Expression Course Director for Intermediate Recording Production, Dave Bell, got a call for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  Dave was contacted by The John Lee Hooker Foundation to see if he would be interested in mixing some of John Lee Hooker’s un-released recordings.  One of the last links to the Blue’s of the South, John Lee Hooker was inducted into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.

Dave started his extensive career as a recording and mixing engineer and over the years, has grown to engineering many noteworthy artists like James Taylor, Steve Miller, Greg Allman, Goo Goo Dolls, and Chris Issac to name a few.

“To be given the opportunity to mix these historic tracks was both an honor and a privilege,” said Bell. 

The task wasn’t easy, but Dave was up for the challenge. “The first tune I mixed, Blues Before Sunrise, was recorded at Russian Hill Recorders in April of 1991. It was recorded on Ampex 456 and the machine was calibrated at +3/185. After I had Ex’pression’s J Series room’s Studer A827 re-calibrated to the same position, I booked four hours to do the mix. When I hit PLAY and pushed up the faders for the first time, it was obvious that this was not going to be easy.”

Expression College student Angie Yesson, was Dave’s assistant for John Lee Hooker mix.  Going into more technical detail about what they did with the mix, Dave notes that, “To begin with the levels to tape were very low, so the signal to noise ratio was difficult, and the tape hiss was a challenge. The only instrumentation was the kit, bass and Mr. Hooker’s guitar and vocal.”

“I used the line amps, gates, and compression on the drum tracks, and filters for the hi hat and cymbals, that cleaned up the kit fairly well. I needed to get rid of the noise on the guitar tracks, but the filters on the desk just weren’t enough, so I ran the 2” tracks through Digidesign Pro Tools so I could use a few plugins to clean the tracks. The amp track just wouldn’t clean well, so I ended up only using the direct track, panning it left and then delaying it (about 50ms) to the right to balance the mix. Considering the problems, the mix really came out great.”

The album Don’t Look Back is being re-released through ShoutFactory on July 17th, and Blues Before Sunrise, will be included as a bonus track on the record.