Music and Recording Features

The Grateful Dead ushered in an era of open-minded experimentation and endless touring that paused occasionally but never really expired until its participants did. It follows that saying goodbye to cofounding Grateful Dead guitarist/vocalist Bob Weir, who passed away at age 78 on January 10, 2026, truly signifies the end of an era.

The jazz world is accustomed to losing its greats too soon. Charlie Parker was gone at 34. John Coltrane at 40. Clifford Brown at 25. Rollins was, wonderfully, not one of them. He lived to 95.

The Penthouse jazz club was on First and Cherry in Seattle. It had a seven-year run from 1962 to 1968 as one of the premier jazz venues on the West Coast. The site is a parking lot now. Yet the Penthouse lives. This is the story of why.

Mike Mettler talks with Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman about The Guess Who's new reunion tour, why they were early proponents of releasing stereo singles, which one of them loves vinyl and which one prefers CD and digital, and how the eternal hit that is "American Woman" was born out of an improvised riff during a live show.

Since founding Ojas in the 1990s and applying the name to his audio components, Devon Turnbull has mined a young audience that the traditional hi-fi industry has struggled to reach. Those who know about him receive his speakers, amplifiers, and turntables as if they were gifts delivered from on high.

Producers and engineers are the human engines that drive and shape the sound of the recordings we know and love—as well as the ones we've yet to hear. In Part 2 of our three-part Studio Confidential interview series, Mike Mettler talks with Sylvia Massy, who has worked with Prince, Jason Isbell, Tool, and many, many others, about what elements make a hit record, what album made her want to become a producer, and why Prince was such a, shall we say, tortured genius.

If you really want to know how your favorite albums came to be, you can't go wrong talking with the men and women who are in the studio day in and day out with the artists—i.e., the producers and engineers. So we're doing exactly that. In Part 1 of our Studio Confidential interview series—there will be three parts this week, with perhaps more to follow—Mike Mettler talks with Chuck Ainlay, who has worked with Peter Frampton, Mark Knopfler (and Dire Straits), George Strait, and many, many others—about his production philosophy and who inspired him to get behind the board in the first place.