Robin Adler & Dave Blackburn: Bio
Joni project bio
ROBIN ADLER & DAVE BLACKBURN EXPLORE THE MUSIC OF JONI MITCHELL
San Diego vocalist Robin Adler and her husband, multi-instrumentalist, music producer and guitar/drum teacher Dave Blackburn, have been lifelong fans of Joni Mitchell and, in early 2006, embarked on the ambitious project of learning her music in all its complexities and through all its epochs, hoping to honor such a major artist with a tribute show deep in its own right. Although they often perform as a guitar and vocal duo they have assembled a group of extraordinary musicians to be the concert band and have evolved fresh arrangements of well-known Mitchell standards such as “Woodstock” and “Both Sides Now” and explored lesser-known songs from her later eras. The result has been a hugely successful series of sold out concerts prompting some concertgoers to claim in the website guestbook: “Robin's vocals were dead on. I thought Joni was actually in the room!” and “Was it worth the 2,281 miles I traveled to hear it? Oh hell yeah!”
The concert band comprises Robin on all lead vocals, Dave Blackburn on guitars, Barnaby Finch on keyboards (touring veteran of Tom Scott, Lee Ritenour and George Benson’s bands), top San Diego drummer Duncan Moore, bass wunderkind Evan Stumpges and background singers Peggy Watson and Brittney Doehring.
DAVE BLACKBURN - Producer, Engineer, Guitarist, Drummer
Guitarist, drummer, producer, recording engineer, and songwriter Dave Blackburn, has performed and recorded with his wife, vocalist Robin Adler since 1990. They share a love of soul, jazz and funk music that reveals itself in all their work. Their latest project together is “The Songs of Joni Mitchell”, an ambitious show featuring a chronological celebration of Joni’s music.
Dave has produced and engineered albums at his studio Beat 'n Track Recording by Joe Rathburn, Peggy Watson, Gary Shiebler and numerous others since 1989, and has written music featured regularly on TV shows and documentaries.
Dave has been a full-time professional musician since arriving in California from the U.K in 1981. Formally trained in music, both in Great Britain and at JazzSchool in San Diego, he has won several first-place awards in area song contests which led to three years of teaching songwriting and music theory at MiraCosta College and to the writing of his teaching text "Songwriting Skills." He also holds B.A and M.A degrees in English from Warwick University (U.K) and UCSD (USA) repectively.
Dave teaches guitar and drums in addition to his performing and recording work.
BEAT 'N TRACK RECORDING & MASTERING SERVICES - studio
Beat ‘n Track Recording and Mastering has been in business since 1989 and has been the birthplace of dozens of fine CDs from the San Diego, CA area. Originally an analog 8-track, then going digital in the early 90’s, and currently a high definition Logic Pro 8/Mac-based hard disk studio, Beat ‘n Track offers extremely high end sound in the most breathtaking country surroundings.
The signal path is as pure and high-end as can be found; top quality mics such as the Peluso 2247-LE large diaphram tube, the A-T 4060 tube, Royer R-121s, Neumann KM184s, the Shure SM7-A, EV RE20, and many more are fed through a short all-silver Zaolla snake to boutique preamps: the Focusrite ISA-428 (with Neve designed circuits and Lundahl transformers) and the Universal Audio LA-610, an all tube unit with T4 optical compressor as used in the legendary Teletronix LA2A. Then the signal passes through the incredibly high end Focusrite 192kHz D/A converters and via a RME Fireface 800 into the Macintosh running Logic Pro 8 for tracking and mixing and Peak Pro 5 for editing and mastering. The Mac is loaded with the finest plugins including the entire Universal Audio UAD-1 suite of vintage emulations (Pultec, Fairchild, 1176, LA2A, Dimension D, Plate 140, to name a few) plus the Waves 5 linear phase mastering bundle and PSP mastering processors. This is all monitored through Genelec monitors, finally reaching the ears of a highly experienced critical listener with a deep understanding of the recording process and music genres from jazz to rock to soundtrack work.
Please see some photos of the studio in the Photo Gallery and soundclips on the Music page (unfortunately reduced to mp3 quality for fast download) of work done at Beat ‘n Track by Dave Blackburn.