Andrew Sa, Missy Thangs, and H.C. McEntire: It Takes Trust

Andrew Sa, in and of himself, is an interesting artist, his talents shaped by his childhood performances at his mother’s karaoke joint then honed through relationships forged in the Chicago music scene as a young adult, all culminating in his debut full-length album American Rough due out June 26th on Bloodshot Records. Add to this that said album incorporates the influences of Mount Moriah alum and revered singer-songwriter H.C. McEntire as well as that of Missy Thangs, former house engineer of Fidelitorium Recordings (Mitch Easter’s place in Kernersville, North Carolina) with the trio’s collective love of Nina Simone, Tracy Chapman, and Patsy Cline coloring the overall tone, and you get something extra special. There’s a crooner sensibility to it, a modern “Countrypolitan” kind of swagger captured using a blend of Fidelitorium’s vintage mics, and also an unabashed queerness communicated throughout. This is an album brought to life in an environment more concerned with care than with power and hierarchies, and while we all agree that it shouldn’t be news for women co-producers and an openly gay man to have helmed such a project, there is an element of pride and authenticity in their having done so as well. The four of us spoke, and joked around, on a virtual call together, and here is the resulting conversation, edited for clarity and concision.

How did the three of you find each other?

HM: Well, I received an email from this guy, Andrew Sa in Chicago (and Sully, his manager/partner in crime in the cosmic country scene) inquiring if I did work with other artists outside of my own, and if I would be interested in producing for him. I had heard of Andrew before that, because we had been featured in an article about cosmic Americana music, and I remember thinking, “Wow, what a handsome face! He can really wear a cowboy hat. And wow, he can really sing. What's going on there?” I was intrigued, but it took me a couple months to be open to that request, because no one had ever asked me that before.

And had you self-produced at that point?

HM: Yeah, I've self-produced or co-produced all of my solo records as H.C. McEntire, and in my bands before: Mount Moriah, a couple other bands, punk music, pop music—I’ve kind of been all over. I've always wanted to be in the driver's seat, or at least the passenger seat when making an album, but it had not been something I'd done with a complete stranger.

What made you want to reach out, Andrew?

AS: The article that H.C. mentioned—it was a bizarre article, during the pandemic, about where queer country artists meet regarding cosmic Americana music and astrology. I remembered seeing her photo and her name, and my mom was obsessed with Reba McEntire growing up, so I thought, “Oh, my God, I wonder if she's related to Reba!” Then, once shows started happening again during the pandemic, my manager Sully and I went to go see her play at Schuba’s Tavern with her collaborator and guitarist friend, Luke Norton. I was enthralled by their performance, and I was too shy to even talk to them. Actually, it was Sully who went up to the merch table. We knew right away, from her voice and the record that Missy and H.C. produced together (Every Acre, 2023) that this collaboration was going to be magical. H.C.'s poetry is remarkable. You don't get to hear that kind of vulnerability. And her voice is so beautiful, authentic, and emotional.

Missy and H.C., you had co-produced before. Is that how you were brought into the fold, Missy?

MT: Yeah, that's right. H.C. and I have known each other through the scene for years. A handful of years ago, she asked me to work with her on Eno Axis (2020), and it was such a special experience. We realized we had complementary styles. We laughed a lot, we understood each other and what we wanted to capture. It came together beautifully. So we did that again with Every Acre during the pandemic.

HM: Yeah, we finished mixing it the second week of March, 2020.

MT: It was insane. It turned everything on its side, but our bond is strong. We knew we had something. Andrew reached out to H.C., H.C. hit me up and said, “Look, I've got this special collaboration going on. Will you be my co-producer?” and I said, “Yes, without a doubt.”

AS: It was very important to me to work with a queer person as a lead producer on this project. And it was very important to me, when we found H.C., that she was a woman—for many reasons. That was part of my search: to find someone who was queer and, hopefully, female.

Tell me more about that.

AS: I have limited experience in the studio previous to this, and while I love all the folks that I work with in Chicago, I had only predominantly worked with straight men steering the ship, and I wanted something different. I remembered reading about Martha Wainwright working with a female producer on one of her albums called Come Home to Mama. And I just thought, “Why is this news? We need to have more of this.”

I love that: “Why is this news?” Exactly. Missy, I’m curious to hear about how you approach recording and the special sauce that you try to bring to the process.

MT: The first thing I want to do is get to know an artist—their sound, where they're coming from. You do research, you try to find out what they like, their references, but in the pandemic, I had just had my daughter, and we were flying by the seat of our pants. H.C. sent me the material, the updates. We were getting introduced, and I was getting to know what Andrew was all about. We were going to Fidelitorium, Mitch Easter’s studio, where I was house engineer for a while. In 2024, coming out of the pandemic, I had hardly been in the studio. I was ready to go—I had picked out my mics, I had references—but I was also anxious, because I had never gone in without meeting the person that I would be working with before. Usually we'll have meetings. It was a grand experiment, in a lot of ways. 

My special take on things is that I have a malleable style. I like to pay attention to what everybody's doing. I'm not afraid to change up the setup last minute to serve the song. This was such a unique experience, because we were all writing together for the first time. We were trying to figure out the narrative, the atmosphere, what room we were going to be in. In a situation like this, I listen and try to pay attention to what people want—to adjectives, the way they're describing things. With Andrew not having been in a studio environment like this as much, I was trying to figure out what adjectives he was bringing to the table, to interpret him through deep listening, and to set up the environment for everybody to get their best possible performances.

Do you have anything to add to that, H.C.?

HM: There were a lot of things that were unique about this experience. We were operating from this place of deep trust and openness and encouraging each other to be brave. I wanted my first client to feel like his vision resonated.

I've worked with so many male engineers, and I remember the first time I started working with Missy, it was a game changer—not just because she's a woman, but because of the kind of person she is. There's this trope with engineers and sound people that they’re awkward communicators, maybe a little grumpy, maybe a little jaded. Not having that type of personality around allows for so much creative freedom to find your voice.

AS: All three of us realized that we were going to get something special if we handled each other with care. We understood each other's needs; we almost anticipated them, sometimes—Missy and H.C., especially. That even goes into, “Do you need a cup of coffee?” Things like that. We really respected each other and trusted each other. As H.C. said, trust was huge because we were all being so brave. We were relative strangers. And I do want to say, since you asked about setting the vibe, Missy and H.C. are both really good at that. Missy would put on some music early in the day, like the beginning of the session day, and we'd have a bunch of coffee. My God, we drank so much coffee throughout that whole thing. H.C. brought a couple of physical items in, to ground us—incense burning. H.C. and I both admire Nina Simone, and H.C. had found a can under Nina Simone's childhood house [that she brought into the studio]. Having that in the room—things like that, energetically—facilitated something special.

Wow. Little talismans.

HM: I wanted to make Andrew feel comfortable. He was walking into this situation where he had to be so courageous. He hadn't met the group that we had put together, and Missy and I had a lot of experience with them. Two of them I've played with for many years. I remember picking Andrew up from the airport, and that was a powerful moment for me. It was like, “Okay, this is real. Here he is. We're gonna go make something.” Maybe we were summoning a little Miss Simone.

MT: That was a bonding point between H.C. and me, too. She was heading up Girls Rock at the time [NC, now Youth Rock NC], and had me come out to be a counselor and we were going around the circle with all the campers talking about our favorite artists, and she said, “Nina Simone.” I said, “Nina Simone,” and I was like, “Oh! That’s my person!”

HM: That's how Missy and I started connecting more deeply.

I want to talk about the music that you were playing as you were setting up the session. Was that in a vibe-setting sort of way, or in a reference track/get-on-the-same-page sort of way, or both? And what were you listening to?

MT: Oh, both. I like to start a studio session with Alice Coltrane and some coffee, and meet up with everybody to talk about what we're going to do. We navigate into the control room, plug the iPhone into the speakers, play through and talk through. I can say Tracy Chapman came up quite a bit in that first session.

HM: That's one of the things that I love about you, Missy. We both do a lot of research. I feel like we have a sweet balance of interests within production, but we both like to research and prepare as best we can, and I have noted those songs that you would queue up, whether it's a playlist that we put together internally or maybe some references that we heard Andrew talk about, then splintering off in different directions from that point.

MT: It’s a launching point to get all those juices going. I think that's pretty common. You talk about what you like about the song that’s playing and then you go into the room and play something totally different [laughter].

It sounds like you're listening more as fans and lovers of music, lovers of what the process could look like and can achieve when it's done well.

HM: Something that I find off-putting about recording or the music industry, or even music scenes, is that there's a pretension that can come with the territory, unless you break free of that and put yourself on the same level as everyone and from the get-go. That's the tone that we like to start the session with.

You achieved an amazing, modernized “Countrypolitan” color on this record—that throwback to the early Patsy Cline-era stuff. What did you use to do that?

MT: Foremost in my mind is how to make Andrew shine, and then to build the sound around him. With a lot of those references, Fidelitorium’s the perfect place to go. The console we use is a [28-channel] Amek Angela, which gives you nice open sounds and sweeping EQs. It's more of an ‘80s console, but we have a little bit of gear from all the decades.

HM: We had a [Sennheiser 441] for initial vocal tracking.

MT: And he sang in the control room with us. That was a lot of fun. You get a great sound with that, because you get a little bit of the speakers. That mic’s got pretty good isolation, but if you have the speakers down low in the background, it adds a lot of character to the vocal. We didn't go with many of those vocal tracks, but it was a great way to get started. We tracked through the Amek into Pro Tools. I tried not to over-mic, tried to focus on placement, to be resourceful and not be too precious about anything. For the drums, I used a D25 AKG tight up on the bass drum, Shure 545 on snare top and Altec 175b under the snare pointing toward the bass drum. I placed a pair of Soyuz 013 tube condensers on the hat and floor tom, and opted for an STC 4038 mono overhead for a mellowy overhead sound. I love the Gefells (M295) on the guitars. I thought the Lomo 19A19 brought a nice contrasting sound to overdubbed guitars. I tried to create both up-close and focused room sounds with as many overdubs as possible, dragging around Neumann KM84s or Gefell M295s. We were doing a lot of over-dubbing in a short period of time, so I wanted to record the space to make it feel like everybody was playing in the same room.

Andrew, did you have a new favorite thing that stuck out to you as they were recording with you?

AS: That mic, the Sennheiser [441], that Missy pulled out. While we didn't use those scratch vocals, I realized that something I love to do in the studio is to sing every time, for every take. I wanted each take to have a life to it. We did end up borrowing one of those Sennheisers when Dorian Gehring and I were doing the overdubs for the lead vocals [at Fox Hall Studio in Chicago]. They inspired the color. The voice felt richer coming through that mic than other mics that I had used.

MT: Tubes and transistors make magic sounds. The combination of mics that I like to use at Fidelatorium all add up to something that has a special character. But the most important part of it is the player: they're making the gear come alive. Andrew's voice sounds amazing on everything, but that mic combination had a velvety richness to it, and the bleed, whatever we were able to get coming back in, added a mood on top of the other performances. The players were fantastic. They're the bedrock of the album, and their performances are the magic. But in Fidelitorium’s stockpiles, there are a lot of outsider mics that are 40 to 60 years old, a few crucial Gefell mics. You can pick anything out of the library, and go. I wouldn't say I had a secret weapon, as much as it was playing to the moment and finding a mic to get the best possible sound.

 I love that you're talking about the bleed as an effect and not a flaw. You hear so much about how to avoid that in the studio.

HM: Baffles on baffles, yeah.

MT: On “Love Songs” Luke and Casey played the upright and the grand piano together, but we needed a level of isolation. There might be some editing for safety, but finding just the right amount of bleed can do so much. It gives you that depth. When I'm thinking about a record, I like, I like to feel like I'm going inside of it, and, in a way, maybe the bleed helps that.

Yeah. That stands out to me as unique. The training that I’ve received on this kind of thing is for everything to be more isolated

MT: Oh, there's hooting and hollering in the background! That's when you know the take is right, because you hear those sweet affirmations!.

AS: I don't think it made it onto the record, but at the very end of “Lavender Cowboy,” you could hear the click from the studio mic, and then clapping from the control room. There's a Shania Twain song where, at the very end, the guy goes, “There's your song, Hoss!” or something like that. That's what I thought of.

That's amazing. 

HM: Missy, you did sneak in a little gospel shout of mine from the control room.

MT: Oh yeah. It’s there. You’ve gotta put all that real stuff in there somehow.

AS: It speaks to what you were saying about building a world to enter, Missy.

Is there anything that you really wanted to talk about that you haven't had a chance to get to in our conversation?

MT: In the process of making this record over a few years, from the beginning of the project to the end, I probably had close to 100 different files. One thing that I learned along the way was the importance of organization. The organizational aspect of what we did was pretty profound. H.C. and I were managing spreadsheets, docs on visioning, travel schedules, and managing the different roster of musicians and sessions, rough mixes, final mixes, instrumentals, everything. Staying organized is such an important aspect of making something like this happen.

Yeah, that's a great point. I feel like that doesn't get talked about enough.
AS: As the client, I'll say that was such a blessing to know that you had everything so organized. Both of you had so much organization. That was a blessing.

HM: Virgo. Virgo energy. [Laughter] That's when I knew Missy and I had a lasting partnership. People can get really caught up in gear, and it is cool and nerdy—let's go!—but also, I have this jar of buttons, my grandma's button jar, that's on so many demos for this record. Something that I like to bring to the table is to be resourceful. I come from a punk background; I'm self taught. You might not have some fancy pants mic, but what you have is the performance. A lot of times, it doesn't matter how something is captured. When someone's taking you to church, it doesn't matter what mic is on it.

AS: I just wanted to say that I thought H.C. was the coolest person I'd ever met, and finding out that she was so patient made this experience so worthwhile. I started my music career many years ago here in Chicago, and it has taken a long time for a debut album to come together. I didn't understand how much patience I required from a collaborator, but she was always so willing to give it. Along with that, our patience and bravery, our willingness to play and try things that were outside of our comfort zone—every single one of us did that—brought the album to another level.

HM: Andrew, you went down the rabbit holes with me. It's not lost on me how big of a deal it is for an artist to be vulnerable. It takes a certain type of collaborator. It takes trust. It takes three people wanting to serve the song. We were able to get some of the richness and depth that we got, because, Andrew, you were open to it. I know I personally learned a lot about the cruising scene. [Laughter]

AS: My pleasure.

HM: I kind of fell in with it as a lyric writer. Thank you, Andrew, for letting me explore. Do we want to give a shout-out to Eagle Eagle? 

MT: Absolutely.

HM: Missy and I are soft launching this production partnership, and we're calling it Eagle Eagle.

That's incredible.

MT: We're taking it to the streets. End to end services: Eagle Eagle.

AS: I did want to say earlier, it's a fine line, right? I’ve worked with these two incredible producers who are women, and I want to talk about how they are women. Earlier today, I said, “Why is that news,” but it's still news, so let's make it news. That was so important to me, ultimately, because of the amount of listening. I feel like we were all so willing to listen to each other. No one was trying to be the bigger, more assertive voice ever. As a gay man, I don't have as much in common talking to a straight man.

They're conditioned to fit into masculinity and assimilate. And in existing as a gay man, you've had to work your whole life to disrupt that.

AS: Or stay quiet and allow them to land.

Yeah, for that dynamic to function, you have to uphold their masculinity.

AS: And I can't imagine that that is only true for gay men in the studio. I'm sure that happens to women all the time.

MT: On that note, I felt like all the straight men that we collaborated with on this record didn't really fit into that. Did you feel that way, Andrew?

AS: Yeah. Halfway through that first session, I said to H.C., “These guys are so great.”

That was a really sweet moment, because you said the thing about straight men having made you feel a certain way in recording spaces, and Missy immediately went to check on you to make sure that the straight men that she'd invited into the space didn't make you feel that way.

AS: This is why we worked so well together. 

MT: I love you guys.

HM: I just remembered something very important: Sarah Register mastered this record.

MT: She is so amazing to work with. We actually finished the record on a full moon, which felt significant. She was so caring and knew what to do with our work. She had the touch, the intuition. It was really special.

HM: Another queer woman who fell in love with Andrew's voice and songwriting.

MT: What a cool crew. Andrew, great job.

AS: Hey, I showed up.

Missy Thangs, in a separate email, sent these important notes and credits concerning American Rough’s recording process, to ensure that all studios’ and players’ contributions to this album were honored as they should be:

The first two tracking sessions at Fidelitorium in North Carolina form the bedrock of the album. The first was in December 2022 and the second June 2023, each session only three days !!! Luke Norton and Casey Toll contributed guitar and bass across both sessions, with TJ Maiani on drums for the first. Andrew later returned with Spencer Tweedy for the follow-up session. We captured beautiful vocals here in NC (Sennheiser 441 into a GATES limiter to the Amek), but as the songs continued to take shape, Andrew went on to record with Dorian Gehring at Fox Hall Studio in his hometown of Chicago, where he tracked  Andrew's vocal takes using an 441 paired with a Peluso U47 clone. I believe I ended up using the 441 exclusively for the songs. Andrew's "Love Songs" vocal was tracked again toward the album finish at Betty's in Chapel Hill, NC. I believe we used a Røde NTK into an AML 1073-500 with minimal compression.

Later, H.C. and I joined Andrew in Chicago to produce the bulk of the overdubs at Fox Hall. This includes all of Andrew’s vocals, along with violins by Macie Stewart, horns by Nick Broste, Hunter Diamond, and Ivan Pyzow, and additional foundational work on “Gorgeous Things” and “Fightin’ to Be Fightin’,” with Spencer Tweedy on drums and Sully Davis on bass. Both these songs began at Fidelitorium and were later re-envisioned during these Fox Hall sessions.

Additional contributions came in from home studios: Allyn Love on pedal steel, H.C. and Rosali's harmony tracks, Luke Norton on guitar leads and primary guitar tracks on “Gorgeous Things” recorded by Alli Rogers.

*Meredith Hobbs Coons is a singer-songwriter (Lamb’s Ear) and freelance journalist (The A.V. Club, Aquarium Drunkard, The Tonearm, Talkhouse). She co-hosts and edits the podcast Wilco Will Love You. meredithhobbscoons.com