How does the bassist for Rilo Kiley end up owning a studio?
It's that common story of the guy who always tinkered with a 4-track and all that stuff. I was always that guy. Blake from Rilo Kiley and I are old friends from middle school. We kind of inspired each other from the beginning in recording. I was always tinkering and helped him get his first recorder. We'd write songs and record. He lived up in L.A. and I was in San Diego for a while, so I recorded bands there. That's how it started with Rilo Kiley. Blake and I had always fantasized about making a band. He met Jenny [Lewis], and they were playing some coffeehouses and stuff. I'd always come by and visit. I'd record them and play bass on it or whatever. Then Blake and I recorded our first record in our house. I always recorded little bits of every record going forward. It was always a fun thing and my dream to possibly own a studio someday. The opportunity came up about six years or so ago. I've done it ever since.
What led to this being connected to Kingsize Soundlabs?
Dave Trumfio is a friend. I originally partnered in here with Kenny Woods, and then he became a little less involved. I asked Dave (who I recorded my solo record with at Kingsize) if he'd be interested in partnering in. Dave loves a good studio opportunity, so he was in, and it's been great. It was also in conjunction with my friend Curt Anderson, who's my real gear partner. He's one of these treasure troves of loving gear and collecting it. Lots of odds and ends are his. This board is his.
The history of that's crazy, right? JJ Cale's console and tape deck — from when?
'72 is the lore. I've tried to track down what was recorded on it. We finally drummed up a picture of JJ Cale's engineer here in the Valley from like '75. The picture I have doesn't reveal anything about the space. You see the engineer's face, a little bit of the tape machine, and a little bit of this board.
That's crazy. It's Auditronics 501. They were building them in Memphis, and some of the early ones were out of Spectrasonics parts.
Totally, yeah. We've been tinkering with this and getting it in the best shape it's been in. We pulled all the modules to try to figure out. Most are all originals. Some of these have 301 pres, and others have modifications that came later. It's kind of a mix on these, and I'm not quite sure which the Spectrasonics stuff is.
When you and Blake recorded the first Rilo Kiley record [Take Offs and Landings], where'd you do that?
At our house, at a place in Echo Park.
You had enough room to do drums and stuff?
Yeah. We had a living room, a little weird office thing for a control room. We both had these [Tascam] 688 cassette recorders, those crazy, over-built 8-track cassette things. Some of the first stuff that we did was all on those. We eventually got a MOTU. We got some mics and just did it.
Did you mix at home?
Yeah, I mixed most of it and Blake mixed a song or two.
Then on the next records, you ended up working with other engineers at other studios?
Yeah, for sure. Before Take Offs and Landings there was an EP where we did go into a real studio for some of it. The EP was done half at home and half in studios. We did Sound City, Cello (it had just turned to Cello, in the Pet Sounds room). The ones in the "the studio" we did with Dave Schiffman. We had also done some other demos even earlier at a studio called The Sandbox. Anyway, the next record after Take Offs we recorded with Mike Mogis. We did two records with him in Lincoln, Nebraksa.
At the original studio he had there?
Yeah.
How'd you guys settle on Mike?
That was all through Saddle Creek friends. We did a tour with The Good Life and met Tim Kasher and Conor [Oberst] and all those people. We were like, "All right, let's make a record with Mike." We drove out there one weekend and spent six weeks plus. He's always had great ears and a great space to record in. That place at Presto was a great room, too. It had all sorts of stuff. He was always interested in trying new gear. He'd get new toys in the mail and set it up for us to try out. My experience with his production style for us, and I'd assume with other people, is that he'd take what you did and slather it with all of his own stuff, like awesome pedal steel. He'd play on it, he'd add his instrumentation to create a sound which was cool.
You said you were also working on bits and pieces of records along the way too.
Yeah, I'd always kind of be a second recording guy in those situations. I'd do a lot of vocals with Jenny and stuff like that. Blake's a proficient recordist as well. We always had B rooms, so we'd make use of that and do stuff at the same time. All of us knew a little about what we're doing and it enabled us to accomplish a lot more.
What was the history of this space?
Yeah, like I said, I had an opportunity to partner in with Kenny Woods. I brought my collection of home studio stuff. I'd done half my record at home and had been amassing stuff. We joined forces, and I came in with all this enthusiasm. It was just this back room then.
To clarify, this is a rehearsal studio, and you moved in to the back room at the end of the hall.
Yeah. This is the only proper, built-out studio here.
So you had a band right next to you, which is now your lounge.
Whoa.
Luckily, thanks to the neighboring business, no one was allowed to practice until after 6 p.m. It was troublesome, but not too much. I came in there with fresh eyes and wanted to get the neighboring room as soon as it became available. We asked/bribed that band to move to another room that became available, and then another room became available and we moved them out of there. I got Dave Pearlman [Pearlman Microphones] to move into that room. He was building his mics there for a long time. As rooms became available, I'd gobble them up and get like-minded people in there.
So someone else owns and runs this space? You're just leasing all these spaces?
I just kind of facilitate. Our landlord has been super cool about letting me bring these people in and change the whole demographic. He's used to rock bands or whatever, but rock bands are super fickle, they can't pay the rent, and so we've been selling it as stability. "You'll have all these professional, dependable people, you won't get complaints from the neighbors, etc." He's been super cool in letting us transform the place into what it is now. He recently worked with us to help relocate the very last band, so now the whole building is exclusively a recording and production facility. We even have an in-house mastering room now.
That's awesome.
I'm excited. It's a very triumphant moment.
It's kind of hearkening back to the old studio model of people in separate rooms working on stuff and bumping in to each other in the hallways. Like Aaron Espinoza, Rob Schnapf and Kingsize have the spaces in Eagle Rock.
Totally. There's like a rock block, and then there's an adjacent building where Mark Chalecki has his mastering studio. It's a bunch of people wandering around making music. It's a cool community. I'm glad that this place is turning into something like that as well.
What projects have happened in here so far?
I did the most of the Jenny & Johnny record. Mike Mogis did a few songs as well.
I bought it on iTunes, so I didn't get to read any credits.
That was super fun. I did Johnathan Rice's record. The first and second Big Harp records from Saddle Creek. They're super awesom. Ben Harper did a record in here, I did a single with Vampire Weekend, I did some of Ben Gibbard's solo record [Former Lives], Death Cab For Cutie came in separately and did a week of stuff for their last full record [Codes and Keys]. All the She & Him stuff we haven't really done here, because I only have a 16-track and they always want 24. We did some overdubs here though. I had Jim Keltner come in and do some stuff. He's an old friend of JJ Cale's. He loved it.
He was probably happy to see the old stuff still being used.
Totally.
It must be insane recording someone like Keltner, a guy with that level of chops?
Yeah, it's all of that. You become neutral and professional. Especially for the kind of stuff we were doing, like this last She & Him record that we did, Classics. I did it at the other Kingsize. We had a 20 piece orchestra with Jim. The thing Matt [Ward] was referencing was like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. I delved in and Wes Dooley was awesome, giving me his whole ribbon mic collection. The orchestra was just eight mics total, the majority of things coming from three [RCA] 44s against the wall. There was Keltner and Zooey [Deschanel] in their rooms but with the doors open. It was just all kinds of great sound bleeding. For that, it's amazing to see a pro like that interact and be both confident and humble.
Playing to the song.
Yeah. Clear idea, a real pro, and a real awesome guy.
So that was Matt's idea to get an old-school, live on the floor record?
Yeah. He sent me a couple of references and asked me how we could do it. I thought it was awesome, because I've always wanted to have the ability to have an orchestra and do all that stuff in a live room. I really sunk my teeth into it and researched how they did it in the old days. There was that connection with AEA Microphones, so I wrote them and told them I was doing this. Sammy [Rothman] responded and had heard about it through She & Him's management. Anyway, Wes was super on-board to do it with all ribbons, minimal mic'ing, and they got really excited about it. It also gave me a lot of lead time to plan out. It was really fun to tinker and let the ideas evolve. I went to AEA and Wes not only gave me tons of R84s, but the original ones [meaning the first ones Wes made] and his actual RCA 44s, his Model A, personal collection, and the KU4 - a reproduction of this other RCA mic that was a cardioid with all these chambers in the bottom. It's a super stage ribbon mic. Anyway, it was perfect. I had this vision, this plot, we set everything up with the orchestra, just a couple of mics close to Jim, but we never really used them, just the overhead and front. For Zooey, I had a 44 out here and a [Neumann] U87 kind of Ella Fitzgerald style. She'd [Ella] actually do a 47 and a 77, or some ribbon and a condenser. Whatever. It all just turned out great. It was one of those things where I set some preliminary levels and when it went, when they hit the first string, it was almost perfect. It was kind of ridiculous.
That's crazy. How many channels were being recorded?
It was 24-track tape, but let's see. There were only eight in the orchestra. Three across. Left, right, and center: a 44, a 44, and then the KU4. For each section... there was first violin, second violin, cellos, and stand-up bass. Each one of those had a single R84 over it. On the stand-up bass's, I had one spot mic on each. But that was it. Then a stereo overhead ribbon, the R88A over the drums. In front I had a 47. Then there were a couple spot mics. Between all that, it was only 14 or 15, maybe 16 tracks for basics.
That's crazy. So live on the floor, you're getting a lot of stuff on those first takes.
Yeah. It was the whole thing, including a live lead vocal. Very little overdubbing on the orchestral tracks.
This is at Kingsize? How big is that studio?
Yeah. The tracking room is about that same size as the one here at Kingsize North. I'd guess around 700 square feet. This one has the interesting chunk out for the stairs, which that doesn't have, and ceiling is a little higher here. I really plotted it out and had to convince everyone we could do it there. It worked out great.
How many days were you tracking like that? With that many people, it's going to be expensive.
It was only one full orchestra day. There was another day or two with just Jim and a different stand-up bass player, as well as Matt and Zooey.
More intimate songs or something?
Yeah. I think we did five full orchestra. Something like that.
Did you continue to do all the recording on that record?
