Receiving his first nominations two decades ago, four-time GRAMMY winner Neal H. Pogue disagrees with the idea that music is a young person's game. In fact, he thinks the misconception is holding the music world back.
"I remember being 4, 5 years old in the latter '60s listening to music…my brain is like an encyclopedia," Pogue says, in this episode of Behind The Board. "If [people] got rid of that age barrier — this music business, you think it's great now, it would be 10 times better."
Watch the LA-based engineer/mixer dive into his experiences and explain how one seemingly unimportant aspect of his past prepared him for the ultimate heights of music.
"The biggest lesson was working at a department store, working in customer service. When you're dealing with different people, I think that prepared me for working with different artists, different walks of life and different egos," Pogue details. "To me, I'm still in customer service — getting the GRAMMY is like being employee of the month."
Mixing and engineering Tyler the Creator's IGOR, Kaytranda's Bubba and Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below earned Pogue four "employee of the month" awards so far. With Doja Cat's Planet Her (Deluxe) up for Album Of The Year and The Marías' Cinema up for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical at the 64th GRAMMY Awards, the veteran engineer has a chance to add two more honors to his collection.
