The Ears of God
by Gary Powell
March 25th, 2003
“The Ears of God”
If world leaders were chosen by their ability to “hear”, Larry Seyer would be King of the World. Often times, the professionals who truly make the records fronted by celebrities are, in fact, judged just that way, by their ability to “hear”. That means hearing alternate melodies, harmonizations, instrumentation, mix decisions…..vertually every possible musical and electronic opportunity.
Knowing this little inside music industry fact explains how a boy raised in Oran, Missouri has become one of the most sought after recording engineers and session guitar players in Texas. If Texas isn’t big enough for you, check out who has called on Larry regardless. There’s Chet Atkins, Ray Benson, Shawn Colvin, songwriter Helen Darling (“Bring on the Rain”),The Dixie Chicks, Vince Gill, Johnny Gimble, Paul Glasse, Goldie Hawn, Tish Hinohosa, Eric Johnson, Lyle Lovett, Manhattan Transfer, George Martin, Reba McIntire, James Mitchner, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Lee Roy Parnell, Bert Rivera, Phillip Sandifer, Joe Scruggs, Dardin Smith, George Strait, Marty Stuart, Pam Tillis, Steve Warner, Lee Ann Womack, Dwight Yokum, and the United States Air Force Band of the Rockies.
Now I suppose most people in Oran, Missouri used to scratch their heads when it came to the Grammy Awards. Not anymore. Larry has been either the recording engineer, the mixing engineer, or the guitarist on nine Grammy winning albums.
The mystery of Larry’s talent and work ethic can best be understood by his family’s policy of the old upright piano in the living room always holding favor over the television and radio.
It has been said that Larry Seyer has the “Ears of God”. He’s been proving it steadily since 1978 when he showed up in Austin. Maybe we have his parents and the old upright to thank for that. Regardless, Texas music has never been heard the same way again.
X-tra Long Bio
Larry Seyer was born in Augusta, Georgia at a make-shift Army Hospital while his Father “Lefty” was serving in the US Army during the Korean Conflict. Only there for six months, his Father was released from the military and his family of three returned to their native hometown of Oran, Missouri in June of 1952.
Lefty came from a family of thirteen and wanted a large family of his own. The small town of 1200 people was the perfect place to raise his and Ida Mae’s planned family of eight.
They wasted no time in starting their family and soon afterwards, Mary, Marty, Jane, Kevin, Anita, Robert and Bennett were born about one year apart from each other.
Their life was heavily influenced by the strong German Catholic contingency of that area. Although Oran had only 1200 people, it had the largest Catholic Church between St. Louis and Memphis. For a small town, this was a large church…large enough for it’s own Catholic grade school.
Lefty and Ida Mae were good parents to Larry and the rest of the kids. More than anything, they wanted to give each of their kids everything that could want or need. And they did that.
There was not much to do in Oran, however, except play baseball, tag, hide and seek, cops and robbers, cards, and an entire litany of normal things for kids that age.
The only problem was Larry wasn’t normal. He didn’t want to play baseball and other sports…he wanted to play music.
Thanks to his Mom and Dad (Lefty and Ida), there was a piano in the living room that anyone could play anytime any of their kids wanted to. And that piano had power.
The power it had was control…precedence over the TV and Radio. If one of the kids was watching TV or listening to the Radio, and one of the other kids wanted to play the piano, it was “bye bye” to the TV or Radio. The piano player had control over the entertainment the family listened to.
The same was true of the guitar. If one of the kids wanted to play the guitar, they could play ANYTIME they wanted (as long as it wasn’t past bed time).
Being the oldest of eight, this was the kind of garden Larry’s music seed needed to grow. Available instruments, a captive audience, and a willingness to be in control and learn.
Larry would come home every day after school and hop on the piano bench and be king of the living room. He could play whatever he wanted. He could make up songs as he went along, or play melodies that he heard before. It didn’t matter…it was fun…much more fun than going to Catholic grade school.
Many years of this scenario passed until Larry was in High School where he met other music friends and formed a band that played school dances and parties. Eventually they made their way to the nearby city of Cape Girardeau to make a recording.
Jim Rhodes was a short, thin, enterprising young school teacher who owned the recording studio in Cape. He knew more than Larry dreamed possible to know.
He knew which microphones to use on what instruments; what levels to record the drums; how the balance of instruments determined how the lead vocalist sounded…these were all things that Jim knew and Larry was in awe.
Larry just HAD to learn how to do those things. In his mind, knowing how to do those things was as necessary as learning how to tune a guitar or play a piano.
So had asked questions, thousands of them, and eventually spent almost all of his spare time with Jim at the studio learning what Jim knew.
The Vietnam war was raging during that time. Larry’s draft number was fifty-three so he was sure to go.
A friend told him that if he joined the Army, he could have his pick of what job he was to have in the Army. So, he joined for three years and pick the Army band as his job and served one year in Fort Leonard Wood Missouri and two years in Stuttgart Germany.
While in Fort “Lost In The Woods” (as they used to call it), Larry was put in charge of the recording equipment that they Army band had there. This was exactly what he needed…more toys to play and learn with.
After the year at Leonard Wood, Larry traveled to Stuttgart where he played in the Army band whose primary mission was to foster good will towards German/American relations. In other words, they drank a lot of German beer and played a lot of great music.
Back in the states, Larry went back to Cape only to find that Jim no longer owned the recording studio. He had moved onto Springfield and started working with “The Ozark Mountain Daredevils”.
This was a great opportunity for Larry, as this meant that he could now take over the studio there in Cape.
Never mind that he didn’t have any experience, he just wanted to be involved in any capacity with music, that it didn’t’ matter. He would learn whatever it took to do it.
When a friend of his called him to record a stage band, he was ecstatic. In his mind, he went through every connection, every mic, every track for every one beforehand so that when they got there, everything would be ready to go with no waiting.
The stage band was so impressed, that they told all of their friends about this “new engineer” in town that they HAD to use.
Word of mouth spread fast and soon there was plenty of work for him in Cape.
Around June of 1978, Larry had a chance to move to Austin Texas and continue the work he started in Missouri.
He met with Wink Tyler of Austin Recording Studio and began working there producing and engineering several local Austin groups.
Around 1986, Ray Benson from Asleep At The Wheel contacted him to work on an album he was producing. It was called “Asleep At The Wheel 10″. On that album was a song called “String Of Pars”.
The next year that song was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Country Instrumental Performance. The song won the award and Larry was on his way to a successful relationship with Ray and the Wheel.
Soon after, The Wheel was at it again and recording the classic “Sugarfoot Rag” on their album “Western Standard Time”. In addition to engineering that album, Larry was asked to play acoustic guitar on the cut.
Again, as in the previous year, one of their songs was nominated for a Grammy under the category of “Best Country Instrumental Performance”. And again, as in the previous year, they won. Because he both engineered and played on the album, Larry was blessed with an Engineering Grammy AND a Musician Grammy.
Things were looking up, but there were other irons in the fire for Larry. In addition to being a full time recording studio engineer/producer/musician, Larry wrote software for computers.
Because of a prior commitment to a software contract, Larry was unable to participate in the recording of the Wheel’s next album “Keepin Me Up Nights”
As fate would have it, The Wheel did not win a Grammy that year. But thankfully, by the time it came time for the Wheel’s next project to be recorded, Larry was finished with the software contract he had been working on.
The project was a movie score for a movie starring Dolly Pardon, Gary Bussey, Willie Nelson, and Ray Benson.
Working closely with Ray Benson from Asleep At The Wheel and Dolly Pardon, who produced the show, Larry gained considerable experience in the film scoring arena.
After that movie was completed, several other people approached Larry to do their movie scores for them. Some of them wanted him to “mix” their movie. In movie terms, this is called “re-recording”.
Al Reinert was one of the first working on a small sixteen millimeter film called “For All Mankind”. At the time that Larry worked on this film, it was just a thirty minute documentary with actual footage from NASA covering our first trip to the moon.
Brian Eno had already done the score for “For All Mankind”, so there was no opportunity for Larry to work on the score. However, much to be learned from Al in the way of mixing films during that project.
Several months later, Sam Um contracted Larry to do the entire score for a picture he was working on called “The Way”. Basically, this picture was to be a Korean version of “The Karate Kid”.
Having the opportunity to score an entire picture by himself was a great way to instill confidence in a budding composer. And this confidence eventually led to his next scoring picture “El Puente”.
No sooner had he completed “El Puente”, than Ray Benson from the Wheel called and discussed an idea he had for a new album. It was to be a tribute album for the Father of Western Swing, Bob Wills.
More bio to come later…
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add George Martin stuff here
add Larry Gatlin stuff here
add Dixie Chicks stuff here
add Scoring stuff here
add NARAS stuff here
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