John Piette is an old-school kind of guy.

When walking into the mixing room of Extreme Recording Productions in the basement of his Warrenton home with Piette, there is a notable absence of a computer monitor.

Anywhere.

Wires from nearly every color of the visible spectrum abound. There's a hard drive, a vintage mixing board, there's this, there's that, but no computer screen.

"One of the biggest things as an old-school guy is the clarity of this hard drive recorder is unbelievable," said Piette, discussing a 24-track digital recorder that he can read without a PC or a Mac. "But the main thing is it has the feel of the human playing it."

From bad-boy rocker George Thorogood to country star Trisha Yearwood, Piette's worked with legions of famous artists throughout his 30-plus years in the music industry.

"One of the best things record companies like about me is that I love them: Christian, big band, heavy metal, thrash. I can do it all. I love it," said Piette.

His roots, however, brought him back to Warrenton to raise a family and record music after 12 years on the road throughout the 1980s and '90s.

Now, he works from home with ERP president Allen Moore, who he met while both attended Fauquier High School in the early 1970s.

Last week in his brand new studio that opened earlier this month, Piette talked about his own history in the business while explaining what bands that want to work with him now need to know now.

With a cigarette burning in his left hand, the bespectacled Piette crossed his right sandaled foot over his left ankle and waved his right arm as he talked about writing over 300 songs in his career, some of which have been used by other artists.

Piette did not let go of the rights to all of his songs though and it once cost him dearly. He opted out from releasing two tracks for the band Foreigner to use when they recorded the album that featured the smash hit I Want to Know What Love Is.

"I didn't understand the business that if my song's on the record, it doesn't even matter if my song's heard by you. I get the same amount of money as the guy that wrote the hit. I didn't know that," said Piette.

With his Warrenton-based band August, the guitarist Piette nationally toured and released a handful of records after landing an independent label contract associated with Atlantic Records. Something he found out along the way is some of the studio engineers he encountered were not musicians in their own right.

"If you're having trouble on a song, [that engineer] can't go out there and help you," said Moore, who played a 1960 Gibson Melody Maker guitar when jamming Piette in high school. Both graduated FHS in 1973.

Working with Piette is different, at least to one of his clients.

"There's a hands-on mixing that he's doing," said Kay Finnerty of the Manassas-based band Music Box.

"Our job is not to make a lot of money off that. My job is if someone hires us to make a CD, I'm going to give them the best CD like if I was in New York, D.C. or Nashville, right here. I'll give them the same attention I've given the big names," said Piette.

One of the ways he does that is by taking advice from legends that have crossed his path such as David Crosby.

According to Piette, the partial namesake of Crosby, Stills and Nash told him about five or six years ago trashed an all-digital recording he was making.

"It sounded like I never took a breath," Piette said Crosby told him.

For singers like like Finnerty, that is one of the advantages of working with Piette, who she describes as "patient," on analog: it captures the moment.

"From a vocalist's standpoint, you express emotion in your singing and you want that to come through. If you can get that to come through, all the better, and it becomes more intimate for the listener," she said.