Aside from being a veteran producer for a roster as diverse as Megadeth, Keith Urban, and Faith Hill, Dann Huff has racked up credits as an in-demand session guitarist, and his chops can be heard on records by Michael Jackson, Whitesnake, Whitney Houston, and George Benson.
The biggest lesson he’s learned from his sessioning days? There’s zero shame in not being the producer’s first pick for a solo – as long as you land the job.
“You learn real quickly to be deferential, to be confident,” Huff says on the Wong Notes Podcast. “You're there for a reason. You don't want to get too star-struck by it. I'm sitting there with [session legend] Paul Jackson Jr – I could play funk stuff, but if I'm with Paul Jackson Jr… I mean, let me color around him, right?”
While Huff says that sometimes it all boils down to “a flip of a coin” due to the level of talent in the room, there are many times when it’s about which playing style the producer or the artist gravitate towards.
“Learning how to be a good second guitar player, I think, is essential,” Huff continues. “We're all kind of alphas, right? We walk in… ‘Look at me,’ but what if that producer likes Mike Landau, and he wants me, ‘Hey, Dan, sprinkle some fairy dust over there. But I want Mike to do this, and I want Mike to play the solo too.’”
Huff goes on to recount one time, right after he moved back to Nashville and properly sank his teeth into sessions, when he got paired with one of the most recorded guitarists in music history, Brent Mason.
“The Brent Mason thing, it's untouchable. So we get in rooms, and of course, there were a funny few times when somebody said, ‘No, you do the chicken pickin’ solo.’ I mean, in front of Brent Mason? No, I'm not doing that!” he adds with a laugh.
And while he admits he was “awestruck” by what the other session guitarists were doing, and to a certain degree, intimidated by them, he concludes that they ultimately “elevated me, made me better.
“I always would watch them play and listen to their sounds, listen to just everything about them,” he concludes. “I would dissect it in real time [while] I'm getting paid to play a part.”
In more recent news, one of Huff's long-term collaborators, Keith Urban, revealed how he was initially reluctant to work with the esteemed producer, and how a contentious guitar solo nearly spelled the end of their nascent partnership.
