September 1997

Seventeen Grand Studios in Nashville was choosen by producer / supervisor Spencer Proffer for cable network Showtime's original feature film "The Day Elvis Met Nixon."

Proffer picked the studio becasue of its Nashville location, its Neve VR-60 Legend console and the fact that Seventeen Grand haad done work on five major feature films in 1996. Tese included soundtrack work for "Twister", (a new Allison Krauss cut for the film); "Tin Cup," the Kevin Costner vehicle for which Nashville producer Emory Gordy did a new George Jones track; "Beavis and Butthead Do America,: for which producer Isaac Hayes did the theme and opening song productions; scoring for the forthcoming "Men Seeking Women," featuring "Saturday Night Live's" Will Farrow; and songs by the Cox Family and new Asylum duo Thrasher / Shriver for the recent release "Travelers."

Sessions engineer and studio co-owner Jake Niceley set up the musicians in the studio atttempting to re-create the intimacy and interplay that characterized Nashville sessions of the time, with close miking on all instruments and amplifiers, but with equal mix emphasis on the Neumann U87 (figure-8 pattern) that was being used as a room microphone.

Recording was done to a Studer D-827 48-track digital machine, which was the master deck, with a 1/4-inch video slaved to it via a Zeta-3 synchronizer. "We're cutting all of the score and music cues live to picture," Niceley explains. "There are no overdubs; we just keep doing takes till we get ones we like."

It was microphone choices and placement, as well as the choice of players, that gave the recordings their vintage sound, says Niceley: "That and letting the picture follow the music."