For someone who has worked on as many records as you have, I was surprised to find that there weren't any previous interviews with you.
Yeah, I've managed to stay under the radar. I don't have a website, you can't find my email online. I have no manager, and I'm not a member of organizations or social media. So I'm a little bit hard to find. People usually just get my email from someone else that's worked with me. It's all word-of-mouth.
How do you deal with the ups and downs of the freelance lifestyle?
Sometimes it's all or none. You just take it when you can get it. Sometimes it'll be two weeks in a row without a day off. Sometimes it's a month with nothing going on. But I enjoy my time off. I'm not a workaholic; I don't go insane when I'm not working. And when I have to work hard for a long stretch I can still do it. Now that I'm in my early sixties, it's not as easy as it was to do all those long days in a row as when I was 25 — but not impossible.
What got you interested in recording?
My father worked for RCA designing tubes. So we had all kinds of gear in the house, including a good stereo and an old tape recorder. I was fascinated by those. I remember my fifth birthday party, all the kids would come over and we'd record ourselves into the tape recorder. It's a toy I've played with since... forever. I always had an interest in it. I remember watching TV and there'd be a scene from a recording session. I'd think, "I want to do that." In high school I had a rock band and I was the guy with the tape recorder. The recordings always sounded pretty good. At least I had good levels and had an interest in doing it right. Then the same thing in college: I got into playing jazz piano in some groups. We gigged in bars a couple of nights a week and played what I called "dollar jazz," because that's what it cost people to hear us. We were playing a lot of blues and CTI [Creed Taylor Incorporated] tunes, some modal stuff. I wasn't really that versatile with the changes, but we played a bunch of standards too. But I always had the tape recorder and would record our gigs.
What were you using at that time?
As a kid I had a Sony tape recorder and just the two mics that came with it. And then I had a Teac Tascam 1/4-inch, 2-track and later a 4-track. We didn't have mics, so I'd borrow a couple of [Shure] SM57s from somebody. Nothing fancy. I ended up going to UW Madison to study communications. I figured at least it was something involved with media. I took radio production and electronic music composition. I was always splicing tape and using tape recorders and I got good at it. But nobody could tell me how to do this professionally. You know, "You gotta know somebody."
There wasn't as much information available back then.
No. The schools were just cropping up. When I graduated college in '75 I hung out in Madison for a while and worked in listener-sponsored radio. Eventually I moved back to New York and enrolled at Institute of Audio Research, which was just starting up. That's kind of how I learned a little of the technical end... at least enough to talk my way into an assistant's gig.
You ended up here [Power Station/ Avatar] assisting, right?
I had one other job before this. My teacher, Jim Jordan, at IAR worked at Big Apple Studios in SoHo. He got me hired as a part-time assistant. I was making $3 an hour, still living at my parents' place in New Jersey. I would drive into the city and between gas, tolls, and parking I definitely lost money. I have a photocopy of the first check I got for a nine-hour session for $27. It was pretty exciting. I had a great intro to the business. My first week in the studio I was the assistant on Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach mix. They were also doing a lot of punk sessions there. I learned from these guys how to set up mics. It's the kind of gig you learn by doing and watching. Then I got introduced to this place through a good buddy of mine from UW Madison who was friends with Iven Walters, the son of Bob Walters, who started this place with Tony Bongiovi. Those guys came from Media Sound and opened Power Station in '77. I saw this place and I said, "Wow, this is the real deal." Neve console, big room. It was unbelievable. So I would come here and hang out with Iven as much as I could. Eventually an opening developed because they built Studio B and needed another full-time assistant.
How long did you assist at Power Station?
I was an assistant for only about a year. I barely knew what I was doing, but I had a good sense of balance in music and learned really fast. I had such good training from the engineers here: Tony Bongiovi, Bob Clearmountain, Neil Dorfsman, and Scott Litt [Tape Op #81]. I worked on a couple of big records: Bruce Springsteen's The River, Graham Parker's The Up Escalator, and Blondie's Eat to the Beat. I got promoted to staff engineer when Studio C opened, so I only had to assist for a year. These days, you better plan on five years before you get anywhere in a studio, although many people don't even go that route anymore. They just work for themselves and figure it out. Then around 1984 — I had been on staff here for 6 years — I got a call from the studio manager. She said, "Mick Jagger is making a solo record with Nile Rogers, but the staff engineer and Mick aren't seeing eye-to-eye. He requested a replacement and you're the only one available. So you're starting on Mick Jagger's record tomorrow." That's the way things used to work. Nile and I ended up having this great rapport, and I continued working with him for the next three years. That was sort of like going to graduate school. Tons of overdubs and punching; I got to be very precise with that. We made 12 or 15 records together, mostly R&B and pop, including Thompson Twins' Here's To Future Days, Grace Jones' Inside Story, and Nile's second record B-Movie Matinee.
You also engineered a lot of Haitian music in the early '80s, right?
Yeah, there were a ton of these Haitian "compas" records being recorded at Power Station. I started assisting a producer named Fred Paul on some of those and we got along great. Nobody else was into it here. It was a little bit like a chore. "Oh, we have to do those sessions." But I really liked the music and those guys, and Fred started requesting me as the engineer. Bands would come from Miami, Montreal, Boston, and Brooklyn — wherever there were big Haitian communities. We'd do an album a week. Maybe a couple hundred in two years.
What did that involve, as far as instrumentation and setup?
Everybody played live. It was two electric guitars, Rhodes and/or piano, drums, two percussionists, horn section, background vocals, and lead vocal. It was amazing training. They were always night sessions: it would start at 7 or 8 p.m. and go until around 4 in the morning. Everybody was speaking in Creole. A lot of people hanging out; like a party scene. We'd do everything live, but then we'd overdub and replace better performances of certain things. The formula was: Monday for basics, Tuesday replace the horns, Wednesday replace the background vocals, Thursday the lead vocals, and Friday we'd mix. We'd rehearse the mix old school; a couple people had their hands on the faders. I wrote down numbers where things happened and tried to memorize everything. It was all tape, so we'd leave the 2-track running and if we made a mistake we would just rewind the multitrack, let the 2-track run, and then edit the 2-track together when we were done. I listen back to those records and feel like I couldn't improve upon them now — in fact, I'd probably make them worse. They were done so instinctively, yet they really defined a sound of a genre of music. The producer, Fred, took me down to Haiti in 1982. He said, "I'm taking the band down and we're gonna play a week of gigs. Why don't you come down and do live sound? You don't have to do much: set it and forget it, go to the bar. But you'll get to see Haiti." It's good that I went with supervision because it's a wild place! But the radio was on down there, and 75% of the albums on the radio in Haiti I had recorded here.
Were you also working on jazz records at that point, or did that come later?
Some. I'd be setting up for disco horn sessions, and who's in the horn section? Michael Brecker, Jon Faddis, and Randy Brecker. It was all New York jazz players. Mike Mainieri, the vibes player, was producing records here and I was assisting on some of those. So I met all these guys and talked to them about music all the time. It's great when musicians start talking about classic jazz recordings and you can join in on the conversation. I knew the history of the music and all the classic records. Sharing that history really helps. I can't play on their level, but just having some understanding of what it takes goes a long way. So in the early '80s, when it came time for [the group] Steps Ahead to make a studio recording here, they came up to me and said, "Listen, we know that you're the guy on the staff who really loves jazz, and we want to give you a shot at recording this record." That kind of put me on the map for jazz.
I found a radio interview you did with pianist Bill Evans when you were just out of college. It was obvious that you were a big jazz fan, even then.
Oh, totally. Jazz is what I listened to at home — that's what I played and what I loved. Engineering-wise, I'm a huge fan of the early stereo records: late '50s, early '60s. I love the sound of early stereo Rudy Van Gelder recordings, with the drums in mono on the right speaker. There were no pan pots — just left, center, right. I also love Fred Plaut's Columbia 30th Street recordings, where you really sense each of the band members positioned on a stage.
Do you still draw on those in your engineering approach?
Well, I'm always working for someone, so I want the record to reflect what they're into. A lot of piano players hate that mono Rudy piano sound; they want a big, expensive stereo piano sound. Also, if the music is complex, and we need isolation for editing, that hard-panned mono approach doesn't work because you don't have leakage. The leakage is what defines the room and allows the hard-panned instruments to sound less detached from each other. So, in that case, I'll usually have stereo piano and stereo drums overlapping. That tends to be a bigger, more homogenous sound. But if everyone's in the same room, I'll set the musicians up to reflect the imaging I want in the final mix. If it's a good-sounding room, I'll also have a stereo pickup that I can add to the close mics. Maybe a Decca Tree with three omnidirectional mics; maybe an X/Y pair, or maybe an ORTF [Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française] pair facing the wall. I usually don't have a lot of inputs left to do anything too elaborate. And depending on how much individual fixing you need to do, you might be limited as to how much you can use the room mics. When I do recordings at clubs like The Village Vanguard, I'll always have a stereo mic right in front of the stage — hanging down overhead, capturing the natural image and balance. It might be an X/Y, or it might be an M/S [mid/side]. And I'll always have a stereo pair of omni mics back in the room, just capturing the air of the room and the audience. The combination of those two things will add a lot of the depth in the recording.
How do you deal with setup and monitoring in a small club like the Vanguard?
Normally that is preamp, to converter, to Pro Tools, no processing. Monitoring is done on earphones. It requires a lot of pre-planning because you've got to plan the load-in, the running of the cables, and the backend setup. Then there's setting up the stage, which is tricky because it's a concert for the people in the club. You can't destroy that just for the sake of the recording. You know, you can't start putting up baffles or something like that — I'd never do it. So you've really got to figure out how to make what they're presenting to the audience work for your recording. Then you get a short sound check and you're rolling.
How long do you allot for setup on a studio recording date?
If we're not doing takes within an hour of the musicians arriving at the studio, something's wrong. That includes a big band, anything. I go fast, but that comes with experience and working with excellent players. It's never a few hours of experimentation. The guys come in and they want to play. I'll usually come an hour before a small group session. I'll go right into the control room and I'll do my setup in there. As the musicians are arriving, I'll start mic'ing them and fine-tuning where things are placed. I do a lot of pre-planning. I'll send in a very detailed setup to the studio. A studio diagram, complete mic input list, what preamps I'm using, comments about inserts if I'm using a compressor, all the patches, where the reverb is going to return and send from. If there are two [Neumann] U 47s and I need one of them, I'll specify "#1," "the shiny one," or "the matte one." If I'm recording here at Avatar, and I want to use RCA 77s on a big band trumpet section, I'll say, "I want #6 on Trumpet 4, and #1, 4, and 5 on the other three trumpets." I just know which mics have certain characteristics and which ones are going to work. All that goes into the setup notes. When I show up, the assistant is really prepared. If the piano isn't where I drew it, I'll take him or her aside and say, "Listen, this drawing is designed for a very specific sightline to that booth over there. You really have to pay attention to this next time because it's not an arbitrary drawing." I leave nothing to chance. I ask so many questions before a session, to the point where sometimes I'm annoying people. I really try to get all my questions answered. "How many toms in the kit? How many snares? How many amps does the guitar player have? Acoustic guitar, as well as electric?" The worst thing to me is coming in, with everything perfectly planned, and all of a sudden the drummer is adding a tom and I have it to put the channel all the way down at the end of the console, and it's not near the rest of the drum mics. That drives me nuts. [laughs] If I don't know all the players, I'll also have all the musicians' names on the input list. That way, if the assistant or I have to talk to them, we can address people by name. The better relationship you can have with the players, the more comfortable you can make them feel, the better they're going to play, and the better what I do is going to sound.
Do you find yourself sometimes taking on more of a producer-like role?
The lines all get blurred when it's just the artist and the engineer. Often I'm the only one in the control room, and the artist is the producer. In those situations, I might have to help with producer-type things. I would never make suggestions to anybody about what to play or anything, but if I like a take, I will say so. But I will only do so with people who I've been working with a long time, who trust me enough to know that if I say that, that it's something that they would want to hear from me. If I'm working with someone for the first time, I probably want to build up a certain amount of trust before I start interjecting on that kind of thing. Working groups, like Brad [Mehldau]'s trio, have often been playing their music in concert, and they come into the studio prepared. They know each other so well that takes happen very quickly. Brad will rarely do more than two takes of a song. We'll record 15 to 20 songs in a day sometimes.
Do you also encounter the other end of the spectrum more these days, such as take-splicing, mistake-fixing, and so on?
Yeah, people are a little less likely to accept a rough edge. In the old days, there were always rough edges. Sometimes a little valley in the performance will help to give the peak its impact. But some people like to do a lot of takes because they'll develop something over the course of playing it. When you have a lot of musicians playing a song together, maybe there's a horn player who, the more he played it, really got to some places he wanted to get. But maybe by that eighth take, the rhythm section sounds a little tired. To find that place where it's the right take for everybody — giving some preference to the leader whose record it is — that's a magical choice.
How do you deal with the variety of monitoring setups you encounter as a freelance engineer? Do you ever bring your own speakers?
I don't own any gear, which is unusual. I'm lucky enough to work at places that have enough gear to make a record. No matter where I go, I'll figure out a way to make a record with what they have. The speakers, however, are the one thing that I prefer to keep somewhat constant. I'll try and persuade people that, to get what they expect of me, they're better off in a place that I know well. If I'm working at Studio A or C at Avatar, I'll use ProAcs, and I know which amp in the control room that I'll hook them up to. I know that I can work that way and take something to mastering that I can cut flat. At Sear Sound they have Genelecs, and I have certain settings on the back that work. I have a different setting for Studio A and Studio C, and I know that with those settings I can trust what I'm hearing. If I go somewhere that doesn't have monitors I know, then I'll have the client rent a pair of ProAcs and do my best to figure out the room. I'll go in a little early and listen to albums I've recorded for 15 or 20 minutes. I'll say, "Okay, this control room is a little boomy, so I better have the bass sounding big, otherwise it's going to be thin at home." Or, "This control room sounds bright, so I better make sure I really have those cymbals featured in the mix and not too much low resonance, otherwise I'm going to have a dark record when I get home." You try to learn the control room in 15 minutes and take your best guess. I might depend on the mastering engineer a little bit, in those cases.
