East Texas musician, writer, producer and recording engineer Bob Gentry has worked with industry giants like Leanne Rimes, The Chicks, and even the legendary Tom Jones. In this episode, Bob shares behind-the-scenes stories and his journey from being a nascent musician in Tyler, to becoming the acclaimed musician, performer, writer and recording producer he is today.
Bob also gives a sneak peek into the future of the music industry in this era of TikTok and artificial intelligence, emphasizing the critical role of “soul” in music.
Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. Most of you know the names of successful recording artists from our part of East Texas, like Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves. But there are quite a few musicians right here in Tyler who have a rich history of contributing to the success of well-known artists. And one of them is Bob Gentry, who lives in Tyler, still writes and plays music and has a recording studio here as well. Feel free to name drop early and often. Tell us about some of the folks you got a chance to work with.
Bob Gentry: Well, I had worked on album projects with some different people like Leanne Rimes and just different ones.
Mike Landess: Dixie Chicks.
Bob Gentry: Dixie Chicks. Yeah, you can help me. But yeah, and I did some stuff for Kacey Musgraves early on, when she had been on the Nashville Star and was having a little winning streak there. And she had started recording a first album. I guess it was the first album. She could have had something before that, but anyway, she had started recording an album at different studios, and it was in different degrees of completion. And her dad called me and said, “Man, we need this yesterday. Can you help us out here?” So when I worked with her, it was really more taking all of these different recordings that she had started at different places. And then in just a few days, trying to finish out the unfinished stuff and do the mixing and make an album out of it. So that was as far as her, the credit working with her.
Mike Landess: We lost Tina Turner this year, and your friend and mentor, Robin Hood Brians, shared his experience in working with her. What was your experience like?
Bob Gentry: I had a brief experience getting to work with Tina Turner. I was touring as a side man, bass player back in the late ’70s for Tom Jones, the Welsh singer that everybody, most people, I’m sure nowadays, there are a lot of people who don’t know who that is…
Mike Landess: Oh, he’s made a comeback…
Bob Gentry: But most people do. And I was touring with him in the late ’70s, and one of the shows we did was in Washington, D.C., at a concert. It was a video thing for television. It was for, of all things, the national, let’s see, National Organization for Women, which I thought was kind of ironic, being that Tom Jones was kind of a male sex symbol-type singer guy.
Mike Landess: Women loved him.
Bob Gentry: Yes, that’s true.
Mike Landess: And they still do.
Bob Gentry: Tom Jones and Tina Turner were the featured artists. So, as a result, our group, our musicians, played on the performances where Tom and Tina sang together some duets. And that was really fun. And getting to be there and just the rehearsals, meeting her band guys and getting to meet her and watching her energy at these rehearsals. She was, I’m not sure of her age, I would suspect probably, maybe 40 years old at the time. And she had a lot of young dancers who were working, doing choreography with her on her part of the show. And these girls were probably, you know, in their early 20s or maybe even even younger than that, and she was just working them to death. It was amazing to see this woman just wearing them out with her moves, you know. They were working hard to keep up with her.
Mike Landess: Let me turn the clock back just a little bit here and talk about playing early on in Tyler. I mean you used to play some of the battle of the bands competitions out at Bergfeld Park.
Bob Gentry: Yeah, that was a lot of the beginning stuff, when the Beatles and all that British Invasion stuff first came out, and every kid you know in the whole country, you know, wanted to get an electric guitar, learn to play. And there were all of these local bands like you don’t see that anymore, but at that time, they were just blooming everywhere. There was a guy here, a local guy — you may know him, Rodney Camel — and he put on these talent shows at Bergfeld Park every Friday night. And so at one point, it got to be where there were too many bands to even fit in a show. And of course, he was trying to have the other talent as well. You know, have the people doing different things with talent, but that was a big deal. It was pretty inspirational. And there were a lot of guys and probably women, that got their start back in those days. There’s — I can name several very famous musicians who got their start there, like, for instance, Paul Leim is a drummer. He lives in Nashville now, but he had worked in Los Angeles and played on just all kinds of movie scores and huge hit records for all these major artists and continues to even be doing this kind of stuff. He’s done it for years. He started in a band there. I believe it was… I can’t remember the name of the band, but they were from Troup, Texas, and Robin Hood actually discovered him there and got him to come over and start playing recording sessions. And that’s where he got his studio musician career. Another one was a guy named Doug Rohn. He’s really a great guitar player. He ended up being the musical director for Neil Diamond. And although I’m sure they’re pretty much retired now, or semi-retired, he’s still doing that. And several others you know, the Stanley brothers, David Stanley and Larry Stanley and Ken Murray. A bunch of these guys had long musical careers and started there at Bergfeld Park.
Mike Landess: Did you move to Dallas after that and then start playing?
Bob Gentry: I did eventually, yeah, after just playing around for fun in the garage band, quote, unquote kind of situations. And then at some point, I started needing to get a little bit more serious and started wanting to become a studio musician.
Mike Landess: What got you into studio building and becoming a recording engineer and a producer?
Bob Gentry: Well, again, Robin Hood would be directly responsible for that. Because when I first started working for him, before I was ever really doing many sessions as a bass player, but was just kind of a wannabe, just to hang around and learn all of it. I was just really curious about all this stuff, and I went to work over there for him as sort of an apprentice and also working part time helping him construct his studio when he was remodeling it back in the ’70s, around the time right before ZZ Top came in to record their music. And we were, you know, tearing things apart, and he was teaching me things about acoustical physics and wiring microphones, and you know, all the stuff about studios that you just wouldn’t have had any way to learn it.
Mike Landess: You know, it’s interesting. I saw an article lately claiming that TikTok was going to change popular music forever. And I saw the same kind of claims about artificial intelligence, AI. Any thoughts on that?
Bob Gentry: They’re pretty negative (laughs). But yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about it. I have a big issue with the auto tuning and the computer stuff where people are putting music, quote unquote, together. In many cases, has no humans in it. I mean, it’s a machine playing a beat. It’s, you know, maybe somebody trying to sing, who in some cases can’t even sing, and they auto tune it with these machines. To me, you know, having been in it so long, I hear it instantly, and it sounds like a robot. For all the people who are coming up, that are wanting to be musicians and performers and everything, I hope that they will try to find that thing that gives it the human quality that speaks to the heart, as opposed to just a technical, mechanical, computerized thing that anybody could just program.
Mike Landess: Keep the soul?
Bob Gentry: Keep the soul in the music.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been musician, performer, writer and recording producer and engineer Bob Gentry of Tyler. To hear this interview again or to share it, go to KVUT.org. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
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