David R. "Fergie" Ferguson (born July 2, 1962, in Nashville, Davidson County,

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

) is an American recording engineer.

Career

Ferguson's career began in the mid-1980s engineering

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

recordings for "Cowboy"

Jack Clement Jack Henderson Clement (April 5, 1931 – August 8, 2013) was an American singer, songwriter, and record and film producer. Biography Early life Raised and educated in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, Clement was performing at an early age, ...

, at Clement's ''Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa'', in Nashville, Tennessee. Today, Ferguson is best known for his works with Johnny Cash, as

sound engineer An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproductio ...

on the highly successful

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...

-winning American Recordings albums produced by

Rick Rubin Frederick Jay Rubin (; born March 10, 1963) is an American record producer. He is the co-founder (alongside Russell Simmons) of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records. Rubin helped popula ...

, in the 1990s and 2000s (decade). Ferguson has also engineered or produced recordings for such artists as

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

legend

John Prine John Edward Prine (; October 10, 1946 – April 7, 2020) was an American singer-songwriter of country-folk music. He was active as a composer, recording artist, live performer, and occasional actor from the early 1970s until his death. He ...

, bluegrass music artist

Mac Wiseman Malcolm Bell Wiseman (May 23, 1925 – February 24, 2019) was an American bluegrass and country singer. Early life He was born on May 23, 1925, in Crimora, Virginia. He attended school in New Hope, Virginia, and graduated from high school the ...

, Sturgill Simpson,

Tyler Childers Timothy Tyler Childers (born June 21, 1991) is an American singer and songwriter. His music is a mix of neotraditional country, bluegrass, and folk. He released his breakthrough album ''Purgatory'' in August 2017. Childers has released five stu ...

, The Del McCoury Band,

legends

Charley Pride Charley Frank Pride (March 18, 1934 – December 12, 2020) was an American singer, guitarist, and professional baseball player. His greatest musical success came in the early to mid-1970s, when he was the best-selling performer for RCA Rec ...

Eddy Arnold Richard Edward Arnold (May 15, 1918 – May 8, 2008) was an American country music singer who performed for six decades. He was a Nashville sound (country/popular music) innovator of the late 1950s, and scored 147 songs on the ''Billboard'' cou ...

, rock-n-roll band U2, and many others. Ferguson appeared as himself in the U2 film, ''

Rattle and Hum ''Rattle and Hum'' is a hybrid live/studio album by Irish rock band U2, and a companion rockumentary film directed by Phil Joanou. The album was produced by Jimmy Iovine and was released on 10 October 1988, while the film was distributed by ...

'', and portrayed his mentor and once real-life boss,

in the

Jerry Lee Lewis Jerry Lee Lewis (September 29, 1935October 28, 2022) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Nicknamed "The Killer", he was described as " rock & roll's first great wild man". A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis ma ...

film, '' Great Balls of Fire!''. Ferguson maintains a recording studio in Nashville, and resides in nearby Goodlettsville, Tennessee, near his boyhood home. In 2012, he went on tour with Swedish singer-songwriter

Anna Ternheim Anna Ternheim (born 31 May 1978) is a Swedish singer-songwriter. Early life Ternheim was born 31 May 1978 in Stockholm, Sweden. When she was 10 years old she began playing the guitar, writing songs and performing. During a year abroad in Atlan ...

for whom he recorded her album ''

The Night Visitor ''The Night Visitor'' (Swedish title: ''Papegojan'') is a 1971 Swedish psychological thriller film in English, starring Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Trevor Howard, Per Oscarsson, Rupert Davies and Andrew Keir, and directed by Laslo Benedek. Plot ...

''. In April 2020 a collaborative album between John Anderson,

Dan Auerbach Daniel Quine Auerbach (; born May 14, 1979) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and record producer, best known as the guitarist and vocalist of The Black Keys, a blues rock band from Akron, Ohio. As a member of the group, Auerbach has ...

, and David Ferguson is scheduled for release. In 2021, Ferguson recorded "The Housebuilding Song" for Rockstar Games' album ''The Music of Red Dead Redemption 2: The Housebuilding EP'', a collection of tracks from the game ''

Red Dead Redemption 2 ''Red Dead Redemption 2'' is a 2018 action-adventure game developed and published by Rockstar Games. The game is the third entry in the ''Red Dead'' series and a prequel to the 2010 game ''Red Dead Redemption''. The story is set in 1899 and f ...

.''

Career

References

Further reading