Grammy nominee Shawn Everett's experiments land him top honors

From drumming in a tiny building behind hisBragg Creek home to living in Los Angeles as a Grammy Award nominee, Shawn Everett's road to success has been nothing if not unconventional.

"Especially when you're playing bad metal music as a teen,you don't think that the world's going tolisten to anything you ever do," joked the drummer turned sound engineer.

Everett is one of five nominees for the 58th annual Grammy Awardsin the category"Best Engineered Album, Non Classical" for his work on Alabama Shakes' albumSound and Color.

Experimental recording techniques

Everett and Alabama Shakes lead singer Brittany Howard experimented with a variety of unusual techniques while recording and engineering the nominated album.

"She was buying these whacky mics off of eBay for $10,and we were recording her lead vocals with those," he said.

Using a speaker as a microphone, they fiddled with their recording technique to capture her main vocals. One time, they evenstuffed Howard'smouth with cotton balls and Anbesolbecause she didn't want to feel her mouth as she sang.

"They're just kind of fun ways of not doing it the standard way," Everett said.

"Especially with someone like her who has this world-renowned voice, people are very hesitant to do anything with it other than record it in a perfect, beautiful manner.

"Sometimes, the most interesting results come out of just cracking the creme brulee open a little bit," he said.

Sound engineering to evoke emotion

For Everett, sound engineering ismore of a creative art form than a technical process.

"It's kind of like if you have an empty room and you're kind of just designing the air, really, with design,and placing differentthings in rooms, and distorting things," he said.

He often asks the artists he works with for a picture or a painting that encompasses theprimary emotions they want to convey through their music.

"Just by looking at a photograph, you can kind of imagine that world and create that sound," he said.

"It's amazing how much you can alter raw, recorded sound by placing different thingsin different speakers, distortions,reverbsand things like that."

The 58th annual Grammy Awards happen in Los Angeles Feb. 15.