Hot Producer: Butch Walker

I started playing in clubs when I was fifteen," says Butch Walker. "But no matter what I did, all I wanted was to be in the studio. Even when I was getting drunk and sleeping with different bar sluts every night, I couldn't get the sex part right because I kept yelling, 'Cut! Let's try that again.' "

Nearly two decades later, Walker is happily married, but the power-pop maestro hasn't lost his studio jones -- and it's finally starting to pay off. During the past two years, his focused, punchy sound has made him the go-to guy for artists looking for help honing their songs. He's logged producing, mixing or writing credits on albums by Avril Lavigne, Simple Plan, Bowling for Soup, Sevendust, American Hi-Fi, Midtown and, most recently, the Donnas. And the other day, Shakira's people called.

"My butt is starting to hurt from sitting in a control room for two years straight," says the Atlanta-based thirty-three-year-old. It's a strange position for Walker, who always meant to devote his life to his own music. He had been slogging away at it for years when, in 1999, his band Marvelous 3 scored a Top Five modern-rock hit with "Freak of the Week." But their follow-up album fizzled, and the band broke up.

Ideally, Walker would like to split his time between his own music and other people's. He'll be releasing his second solo album in August and is currently on tour with American Hi-Fi. "I think I dug myself into a hole by being a recording artist my whole life and then everyone wanting me to produce, and I didn't want to give either one up," he says. "The minute my ego starts getting too big from being onstage, I can go in a studio and be humbled by having it be about somebody else for a while."

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