Well, what can I say…. it was an unbelievable 4 days in New Orleans. There was so much good stuff going on it’s hard to know what to highlight. The Mother In-Law Pre-Party was amazing and Quintron was knocking us out. Miss Pussycat rocked! And the Drum Buddy was the perfect introduction to the whole concept of smashing all barriers created by the media imposed layers of description between music forms. In other words, it defied description!

I could write up a lot more but I’m hoping that everybody finds this blog sight and submits their own PotLuckCon highlights.

I look forward to hearing  from everybody!

Well, it’s almost Conference Time! WaveLab is shut down and all our cables are being packed up. Today we pick up our truck drivers, Frank Lambrick and George Figgis, who ae flying down form Denver to Tucson. The Program Guide is uploaded to the printer and now it’s just the badge making and the truck packing. We are really geeked about how amazing this year will be. To all of those who have taken the time to register, get rooms and commit to attend this year, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks in advance.

Here’s a link to this years Program Guide.

Good news for us… we made the room block and filled up all our rooms at the Sheraton. Good news for you…. they added 50 more rooms and have given us a chance to sell them at the $109.00 for the rest of May. If you thought you missed out, you still can get into our host hotel. The conference is really looking great and you don’t want to miss it. Get your rooms here!

Also, check out the Urban Edge panels that The Memphis Chapter and The Producers and Engineers Wing of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is hosting. They have put together an amazing line up of cutting edge Urban Music artists and producers and we are looking for a great turn out of local and regional R and B and Hip Hop musicians and engineers to join us on Saturday for this special event with in our event.

We are still holding our early registration pricing also so sign up today!

See you in New Orleans!!!

PotLuckCon is almost here! The conference is moving full steam ahead towards June 6 to 8. There is so much coming together here as we get closer. The speaker demo room is really happening and it’s going to be pretty amazing. We are going to have monitors from Griffin Audio, Pelonis Sound and Acoustics, ATC, Focal, ADAM, Dyn Audio, Mackie, and maybe more. We are working with Francis Manzella, Wes LaChot, and RPG Diffusor Systems to set up a great listening area to check out all these monitors. There will also be the new API 1608 in there to check out as well. We will have a sign up at the room to set up time for you to check out your own favorite tracks and listen to the 1608 and all the different monitors.

Speaking of consoles, did you know we will have the Rupert Neve Designs 5088 in the main Pot Luck studio this year not to mention a fully loaded RADAR? Bolstered by gear from A Designs Audio, Chandler Limited, Retro Instruments, Shadow Hills Industries, Empirical Labs, Millenia Music and Media Systems, Manley Labs, Universal Audio, True Systems, Groove Tubes, Grace Design, Matrix Audio Systems, LaChapell Audio, Brent Averill Enterprises, Audio Technica, Royer Labs, Mojave Audio, Bock Audio Designs, Inner Tube Audio, Latch Lake Music, Little Labs, Chameleon Labs, Great River Electronics, Hamptone, Tonelux, Apogee, Daking, Drawmer, AnaMod, API, SSL, PreSonus, AEA, Blue Microphones, Josephson Engineering, Shure, Avenson, Shiny Box Audio, Cascade Microphones, Coles Electroacoustics, Crowley and Tripp, Mercenary Audio and more the main Pot Luck Studio is ready to record a New Orleans classic track in real time! Mark Mullins of Bonerama is lining up the musicians and getting the arrangement together. Plans call for drums, bass, guitars, keys, horns, vocals, and then we will mix it and master it on site. It’s going to be amazing!

Not enough for you there? Of course we will have all of the incredible gear from Dangerous Music and Blackbird Studio anchoring the Pot Luck Mastering Studio in the Borgne room where you can check out mastering engineers like Greg Calbi and Dave Kutch doing that voodoo that they do. How about checking out the SSL AWS 900+ in the Nottoway room Solid Sate Logic is sponsoring? We will have a full Apogee Symphony System set up for our Logic workshop which you can check out in the Apogee sponsored Evergreen room. We also will be demonstrating the Merging Technologies Pyramix System in the Bayside B room. Our Sweetwater sponsored Pot Luck Training Studio in Bayside C will feature a Toft ATB Console and be this years place for checking out different microphone placement and recording techniques from Vance Powell, Ross Hogarth, Don Zientara, Jeff Powell and more. Auralex Acoustics will be helping us make that room work for our demo recordings and we have gear from may of the main Pot Luck Studio contributors coming in as well.

Add in all the workshops, main panels, amazing panelists, great sponsors and exhibitors, and you’ve got a recipe for the most intense recording focused weekend ever. It seems like every year we manage to raise the bar on what you can learn and do and this year we are definitely doing that again.

We hope you can make it down and use this weekend to help you make informed choices when it comes to the equipment that is right for your studio and learn a few tricks along the way. I wish there was a way we could tell every recording musician, studio owner, gear geek, and audiophile about this years conference as I’m so excited about the content. Maybe you know someone who is on the fence about going? Help us get them off of that fence and get them down there! We are holding the line on the registration pricing and are still accepting the early rate pricing. We’ve even found cheap flights by waiting till late at night and using the brokers. We want you there so contact me directly if you need any registration help and let’s get you in! Don’t forget, the Sheraton New Orleans special rate of $109.00 a night expires this May 15th so get your rooms and come to New Orleans!!!

Speaking of New Orleans…. last weekend and the weekend before was Jazz Fest. Karen and I went to the second weekend and it was as always a great time. Highlights were bumping into Allen Toussaint while walking from The Fais Do Do tent to the Gentilly Stage on the race track. Stevie Wonders show at the Acura Stage on Friday was so good that it overcame the intermittent rain. As always, the Gospel Tent was exploding with energy. The Raconteurs came through on Sunday with a fine selection of good old guitar driven Rock n Roll. And finally we witnessed the triumphant return of the Neville Brothers who are back to their traditional closing Sunday set after two years since Katrina. A small but important step for a great and important city still struggling to come back from the flooding. We are excited to be a part of that recovery and we hope you will be too!

I’ve posted some pictures to check out from Jazz Fest to help get you in a New Orleans frame of mind.

Just back from mixing the new Calexico record and John Harvey and Mary Podios Top Hat recording in Austin Texas. It was a lot of work but also very rewarding as we got some great mixes. On the second to last day we took a trip down to Wimberly to see Josh Thomas at Rupert Neve Designs and see the 5088 board we will have at this years Pot Luck Studio. But the big news was the phone call I got from Geoff Daking asking if we’d like to have the Blues Magoos as one of the bands for our Saturday Night Sweet Home New Orleans benefit concert at Tipitinas. That makes our line up Bonerama, Calexico, Chris Stamey, Mitch Easter, and the Blues Magoos!

Don’t forget the early registration deadline of April 25th is fast approaching and the our $109.00 per night room rate at the Sheraton expires May 15th so get your reservations in! This conference is going to be off the wall this year!!!!! Reserve your room here.

So, I get an Email from Andy Hong today with a link to an article in the NY Times written by Billy Bragg. Ironically, I just met Billy Bragg last week at SXSW at the ANTI party on Thursday Night. Too bad I had not seen this article then as I’d have drafted him for PotLuckCon right there on the spot. For sure I’ll try now as this article is what the new frontier is all about. Check it out here!

Don’t forget that online registration is up and running and the early registration deadline is now April 25th.

Well, after what felt like an eternity, the wait is over! Online registration is working now. We’ve extended early registration till April 25th.

Check out the online form here!

Just back from SXSW and there were more venues and bands then ever before. Here is a link to a New York Times overview on SXSW that includes some interesting comments in a You Tube video from Mr. Lanois. Here is also a link to another interesting article on musician Paul Cebar and why he loves to play in New Orleans. In other news, we are almost done de-bugging the online registration forms. We also have recently updated the schedule and panelist names are beginning to be posted. Check out our exciting audio treats prize give away this year. Don’t forget our room block cut off is May 15th and it’s fast approaching. Reserve your rooms now and grab your flights soon to help save your money for partying on Bourbon Street!

Hey Everybody! We are very close to getting all our online registration forms completed and working. We are going to extend the early registration deadline till March 31st. Get you rooms and book your travel now and save that way. Our pricing is still at it’s lowest level for another month!

This year, thanks to our title sponsors, we have something really special to tell you about. All registered attendees will be automatically entered into our Gear Giveaway Drawing this year.

First prize is one of only five hundred Universal Audio LA-610 Signature Edition microphone pre-amplifier/compressor/limiter.

Second prize are a pair of the highly acclaimed Audio Technica ATH-M50 headphones. These things sound amazing and we have two of them to bestow on two lucky second place winners.

Finally, our third place prize is three nights of accommodations at the our host hotel, The Sheraton New Orleans, during the conference. That’s right, stay at the host hotel and you may find yourself being told your room nights plus tax have already been picked up. All you will need is to cover your own incidentals.

Online registration is almost ready to go and we have overcome all the new merchant setup obstacles and are accepting mailed in and faxed in registration daily now. Look for our post declaring “online forms working finally” real soon.

In the meantime, book your travel and grab your rooms. Save money on airline tickets by reserving now. We are holding our registration early discount for 30 days from the date of the start of the online form so you won’t miss out on those savings. We are doing everything we can to make this year affordable so don’t wait till it’s too late and miss out on what is shaping up to be the most amazing conference yet!