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With credits alongside some of the genre’s biggest names, from Luke Combs and Jelly Roll to Marren Morris and icons like Reba McEntire, it’s easy to assume that songwriter and producer Mikey Reaves only finds his flow in country music. His work has earned him award nominations and wins, including a Country Music Award for Album of the Year for his work on Cody Johnson’s 2023 album Leather. But his musical roots go back to his days growing up in Richmond, Virginia, where a variety of musical influences laid a foundation that still shows up in his country production style today. “I come from a band background; hardcore punk and heavy metal,” he explained. “I just followed the white rabbit to Nashville and now I’m working on a lot of country music. I have very, very warm feelings towards country, especially in this time and place, because it’s just kind of opened up in a beautiful way.”
Today, he’s among the first producers to add their spin on the country sound collection to the music creation platform Splice, which Reaves says has been a part of his creative process since 2016. “Splice has always been a part of my workflow,” he said from his studio in Nashville. “I’m so excited for them to have a country wing because it seems like everybody’s using all these country sounds now.” His own collection of sounds, a blend of drum-heavy grooves and layered melodic loops called Mikey’s Country Mojo and Spice, are a testament to his early days as a drummer, and incorporating much of the pop gloss and indie edge he’s picked up along the way. Since moving to Nashville after college in 2010 with friend Will Anderson of the band Parachute, Reaves’ journey has been unconventional but fulfilling, with him working as a drummer, an engineer, and even a touring guitar technician at various points. “I was, like, I gotta figure out how to create a sustainable career,” he explained. “So, it was very natural to pivot from being the dude who will record your band, to recording all these songwriters that I became friends with, to recording demos, to writing songs. I was a ‘songwriter’ before I really felt like one.”
He’d go on to develop his skills as a songwriter, meeting with industry acquaintances from the likes of Warner Chappell Publishing and the performance rights organization BMI early on while honing his creative process and learning how to incorporate his affinity for different genres into his work in Nashville. “I’m producing these demos and I’m not a country guitarist, it’s not in my fingers, so you’re going to get the Blink-182 influence,” he explains, adding other inspirations like the groove-heavy percussion of classic R&B and soul. “Luckily that’s kind of what seems to work for me at least. As a musician I identify with the drums, but as a producer I have to play a little bit of everything.”
Overall, Reaves says the genre has become more accepting of sample-based production of the last decade. While the use of session musicians is still often the standard, the use of tools like Splice, and sounds on the platform by country producers like Nathan Chapman, is more widespread. It’s a move that’s played a pivotal role in his own creative process, with singles like Lambert’s “Country Money” from her 2022 CMT-nomated album, Palomino spawned from one of the platform’s many samples. “That was made in the heart of the pandemic, that was October 2020 and it was easily the most exciting session I had all year,” he explained. “I was just like, this is a funky, quirky ass song and I found those little dialogue samples on Splice and it kind of gave it that throwback feeling.”
Often, tools like the platform’s AI-powered Create feature blend seamlessly with more analog approaches. “It’s cool that there’s a function that basically allows you to just shuffle the deck and deliver an instant vibe that’s one of one,” Reaves said of the feature, which lets producers automatically generate unique loops based on the platform’s extensive library. Producers can then mix and match different tempos and keys, and quickly export the stack to build on top of it. “It’s just another means to get inspired. For us country guys, you had some splice loops before that were vaguely country but this is a really cool new sandbox.”
