Role:
PRODUCER
Shawn berman
Producer/recording engineer Shawn Berman is likely the only person in history to have engineered albums by both Captain and Tennille and Guns N’ Roses. “And don’t forget,” he laughs, “my first engineering credit was on an album by The Mickey Mouse Club.” Berman began his career as an assistant at LA’s famed Rumbo Recorders. “My third day there,” he says, “Mike Clink walks up to me and says, ‘I hear you can play drums. Follow me.’ He led me into one of the studios where Slash, Izzy and Duff were plugged in and working out an idea. I sat down behind the kit and became Guns N’ Roses’ drummer for the afternoon.” The session led to Berman being mentored by Clink, becoming assistant engineer on the GNR album The Spaghetti Incident? and engineering Chinese Democracy . Berman also began working with producers that included Ron Nevison, Richie Zito, David Foster, Brendan O’Brien and Jeff Lynne, engineering hit albums by Ice Cube, Eddie Money, Dan Baird, Ratt, Diane Schuur, Slash’s Snakepit, Ringo Starr, Danzig and I Mother Earth.
In the late ‘90s, Berman partnered with hip-hop entrepreneur Bilal Bashir – who had produced Ice-T’s landmark Power album – to form Bilawn Records. As executive producer, producer and engineer, Berman brought a rock sensibility to an eclectic roster that included albums by Izzy Stradlin, Rhyme Syndicate lyricist Divine Styler, and the underground hip-hop collective Styles Of Beyond featuring the #1 Rap singles ‘Easy Back It Up’ and ‘Spies Like Us’. Berman’s work with Grammy-winning producer Jim Gaines led to Shawn engineering the George Thorogood and The Destroyers’ albums Ride ‘Til I Die, The Hard Stuff, The Dirty Dozen, 2120 South Michigan Ave., and Thorogood’s acclaimed 2017 solo disc Party Of One, as well as producing the band’s ferocious 2018 Record Store Day single ‘Shot Down’/’Ain’t Coming Home Tonight’. “The most consistent compliment I get as a producer and mixer is that my recordings sound live,” Berman says. “My ears have always steered away from processed sounds and gone straight for the energy.”.