While it takes an artist to create the music, it takes the partnership of recording studio engineers and producers to complete crafting the songs, an art in its own right. Trina Shoemaker (6/14/65) is one of those. She’s been so honored as being the first woman to win a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album in 1998 for her work on Sheryl Crow’s The Globe Sessions and has continued that success pulling down nods in 2004 for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album with Steven Curtis Chapman’s All Things New, and most recently in 2020 for Best Country Album for her work on Tanya Tucker’s While I’m Living. Not bad for a girl that grew up in Joliet.
Her path for getting to that point found her having to travel the world.
Growing up in Joliet, for Kathryn “Trina” Shoemaker there was nothing she loved more than listening to her dad’s Hi-Fi stereo and comparing it with the other systems in the neighborhood. They were all good, some better than others. Her father’s was the best and it was loud! By 13, Shoemaker knew she wanted to record albums, whatever that meant.
After graduating from Joliet Central High School in 1983 she set out on her path. By the age of 19, she had a little apartment in Los Angeles and an entry level secretarial job at Capitol Records.
It would be a long road finding her way to a seat behind a recording console. From her time at Capitol, her rather circuitous route to recording began in a basement studio in a London flat, then wound through Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree, and further on down to the Mississippi River Delta, where she began by cleaning studios in New Orleans.
Eventually, she found her way to Kingsway, Daniel Lanois’ famed studio in the French Quarter where she was hired as a tape opereator and second engineer in 1991 and quickly became the house engineer. It was there she really got her feet on the ground. Some of her first major projects included Iggy Pop’s American Ceasar, Throwing Muses’ University, Giant Sand’s Glum and Emmy Lou Harris’ Wrecking Ball.
She left Kingsway in 1995, striking out on her own. Her first big break came when she was hired by Sheryl Crow, scoring hits with “If It Makes You Happy” and “Everyday is a Winding Road. They followed that up with The Globe Sessions, in which Shoemaker pulled down two Grammy Awards for Rock Album Of The Year and Best Engineered Album Non-Classical, making her the first woman to win the latter.
Over the next decade she would work on projects at various studios for the likes of Queens of the Stoneage, the Dixie Chicks and Blues Traveler. During that period, she was once again nominated for Best Engineered Album for Sheryl Crow’s C’Mon C’mon, and pulled down another Grammy in 2004 for Steven Curtis Chapman’s All Things New.
Settling in New Orleans, Shoemaker would marry blues-rock guitarist Grayson Capps, giving birth to a son Waylon. After they lost their New Orleans home during Hurricane Katrina, they moved to Nashville. During her five years in Nashville, she produced, engineered and mixed dozens of albums including Sunset Man by James Otto, which featured the #1 Billboard Country hit “Just Got Started Lovin’ You.”
In 2010, Shoemaker and her family moved back down to the Gulf Coast where she built a mix room at her home and partnered with Jake and Luke Peavy, opening Dauphin Street Productions studio in Mobile. Trina was again nominated for Best Engineered Album Non-Classical in the 2013 Grammy Awards for the album The Moorings by Andrew Duhon, in 2015 with Brandi Carlile’s Firewatcher’s Daughter for Best Americana Album, in 2017 with The Secret Sisters’ You Don’t Own Me Anymore for Best Folk Album, and took home her 4th Grammy Award in 2020 for Best Country Album for her work on Tanya Tucker’s While I’m Living.
With all those awards and nominations under her belt, she has recently added another, honored in 2021 with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Americana Music Association.