Can you tell me a little bit about your early interest in music?
I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. The government was doing an experiment on our school system to try to integrate the schools, and they had a magnet school program. In middle school I went to a performing arts magnet called Kansas City Middle School of the Performing Arts, KCMSA. I'm dyslexic, and I always struggled in school. I did just about everything I could to get out of doing anything academic. I took classical guitar, was in an orchestra playing upright bass, played in the jazz band, and took recording studio class – all at a pretty young age. KCMSA had a Tascam 388, so that was what I learned on. It was there I met my still best friend, Jake Blanton, who's a great musician.
What music were you listening to?
Jake and I were both obsessed with The Beatles. This is before they released all the CDs in the '90s, so nobody in our class really knew who The Beatles were. Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer were popular. I guess I didn't totally realize that there were different generations of music. I'd go to school and they'd be like, "Check out Vanilla Ice!" And I'd say, "Check out The Beatles!" They'd say, "What are you talking about?"
Where were you getting information on The Beatles?
Those were the records that my parents had in the basement. Oldies 95 FM [KCMO] was my station. From a young age it was Motown, The Beatles, '70s rock, and music like that.
What do you think was the attraction for you?
You know, it's hard to say. Now I think, from the perspective of where I'm sitting now, I could rattle off, "Oh, it was a live band, or it's tape, or the recording process was different." It was just a connection to the music. It sounded good, and made me feel good.
At what point did you start dissecting it from a production and recording angle?
I think it was when Jake and I discovered the early Paul McCartney records and realized that he did everything himself. When we got access to the 388 it was mind-blowing. Jake was really good at playing all the instruments. I always tried to do that, but couldn't do it as well. The school would let us take the machine home over the summer, and that's when we started writing and recording our own music.
Did you have anyone to show you the recording ropes?
We were really lost. Kansas City, at the time, was not a very hip town. We had something like a [DigiTech GSP21] Legend effects processor, and were like, "What is this thing, and why does everything sound like shit?" We did recordings on the 388 with about three mics. We'd tape one mic to the ceiling so it was hanging down, like a little mono overhead, and then another one on the kick drum with a pillow in it. When we were a little bit older we got some money together to go record at a studio in Kansas City that we knew. We recorded to [Tascam] DA-88s through a pro Tascam console. I don't know how many mics the guys put up on the drums, but we did this whole recording and it was like, "Wow, this is terrible." I think that's when it finally snapped for me. There was something that we were doing before that worked better for what we were trying to do.
That's advanced thinking for that age.
Yeah, exactly. I think that's been something that's kind of followed me along.
You started your music career as a bass player.
I started young, working as an acoustic jazz bass player in Kansas City. I went down about a ten year "jazz guy" road where I didn't want to play electric bass. I wanted to play swing. I went to CalArts and studied with Charlie Haden, moved to New York for a short while trying to do the jazz thing, and then came back out here and decided I wanted to transition into a different style of music. At that time in jazz everybody was trying to be the more mathematical player. Play faster, play louder, make it more complicated, and write compositions that nobody can play or listen to. I got so burnt out. Even the jazz, I like it simple; the '50s and early-'60s. When it gets to the mid-'60s, jazz starts to lose me a little bit. I was out here trying to get a gig on bass. I had studied at CalArts with a couple different people who were trying to get me to play five and six string basses. One guy was trying to teach me how to comp and tap on six-string bass. At the time, I was listening to records like The Headhunters, Tower of Power, Chicago, Motown, and of course The Beatles. I bought this horrible six-string bass, and thought, "Why can't I sound like Motown?" I was literally looking at all these old albums and saw that in every picture of the band the bass player had a [Fender] P Bass. That's when I went, "Okay, I'm going to get an old P Bass." That was the beginning of the whole transition to where I am now. I bought a '72 P Bass, but it still didn't sound right. Then I heard about flatwound strings. I put them on and was like, "Oh, shit. Now I'm starting to sound like these bass players I've been listening to all this time." There was nobody there to tell me, "If you want to sound like the old guys, you put flatwound strings on an old bass and play through a tube amp." What I was being told was, "You need to learn how to tap and comp so you can play in a coffee shop." [laughs]
At CalArts were you just playing and studying bass?
Yes. No recording there. They did have a studio, but it wasn't something I was interested in for a long time.
When did you make the jump to playing with bands and making records?
It's all strange how it went down. I was trying to transition out of the jazz world. I was looking for a band and was auditioning in L.A. There's this guy I think is still around named Barry Squire who does these "cattle call" type auditions. He's a sweet dude, but I'd get called in for weird Christian rock bands, or a Disney band. I'd be in a line of 20 people to go play the worst fucking music you've ever heard in your life. I was trying to latch onto something and couldn't find anything. Then Charlie Haden told me about his daughter's band, The Haden Triplets. They were playing old Carter Family and Haden Family tunes. I went to see them play; they were amazing singers and the music was great. I went up and said, "You guys don't have an acoustic bass player. I studied with your dad. You should hire me." They were like, "Yeah, I dunno." I called up Charlie and said, "Tell your daughters to hire me." They called me back and said, "Dad says we should try you out." That's the first thing that got me into the beginning of what was the Silver Lake scene. I was working, and people were asking me to play on their recordings. I guess through all that I got an audition to play with Beck. He ended up going with another guy and not hiring me, but somehow [drummer] Joey Waronker heard about me, and he hit me up to do an audition. I went in, didn't get that either, and was totally bummed. Then, a few days later, he called me up and said, "Hey, do you want to go get coffee?" All of a sudden I was doing sessions with Joey Waronker. I bought a 388 and started doing recordings here. A great songwriter, Benji Hughes, and I were hanging out, partying, writing weird songs, and I was recording them on the 388. Joey would come by and play drums for fun. Benji was making a record [A Love Extreme] for New West [Records] with Keefus Green [Ciancia]; a really cool producer. They were finishing up the record and were like, "Hey, we want to use the songs you recorded on this record, so you're going to be the producer of these songs." At that point I was like, "What's a producer? What do you mean?"
Your first production credit and you didn't even realize you were producing?
Exactly. Once I realized, "Oh wow, that's cool. I can help somebody with their songs to try and get good sounds on them." Then I went down a huge rabbit hole. Joey pulled me out on the road to play guitar with Sia for a couple years. Then we played on Norah Jones' record, and she asked us to go on tour. I started making money and started buying old gear. I was obsessed with finding the cheap old shit that people didn't know about.
What were some of your first acquisitions?
The Auditronics Grandson [110] was my first console. I had that forever. I actually just recently got rid of that, as well as an 8-channel rack that had I used forever. Then it was weird old tape machines. I got some Scullys for nothing. Eleni Mandell sold me a 4-track Scully and I restored it. Mark Linett [Tape Op #47] bought it off me because he was transferring Brian Wilson's tapes. Then I bought a Tascam MS-16 thinking I'd be super dope with a 1-inch, 16-track. I hated it. Somebody was selling these Scullys I have now, so I bought two of them; a 1-inch, 8-track and a 1/4-inch, 2-track. That, along with the Auditronics Grandson, was my rig forever. I did a lot of fun recordings on that gear.
You're still playing and touring, right?
Exactly. Still touring, and spending every penny on old microphones. I started to do more sessions and meet all these great producers. I started working with Glyn Johns [Tape Op #109], Ethan Johns [#49], Nigel Godrich, and Brian Burton [Danger Mouse]. I was being a real geek, and becoming friends with some of these people. I would pick their brains, or be looking over their shoulder trying to figure it out. One of the biggest influences was Nigel. I was tight with Joey [Waronker], and he [Nigel] was working with Joey a lot. He'd bring me in on a few things. We ended up doing some recordings at my old house where we were fucking around, trying to write music, and using the bare minimum of equipment I had, like the Auditronics console, a Digi 002, a RØDE MK1 mic, and a few other microphones. He'd place them in a certain way and we'd make these incredible sounding recordings. It's like, "I won't fucking touch that!" It was inspiring to see somebody like that come in, use minimal gear, and make it sound great.
How did you end up playing with The Black Keys?
When I was on the road with Norah, I met Pat Carney [Black Keys' drummer] at a bar and we hit it off. When they wanted to add a bass player and a keyboard player, he called me. I think he thought I was a keyboard player. I said, "Yeah, I guess I could do that, but I'm really a bass player." His management called me and said, "They need bass too." They had a couple other guys, Nick [Movshon] and Leon [Michels], who were playing, but they had their own thing too. They needed somebody to fill in for a tour; they called me up and asked if I could do it. It fit right in the middle of a gap we had with Norah Jones. They said, "Hire a keyboard player, learn the material, and show up in Buffalo. Our first show's on this day." I showed up and we literally ran the set at soundcheck. That was it! That was right before they blew up. I think it was the promo tour for Brothers.
Is your studio strictly analog?
No. I love tape, I love that process and I think it saves time, but I've done a lot of projects in Pro Tools. I used to really fucking loathe Pro Tools, but lately I feel like it's gotten easier. A big turning point for me were the UA plug-ins. Once there was modeling of vintage gear in a good way I could set up in-the-box the same way as I do on my console. I frequently work that way now when I know I'm going to have a lot of recalls. But if I get a band in here that's down to do it the old way, it's so much fun. I just did a record recently that we did completely analog.
Where do you see the value of doing a project all analog? Is it the workflow and focus on performances?
Yeah, there is a sound thing that happens. I still love the 388 and will do weird demos and recordings on that machine. I'll do stupid shit, like record with the dbx [noise reduction] on and then turn it off. It has this insane, fucked-up compressed sound. There's magic in the tape recording that isn't in Pro Tools. I don't think there's any one way to do it, but for me a lot of this is just the process. It's so easy to get stuck in Pro Tools thinking, "I can make that better." With tape, I like to make decisions. It will probably need some mixing and processing but, for the most part, I can put the faders up and shit sounds good. I got to work with Glyn Johns on a record, and something he did blew my mind. When it was time to mix, he brought the fucking console up to zero and that was the mix. He was printing it. I thought, "Well, fuck. That sounds good."
