From R.E.M. to Cleveland Christmas Songs: The Many Musical Lives of Don Dixon

You might recognize Don Dixon from his production work with the Smithereens, or his team-up with Mitch Easter in producing R.E.M.'s early records, Reckoning and Murmur. Maybe you've caught him on tour with Mary Chapin Carpenter, experienced his band Arrogance in the '70s, or witnessed his performances in the Cleveland holiday supergroup Ohio City Singers.

Both Dixon and Marti Jones, his wife and musical collaborator, are based in Canton, not far from where Jones grew up in Uniontown, Ohio.

We caught up with Dixon to hear more about his music work and his important role in R.E.M. history, along with the story of how he met Jones and moved to Northeast Ohio, in an episode of The CLE Connection, Cleveland Magazine’s podcast that takes a look at Cleveland’s surprising ties to major pop culture moments. 

Cleveland Magazine: "You became a Northeast Ohioan when you and Marti moved to Canton, and obviously when you guys met and just connected with music, I'd love to hear more about that story and and how you relocated to Ohio."

Don Dixon: "Marti is from Ohio. She's from Uniontown, a little town just south of Akron. And she was in a band called Color Me Gone, which had been signed was created by some guys from the Akron scene. They were signed to A&M, and I got called because they weren't they were making an EP for A&M and they weren't crazy about everything and wanted to re-record some stuff. So they called me up, and I came up on New Year's Day of 1984, and stayed in some funky-ass little hotel there in Akron, and and we worked on some songs. And I listened, but I told them, 'You're really crazy to be re-recording these songs. They sound really good; go work on new songs. I don't want I don't want to really mess with re-recording these songs. You've already spent all this time and this money on these six songs or whatever it was. Just move on.' And they didn't want to hear that. I think Ed Stasium or another guy came in and redid some songs with them. But anyway, that's where I met Marti. So I met her on New Year's Day, 1984, working with Color Me Gone.

"She just she was never really 100% sold on that band. I mean, they had some conflicts, and they were on tour, and they had some blow-ups. And she said, 'I'm not putting up with this anymore.' I think they were actually in Athens, Georgia, when she asked her parents to wire her money to take a bus back home from Athens. So she broke up with this band. I was going to go see them and talk about the new album the very next day. They were going to play in Greensboro, North Carolina. I lived in Chapel Hill at the time, so this was sometime in '84, and they didn't show up. And somebody said, 'Oh, Marti has a sore throat.'

"I wrote her a note, and I said, 'Well, I'm sorry you quit the band, but you can do something without the band.' Then, a few months later, I was meeting with some A&M people that knew her and knew that I had met her, and they really still liked her, but they were going to drop the band, but they wanted to keep her, but they didn't kind of know what to do with her because she wasn't really a writer. I said, 'Well, that's not a problem. I know a lot of good writers; we'll make modern Linda Ronstadt records, so that we just have great songs. We can pick from the entire world of great songs.' And they said, 'Oh, OK.' So they gave us a little budget, and we went in and did some songs, and that's how we met and became really good friends, and then that turned into a relationship, for better or worse. I think better, as it turns out; we've actually been married now for 38 years. But we just met because of Color Me Gone and me producing her, and then we became friends through working together, and then we ruined it all by falling in love.

"I was recently divorced, and she was living here in Canton, and I was just I needed a place to put my stuff. Compared to so many places, Canton was giving houses away to people, especially in 1987, that's when I bought the house. We never expected to stay here. We had a place in L.A. We didn't expect to live here forever. But it just turned out to be a great place to live. I love it here, and I made really good friends, like with Chris Allen and and all The Ohio City Singers folks, and I'm still back in North Carolina a lot. Mitch (Easter) and I are still very close."

Hear more from Dixon in our podcast, which is streaming on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and more.

Listen to more episodes of The CLE Connection:

• Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Gets its Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

• Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears' Very-Cleveland Origin Stories

• Bad Luck Brian and Chicken Salad: What It's Like to Go Viral in Northeast Ohio

• How Howard The Duck Became Marvel’s Cleveland-Based Comic Book Character

• This Cleveland Vocalist Sings on the World’s Biggest Stages

• From "30 Rock" to "Ted Lasso," Jack Burditt Brings Cleveland Roots to Major TV Shows

• An Ancient Boar, a Viral Meme and a Cleveland Museum of Art Mystery

For more updates about Cleveland, sign up for our Cleveland Magazine Daily newsletter, delivered to your inbox six times a week.

Cleveland Magazine is also available in print, featuring immersive stories, helpful guides and beautiful photography and design.