Audio engineer Grayson Barton talks T-Pain, Earthworks, and navigating the industry

US engineer, producer, and musician Grayson Barton is one of the busiest men in the business. As the owner of Starscream Studio, he finds himself spread across the live industry, the studio sector, and even the world of live streaming in both audio and visual capacities, often juggling multiple projects at any one time. Here, Headliner finds him on a rare day off on his tour with rapper and streaming sensation T-Pain to discuss his unique career so far and how Earthworks Audio mics have transformed his approach to his craft…

“It's been great,” Grayson Barton beams as he joins Headliner via Zoom on an early morning in Atlanta. It’s a precious day off for the US polymath and yet he’s already taking a chunk of his free time to chat with us about how the current tour with T-Pain has been going. “This is his third sold out tour in a row, so it's been an exciting journey to be on with an artist who had huge popularity, then kind of went away for a minute, and is now enjoying this incredible resurgence. He’s one of the kindest people to work for and he's trusted me with not only being his monitor engineer on our first tour, but then moving out to be his FOH engineer over the last two years.”

It's easy to see why he’s struck up such a relationship with T-Pain and his team. He could hardly be more enthusiastic about not just the tour, but the passion he feels for his work in general. As we discover during the course of our conversation, his infectious positivity has led him down all manner of creative avenues.

“There are great benefits to working with the same artist over a prolonged period of time,” he continues. “T-Pain loves technology; he loves getting his hands dirty. He comes from writing and producing his own music, so if you don't know what you're doing you can't BS your way through with him! It's very refreshing and rewarding because he's on your level talking about the tech, talking about the production.”

To understand how Barton arrived at a point in his career where he is in demand from almost every quarter of the industry, we need to go right back to the beginning.

“When I was eight I used to make fake radio shows with the tape recorder,” he recalls. “Then I got into playing guitar and toured in some pop punk bands. We always had a hard time getting quality audio so that got me thinking I'll become a studio guitar player, and then I was like, maybe I'll just become an engineer. So, I went back to school for audio and graduated from audio college.

“After that I helped out at a lot of churches just to get involved in different productions. A lot of really cool people gave me opportunities in the church world, and you just keep saying yes until you have to start saying no, which is kind of how this business works.”

This approach saw him cross paths with one of YouTube’s most popular drummers and drum-related content creators, Casey Cooper (COOP3RDRUMM3R). It would result not only in one of the most important working relationships he would forge, but in the creation of his very own business in the form of Starscream Studio, a multi-purpose, multi-service operation that caters for everything from studio recording services, to live engineering and AV streaming solutions.

“When I was in school, I was tearing down this building and working it up to be a recording studio,” he says. “I was reading books on acoustics and building rooms and just trying to better understand it all. Anyway, I started helping and volunteering at this church and it just so happens Casey Cooper goes there. He's a drummer there and we hit it off immediately. I had no idea this guy had a huge YouTube following and he's super humble, doesn't even bring it up. I was like, ‘oh you do drums on YouTube? There's this drummer I'm watching there called Cobus’. And he was like ‘oh Cobus is super cool’, and we're just there watching YouTube videos and I'm sitting with the most subscribed YouTube drummer in the world [laughs].

“So, a friendship started and he helped me with my studio, which became Starscream. I was just trying to work on records with people willing to give me a chance. And after a little while Casey needed some help over at his studio, so I would go there and start mixing for him for his YouTube channel.”

It is through Cooper that Barton first came into contact with Earthworks Audio microphones – a brand that he insists has revolutionized his working process.

“The first time I used Earthworks was working with Casey,” he recalls. “I'd used a lot of mics but getting to use their tom and snare mics, it was clear they were a different level. The way they have the rejection built into their mics for drums specifically is incredible. And in the studio, you’re able to get a much purer signal - I’m not having to go in and clean it up and gate it out. It was very refreshing right off the bat. Even this cool stainless-steel look.

“They’re innovators from top to bottom, so anytime you're like, okay we've reached the limitations of what mics can do. they always come out with something that's crazy, and it’s a crazy affordable price.

“They just released their new kick mic, the DM6, and I was blown away. It’s the quickest mic you can put on a kick drum and not have to tinker with EQ and go crazy with. It's just a good sounding kick drum mic right away, and that's what you want as an engineer.”

One Earthworks model that left an indelible impression on Barton was the Ethos mic, which he and Cooper tested in highly unconventional circumstances. The pair decided to record a cover of The Beatles classic Hey Jude using the Ethos and no other mic whatsoever. Barton picks up the story.

“It was the most daunting task ever,” he laughs. “We're going to cover a Beatles tune with one microphone, like, this is not a good idea! There was lots of trepidation when Casey brought that idea to me, but I was like, let's do it, I trust you! So, we went through the process, and it was amazing. Even the drum kit – it’s just one mic. That's when I became a big fan, like, their mic can do anything!”

This talk of boundary pushing and innovation brings us round to Barton’s own ethos of always looking to expand both his professional horizons and his skillset.

“You have to be a chameleon,” he states. “And the minute Covid hit you had to do anything you could to keep working. There were moments during covid where people wanted me to learn how to do streaming software and that's something I still do to this day. Obviously I bring audio to the table in that, but I wanted to bring excellence to video as well, so it's about learning to say yes until your calendar just can't hold it anymore!”

He also describes how the pandemic instigated a major surge in DIY content creators upping their production values.

“Covid created this wild, magical convergence where we saw pro level gear being brought down to a consumer level of price,” he continues. “To get the highest quality image and audio on a stream was really difficult before Covid but all those things became more affordable. And once people have that level of gear they want to use it to the fullest, so that's where a production company or an audio engineer gets to step in and help improve what you're doing.

“In places like houses of worship they're streaming on a weekly basis, and before Covid it’d be like, there’s a single camera shot and one live room mic and that's fine. Now, if you don't have four nice audience mics and you don't have everything fully mic'd, a couple of camera shots, and a little movement on the camera, it's like, ‘oh man what are these people doing’!”

As we finally free Barton to enjoy the rest of his day off there’s just time for him to fill us in on what else he’s been working on, as well as what he has in the pipeline.

“I'm always looking for opportunities to get my hands on,” he says. “I was out with country artist Russell Dickerson for a little bit recently. A buddy of mine is his tour manager. I love those guys from the country world, it's really different from the hip-hop world so it's always fun to step in that for a minute. It’s a completely different world and you get to stretch and sharpen your skills.

“At Starscream we recently did a live performance showcase where we gave people an opportunity to show up and see new artists that are starting out. We brought a local band in and a local singer-songwriter and said we want you to do a couple takes and we're just going to take one solid take, no comps, mix it up, put a little sauce on it, and put it out.

“As always, it's a lot of irons in the fire. That's how this thing works. You’ve got to keep them going and keep them all hot.”