Todd Mack on Personal Songwriting and Working With Another Producer on ‘I’m Gonna Love You No Matter What’
Todd Mack is a singer/songwriter, producer, and founder of a non-profit called Music in Common. Previously, he’s played in different musical configurations, and run his own studio, but these days most of his time is taken up with Music in Common, now over twenty years old, which aims to bridge social divides through the experience of creating music together. His work trajectory meant that his own songwriting and recording took a back seat, also influenced by the amount of travel his non-profit work entailed. But due to determination and some stars aligning, Mack managed to write, record, and release his first album in 15 years, titled I’m Gonna Love You No Matter what, out now.
Part of what enabled the album to come together was finding a very meaningful collaboration with Rob Vermeulen as producer, someone who was able to take Mack’s very personal and emotive songwriting and find its wider sonic possibilities. Not only was that a very rewarding process for Mack, but it opened up avenues for future work that he hopes will bring him back to recording his songs more frequently. I spoke with Todd Mack about his multi-genre album, working for Music in Common, and a great deal about being a producer, as well as finding the right producer to collaborate with on your own work.
Americana Highways: There’s been a gap between your last album and this one, so I was wondering about the challenges of that for you. There’s an accumulation of creative ideas and notes that can develop over time, and there are so many ways to get music out there, but in a way, it’s better to choose smaller amounts to release.
Todd Mack: In some ways, there are so many outlets to get your music out there, that it adds to the stress. There’s all this creativity laying around that you haven’t really shared beyond your living room, and then, there are so many ways to share it. Then the process, especially for indie artist, is that there are something like 115 DSPs and they all have to get it. Then there’s Bandcamp, which is an island unto itself. Then you have to make the videos. It never ends.
AH: Related to your situation, since you’re very much a producer, there’s a kind of syndrome of “Producer-itis” where producers will often focus on other peoples’ music rather than making and finishing their own albums, if they are songwriters, too. That adds to backlogs and delays.
TM: Yes, I definitely suffer from that.
AH: I know it can be practical, because production might seem faster and more direct than doing one’s own creative work.
TM: Yes, and not to go deep or dark, but you start questioning, “Why am I always putting myself last? Why am I always putting other people first?” And for me, part of that is, “Well, that’s my day job. That’s how I pay the bills.” Producing other stuff than my own stuff does that.
AH: You ran a studio for a long time, but you moved on from that. Did you put producing aside, then, or do you still do that commercially?
TM: I still produce for other people, but my day job now is one that I had for 21 years while simultaneously being a studio producer. I closed the studio about eight years ago to do this full-time, which is running a non-profit called Music In Common. I feel like there are so many dimensions to that work, but a lot of it is content creation, where we’re just constantly pumping stuff out.
It’s producing, but sometimes it’s a different kind of producing. Sometimes I’m working with people in different parts of the world who don’t speak much English, and sometimes I’m working with young people, and sometimes with communities that have been raised to hate one another, and I bring them together to write a song and record it. They don’t know how to play music, and it’s very foreign to them. It’s a whole different kind of thing. But it’s all-consuming, that work. That was a huge factor of why it took 15 years for me to put this album out, and why I’m always putting that work first.
So I am still producing, and I’d love to do more producing, like I used to do. Some of the stuff I do now is producing, since we’ve done a few records in the past few years, like The Black Legacy Project. That was really cool, and took me into amazing studios all over the country, with amazing musicians. So that definitely has its up-side.
AH: Now, you have a more conventional musical background, too, playing in bands before all this, don’t you?
TM: That’s right, the stuff with Music in Common is really the second half of my career. I spent twenty years pushing my own work out there. I learned pretty quickly that you’re not going to make a lot of money, or even enough money to live, if all you’re doing is putting out records and going on the road. That’s really what drove me into producing. I was producing all my fellow Indie artist friends. Then I started getting into producing books on tape, going way back. You start piecing things together, so to be in music, and to be truly independent, you have to think outside the box, and have your fingers in a lot of pies.
AH: You have also made the choice on this album to work with another producer, and not just produce your own work, which I often see people doing for the sake of their sanity. How did find Rob Vermeulen and come to work together out in California?
TM: It started with pragmatism and practicality. My wife and I live in Atlanta, but for the last few years, she’s been living mostly in California, looking out for her aging parents. So I get out there as often as I can, but what I found was that since I’m on the road so much for work, when I’m out there, it is a different time. I found that I’ve not been in one place for over six consecutive weeks in over five years. I love the road, but the older I get, the more I feel it. When I go out to California for a week, or two, or three, because I don’t really know anybody out there, there are no distractions. So that was a big part of it, this was the only way it was going to work. I just needed to get away.
The other part of it is that I told myself that I was not going to Produce this record myself, or at least not alone. I needed to work with another producer, whose stuff I liked, even if I didn’t know them yet. I just happened upon this person. Morro Bay, California, is pretty small and rural, and there are maybe three studios in an 80-mile stretch, unlike Atlanta!
But I met with Rob Vermeulen, at his space, which was basically a converted garage, and we just hit it off. I had listened to some of his stuff, and Iiked his production style. I felt like we spoke the same language and that we drew from a lot of the same influences. So we started out with me coming in and doing three or four songs together, all very different in style and genre. I just wanted to see what he would do. I was really digging what he was coming up with, so we recorded 17 songs, 11 of which made it onto the record. He deserves so much credit. I do feel that it was a collaborative effort. There are some songs on there that are 1000% him. I would give him a scratch vocal, and a scratch acoustic guitar track, and he’d say, “What about this?” It would be great.
AH: A lot of anxiety in making music seems to be finding a producer to work with, though I think that is improving, with more choice and more flexible scenarios these days. But it’s like trying to meet someone on a blind date and hoping you will get along, it seems.
TM: I know, it is. That’s a partner. That’s a really great analogy. First, you have to get over the vulnerability of it, thinking, “Is he going to think I suck?” For Indie artists, we’re hiring a producer, so it’s a work-for-hire arrangement, but there’s so much more creative partnership involved than that. There’s so much trust, and it starts with getting over that vulnerability. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing it, how accomplished you are, or how confident you are, you always have to question yourself, and I consider myself a damn confident artist at this stage in my career. That’s how you get the best from what you’re doing, questioning yourself and challenging yourself.
AH: Some of these songs, if not all of the songs on this album, feel personal and emotional, so that must have been a close collaboration for you.
TM: I went in wanting to work with another producer, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back, be it Rob or another person. If you’re really lucky, you get a guy like Rob, who can take the blank canvas, where you just throw him the song, not knowing what you want it to sound like. There are a couple of songs on the album that stand out as great examples of that. The first one is the album opener, “Angel Above.” I came in and laid that thing down, and it’s a pretty personal song for me. But I could not hear anything for the song beyond the way that I was playing it in my writing room, with an acoustic guitar, and singing it, but I felt like, “That can’t be it.”
The way I was playing it was very different from the way it landed on the album. It was very sparse, and I knew that was not going to work. I knew there must be more, I just didn’t know what. Rob said, “Oh, man, I’m hearing this whole Levon Helm, Band, thing.” I said, “How? How are you hearing that??” If you’re lucky, you get the guy who can come up with the ideas, and that’s a great example of that.
AH: I don’t know if you feel the same way, but when I hear that song, I hear that he’s also being very faithful to something original. I can hear some of the sparseness that you’re talking about, but it’s like its preserved in the middle of a lot of other colorful aspect. It’s accompanied. The atmosphere is preserved within the wider context.
TM: Yes, and that’s a great reflection of who he is, not just as a human being, but as a producer. The interesting thing about Rob is that he doesn’t write. He’s not a songwriting. So, in some ways, he’s saddled by that. He just hears a song for what it is, then what it could be. Whenever I bring stuff to him, he prints out the song sheet, because he wants to read the lyrics as he hears the music. Then he asks, “What’s this about?” For “Angel Above,” I told him the story of what the song was about, and I think he was pretty moved by it. I think that’s why he was able to come up with this version that still respected the barebones version of the song, and still found a lot of meat on the bones.
AH: I appreciate that he wanted to know, “What’s the weight of this? Where’s the emotion of this coming from?” Because, for one thing, that’s going to affect your vocals so much.
TM: Totally, yes, all of that. It’s so true. It’s not just about coming up with a sound-bed for it, it’s how are you going to sing it? I think that’s one of Rob’s super-powers. I think this is because Rob is such a complete human being. The story of the song is the hardest thing that I ever had to do, to tell my 15-year-old son that the love of his life, and his best friend, had just drowned. Rob has kids, and I think as a parent, he was able to think about that. He was almost devastated by that origin story for the song. I don’t know how you can produce without knowing something about the artist, something about the song. You need a reference point. How do you bring out something that’s true to who that person is? And being an artist is just an extension of being who you are as a person.
AH: What a great way to say that, I agree. I love the idea that you bring your complete person into the studio with you, into the discussion. It almost feels like, “If you’re not doing that, what are you doing?” Your time on earth is limited, you have to bring yourself to things.
TM: For sure. There may be some people for whom music is more transactional. They may not be as emotionally invested, but that’s the exact opposite of what it is for me. This is my lifeline, and my religion. I couldn’t live without music. It’s my sustenance.
Thanks very much for chatting with us, Todd Mack!
More information is available here on his website: https://toddmack.net/home
Also check out the Music in Common website: https://www.musicincommon.org/
Enjoy some of our previous coverage here: REVIEW: Todd Mack “I’m Gonna Love You No Matter What”