Dave Cobb

This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "Dave Cobb" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Dave Cobb (born July 9, 1974) is a thirteen-time Grammy Award winning American record producer based in Nashville, Tennessee, best known for producing the work of Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, John Prine, Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, The Highwomen, Take That, Rival Sons, and Zayn Malik, among others.^[1][2]

Cobb is also a contributor to the six million-selling 2018 A Star Is Born soundtrack and produced "Always Remember Us This Way" for Lady Gaga.^[3][4]

Cobb was born in Savannah, Georgia,^[5] to Mary Cobb (née Floyd) and David Cobb, Sr.. He attended The Cottage School in Roswell.

Cobb said his family was very religious and was active in the Pentecostal faith (his maternal grandmother was a minister).^[3] Cobb began playing drums and taking guitar lessons at church when he was four years old.^[6]

Cobb's career in music began as a session musician in Atlanta, sometimes working with producers Dallas Austin and Jermaine Dupri. In the late 1990s he joined Britpop band The Tender Idols, featuring Ian Webber (vocals), Danny Howes (guitar), Guy Strauss (drums) and Joe Jones (bass), and Cobb on guitar and bass.^[7] The band signed with New York record label Emagine and released three LPs, the second of which Dave Cobb co-produced.^[8] Cobb's involvement in the recording process got him interested in working in the recording studio and led to him recording and producing other bands he was friends with.^[5]

Cobb left the band and moved to Los Angeles, California in 2004. Cobb's manager, Andrew Brightman, introduced him to Shooter Jennings,^[5] and the two became friends, connecting over shared interest in bands like Ministry, Skinny Puppy, and Nine Inch Nails.^[8] Jennings also expanded Cobb's country music education and, in 2005, Cobb produced Jennings' debut solo album Put the "O" Back in Country. Over the next several years, Cobb produced more albums by Jennings, as well as albums by such rock bands as Rival Sons,^[3] and co-produced Jamey Johnson's That Lonesome Song (2008) and The Guitar Song (2009).^[7]

In 2009, thanks to his professional connection to Jennings, Cobb produced the Oak Ridge Boys' record The Boys Are Back,^[4] encouraging the band to record outside their standard catalog. The group then went on to cover songs by The White Stripes, Neil Young and John Lee Hooker.^[9]

In 2011 Cobb moved to Nashville, Tennessee.^[3] Cobb established a recording studio in a bedroom-sized room at the back of his house and named it Low Country Sound.^[10] After meeting Sturgill Simpson at a Billy Joe Shaver concert,^[11] Cobb produced Simpson's debut studio album High Top Mountain (2013) and its follow-up, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (2014). Recorded at Cobb's Low Country Sound studio in only four days, Cobb used many different vintage recording techniques, avoiding any electronic recording approaches for this particular album.^[7]

Cobb began working with Jason Isbell in 2013. Isbell's album Southeastern, recorded in Cobb's home and studio, was an effort to chronicle an acoustic sound similar to what is found on Simon And Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water, where a non-traditional recording environment was captured to provide an organic, live and "warm" sound.^[5][12] The same year, Cobb began work producing Early Morning Shakes, the third studio album from Whiskey Myers, a Country Southern rock band from Palestine, Texas. The record was released on February 4, 2014.

Cobb met singer-songwriter Anderson East at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe, and Cobb ended up producing East's 2015 album Delilah, which was recorded at FAME Studios in North Alabama's Muscle Shoals. Rodney Hall from FAME allowed the pair into the archives—in the vault they found George Jackson's song, "Find 'Em, Fool 'Em, Forget 'Em," which is now a track on Delilah.^[13] The video for "Find 'Em" is shot at FAME.^[14]

In 2015, Cobb founded Low Country Sound (LCS), a record label imprint of Elektra that has a distribution deal with Atlantic Records.^[15] The debut project for Low Country Sound was the 2015 record Delilah by Anderson East, who is currently signed with the label.^[16] The same year, Cobb co-produced Chris Stapleton's debut studio album Traveller at the historic RCA Studio A on Nashville's Music Row, which was slated for demolition.^[10] The album would go on to top the Billboard Year-End Top Country Albums chart in 2016 and 2017,^[17][18] and win the Grammy Award for Best Country Album.^[19]

On March 18, 2016, the collaborative album Southern Family was released on the Low Country Sound imprint. Produced and curated by Cobb, the concept album was inspired by the album White Mansions, with themes centered on family values and the artist's experiences growing up in the South. It contains song contributions by Zac Brown, Anderson East, Jason Isbell, Shooter Jennings, Jamey Johnson, Miranda Lambert, Morgane and Chris Stapleton among others. It was officially released on March 18, 2016.^[20]

RCA Studio A was saved from demolition, and in July 2016, Cobb began a long-term residency at the studio.^[10] The title of Chris Stapleton's 2017 releases From A Room: Volume 1 and From A Room: Volume 2 refer to the albums being recorded at the studio, as does The Oak Ridge Boys' 2018 release, 17th Avenue Revival, referring to the studio's location on 17th Avenue in Nashville.

In 2022, Cobb produced Gavin DeGraw's eighth album titled Face the River, the album 4 by Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, as well as Sammy Hagar and the Circle's album Crazy Times.

In 2024, Cobb produced singer-songwriter Oliver Anthony's debut album Hymnal of a Troubled Man’s Mind, who came to prominence half a year prior with the viral single "Rich Men North of Richmond". While most of the songs were already released as acoustic recordings, they were re-recorded and provided new arrangements by Cobb.^[21]

Cobb has said he focuses on the performer's voice, aiming for an end product which sounds natural. Cobb often plays guitar, and occasionally drums, on the records he produces.^[5] Cobb cites Jimmy Miller (Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street) as an important influence in his approach to producing, as well as Glyn Johns and Brendan O'Brien.^[22] Current influences include Gabriel Roth (Daptone Records).^[5]

Cobb also is known to not have a preference over analog recordings versus digital, instead believing the spontaneous nature of creativity as well as the inspiration derived from new discovery, predominantly drives the organic quality of a song.^[5]

Cobb lives in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee.^[3][16] Cobb is married; he and his wife, who is from Albania, have one daughter together.^[6][7][3]

One of Cobb's paternal cousins from Georgia is the singer-songwriter Brent Cobb.^[7][23] Additionally, Cobb said he grew up with musician Butch Walker.^[6]

Cobb has talked about the long-term passion that turned into a serious hobby where he explores different types of wine, especially from Paso Robles and other California vineyards.^[6]

This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "Dave Cobb" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• 2011: Grammy Award for Best Country Album (nominee) for Jamey Johnson's The Guitar Song^[16]
• 2014: Americana Music Association, Album of the Year for Jason Isbell's Southeastern^[24]
• 2014: Americana Music Association, Producer of the Year^[5]
• 2014: Grammy Award for Best Americana Album (nominee) for Sturgill Simpson's Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
• 2015: Grammy Award for Producer of the Year (nominee)
• 2015: Grammy Award for Best Country Album for Chris Stapleton's Traveller – as producer
• 2015: Grammy Award for Best Americana Album for Jason Isbell's Something More Than Free – as producer
• 2016: Americana Music Association, Album of the Year, Jason Isbell's Something More Than Free
• 2016: Americana Music Association, Producer of the Year
• 2016: Music Row awards, Producer of the Year
• 2017: Country Music Awards, Chris Stapleton's From A Room: Volume 1
• 2017: Country Music Awards, Producer of the Year
• 2018: Grammy Award for Best Americana Album (nominee) for Brent Cobb Shine On Rainy Day
• 2018: Grammy Award for Best Americana Album for Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's The Nashville Sound – as producer
• 2018: Grammy Award for Best Country Album for Chris Stapleton's From A Room: Vol. 1 – as producer
• 2019: Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song for Brandi Carlile's "The Joke" – as co-writer, producer
• 2019: Grammy Award for Best Americana Album for Brandi Carlile's By the Way, I Forgive You – as producer
• 2022: Grammy Award for Best Country Album for Chris Stapleton's Starting Over - as producer
• 2022: Grammy Award for Best Country Song for Chris Stapleton's "Cold" - as songwriter and producer
• 2023: Grammy Award for Best Americana Album for Brandi Carlile's In These Silent Days - as producer

• Console / board: HELIOS by Dick Swettenham (Abbey Road Studios)^[6]
• Recorder: Endless Analog's CLASP (Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor)^[25][26]
• Converters: Burl Audio B80 Mothership and the B32 Vancouver^[27]

• Albums produced by Dave Cobb
• RCA Studio A

• Official website
• Dave Cobb at AllMusic
• Brightman Music: Dave Cobb