Dallas producer and engineer Stuart Sikes has a Grammy on his shelf (for Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose), a gold record on his wall (the White Stripes' White Blood Cells) and a résumé that reads like a who's who of indie rock: Modest Mouse, the Walkmen, Cat Power. The only thing he's lacking is recognition. Most people have no idea who he is, or what he does.
"When I try to explain it, people's eyes glaze over," Mr. Sikes says over breakfast recently at the Cliff Cafe, a short drive from his new Oak Cliff studio, Elmwood Recording.
"It's like saying 'I'm a nuclear physicist.' They're like 'Oh ... OK."
Courtney Perry / DMN
Stuart Sikes in his Dallas recording studio
It's actually not quite that complicated. When Mr. Sikes works as an engineer – as he did on Cat Power's Jukebox CD, which hits stores today – he runs the technical side of the session to make sure the musicians and their instruments sound perfect.
When he's the producer, he plays a more creative role, whether it's telling a band its song is way too long or calming down a bunch of nervous musicians. "Sometimes you play the psychologist," says Mr. Sikes. "Especially with young bands who get freaked out if they've never been in the studio before."
Producer John Congleton, his partner at Elmwood, says you can't find a better shrink than Mr. Sikes.
"Stuart's a very mellow guy, very laid-back, very open-minded," says Mr. Congleton. "Which is the right temperament for a good engineer-producer."
At the ripe old age of 35, Mr. Sikes is seen as the wise guru of the Dallas recording scene. "Bands aspire to work with him because of his experience," says Idol Records president Erv Karwelis, who's hired him to produce local bands such as Black Tie Dynasty and Daryl. "They hope some of Stuart's magic will maybe rub off on them."
But it wasn't that long ago that the magic man could barely find a job. He grew up in Plano in a musical family of sorts: His sister turned him on to her punk CDs, and his audiophile uncle taught him the joys of high-end stereo equipment. After taking a music-recording class at Collin County Community College, he went on to earn a degree from a recording school in Orlando, Fla. But his real breakthrough came when he got hired as an engineer at Easley McCain Recording, the Memphis, Tenn., studio where Jeff Buckley, Pavement and Sonic Youth recorded.
In 2001, Mr. Sikes found himself working at Easley McCain with an unknown Detroit garage-rock duo, the White Stripes. Their album, White Blood Cells, would soon become one of the most influential rock albums in recent history. But today, he admits he had no idea how big the CD would get.
"I thought it was good, but I didn't know they were pegged as the next big thing," Mr. Sikes says. "I must have missed that publication."
Bolstered by his success in Memphis, he moved back to Dallas in late '01 with his wife, Diane, who'd landed a job teaching art at the University of Texas at Arlington. But people in Dallas hadn't yet heard of the White Stripes, and recording studios had no idea who Mr. Sikes was. For a while, nobody would hire him.
"To come here, having recorded bands you think are good, but nobody here knows who these bands are ... that's pretty depressing," he says. "I remember thinking, 'Why the hell did we move here?' "
Gradually, Mr. Sikes found work around town (as well as the odd job back in Memphis). It was there, in 2003, that he engineered Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News, which sold a million copies and spawned an unlikely hit in "Float On."
Two years later, Cat Power (alias singer Chan Marshall) hired him to work on her album, The Greatest. She liked the results so much she tapped him to work on her newly released Jukebox, which was recorded partly at Elmwood in Dallas.
The albums solidified Mr. Sikes' rep, but they proved how nebulous terms such as producer and engineer can be. While he's listed as an engineer on both Cat Power albums, he says that technically, he produced The Greatest, but Ms. Marshall doesn't believe in using the term producer.
"I was like 'Fine. If you don't want to call me that on your record, then don't,' " he says. "I know what I did." Through her publicist, Ms. Marshall declined to be interviewed for this story.
He got more concrete credit for engineering Ms. Lynn's 2004 CD, Van Lear Rose: A Grammy (for best country album) sits atop a bookshelf in his Oak Cliff home. "It marks a place in history, but it doesn't mean you've made it," he says of the award.
He also knows people might not be impressed for long by his connection to the White Stripes or Cat Power. In the hip-today-square-tomorrow world of rock, he has no delusions of being cool forever.
"I'm not a hip person. My wife hates the way I dress. ... I look like an idiot," he says, pointing at a drab hooded sweatshirt he's wearing.
"But I can't be concerned with what people think. I just have to keep making things that sound interesting, and hopefully I'll continue to find work," he says.
"I'd better, because it's the only thing I know how to do."
