After graduating high school in Huntington Beach, California Altman attended college at UC Santa Barbara, for a major in business and a minor in music. He left UC Santa Barbara before finishing his degree to attend the Grove School of Music in Los Angeles. After finishing at Grove, he went on to perform a series of odd and side jobs such pizza delivery, waiter, and swim teacher while also working for free as a music programmer. Eventually he started a recording career with a studio as a second engineer. When that studio went out of business, he borrowed money to set up his own small recording studio in Hollywood. While running his own studio he did work writing software, which then lead to software work with Capitol/EMI. He quit his studio and left for a job at Capitol, working in sales and eventually moving to the A&R department as a scout. During this time he formed a band called Farmer in 1995 that was signed by Aware Records and later released an eponymous album in 1997. While on the road touring with Farmer he served as an A&R scout for Capitol, while also listening to demo submissions. One of those submissions was for the artist Citizen Cope, which he helped develop and was able to get signed a record deal to Capitol. Following the signing, Altman was awarded with an executive A&R job. He quit his band and focused on A&R, keeping the career for ten years. During this time he moved from Capitol Records, to Hollywood Records and to finally Columbia Records where he principally A&R'd Katy Perry & OneRepublic.
Record Producer
During his last years as an A&R executive at Columbia, he also began actively working as a record producer. Some of his early work includes producing Marc Broussard's first two albums, Momentary Setback and Carencro, as well as an album for the band Jupiter Sunrise. He eventually left Columbia to pursue being a full-time record producer in 2005, starting the Galt Line Music label and a studio in Burbank, California. During the production of Todd Carey's album Watching Waiting he was introduced to engineerEric Robinson by Carey, and Altman and Robinson would continue a working partnership at the Galt Line for years afterward. At the Galt Line he would go on to produce for a variety of artists, achieving commercial success with albums such as Kate Voegele'sDon't Look Away and Matt Nathanson'sSome Mad Hope. His other producer credits include albums for: Bethany Dillon, Natasha Bedingfield, Gabe Dixon, Walker Hayes, Rosi Golan, Adema, Matt Wertz, Trevor Hall, Caitlin Crosby, Kimberly Caldwell, and Tom Morello and others. Marshall founded the label Galt Line Music in 2007, and its first release, the eponymous album by Curtis Peoples, came out in August 2008. In 2010, Altman had a top 10 hit in the UK of his co-write "Parachute" with Ingrid Michaelson for British pop singer Cheryl Cole's debut solo album 3 Words which went #1 in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Marshall also co-wrote Jessie James' 2011 single "When You Say My Name." Altman produced and co-wrote select tracks from Amy Grant's 2013 album How Mercy Looks from Here, co-produced and was a co-writer on Frankie Ballard's 2014 album Sunshine & Whiskey, and co-produced Eric Paslay's 2014 debut album Eric Paslay. He was sole producer on Ballard's following album, El Río, which was released on June 10, 2016.
