them.
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Jonathan: “Yeah, and the guitar is such a weird instrument too. It’s like where as a piano you have one location for each note, you can play the same note in the same octave in 4 or 5 different places in the guitar, and there is no one telling you where is the right place to do it. Each one has a slightly different sound, and physically the guitar is a really stupid instrument, it like mathematically can never actually be in tune. So many other physical aspects of it that can alter the intonation and the tuning of it. That’s what makes personality. You think of a guy like Bill Frizzell, who is one of my favorite guitar players. He always plays stuff a little bit sharp, and it creates this tension that you instantly know it. It’s like the sound of his voice.
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Lisa: “It’s like a thumbprint, or something?
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Jonathan: “Exactly, exactly. I think it’s really interesting not just on guitar, but on so many instruments that you can identify a player within a couple of notes. I think it’s the sign of a great player.
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Lisa: “Which is kind of funny, because we spend a lot of time in music, at least initially trying to get people to sound a certain way. To make sure that they’ve got the right notes, and they’ve got the right foundation. Ultimately, you do have to cross over. Like being an artist, like a visual artist, you have to cross over and have your own thing.
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Jonathan: “That happens too in terms of mixing. To bring it back to what I do now, musically where you spend a lot of time especially for me in formative years sort of 8 being the people who I really like and admire, and trying to make things sound like Chad Blake, and trying to make things sound like Rich Costey. I think it’s a natural thing as an artist, where you start off imitating, and then it becomes your own voice, and it becomes your own sound. I think a lot of people do that.
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Lisa: “Is it similar for you that you have your own fingerprint and somebody would say this has been done by Jonathan?
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Jonathan: “I don’t know about that yet, I can’t hear it. In some ways, that’s really good. There are the mixtures that you can tell instantly that is Chris Lordalgee, I know that snare drum. There is also like I mentioned Rich Costey before, and he might be the person who I look at and pay attention to the most of these days, because I’m never certain that it’s him, but I will always hear a record and say to myself, “That sounds great.” I will go on the Internet, because that’s how you find credits these days, and I will see who produced it, or who mixed it, and it’s nine times out of 10 it’s Rich Costey. It never screams this one identifiable sonic thumbprint, but it’s always great.
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Lisa: “That’s also kind of intriguing that you don’t know somebody by specifically what they are, but more globally by the sense of it.
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Jonathan: “Everything on his CD is just top-notch, awesome stuff. I think that’s a great example of doing this job right, like I said, it’s about taking somebody else’s work, and making it as good as it can possibly be. It’s like being a focusing lens. I think that’s a good sign, I think not being instantly identifiable means that it’s the artist that comes first, and the most important thing is finding the best things about what that artist is doing, and bringing them to the forefront, and maybe if there is something weak, or something’s not as successful, either edit it out, or downplay it.
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Lisa: “Because I’m assuming you are very sensitive to sound, just in general. As you are walking down the street, what’s that like for you?
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Jonathan: “Yeah, I mean I think the biggest thing, and this it goes around the Internet now, but misophonia, the thing that happens when people are chewing, and it drives you crazy. That actually happens to me, and if I’m working on something, and I don’t listen very loud anymore, because I want to preserve my hearing as much as I can, and I think you hear better at a moderate volume. If I am working on something, and they are somebody else in the room, and even if they are chewing gum, or eating potato chips, that instantly drives me crazy.
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“Especially if you are doing voice over stuff, or listening to just spoken content, you are actually trying to edit out all those little sounds, you’re trying to get rid of it. As far as the walking out in the real world, it’s interesting, I live downtown now, so it’s a lot louder. It’s traffic noise, not so much in the house, but just walking around, I notice it a lot more. I used to live in Brookland, and I guess the subway is really bad for hearing, it is something like 95 dB. There are people who will actually actively wear hearing protection when writing the subway, because it can cause actual hearing damage. It’s that loud.
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Lisa: “It’s interesting you would say that, because I think about riding on boats, and the motor to a boat, and how loud it can really be, but because it’s so overwhelming, that you don’t even think, “Oh, this is a loud motor.” There is a lot of things like that. Like in our everyday life, and because this is what you do, your ears are like other people’s hands for example, you would have to be even more careful.
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Jonathan: “Yep, I’m pretty careful about it, I try to wear your plugs when I go to shows, and if an ambulance is going by, plug your ears or something. Yeah, you have to be careful, because that’s it. It doesn’t grow back if you have hearing loss, and maybe even happens naturally even if you take perfect care of your ears, I’m 41 years old, the high-frequency perception starts to dissipate a little bit. Not scientifically, but just listening to tones, I think I hear the upper upper echelon of human hearing a little less than I did when I was 22 now.
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Lisa: “That’s a little discouraging.
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Jonathan: “It’s natural, it happens.
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Lisa: “Your wife, you and your wife both teach up at Bates-
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Jonathan: “Yep, she more than I. I do it once a year for five weeks at a time, and I don’t think I’m going to do it this year. I don’t think they are going to have me back, they’ve got to rotate the stock a little bit.
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Lisa: “You went to Bates yourself. What have you noticed about the availability of access to the type of work that you do at colleges like Bates, at Bates specifically, or colleges like Bates?
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Jonathan: “Yeah, it’s pretty amazing that it used to be on every laptop, but now it’s even on phones, and tablets, you have the technology to do the multitrack recording way way way beyond the level of the apparatus that I talked about earlier when I would go into Boston, rent equipment that I could only afford to have for a week at a time, like now that is on a phone. It’s pretty great, I think the ability to learn about recording, and the editorial process as an artist, and as a writer that recording can give you, that perspective, where you can hear yourself, you can hear the songs, you can hear how you are performing it. That is I think a huge advantage to people who are coming up as artists today. Just being able to … I don’t know, have access to the kind of technology that will give you that perspective on your own.
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Lisa: “Well, I’m thinking about the photographers who used to do film, and now are digital. There is a fair number of people who didn’t really like that transition, and resisted it. Actually, there is a fair number of younger people who now go back and they learn film. Is there any sort of equivalent in the work that you do?
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Jonathan: “Yeah, absolutely. Coming up we recorded everything to 2 inch analog tape, and you had 24 tracks, or 16 depending on the kind of tape deck, and tape was expensive, it’s even more expensive now. Because fewer people are making it. There is all the romanticism about the quality of sound, the actual auditory experience of magnetic tape. I think the bigger thing comes in workflow, and in the fact that maybe this is similar to film, where it’s like if you want to do that guitar solo again, we have to record over the guitar solo that’s there. That guitar solo is really good. We can never get it back if we record over it.
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“Because this is the last available track, this is the last thing we are doing on this song, so if you go in again, we’re going to lose that forever. Obviously in digital, you have nearly unlimited tracks, you have these different playlists that you can do, different versions of different performances, and even compile them together into one Frankenstein performance. That is definitely true in my field, and in some ways I sort of miss that level of commitment and that workflow that analog tape provided. Less so the maintenance, and I think analog tape sounds good, but that’s not the reason I get nostalgic for it. I get nostalgic for it, or I think nostalgia is the wrong word. Because I even this morning was thinking about, “Man, would it be great to have a room that was just tape in a console, and maybe a couple of pieces of outboard gear.
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“Not these hundreds of choices that the digital environment provides you with.” You can open a menu in ProTools, which is the recording software I use, and you have 25 different equalizers, and 25 different compressors, and I think that can slow down creativity. I think that you get way too wrapped up in all these different choices, and tape made you commit, and maybe that’s the same thing with film, where you can’t just shoot 1000 times, you only have I don’t know how many exposures you get per roll of film, but it’s limited. There is a physical piece of film in there, that you only can get so many exposures on. Then you have to develop them, and you have to as opposed to the instant gratification of the digital world.
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Lisa: “Well, as you’re talking, I’m thinking about the amount of prep time that used to be required before you would go in and record something. Because if you had a limited amount of tape, you would need to make sure you were pretty good by the time you got there. Now, not that this is a good or a bad, but now you can almost prep as you are going.
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Jonathan: “Oh, it’s definitely bad. It’s definitely bad.
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Lisa: “Okay, well I didn’t want to make that judgment.
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Jonathan: “No, I make that judgment, it’s you get that sort of, “Oh, you can fix it in ProTools. You can just get close enough, and you can move the notes around digitally, and make it right.” I don’t like that, I think that recording can be this really expensive time-consuming thing, but there is this guy cowboy Jack Clement, he was a record producer, and he had his rules of recording, and the last rule was my favorite, and it was it only takes three minutes to make a hit record. All you’ve got to do is be prepared, have a compelling performance, and that’s it. It’s not rocket surgery. You get people who know how to play on the floor, and make a recording. I think that the digital age has fostered this … Wow, I don’t want to sound negative about it, but this lack of preparedness, or this reliance on manipulating things. As opposed to preparedness, and performance.
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Lisa: “Yeah, I mean that makes sense. You think about even people who are learning music as they are coming up through, they can record themselves from the moment that they start doing music, and they can start thinking, “Oh, well I already sound good. I don’t really have to practice. I can just-“
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Jonathan: “There is a button that I can press that will make all the notes be in tune, and if I can press that button, why would I need to practice?
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Lisa: “Right. When we talked to photographer Trent Bell, he spends a lot of any photographs for Maine home design, he spends a lot of time setting up the scene. Everything is exactly right in the house that he is photographing, and he is training as an architect, so it kind of makes sense that his mind works that way. Once it is done, it’s done. He does very little editing afterwards.
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Jonathan: “I think that makes the best recordings. As far as preparation, and the analog in my world would be make sure you’ve got the room set up, you don’t want people sitting around, you don’t want people getting bored, if you can have everything ready to go so they can walk into the room, put on headphones, and start playing immediately when the inspiration is there, and everybody is still excited. It can be a really time-consuming, sometimes even boring process doing the same thing over and over again. Part of what makes rock ‘n roll great is the vitality, and the spontaneity of it. You don’t get that when you are doing 20 takes in a row trying to micromanage the snare drum sound, and get it just right. Yeah, that’s a really good analogy to what my level of preparedness has to be to get a great performance out of people.
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Lisa: “For those of us who don’t have as much musical background, what is the difference between engineering, and mastering, and …
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Jonathan: “Sure. The two big dichotomies from my world are engineering, and producing. Engineering is the translation of a performance into some sort of storage medium. It’s a technical, but artistic endeavor, because you can affect that capture using different microphones, using different microphone techniques, using the relationship of the room to the performer. Producing is more overseeing both the creative side of it, and the organizational and logistical side of it. As a producer, you are responsible for delivering the record, and saying, “Okay, on this day we are going to be done, and this record is going to come out.” It doesn’t always in my world it also involves being the engineer. A: because I like engineering, and it’s just one more tool to get the aesthetic I’m looking for.
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“Within that, you’ve got basically let’s call it three different stages, recording engineer, who is capturing performances from artists on the floor. Then the next, maybe not the next step, but the next big step is mixing. Where you take all of these multiple tracks, because when you are recording, you record let’s say a kick drum to one track, and a snare drum to another track, and a bass guitar to another track. The mix engineer’s job is to blend all those disparate tracks into a cohesive whole. Into the song. To do that, both in a technically pleasing manner, and an emotionally convincing you want to convey emotion, you want to bring the listener along for the ride over the course of the song.
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“Finally, the last step is mastering, that’s not something I do. Mastering, it’s almost like the final glossy finish, the last layer of lacquer on a piece of furniture, or at Gateway they describe it as, it’s the last creative step in making a record, and the first technical step in producing whatever is going to go to the consumer, whether that is a compact disc, or these days a download, or a streaming file. Mastering, you don’t have as much control, you can’t in mastering say, “Oh, I wish the vocal were louder, or I wish that the guitars were quieter.” You have a fair bit of control over the overall it’s big broad strokes. The thing that mastering engineer does usually it brings perspective.
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“I make records really fast, like rarely do I have more than two weeks to make a record. Two weeks is a long time to be listening to the same eight or 10 songs. All the time, 60, 70 hours a week in those two weeks. The mastering engineer has the ability to hear those songs for the first time, and maybe hear things that I as a mixer missed. Again, I work fast, so maybe one song is a little bass heavy, maybe one song is a little dull. Maybe one song the choruses don’t explode the way they could, and the mastering engineer’s perspective as more or less a first-time listener gets to modify that, gets to again, say what’s the very last thing that this needs to put over the top.
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Lisa: “Well, I have learned a lot during this conversation. It’s good stuff. Because I’m lucky I have Spencer Albee to do all of the stuff to bring the radio show out there, all I have to do is talk. My job is relatively easy. I’m going to refer people who have been listening and want more information about the work you are doing to our Love Maine Radio show notes page where we will put your website, so that they can find you here in the Portland Maine, not Portland Oregon.
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Jonathan: “But if you are from Portland Oregon, we can still do stuff.
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Lisa: “That’s okay too. I’ve been speaking with Jonathan Wyman who has spent most of his adult life in recording studios. Now operates out of the Halo recording Studio in Wyndham. Thanks so much for educating me, for coming in today, and for the work that you are doing.
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Jonathan: “Right on, thank you for having me.
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Lisa: “You have been listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 269, making music. Our guests have included Spencer Albee, and Jonathan Wyman. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter, and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on twitter as Dr. Lisa, and see my running, travel, food, and wellness photos as bountiful1 Instagram. We would love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our making music show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
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Male: “Love Maine radio is made possible with the support of Berlin City Honda. The rooms by Harding Lee Smith, Maine Magazine, Portland Art Gallery, and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music have been provided by Spencer Albee. Our editorial producer is Paul Koenig. Our assistant producer is Shelbi Wassick. Our community development manager is Casey Lovejoy, and our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Susan Grisanti, and Dr. Lisa Belisle. For more information on our host production team, Maine Magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, please visit us at lovemaineradio.com.
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