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Steve Hodge
Audio Production and Engineering
Best known as the primary Mixing Engineer for "Flyte Tyme Productions," the company of super-producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Steve was pivotal to the evolution of the Flyte Tyme sound.
His story of achievement began in the summer of ’69 when Hodge got a construction job at one of the dozens of new recording studios popping up in LA working for producer Val Valentin. This led to his working as a second engineer and collaborating on landmark records such as the Osmonds’ “Puppy Love,” Sammy Davis Junior’s “Candy Man,” and Boston’s groundbreaking first record.
From second engineer to first engineer to staff engineer, he worked in many of LA's top studios, from MGM Records and The Record Plant to the legendary WestLake Audio. Steve took a two-year sabbatical to work in a new studio in Louisiana in the early ‘70s, where he worked as producer/engineer on roots blues and unique musical genres with artists from Professor Longhair to the Wild Magnolias and Clifton Chenier.
A return to LA led Steve to work on a series of major projects as engineer and mixer, most notably for Solar Records, with their stable of artists: Shalamar, Lakeside, The Whispers, Dynasty, Leon Sylvers, and others.
In 1986, Steve received a call from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, asking him to fly from LA to help them with a very important album they were producing at their fledgling studio in Minneapolis.
The album was "Control," which established Janet Jackson as a pop diva, and was instrumental in Jam and Lewis winning the Grammy as Producers of the Year in 1987. It created an international reputation for their Flyte Tyme Productions and began an eighteen-year relationship with Steve at the center of one of the greatest hit-making machines in the history of the recording industry.
From that point on, Steve was pivotal to the evolution of the Flyte Tyme sound, a mix of unique hard-hitting rhythmic lines, lush multi-layered production and melodic vocals. This approach led to hits for an astonishing list of artists including Janet and Michael Jackson, Sting, Rod Stewart, Boys II Men, Mary J. Blige, Maria Carey, TLC and others.
Steve has close to 150 Gold and platinum records to his name. He refers to this as “a ridiculous amount by anyone’s standards”; to put it another way, he has more than 100 million records in circulation and is a Grammy winner. In 2007, Steve was elected to Board of Governors of the Chicago Chapter of NARAS.