Dino Maddalone on Being a Producer and His Work on The Ask Dino Show

Dino Maddalone is the creative force behind The Ask Dino Show, a variety show based on examining the careers of some of the music industry’s most successful talent, with an actor or two thrown in for good measure. I feel a kinship with the man for his mission is the same as mine: to help out artists struggling to make their way in the music or entertainment industry. I caught up with Dino in his studio and here’s what he had to say.

THR: What exactly is the Ask Dino Show?

DM: A music based talk, entertainment and mentoring show. I’ve been in the business for 40 years, I started very young, I started making a living when I was sixteen, back in the late 70'S

THR: it was a very different scene back then wasn’t it?

DM”: Very different, you had to be really good, a d in the 70’s and 80’s we got paid. So the two differences were that you had to play really good to get a job, and you got paid. I’m not saying that the kids today can’t play because they can but, back in those days, you had to really be able to play or you didn’t work, if you weren’t good enough, you didn’t work, now everybody works, or they play at it and everyone can do it. It’s about quantity now instead of quality. So now it’s ” Bring em all down, we don’t care!”

THR: So you’re saying that because there are so many musicians willing to play for free that the clubs can skirt on paying for real talent?

DM” Well it’s all morphed. It went from being good and getting paid, to nit getting paid to paying to play. Now if I’m a club owner, and bands are paying me to play, and I’m getting 5 or 6 or 8 of em a night, I don’t really give a damn. I’m not saying me personally, I mean metaphorically, they don’t give a damn. The 5 bands bring all their friends, and pay up front. The bands pay for their tickets up front, the clubs already won, now they get all the guests pay for drinks they’re overcharged for, and they know that one bands can’t fill the venue with one band, so they book five bands, which is crap for the bands and the people trying to make a career out of this. So they get the money and sell the drinks to the people, and the quality goes down and the venues really don’t care. Some do, most of them don’t,

THR: How did drumming turn into producing and eventually your own T.V. Show?

DM: When I was playing drums, I was pretty much the band leader and I was arranging everything, so whenever we were doing cover gigs and even the originals, I was always the arranger.  

THR: Like a good drummer (laughs)

DM (laughing) People say that drummers can’t arrange well, a lot of the best producers are drummers

THR: I’ve found that the drummer is always the driving force of the band, well a good drummer; the band always needs to be following the drummer.

DM: I’ve always said, “So goes the drummer so goes the band”. If you have a good drummer, it’s pretty hard to screw the song up, if you have a crappy drummer, well, no matter how good anyone else is, if the drummers crap, the song will never be good. I’m not just saying this because I’m a drummer, as a producer to, I mean I produce a lot of bands and when the drummers not good the bands not good. But I’ve always been a drummer first; I’ve played drums on a lot of the records because I want them to sound good

THR: Right, there’s a famous letter by Thelonious Monk where he gives advice to his band and one of his first notes is make the drums sound good! …So when did you become a producer?

 DM: Well  I built my first studio 1986, and I was a producer before I was an engineer because drummers aren’t used to the technical side, there used to the playing and arranging and stuff like that, so I built my first studio, then I learned how to be an engineer from my first mentor back in 86,87. And then I incorporated all that into where I am now, where I do everything. I mean I teach, I’ve taught engineering for the AMA, I’ve teach record production for music conservatories and I give speeches at colleges and all that stuff now, but now it’s all morphed. The engineering for me is a tool to get out all the stuff that’s in my head, as opposed to these computer guys who think that the tool makes the sound. It’s the brain and the heart and the knowledge that creates the sound, you have to hear it and feel it, and the technology is just to get out what you hear in your head and your mind. It’s not the opposite. That’s why a lot of these young engineers can only go so far and they can never get any farther.

THR: Yea, I was debating a friend about that, specifically referring to Skrillex. People say “Oh, he just pushes a button and it does all of that” No, he’s not just pushing buttons; there is a brain behind that who writes and creates all of that.

DM: Exactly.

THR: How did you transition into becoming a TV show host?

DM: I was asked, after winning record producer of the year in2008 by I am entertainment, they keep asking me to come on the show. And the show was great and I loved it but after four or five times, I can’t keep talking about myself. I need to talk about something else, so I said, “why don’t you ask me questions about the music business in general?” that way we could have people write in questions, and it was a segment, the Ask Dino segment and the person interviewing, didn’t know anything about music, so I just did it myself, so when that wasn’t working, I just made my own show out of it. And it’s morphed over the last few years… I mean you’ve seen the early episodes! Now it’s a variety show, its entertainment, I’m getting bigger guests.

THR: I can tell you have a lot of fun with it. The fact that you are knowledgeable with the music industry provides fertile ground and I think more poignant questions.

DM: Well, that fact that I have a lot of knowledge and that my guests are icons, and we have new artists on too, but a lot of them are icons so they have a lot go knowledge, I not only ask them what did you do, but I ask them how did you do it and that’s the difference between my show and other talk shows. Other talk shows just ask “tell us about this and that”. Again, it’s not just what you did, but how did you do it? And I ask "how did you produce this record? “How did you record that iconic song” And that’s the difference with my show

THR: I guess that answers my next question; what is it that brings them on your show, why do they enjoy coming here?

DM: You have to understand that anybody that has been around for a long time, and has done a lot gets to a point where they love to teach younger people and they love talking about how they did stuff. When you’re in your 20s and 30s, it’s all about you, but when you get in your 40s and 50s, you really enjoy teaching young kids, I do. These guys, who have done this, like Chuck Negron of (Three Dog Night) or Robert Flieschman (Journey), or Dick Dodd (The Standells) these guys love talking about how they did that and they love that people are learning from them. It’s a good feeling.

THR: What does it take to put one show together? How long does it take to write the scripts and set it all up?

DM: I write the whole show, all the segments are my ideas, they’re all my ideas, and I get the guests. The two people who are very important is the producer at Time Warner David McNeil, he helped me and taught me how to produce a TV show, which is very different from producing a record. Then I’ve got my editor and director Gordon Michael and I say I want that and that and that and he gets it done. I get the guests, I study the guests and I write their questions as if you or someone who’s just sitting there wondering would like to know, and then I ask those questions. So I shoot the show, I do my funny skits and then I edit it, then I shoot the guests and put it all together so you can see how it all ties together, It’s a lot of work believe me. It’s mind boggling.

THR: What was the inspiration behind the Pappa~Razzi Family?

DM: Here’s what happened. We had Hector Bustamante on the show, he’s a great actor, the guys done Training Day, Hostage, 24,The Shield, LA Law and he’s got his own show now called Caribe Road  So we met because when I won ‘Record Producer of the Year’ the first time in 2008, he won an award for best actor for a film called Little Girl Lost. So we had him on the show and after the show was over, my director took him out and had him run off after announcing the show so I wanted to create something funny around this. So I wanted paparazzi to come out of the bushes after he ran away but then I thought that since I’m Italian and everybody thinks were part of the mafia, so let’s have The Pappa~Razzi Family and we’ll be Mafia Shooters. If we don’t shoot you with a camera, well shoot you with a shotgun if you don’t cooperate. 

So I'm Don Dino Pappa~ Razzi, My staff are my shooters, my brother’s the enforcer and we have Peggy Jo, who thinks everybody’s Johnny Depp. My Dad, who’s the Boss, the Capo De Tu De Capo. We did this thing on Brad Pitt with the commercial and I’m like (Heavy Italian accent), ” Brad, what’s this? You like a dis and like dat, and with the Fight Club and now the Channel No 5? Man up!” I went on this whole thing about Brad Pitt and people are all over this so every guest we have, were gonna do a thing with the Pappa~ Razzi Family. People are loving the Pappa ~Razzi’s. 

THR: How long does it take to put the show together?

DM: Gordon Michal gets all the credit. To edit the show, were talking four 19 hour days. Three days of writing, And the Pappa~Razzi, another 2 days, it takes a long time. If were gonna do a weekly show like we wanna do, were talking 15 hour days.

THR: So then are you going to need staff writers and more editors and crew?

DM well I don’t know yet, were talking with a few cable networks, But I gotta have creative control but and I’ve learned that you have to stick to your own vision, because everyone has their own agenda for you to change to what they want. Now, if someone’s paying you a lot of money and they want a little more X and Y, then you gotta do a little more X and Y. that’s part of the job but I gotta keep control over what I do because as long as the ship is moving forward…right now, I know what I want I do everything. We're self-contained.

THR: As a Record producer, what is it you enjoy most about doing it?

DM: HAHA! That’s always hard to answer because every aspect of it I enjoy, but I enjoy coming up with the parts, I enjoy arranging the parts on the records. On the album I won” Record Producer of the Year’. It was a hard rock album called Resurrection by Joshua Pariah. Mark Boals was singing on it, Josh on guitar, I was on drums Scott Warren on Keyboard and Brian Fleming on bass, all ace hard rock monsters.

THR: What do you think is the most important element involved in being a producer?

DM: You have to have an ear, and you have to have the knowledge…see a lot of producers today…and this is my pet peeve…a lot of these guys that make beats call themselves producers, they’re not producers , they’re beat makers. If they produce a vocal in the studio, they aren’t a producer. A producer, a real producer, they do every aspect of it. They arrange, the get the musicians to play great and work with each note of every part of every players they work with, being there all the time, you have to understand emotions and the emotions that drive people to keep it[ the song] on the station. There is a method to do that. People think its luck and it’s not. There are things that you do to make people interested in the song. And you have to know this stuff. SO the most important part of being a producer is having an ear and how to move people emotionally.

THR: What do you do to create a song that has an emotional impact?

DM:  First off, you have to have a beginning, middle and an end, and every note in between has to tie it together. There is not one note that doesn’t mean anything: Guitar notes, bass notes, keyboard notes, drums, everything’s got to mean something in the puzzle. It has to fit together. You have to start it of interesting, you have to have a good hook; you want them to sing along. It’s a three minute movie OK? And you have to keep people interested the whole time. You have to know what to keep and what to throw away. You have to know what’s too much and what’s too little. 

How do you know this? Experience.  Somebody 15 years old can’t be a producer. Somebody 20 years old may have ideas, but someone has to be there with them. That’s why most of your producers are older guy and women because they’ve been around the block, it’s not just about laying down music, you have to have a concept of the whole piece and people don’t realize that it takes 40 hours for a three minute song but then they come to the studio and say” I never realized it was so much work”. And that’s what it’s all about. It’s the same with TV. That’s why Scorsese and Spielberg are so successful.

THR: So you have an artist like Jack White, and then you have somebody in Shred Metal Band X who writes brilliant music and plays a billion notes a minute, but everyone wants to hear Jack White. Is that because his notes mean more?

DM: Well you have to understand the marketing of the music. Shred Metal X has a limited marketing audience the age range for shred metal does not go past 40, because the younger ears can handle it! Anybody who has ever plays anything crazy when they were younger, ends up in melodic, blues, ballads cause once you get older…I mean look at Rod Stewart, he just did a fricken Christmas record! 

Shred Metal X guys, they’re gonna do what they do, but their audience is smaller.  Jack white, he can do all that stuff, but his heart and soul is in melodic rock stuff, but see, Jack White, he’s a producer too, he can do anything. He proved that with Loretta Lynn and all the other people he produced. He is an exception to the rule. He is eclectic; he can do a lot of different kinds of music. That’s the thing about producers too. See, the artist and producer are two different things. An artist like Jack White will do what he does, but then he can go produce Loretta Lynn, but when it comes to his artistry, he can’t interject his artistry into Loretta Lynn, he has got to produce her for what she is…

THR: He has to compartmentalize who he is from what she needs…

DM: My personal taste never comes into play when I’m producing an artist, and it shouldn’t. A producer should never interject their own personal choices into another artist record.

THR: Is there ever a time when you can see that what an artist wants will be a train wreck, that’s it’s not going to work, do you ever tell them it’s not going to work?

DM: Well you always have to have that person’s music, the marketing audience his demographics in mind, so your own personal taste still can’t come into it. A lot of these young cats wanna do this and they wanna do that, and you can’t. You have to let them [the artist] do what they do. See, if you tell an artist to do something and they don’t want to do it, you can’t make them do it. Now if the record company and they want a record of this or that, then you have to play the middle guy (remember to read those contract people). A producer is always playing the middle. But as far as producing, your job is to make somebody else sound good so you have to do what’s best for them, it’s not about you.

THR: What are some of your biggest challenges that push you?

DM: When I was young there were a lot, but now that I’m older, I deal with anything. Fights, drunken people, coked out people, I’ve had bands beating each other up, I’ve had artist that are totally unreasonable, that love you one day and because of outside agendas and influence, they come back upset. Artists are temperamental, emotional and illogical, that’s why their music is so good. They love you one second, and they next, you’re arguing with them. They love what you’re doing the whole time you’re doing it, then you release the album and somebody says something and then they second guess you. You have to deal with that. They are paying you to tell them what to do so they have to have faith and trust in their producer, well, they have to hire the right guy first of all. And you have to respect the producer.

 A Lot of artists love you while you’re working, you mix it, you engineer the whole album and do all this stuff and a month later their doing interviews and the never mention your name so I’ve dealt with that for 25 years. That is going to happen. But what an artist should do, and a lot of famous ones do, is they always mention the producer, they always talk about how they helped them, You have to understand that you can burn the bridge and that there work to be done later, and eventually, you’ll be broke no matter how much fame you have, people will eventually say “who the fuck are you?”. If you have a guy who worked his ass of for you, and the album is great and has gotten great reviews, you’ve got to talk about this guy! You can’t blow him off, if you don’t say anything, people will assume you did it so you have to give props where it belongs. You have to mention the producer. When you win an award, you have to thank these people!

THR: What is some important advice you have for a young musician who is just starting out in the music business?

DM: Advice is very important, but it’s what you do with it that’s more important. You have to understand first of all, you have to have a realization of whether or not you’re actually good. Don’t let your parents tell you you’re good, don’t let your buddies tell you because their always going to tell you you’re good, You’re not getting the truth there., You have to go out and honestly ask yourself if you’re really good.

Number 2, support yourself. Get a job. Don’t be the broke ass, go work on your music four hours a day then go to work and support yourself. 99% of musicians are broke. They live for the stage, they live for the gig and they’re living with their girlfriend who’s helping them out. Get a fricken job!

Because of the internet, you can make money a lot easier now, but so can everyone else. It’s clouded the market. Get off your ass, get on the internet, and promote your music every day. I do it every day, and I’ve been in the business 40 years.

Perseverance. If you want to do it, you have to keep going forward, but if you keep hearing no, no, no…see if you’re good, people who don’t know you are going to like you. If it’s not in the cards for you, do it as a hobby.

One more thing, write songs all the time. Songs last forever. I make most of my money from BMI checks from music on television, movies. Write songs, because you will make money forever. If you get a hit song, you will make money forever so keep the publishing rights as long as you can but songwriting is forever, you playing career is a short window, and fame is an even shorter window. If you do get fame, get everything you can. Get a product line, a show line, cologne if you can, clothes, energy drinks, you have to multitask. It’s a lot of work, it’s not some shit about going out on stage and being a rock star, that was the 80’s. The drunk ass coked out rock star is over.

Ok, the very last thing I’ll say is alcohol and drugs, get the fuck of them. It’s a dead end. Its proven every day by these kids dropping dead every day. It used to be cocaine and Stolis, now it’s coffee and muffins. Get your caffeine buzz eat your muffin, get your red bull buzz, have a beer once in a while, that’s fine. If you wanna smoke a joint once in a while that’s fine but stay off of the pills, get off the hard shit because you will end up dead and your career will go nowhere, and that’s the truth. Hate me, love me, whatever, but that’s the truth. We had Chuck Negron (Three Dog Night) on the show and this guy and he should be alive, even he doesn’t know why he’s alive. He gave up millions, his wife, his kids, for the drugs. He's been fighting for years and years and years to make a comeback and this guy’s sold millions of records. So I’m telling ya, drugs and alcohol, stay off it.

If you want to contact Dino, here is his info.

DINO MADDALONE PRODUCTIONS

"ASK DINO SHOW" On Air Host  Time Warner 

Music Producer/Composer/Mixer/Studio Owner

DINO M4 STUDIO Los Angeles Ca.

DinoM4@aol.com  Askdinoshow@aol.com