Arts & Entertainment

When Musical Great Dave Stewart Speaks, White Lake's Tanner Peters Listens

Holly High School graduate is part of the inaugural class at The Blackbird Academy, a unique sound engineering school founder John McBride says fills a void in the music industry, and you won't believe who he's rubbing shoulders with.

They don’t teach charisma at The Blackbird Academy, a sound engineering school in Nashville.

But that, says 18-year-old Tanner Peters of White Lake, is a quality aspiring audio engineers looking to work with some of the best in the music business either have or don’t have. 

Peters is a student at the school, which was started by John McBride and his wife, legendary country music star Martina McBride, as an extension of their Blackbird Studio.

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Peters, whose eventual goal is to become a sound engineer or record producer, picked up that bit of wisdom about the need to play it cool from a cadre of well-known professional musicians and sound board engineers serving as instructors and mentors at the school.

That was one of the surprises Peters encountered in the first few weeks of an intense, six-month course when he started talking to musicians who depend on the folks on the boards to bring the right blend of science and creativity to produce a unique sound.

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“They said that it doesn’t really matter how good you are – well, it does matter – but what matters most is your attitude, and whether you can hang out. It’s more of a personality business,” says Peters, a 2013 graduate of Holly High School. “I thought it was based on how you perform on the board with mixing. They said that if you’re not cool and can’t hang out with people, no one will want to work with you. Attitude is 100 percent of the gig.

“You bring the coolness to the table yourself,” he says. “I don’t think you can teach cool.”

Another surprise for Peters in his first couple of months at The Blackbird Academy, founder John McBride’s one-of-a-kind school aimed at correcting what he sees as flaws in most audio engineering educations?

That meeting  Dave Stewart – a great friend of Beatle George Harrison – was on his bucket list. Peters had no idea that  Stewart, an English musician, songwriter and record producer best known for his work with the Eurythmics – was someone he was interested in meeting.

“He was added to my bucket list after I met him and noticed how cool he was,” Peters said. “(Rapper) Yellow Wolf – he’s on my bucket list, too.”

At first, he thought he’d be intimidated, “but the people they bring in are so cool and down to Earth, they make you feel like family.”

Meeting Stewart, Nick Raskulinecz, Tim McGraw, Ben Wysocki from The Fray and other music legends is enough to turn anyone’s head, but the star power isn’t just a perk to keep students engaged, but a necessary element in turning out sound engineers who are prepared upon graduation of mixing mega hits, John McBride says.

“How Much Money They Owed … Added Insult to Injury”

McBride started Blackbird Academy mostly out of frustration, he admitted in an interview with Patch.

About 500 interns – two dozen at a time – have gone in and out of the doors of Blackbird Studio over the years, and although they had graduated from prestigious audio and sound engineering schools like Full Sail University or SAE (the School of Audio Engineering), what they knew – or didn’t know –  “was kind of shocking, to be totally honest,” McBride says.

“The thing I discovered in talking to these interns is that they knew very little,” he says. “When I would ask them whether they liked a soft-knee or hard-knee compressor or ‘What is your favorite kick-drum mic?’ they’d say, ‘Well, we didn’t get into that.’ It upset me. And then I found out how much money they owed – $100,000 to $150,000 – it just added insult to injury.”

McBride, whose studio engages some of the top names in the music industry, says he had “a lot of motivation” to correct that. “I could complain about it, or I could do something about it.”

So McBride hired Mark Rubel and Kevin Becka – both longtime audio engineers, musicians and educators – and they created a program that would fill in the gaps. Students don’t learn just one way of doing things, and they’re taught be people who make their livings in the music industry.

“There are a million ways to record audio, and we didn’t want just one person teaching it,” McBride says.”We’re bringing in a combination of four, five, six great people and stealing from the best. It saves a lot of time having to experiment around. It’s just pretty amazing to get all of this from these heavy hitters.”

The intense, six-month course is also affordable – $21,900 – and McBride says graduates are ready to go to work when they finish.

“It’s the greatest education in the shortest amount of time for the least amount of money,” he says. “When they leave this place, they should be able to engineer a record for The Rolling Stones or at any studio in the world and do a great job. That’s a bold statement, I know, but this program, in my opinion, is just leaps and bounds beyond any program anywhere.”

In addition to learning technique, students also learn how to finesse the coolness that Peters has learned is essential.

Focusing on etiquette gives graduates of the school “a much better chance of succeeding,” McBride says. More bluntly, “if you know nothing, but act like you ought to be mixing the next One Direction record, you’re not going to make it.”

“Few people get fired for not being good at audio,” he says, taking the explanation a step further. “You get fired because you don’t fit it. We make it so students truly understand how to be a positive member in a recording session or a tour on the road.”

School Was a Hassle – Until Now

Peters, who is part of the inaugural class at The Blackbird Academy, learned about the program from his uncle, Marlon Young, a guitarist with Kid Rock’s Twisted Brown Trucker Band.

The Blackbird Academy holds his interest in a way high school never could and that he doubts even a traditional four-year university ever would.

“I wake up every day and want to go to school,” Peters says. “ It’s not a hassle. If I were at a four-year college or community college, it  would be a strain. In high school, it was the same way – a strain – and I hated it.

“Now, I never want to leave,” he said. “If you can imagine yourself doing anything else, you shouldn’t be here. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

He says The Blackbird Academy is much more advanced than other music schools he considered.

And all those industry greats he’s learning from?

Their advice is platinum.

“The mentors are all saying we are in a great place, that Blackbird is going to do wonderful things,” Peters says. “If Dave Stewart is going to tell me I’m the future, I’m going to listen.”


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