Today we’d like to introduce you to Dale “Shack” Shackleford
Hi Dale, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Like many in the music business, I began performing when I was young with my family in Oklahoma. We are citizens of the Chickasaw Nation and would travel throughout the state telling stories and singing songs in our tribe’s language, though there were never any aspirations of making any career out of such things. Later, I also began performing in the local band where I played drums for 5 years, trombone for 2, and trumpet for one. In high school I was also fortunate to attend the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy (later renamed Chickasaw Arts Academy) where I was introduced to my first taste of technical production of any kind. Once again, my career aspirations were not geared towards music and production at all yet, but I began to fall in love with running sound for theater style productions through the academy. All this time during high school as well I had begun songwriting with one of my sisters and making cheap basic recordings of the music, never suspecting that all of these things would culminate into something bigger in my life.
The real turn in my journey that opened up the doors of music was during my freshman year of college. I attended Eastern Oklahoma State College as a Music Major, but only because I did not know what I wanted to do yet at the time. During that semester, however, I realized that I could continue songwriting and stay connected through music recording and engineering as a career. Thus, I elected to double major with Mass Communications, finishing my time at EOSC with Associate’s degrees in Music, Mass Communications, and General Studies. This prepared me to transfer on scholarship to Middle Tennessee State University to begin the Audio Production program and to write a Undergraduate Honors Thesis on the influence of Muskogean and Southeastern tribes on the genre of Delta Blues.
Once at MTSU, I quickly realized that I wanted to go beyond a Bachelor’s degree and was blessed to apply and be accepted for the Accelerated Bachelor’s to Master’s program. My time there taking both Undergraduate and Graduate level courses taught me from the ground up how to produce, engineer, and work with others to make a song come to life. Teachers challenged me to constantly strive for better records, better productions, and better attention to detail which eventually paid off. To complete the Graduate degree I organized, produced, and engineered a 3-way studio session with the help of a great team. Using Dante technology, three previously unconnected studios were tied together to have musicians and engineers in all three locations synchronously interacting, performing, and recording together. During my time in Graduate school I also had the opportunity to intern with a Grammy winning producer and engineer who taught me a different perspective on production and gave me more live-world professional industry experience.
Over the last few years I have worked both as a house engineer and technical director for The Washington Theatre, and as a freelance engineer for hire. At the Theatre I was able to work first hand with directors, talent, and rentals to bring events to life. We produced many children’s musicals and they gave me the opportunity to produce from the ground up the City official annual Murfreesboro Battle of the Bands. Since graduating with a Master’s of Fine Arts in Recording Arts and Technology in May, 2024, I have been blessed to work completely as an independent contractor working with artists and bands alike. My experience has led me to work live shows with corporate bands while also maintaining connections to studios through both teaching introductory studio classes online while also continuing to engineer records myself. Recently most notably I was recommended to work on a project for a new Warner Brother’s artist Blake Whiten where I worked under another engineer and producer to track this Whiten’s first fully produced studio record.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Looking back, most of my journey thus far has been relatively smooth. However, in the moment there have been so many times that productions didn’t turn out the way I hoped they would and artists would hear the work and not want to move forward with it. However, just like anyone would say, you can’t let things like that stop you. You have to get up and try again. Thankfully I have had great people around me to support me through this all, who have given me chance after chance to keep honing my abilities and who expect me to grow. People like that are a huge encouragement and the entire reason that I am where I am today.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
For the last two years, I have been a part of Successfully Unsigned. Successfully Unsigned is a music business podcast founded by David Overstreet, Patrick Glover, and Dale Shack, who are dedicated to providing professional advice for unprofessionals. Our desire since the outset has been to create a product for rookies in the music industry to be able to learn from others the things we wish we knew when we first began in our own careers. We do this through entertaining episodes, local artist interviews, and through creating a community around the podcast that goes beyond the lens. We are constantly attending local shows and showing support for the original music scene in the greater Nashville area, both of artists we do not know and especially of artists that have become a part of the Unsigned family.
My role in Successfully Unsigned is both as an on-screen host as well as taking care of the technical aspects of the production. I record, edit, and publish the majority of our episodes, with David Overstreet taking over when life gets in the way. This is balanced by Overstreet focusing on content topics of each episode and talent scouting, and Glover managing our social media and PR.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I love how supportive the local music scene is of other musicians are also trying to perform their original music. It would be easy for there to be a sense of competition and rivalry, but most in the Nashville original music scene are happy and willing to help others succeed right along side them. On the other hand, my least favorite thing about Nashville is how little support the city as a whole supports original music. Prior to moving to Nashville from Oklahoma I always heard about “Music City” and the reputation associated with it was that of new music being performed on every street corner. While such tales are easily understood as intentionally grand overstatements, it has been very underwhelming to see how little most of Nashville cares about the very thing it is built upon: creativity through music. In a place like this, local shows with small artists should be packed every night as people clamor to great new songs and in hopes to see the next star before they’re famous. Instead, local shows are often vacant with little more than the friends of the artist showing up while Broadway with its touristic bars are overflowing. While I have no issue with the cover bands on Broadway, I am saddened to see the lack of similar support for those trying to share their own personal stories through music.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daleshackofficial/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaleShackOfficial/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-shackleford-696342249/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dshackmusic
- Other: https://su-podcast.com
