Don McGlashan and Sean Donnelly have been nominated for Best Producer Award in the New Zealand Tui Music Awards...here's what Don Had to say about it in the NZ Herald...

Don McGlashan (with Sean Donnelly) in the NZ Herland

Finalist: Best producer
For: Don McGlashan and the Seven Sisters - Marvellous Year
Past work: Blam Blam Blam - Luxury Length (1982); The Mutton Birds - The Mutton Birds (1992); Don McGlashan - Warm Hand (2006)

What does a producer do?
There's the technical side of it, making sure the record can be as good as it can be - getting things in tune, making sure the engineer is getting good sounds down, and do justice to songs and all the ideas. Then there's the devil's advocate role to listen to the songs and say, 'That's not good enough'. Basically pushing the artist to do their best work. You do get a bit tunnel vision in the studio and its nice to remember that you are making something that's going to be in somebody's home, or car, and it's actually part of the world.

So is that where [co-producer] Sean came in?
Yeah, I was able to bounce ideas off him and sometimes it can be things like, 'You don't need the second bridge in that song'. Or sometimes it's more inspired like, 'This one needs some backing vocals, but they need to be really fruity'. It's basically curtailing the bad instincts of an artist and pushing the good instincts.

What was the most unique aspect about Marvellous Year compared to your other work?
It's such a big shift for me from going 10 years working in a band, where everybody's got their jobs to do to and Warm Hand where I could do whatever I like. But with Marvellous Year I think I'd got to the point where the Seven Sisters had been together for a couple of years and it's a great group of people to bring songs to because they pick up and run with them straight away. And I was able to be a bit more flamboyant sometimes because I could trust Sean because we've worked together a lot ever since the Mutton Birds finished.