WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Story Behind the Song: The Role of an Audio Engineer in Music Production

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Join Lilly Faye as she interviews Evan Ridgway, a Nashville based audio engineer who shares his role in producing songs. 

Hey, y'all. Welcome to Story Behind the Song, a podcast that tells behind the scenes of how a song came to be. My name is Lily Fay Kramer and I'll be your host. Today, I am joined by Evan Ridgeway. He is a recent graduate of Belmont University with a degree in audio engineering. Based in Nashville, he works for the world-renowned Ocean Way Studios as a staff engineer, working behind the scenes on many projects. He is here today to explain his story of how. he became an audio engineer and what his work entails. For my first question, how did you get into audio engineering? That's a pretty niche profession to have.

Right. So I kind of got in it through the hip-hop side of things. I had some friends in high school who were expiring rappers. And so I wanted to be a part of that, but I didn't really want to rap. So I decided to make beats just on my computer and getting into production. at home using Ableton and Logic and stuff like that. And then that kind of led me to want to go to Belmont. Belmont University. They have a pretty good music business and audio engineering program.

Going to Belmont originally wanting to be a hip-hop producer and then realizing that there was no rappers there. And then quickly switching to audio engineering instead of music business because that allowed me to get into the studio more and just be more hands-on or less. more hands-on with all the gear and kind of really understand how to produce and make a record versus the business side of it. Yeah, that makes sense.

How would you say hip-hop is different from country music in terms of audio engineering? What all is involved with that? I mean, I guess it kind of depends. The pop country is kind of leaning into the side of people producing stuff on their computer. A big thing now is you have tracks guys who are, lightning fast on the computer and can basically make a pop sounding, you know, commercial sounding hit track in, you know, 20 minutes. And they just do that and then they give it to people and they ride over it. So that's like a whole thing and that's kind of how rap is similar because it's just

people making beats and then recording on top of that. So it's mostly electronic production. Unless, you know, there's obviously standouts. But compared to like what I do in Nashville is a lot of live for band. Everybody's in a room together, a bunch of musicians recording it at once, building the track with a band as opposed to some guy on a computer.

Okay, so you kind of do it more live in the moment versus having it pre-made. Right, and that's kind of a thing that's specific to Nashville. not a lot of places don't really do it like that anymore. Obviously, that's how it was done in the past, like in the 70s and the golden age of recording that everybody talks about. That's what it was.

And, you know, all of this kind of music fell on the backs of like session, musician players who would jump around from session to session and play on everybody's record. And they're the ones that are writing the parts that everybody knows and loves. So it's there's like a whole ecosystem there. What kind of classes did you have to take at Belmont besides your stuff on equipment, the engineering side of things? I'm a minor in music business.

And I never really considered myself a musician, musician. I never was in love with playing an instrument. I found this through the engineering side of things and just listening to a lot of music. I can play a little bit, but I'm not super proficient. and I just, I know a lot of better musicians that it's like, if I need somebody to play piano on something, I'm just going to call him because I know that he's a lot better than that. Gotcha. Okay.

Yeah. What kind of preparation is involved? Say someone calls you to be on set or whatever when they're recording. What do you have to do to prepare for it? Will they still give you a sample of what the song is supposed to sound like or is it more? Yes. We'll have work tapes of them. playing the songs or maybe they've went ahead and made some demos which is just you know getting

initial ideas out you know on their computer like with tracks and stuff like that and that's a big part of what the whole tracks thing is like used for but yeah so then they'll come to me and then i'll usually get a group of musicians and kind of talk to the artist about what they want out of the song kind of what their vision is and just think over how bad he is and then get players in and look out the studio which is probably the most important part I work out of Oceanway in Nashville primarily and it's it's good I know the room pretty well I know all the equipment and I'm able to really do whatever needs to be done and there's a lot of prep that goes into the session itself from the audio engineering perspective you got to set up all the microphones, patch everything, you know, you're using the big board with all the different, you know, knobs and buttons that people get overwhelmed with. And that's the heart of, at least for me, producing a song is, it's like being in that space with creatives, you know,

making it work and figuring out how this song is going to sound. Nothing to do except work the fields and fall on the Sunday on Monday he thank God love never be told so the guy that you sent me Benjamin Joseph I listen to some of his stuff and he gives country but Americana but older country vibes and his voice reminds me of Zach Brian's voice a little bit yeah quite the angle I was wondering what did that process look like like with his different albums and stuff. For him, basically, he was my roommate throughout all of college.

And so he was a songwriting major, and I was an audio engineer and producer. And so it's like, oh, you have songs to record, let's record them. Relationship developed further from that. And now obviously we're out of college. And he's hitting the nail on the head, being in Nashville, being a songwriter,

trying to get songs picked. and also playing the artist route. He had a band, he played a lot of live shows, and that's kind of where it all really started. And so, you know, he had a band of all of our friends, and it was kind of like, hey, all right, we're ready to record these things. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to book out the studio and let's do it. Oh, that's fine.

And so we're all in there. And I'm basically working with all the musicians. All the musicians are going to come up with different parts and things like that. And my role, essentially, as just a producer, producer is not to take away from any of that and to help God that place. If there's things that are maybe clashing, because a lot of times, especially when you're working with like college musicians, things can get a little hectic and crazy things start happening. And it's like, all right, let's take it down a notch. You know, musical ideas that are

just kind of a little out there and cool, but you know. It might be an acquired taste. It might be a bit more eccentric than what the audience may like. So just because a lot of things, you know, our drummer, for example, is a jazz fusion drummer, a country music. So we'll have all these cool ideas that are actually, you know, musically, I think they are cool. But it's like when we're making a country record. That's funny. Yeah. So when did you graduate from Belmont? I graduated last May. What are you doing right now? What's a project you're working on currently? I'm working on some more Benjamin Joseph songs. I'm working on some basically an album for a dude named Miles Connor. Yeah, so he's played a lot of shows, but we're working on his debut stuff right now.

And that's pretty cool. And then I, you know, aside from my freelance engineering and production, I work at a week's group. Okay, fine. And I, you know, and kind of studio staff, and I just help out with anything that the building needs. And it's getting, be pretty random, you know, crawling through crawl spaces to, like, fix insulation and, you know, random stuff like that, but then also assist on the recording sessions and, you know, set up the sessions, basically do everything that I would do for myself before the clients that are coming in. Okay. So with Miles Conner, what kind of music is he what described that process? Country Blues Rock.

Okay. Some of those are pretty cool. I didn't send you any of those because they're not finished. That's so funny. Yeah. You don't want to spoil it. But they're cool. I'm pretty excited about them.

So describe the process. So everyone comes in to the studio and then you have everything set up and prepared and then they record. Yeah. And then there's a bunch of takes. Right. But so have you ever, do you know about like the national number system? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like one, four, five. And then, yeah.

So everybody will show up and somebody will chart out the song. Everybody gets the song. They're looking at the arrangement. And that's the most crucial part. Because aside from my freelance sessions, I've assisted on a lot of pop country sessions at Sony and doing, you know, all their artists that are coming in. that they're learning to record.

The way that Nashville does it is it's super fast pace. You know, go in for four hours and you'll cut three songs. All the musicians come in and there's a whole ecosystem. They're all kind of friends and they walk in and it's like, oh, Jerry, I didn't know you were on this session today. And it's like, oh, yeah. Random musicians come in. They hear the song for the first time.

They have the chart out so that they know the arrangement. And then they go in there and they just boom. And it sounds like the record. as soon as they hit their first pass. That is one of the main components is having good players. If you're doing a full band session like that, you need good players. And there's a reason that Nashville has an ecosystem of credible session players, some of the best players in the world, that just go around town playing on everybody's songs.

Have any of your Belmont buddies, have they ever come in for a session that you're working on? Not at the studio, no. Okay. I mean, the guys that are coming in at the studio that I work at are like... They've been there for a while. Okay. They're probably like 50s, 60s. Because I did a few fiddle camps at Belmont with Ryan Joseph.

He's in charge of, I think it was world fiddlers. And he was like, my goal is to train my students to take over what I do right now. And he fiddles for Allen and stuff. So I was just curious if anyone you knew had been, they're all like fresh out of college. No, but I mean, I know some people that are playing around, but just nobody that's been on a session that I'm. Okay. Yeah. Does cartage, who's a session player and he also does cartage on the side.

That's crazy. Yeah. So he's came into the studio, like carting in drums and stuff like that. That's awesome. There's a whole, I find it really interesting. the way that the Nashville session musicians work. Are they good. Are you also from Atlanta?

Born in Atlanta. And then I only lived there for like a year when I was born. But yeah, my grandparents lived there, so I went there like every summer. So I was wondering if the Atlanta hip-hop scene had any influence on you. Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about it. But also, I was like a big 90s hip-hop. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. The trap.

I didn't like future Mito. That wasn't necessarily my company. I don't think Atlanta would have been before. That's so funny. And then what other schools did you look out besides Belmont?

Just Belmont? Just Belmont. Because I applied early. I was ready to start applying to other schools and they were like, you got it and I was like, all right, that's cool. Yeah, I went to visit And I was like, I really want to do something music related.

I was like, it's pretty cool there. So I was going to block to. No, I love Belmont. I feel like for each musician, they can do their own path, and it doesn't have to be your traditional. I play cello and I'm going to a conservatory. You're a well-rounded musician by the time you leave no matter what. What's your favorite song that you've worked on?

What makes it different from other things? I feel like it's something that you haven't. It's not released. I can't really. The ones that have been released. Let you down, Benjamin Joseph. Let you down. Okay.

Probably, probably one of my favorites. Either that or a devil at your book. That's a really good one. When does the unreleased album come out? It's hard to say. Okay. We're not dealing with a label that has schedules and budgets and all this stuff. So as from the kind of underground scene of like working with artists that don't have a label,

they're not signed, they don't have a budget, you know, because it costs a lot of money to do all this stuff. Get musicians, get in the studio. When you're working with artists that don't have those resources, it definitely makes it a different story than how all the big time artists are doing it. That's fair. Okay. A little more time. There's bumps in the road and there's But that's all part of the thing, you know.

I'm sure. Who's the coolest person that you've ever worked with? I got to work with Deep Purple for two weeks. And they're classic 70s rock band. You know, smoke on the water. They do, you know, 75-year-old British dudes that they had to get it. world record for being the loudest band of all time in the 70s.

Like, and they were super wholesome, super sweet, but then they get into the studio, they just f***ing rip, like. That's so funny. But that was pretty fun, getting to chill with them and work with Bob Ezrin, who is a producer. He produced Pink Floyd's The Wall. He did Kiss Destroyer. So that was cool to, like, work with him and be able to see that. That's awesome.

When did you work with them? Was this an internship or? That was at the job that I haven't had now. Oh, awesome. Okay. Yeah. And so that was, see, maybe February, or was it May? Yeah, similar to a round. So super recent.

Spring, winter sometime. Thank you, Evan, for joining me. That was super informative. And I'm so glad I could hear what it's like as an audio engineer, especially in Nashville, the country music capital of the world. The next song I'm going to play is called Devil I. your backdoor. I'm going to play part of it, and it's a Benjamin Joseph song that Evan produced. So I hope

y'all enjoy a little bit of it. That was Evan Ridgeway. Thank you all so much for joining me on my first episode of Story Behind the Song. This will be a biweekly podcast. And yeah, I'm so happy I could interview Evan and see what it's like being an audio engineer and especially his interest in hip hop and how that became a foundation for what he does now. You can find all of the work that he's produced for Benjamin Joseph on Spotify, Apple Music, all the platforms. I wish I could let y'all listen to what he's working on right now, but it's not complete and I can't even hear what his favorite thing is. Anyway, thank you all so much for joining me, and I can't wait to see what we do next week.