Dave Cobb in 2015
"I moved to Nashville because it felt like, 'This is where music is,'" says Dave Cobb from the control room of Low Country Sound, the cozy but sleek and well-kept studio tucked behind his family's home in the Green Hills neighborhood. "This is mecca for music. You feel it. I've never lived in a city in my entire life that you just feel — the talent's here. The talent's here, and the people who are looking for it."
Cobb is a 40-year-old who's been growing out his beard lately and looks more like a rock 'n' roll guitarist than a country music record producer, though he's been both. A native of Savannah, Ga., Cobb had some success with his Brit-poppy Atlanta rock band The Tender Idols in the '90s. But "a really bad record deal" and a preference for the studio over the road led him away from the band and toward Los Angeles, where he met and worked with Shooter Jennings. That led him to country music and to Nashville, where Cobb and his wife — who now have a young daughter — relocated.
Cobb's list of credits as producer has grown exponentially since then, filled with critically acclaimed non-mainstream country acts such as Jamey Johnson, Nikki Lane, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson. Simpson's most recent Cobb-produced record, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, was particularly successful, garnering praise and awards, topping countless year-end lists and earning Simpson appearances on just about every late-night talk show worth mentioning. As Simpson told the Scene when he topped our Country Music Critics' Poll in January, the process of tracking Metamodern was simple by design. There wasn't much time or money, so Simpson and his band tracked live at Low Country Sound in as few takes as possible, putting the emphasis on strong performances. The approach paid off in spades, obviously. But that doesn't mean Cobb plans on leaning on the same tactics.
"It's never the same," says Cobb. "One thing I think that I try to really do is make all the artists I work with completely unique from each other. I don't think there's any ties between my records. I'm not pulling the same tricks twice, you know?"
So what does each Cobb-produced album have in common, if anything? In a word, a voice.
"I mean, I'm more attracted to voices than anything else, and I think that's the difference between a good band and a great band, is the singer. ... As a singer, Sturgill can do it, Jason can certainly do it, and Jamey can do it. There are a few people that, man, you just can't develop that. It's kinda there — they're born with it."
Cobb is currently working on follow-up records for both Simpson and Isbell, as well as his first collaboration with lauded Brooklyn-based jazz-pop outfit Lake Street Dive, whose frontwoman Rachael Price is a Tennessee native.
"She's got 'it,' " says Cobb of Price. "Whatever that 'it' thing is, she's got it."
More From the 2015 People Issue
The Textile Designer: Andra Eggleston / The Transformer: Bill Schleicher / The Chief: Steve Anderson / The Bookseller: Yusef Harris / The Producer: Dave Cobb / The Rookie: Filip Forsberg / The Pedal Steel-Playing Pilot: Joshua Motohashi / The Weathermen: David Drobny & Will Minkoff / The Punk Neuroscientist: Kale Edmiston / The Kitchen Artist: Karla Ruiz / The Metalhead: Kayla Phillips / The Image Master: kogonada / The Bartender: Lee Parrish / The Professor: Lisa Guenther / The Advocate: Marisa Richmond / The Captains: Kellie Hurst & Regina Durkan / The Painter: Michael Shane Neal / The Tunesmith: Shane McAnally
