Steve Vining, president of Savoy Label Group, is contributing to production efforts on Dave Matthews Band's new studio album. Previously, it had been known that only Mark Batson, producer of Stand Up was working with the band.
Steve Vining is the former president of Windham Hill Records, a new age record label that surged in popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s. The Beverly Hills based company brought to light artists such as guitarist Michael Hedges, world fusion group Shadowfax, and pianist George Winston, among dozens of others.
In 2002, Vining began his tenure as president of the Savoy Label Group, the U.S.-based arm of Columbia Music Entertainment, a longstanding Japanese music label. Savoy Label Group focuses on new age, contemporary and traditional jazz, classical, and classical crossover music.
A biography of Steve Vining on the SLG site shows he has done extensive work as a producer and engineer, helping create Grammy-nominated recordings for artists like Dizzy Gillespie, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, among others. His loves of jazz and goals for SLG are detailed in a 2004 interview conducted by the website All About Jazz.
Steve Vining with Jim BrickmanSavoy recently celebrated two Grammy nominations for the 2007 Grammy Awards. Groove Collective toured with Dave Matthews Band during the Canadian leg of the 1998 summer tour and was nominated on December 8th 2006 for "People, People, Music, Music." A second artist, Ravi Coltrane (son of John Coltrane) was also nominated. Ravi appeared at the New Orleans Jazz Fest in 2005 where Dave Matthews Band was also performing.
Steve Vining's production work for Dave Matthews Band appears to be his first direct involvement with DMB. There is, however, one connection between Dave Matthews and Vining's former label, Windham Hill.
In August 2003, shortly before the release of Some Devil, the label released Volume 3 of their Sounds of Wood and Steel compilation, a mix of acoustic songs performed on Taylor guitars. The unreleased track "Litho Blitho" -- a 2-minute instrumental song Dave recorded during the Some Devil sessions -- appears on the album.
More news, as soon as we can get a hold of it…
What I would like to see is them do is go the route they were originally going to go with for Stand Up. They were going to bring in a different producer for each song or small group of songs, I think that would have been very interesting.
Nitro1515 wrote:What I would like to see is them do is go the route they were originally going to go with for Stand Up. They were going to bring in a different producer for each song or small group of songs, I think that would have been very interesting.
Ehh. Primus did that with their Antipop album. Not bad, but not the masterpieces that their early albums were. It'd probably be different with DMB, but a different producer for each tune makes me wary anyway.
This is good news. I listen to a number of Windham Hill artists and almost all the records I've heard from this company are very well produced and don't seem forced/directed like DMB has recently.
pacific34 wrote:Batson will be limited to strickly rolling blunts.
YAAA! Some fat ones
"It was cold in the kitchen and the lights were low as winter slowly stumbled home, the air felt different and it started to show as every breath resembled smoke, i was short of opinions and i wanted to know if i'd see your face tomorrow,
'cuz it was cold in the kitchen and the lights were low as winter wrapped around CHICAGO"-UM
anyone heard this litho blitho tune? on dmbalmanac, it says it's the mother father outro, which i can't say i'm too familiar with. that's not the best dmb song i've heard.
