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For recording engineers and producers with broad, adventurous musical tastes, Austin, Texas is about as close to paradise as it gets. The city's vibrant live music scene, supported by nearly 200 clubs, as well as the annual SXSW music festival, has earned Austin the title of "Live Music Capital of the World."

As a result nearly 2,000 bands from all over the U.S. playing nearly every conceivable style of music, including blues, country, folk, jazz, metal, punk, indie and alternative rock, have settled in Austin and call it home.

Producer Mike McCarthy grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, but he eventually found his way to Austin in 1994 after spending a decade in Nashville, where he moved to help start a new record label and publishing company when he was just 19. "I recorded publishing demos in an 8-track studio," McCarthy remembers. "At night and on weekends I would bring in my friends' bands and record them. Around that time I got introduced to college radio, which planted the initial seed for the type of rock bands I wanted to work with."

"There just weren't that many rock bands in Nashville then—it was all about country music. There was a short period when I was traveling all over the place to make records—New York, California, Nashville—so I finally decided to come back here and open my own studio."

It didn't take long after his initial arrival in Austin for McCarthy to hook up with rock bands and artists who met his criteria, including Spoon, And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead and Magneto USA (later known as Fastball). While many of the bands he worked with were funded by major labels that encouraged the bands to work in out-of-town studios, Mike discovered that most artists did their best work when they were close to home. He also realized that working close to the band's home made more sense from a financial standpoint.

"I had made two records with Trail of Dead," says McCarthy. "We decided that with my studio gear and their recording budget we would make their next record in Austin rather than go to a studio somewhere else and spend all the money. We wound up coming to Guitar Center to get everything from basic equipment—microphone stands, a headphone system, tape, drum heads, guitar strings—to gear like guitar amps, keyboards and software. It was really cool to have a store like Guitar Center here where we could buy all the stuff we needed to make the album. Since then I've always come here for supplies."

Part of the reason why McCarthy enjoys shopping at Guitar Center is because the staff comes from backgrounds similar to his and they understand his needs. Guitar Center District Sales Manager Parker Bradley arrived in Austin when the band he was playing with at the time decided to move there. While looking for a day job Bradley stopped by Guitar Center and impressed the store manager so much that he was hired a few days later.

"I had previously worked in a mom-and-pop music store for two years," says Bradley. "I had an independent mindset, and I thought I'd work here for maybe three months and then look for work that had something to do with my degree in environmental science. That was nine years ago.

I started at the South Austin store and ended up managing it for about a year and a half. Then in May of 2006 I moved to the main Austin store and ran it, and last September I was promoted to District Sales Manager."

When Bradley needed someone to replace him as the manager of the Austin store, he searched within the company and found Brandon Tuber. "I started working for Guitar Center in June 2005 at the Seattle, Washington, store," Tuber recalls. "I juggled fruit at the Pike Place Market during the day and played in bands at night. One day I went into Guitar Center to buy a new drum set. I got into a conversation with the drum department manager and he said he needed help in the drum shop. I came in the next week to do an interview and got hired that day. I really liked my boss. He inspired me to do bigger, better things at Guitar Center."

Tuber quickly became assistant store manager of the Seattle store, was moved to Boise, Idaho to be store manager, and then filled the same position in Beaverton, Oregon. "I worked in Beaverton for two and half years with the goal of getting to work in Austin, Texas," says Tuber. "I thought if I'm going to be around music all day and at Guitar Center all the time, why not do it in Austin? I arrived here on October 1st and I've loved every minute I've been here."

McCarthy quickly gelled with the staff at the Austin Guitar Center store, and he found that they were always happy to take the extra effort to find him exactly what he needed. Mike runs an old school recording studio with a two-inch 24-track tape machine, a vintage 46-channel Calrec mixing console and racks of Telefunken and Langevin tube preamps, and he was dismayed to discover that his favorite tape was no longer being produced.

"I'm pretty adamant about using Quantegy 456," says Mike. "Parker has been really helpful with finding the few reels that are left in the world for me. I have about 35 or 40 reels of tape, but I can't store everyone's records on tape anymore so I back up everything on Pro Tools HD. I still mix off of tape 80 percent of the time, but now I have to reuse and rotate tape for new projects and I send in my masters to the label or artist on a hard drive in Pro Tools format."

"I remember when Mike was asking us to get tape," says Bradley. "We had a good amount so I held on to some for him, but eventually that was gone. I told Mike that some new company was making tape, but I could tell that he really needed 456 and that even 499 or GP9 would not do. I started calling a lot of our stores and found a few that had rolls, so I had them all send it my way. Sometimes I had to stay on the phone and describe exactly what the box looks like while they searched for it in the warehouse."

"I'm a guitar player, so I know what it's like when you're looking for a particular sound," Bradley continues. "Mike needs specific tones, and I know that he needs 456 tape to get those tones because that's what he works on. That's where the magic happens and any substitute isn't going to be even a possibility."

While Guitar Center stocks the latest cutting edge recording products, the stores are also a great place to find classic gear. McCarthy likes the fact that the Austin store offers vintage guitars and amps, and he also likes that the staff is as into classic gear as he is.

When McCarthy picked up an especially immaculate used Neumann M269, the Austin store had the solution to a unique problem. "The M269 is similar to a U67 but maybe just a little bit nicer," McCarthy explains. "This one was in particularly good shape. I already owned a U67 and I didn't need to have two of them, so Parker helped facilitate the sale of my U67 to someone else."

"Parker understands great gear, but he also understands the creativity side of things as well," Mike continues. "People who make records still use a lot of the really old stuff but they use a lot of new stuff, too. There's always that hybridization. When I started buying gear for my own studio I needed help in a lot of different areas. David Grissom is a great guitar player who I really respect, and he recommended that I talk to Parker because he would know what I was talking about. If I ask him a question about anything whether it's brand new or vintage he knows the whole gamut."

One of McCarthy's most surprising recent purchases was an Akai MPC 4000 Music Production Center—a piece of gear normally associated with hip-hop and electronic music producers. McCarthy uses it for sequencing, and has found his sequenced tracks almost always make their way onto a song that he is recording.

"Mike's MPC 4000 is fully loaded," says Bradley. "He's sampled everything. I have to admit that I've sold a bunch of MPC 4000s because I'm always telling people that Mike McCarthy has one. A lot of people in Austin call Mike and ask him questions about what he does and what he's using. People who know about Mike know the standards that he has. If he's using something they understand that it's been well vetted because it's McCarthy approved. Opportunities come up all the time in this business to take care of people and to make a difference in these things we still sometimes call records. That's cool to me."

McCarthy is flattered that he's become an Austin legend and that he's had the opportunity not only to work with some of the city's most influential artists like Spoon, Patty Griffin and Trail of Dead but also promising newcomers like Heartless Bastards. " Most of my career visibility has been under the whole radar of everything," he admits. "Last year though, I decided to start my own website and blog as an attempt to open up communication with others, and to share some of my studio experiences."

"It's great to have people like Mike shop at the store," adds Tuber. "I'm always learning new things from our customers and sharing that information with other people. It never stops. I find that there are two types of customers—one that knows more than me and one that knows less than me. If they know more than me, I listen to what they have to say and I soak it up and take it all in. It's a free education. People like Mike come in here for a reason. They want to look at instruments and gear and try to decide if they want to buy something. Everybody likes to be recognized and known for who they are, but you don't want to make a big production of it. My motto is treat rock stars like normal people and treat normal people like rock stars. Everybody is welcome here."

For more information on Mike McCarthy visit mikemccarthyproducer.com
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