TSM - News & Blog

Incredibly honored and proud to have gotten to master this beautiful release from Kathryn Belle Long and Mickey Abraham - "Voices: A Folk Opera." In a digitized short attention span era when so many artists just put out a single or EP, this release bucks that trend by being a 3-LP set - yet is incredibly compelling across its entire length. This is from the heart americana played by real deal super accomplished musicians, recorded & mixed by the capable hands of Log Cabin Studio's Kris Kolp, with a truly excellent pressing onto 180gram vinyl from Audiodrome (the one fully solar powered record pressing plant in the USA) in Gainesville Florida. It is also packaged incredibly beautifully in a double gatefold jacket too.

This music is sadly also the last work of Kathryn Belle Long, who succumbed to cancer shortly after the recording was completed. I had the honor of mastering two previous albums for groups Kathryn led (Belle & the Band's "Till We Know Better" from 2017, and The Adventures of Annabelle Lyn's "Maiden Voyage" from 2016) and her enormous talents as a vocalist and songwriter were immediately apparent then. She also was an incredibly sweet and generous person in all my dealings with her. And for "Voices" I think she extended her range even farther, co-writing with the also enormously talented Mickey Abraham a novella in folk music form, that poignantly touches on the spiritual connection we have with our ancestors, the horrors of civil wars and totalitarian governments, and the gem of hope that we can transcend these conflicts by reconnecting with our humanity.

Rest In Peace Kathryn, and thank you for leaving us with this music. And big thanks to Mickey Abraham & Kris Kolp for involving me in this project, which took a lot of work and a number of years to finally become a reality - y'all did beautiful work in honoring Kathryn's legacy.

You can hear and purchase this music at https://folkopera.bandcamp.com/album/voices-a-folk-opera
and read a great article on the making of it at here

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Always great for me to have what have now become rare attended sessions - in this case one that I meant to post about 10 days ago when it happened - with the most excellent Austin band Pocket 20, along with recording engineer/producer Ron D'Argenio, who's built an incredible recording & mixing facility in Buda, under the name of HooDoo Studio.

What's nice with attended sessions is that communication about what approach to take in the mastering is immediate. But way beyond work flow, what is really a joy for me with attended sessions is getting to meet & hang out with some amazingly great people who are also highly skilled music creators.

This new album by Pocket 20 of accessible & whimsical edgy pop-rock is definitely one to look forward to - you can get news for its release at Pocket 20 Music

While other studios might only use "modeled emulators" for their "plugins" - I've often preferred instead to use the real deal, whether tube, transformer or tape, whenever the coloration of these has been desired. While it's super rare that I do layback to tape, for this album of contemporary afrobeat I did last week, where the client name checked the likes of Fela Kuti, Antibalas, along with some albums I did for the likes of Budos Band, Sharon Jones, and St. Paul & The Broken Bones, as the vibe they were wanting for their digital mixes - recording their tracks first onto 1/4" 15ips 2-track analog reel via my Otari MX5050-B2 has been just the thing to bring out some sweet sounding grime, saturation & punch that works perfectly for their goals. Shout out to local South Austin tech Tim Allen for getting this machine purring recently. And for any out there looking for a similar funkification of their mixes, give me a holla.

Was excellent hanging out with fellow Texan mastering engineer, and all around mensch, Harold Larue for the start of this year's downsized SXSW. Started last night with a delish dinner at Ramen Tatsuya and then went next door to the iconic Saxon Pub, where we took in amazing sets by Cari Hutson & Good Company, and The Reverent Few. Followed the next morning with breakfast hosted Recording Academy at the Parkside, where I got to also meet & hangout with KUTX's awesome DJ Shani, who turned out (as one would expect given the high quality of her radio show) to be super friendly and super smart. Harold had to depart after that, but I took in Austin Chronicle's block party at the Hotel Vegas, where I caught sets by Égaux Sells and Free Hamze.

Check out TSM's SXSW 2026 photo gallery for photos we will be posting from SXSW 2026.

We have updated this page to using the old school Serendipity blogging software, so that we can make posts from pretty much anywhere now.
Here's a recent view of the studio, showing off on the desk to the right the also recently acquired Antelope Amari mastering interface. The Amari ties truly excellent sounding 384kHz capable analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters from our desk to our M4 MacMini main DAW, as well as to our monitoring systems. Also seen on screen is Ardour 9, the cross platform, open source DAW software we are using now for capture, editing, processing and assembly of our masters. With its recent update, allowing for better navigation and region (aka object) based fx, Ardour has added even more capabilities, on top of its already easy editing and huge plugin compatibilities. Onward & upward!