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Soul Mining
Grammy-winning record producer and performer, Daniel Lanois takes you on a heartfelt ride of his musical life.
Daniel Lanois’ Soul Mining: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publishing
Born in Quebec, Daniel Lanois got hooked on making music and recording at an early age; by his teens, he and his brother Bob were running a studio in the family basement. The signal event of his career was hooking up with Brian Eno, and a struggling Irish band called U2, whose instinctive methods had a marked impact on Lanois’ production style.
Soul Mining, the memoir of the Grammy-winning record producer and performer, takes a fly-on-the-wall look at many of the author’s most celebrated records—his several projects with U2, Dylan’s Oh Mercy and the Grammy-winning Time Out of Mind, Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball, Willie Nelson’s Teatro and his work on the soundtrack for Billy Bob Thornton’s breakthrough film, Sling Blade, which he composed the score in an abandoned California movie theatre.
Lanois is a gearhead who can rhapsodize about the finer points of a recording console, a rare guitar or a classic motorcycle. Tech and recording buffs will relish the access to some of Lanois’s most closely guarded secrets, from descriptions of gear to more abstract sonic experiments (for instance, wandering around an ancient part of Fez, Morocco, with Brian Eno recording donkeys and pushcarts on two digital recorders tied with string around their necks). And fans of Lanois’s own music will find a new context for his best loved songs.
Related notes: Lanois’ debut album release from his new band Black Dub, on November 2, and the release of Le Noise, his much-buzzed collaboration (as producer) with Neil Young.