It's good to finally meet!
Yeah, it's an honor, man! I'm a huge fan of the publication.
We've been hanging in there. You've been hanging in there.
Yeah. What a year.
You probably had a lot of shows and projects that were scheduled?
Yeah, yeah. I got lucky. I did have all that scheduled, but I also had a child in the beginning of March 2020. It was an odd time to have a kid, but, at the same time, it was a little bit of a blessing in disguise. I got to hang out with my baby for a year, which was nice.
You've got a new album out, K Bay. I understand you had a new process of trying different takes of songs?
Yeah. I recorded two versions of every song. One was more "normal" drums, bass, guitar, piano, and whatever. Standard instrumentation for the main vocals to be sung over. Then I did another version that was a distilled composition, like guided improvisation, that was based around certain pillars of the song, whether it was harmonic material or a rhythmic ostinato like a bass line. Sometimes it was just pure colors. All the sounds would be exactly the same, and the sound design would be similar. I tried to get at some of the essence of the song that wasn't the lyrics and wasn't the form. I sort of based this on [producer] Teo Macero and Miles [Davis'] work with Bitches Brew and On the Corner.
Cool.
I did it to the same BPM, creating different textures for me to sample from, cut in, and use in different ways. Part of that process was connecting different interests for me, both as a composer and a producer. A lot of my background is in the history of production outside of song-based production, as well as the history of composition outside of songs. I was trying to find a way to use that interest and use some of that skillset to intersect with more song-based music; to try to connect those dots for me. Then it was also to get out of the box of bringing up the song and getting from A to Z. I enjoy that process, but this was a way for me to try to use my full width of interests and skillsets, and to get something a little bit more unique to me.
A lot of your music and your productions involve performing in a room and focusing on arrangements. Do you need to expand, open up, and think of other ways in order to keep working?
So much about this record was maxing out the "house band" process. There were a lot of days in the studio circling that concept in a lot of different ways, from working really fast to taking a long time. I feel like it's not the end of the road, but from the development as a beginner – on the first song-based records that I did – it's like some records need to take a long time and need to be teased out. Then some records you need to make in a week.
Yeah, totally.
This record felt like it was an end to a lot of this work I've been doing with these guys for the past ten years. Knowing how to use their different instrumental personalities and what they're good at to get new ways to approach that "house band" concept that we've been working on for a long time. The uniqueness of that is all the water under the bridge. That is important. I feel I would be doing myself a disservice if I moved on from that. The fact that I have been making music in a studio setting with those guys for ten plus years at this point, there's a built-in language that we can get to. They trust me, and I trust them. There's a lot more experimenting that I can do now that I couldn't have done ten years ago, because we have a bigger studio vocabulary to pull from.
The path that you took is so similar to what was going on at Stax, Muscle Shoals, Motown, Royal, and a number of places across the country from the '50s, '60s, and '70s that were working that way. Was that an informed decision based on that history?
It was based off of that, intentionally; primarily because I love that music. When you get to the bottom of how that music exists – "Why does it work? Why does it sound the way it does?" – it has to do with the administrative format of the recording, for lack of a better way to say it. The fact that those guys were in there, in a blue-collar 9-to-5 way, doing it with so many different people over and over again; that's how they got that sound. They weren't changing up personnel. They weren't changing up studios. They weren't changing up the process. They weren't changing up the gear. They did do all of those things over the course of a long period of time, but not session to session. They mic'd the drums the same way with small tweaks. For me, it was a lot of reading and research. Listening to the Otis Reddings of the world. Reading a lot about it. The note choices and whatnot are all important, but so much of the reason that they got to that is because of the way the label and label contracts were organized. The way the industry is set up has a lot to do with the music that comes out on the other side, which is an interesting thing to think about. In my case, it was a happy accident that I live in Richmond, and I live in an incredibly high-achieving musical community that has an incredible amount of talent in it. I don't think I could put together a house band that is as good and as flexible as the band that I use regularly in most communities. I'm lucky to work with those guys. That was just timing. But the idea was definitely heavily informed by '50s and '60s labels; small Southern labels. Jamaican labels were also a big thing.
Oh, sure. Studio One [record label and studio].
Yeah. A huge influence, how they worked and made records.
When you have an adept house band and people you work with regularly, then the focus becomes the songs and the performance.
Yeah, definitely. You can get down the line a little bit faster. It's kind of cold, but so much of recording is about time management.
Yeah, tell me!
Obviously, budget informs that a ton, but then, at the end of the day, for me, there is this intangible magic that can happen in the studio that's unrepeatable and hard to find. It's difficult, and everyone wants to get there in their studio experience. But there's also a whole chunk of things that need to happen before you're getting to that level. When you have accomplished musicians, or people who are on the same page, and who are good at their instruments, you can get to that ecosystem where unplanned magic can happen. You have to know how the songs go. You have to know the chords and the parts. You have to be able to play together. You have to know what the BPM is. You have to know all the riffs in the song, if there are any. All of that. With those guys, we can get places pretty fast and get all of that out of the way. Then we're at a place to start dealing with the "dark arts" side that's hard to pin down.
Spacebomb was initially a studio in your attic? Is that true?
Yeah. It started in my attic. Then we moved to another location downtown that was smaller. We had to get out of my attic. It was great, but it wasn't professional. As soon as we found ourselves on the precipice of being actual professionals, it was like, "We've gotta get somewhere that we can bring someone to that's not my house." We went and moved to another small spot downtown, but we would do some work other places. There's a studio called Montrose Recording in Richmond. It's an excellent studio, and it's important to mention in this interview because it is such a special studio. When we were in the smaller studio, we would often use Montrose for our bigger projects. Then for my record, when we were building out what is now the more "official" space in our studio – which is bigger and can take on all of our projects – I used Montrose to record almost the entirety of this new record. It's a special place. Adrian [Olsen], the owner and engineer, is a great friend and wonderful collaborator. Things that were recorded at Montrose will get said to be recorded at Spacebomb, but they're not. They were recorded at Montrose. I'm sure you know how that goes.
I know the frustration very well.
Spacebomb is sort of an idea and can be anywhere. Currently Spacebomb is a specific studio, at 106 South Robinson in Richmond, but because it was under construction while I was working on this record, and because I love working at Montrose, we did this record out there. For K Bay, my home studio [also known as K Bay] was actually on that property in another building. It's like a sprawling farm with a bunch of old buildings. Montrose is one of them and K Bay's another. It's only been pretty recently that Spacebomb has opened up and been public, in a way. It's hard for us to get that word out locally. You can rent Spacebomb. The reputation of the 9-to-5 house band, working in there every day, is not necessarily the case all the time. But it didn't start off as a public-facing business. I went to school for jazz and for arranging. Halfway through that experience, I was like, "If I want my music to be heard, I need to understand recording." I had a 4-track growing up, but I wasn't good at it. I'm still not particularly gifted on the engineer front. It is shocking how much more that I know now than I did, but it's a trial by fire because I'm not particularly a natural at it. I wanted to get my music out there. I wanted people to hear it. Recording is important. I can't just know how to write and play. I have to know how to record. I lived in this place with an attic. I went to a recording friend of mine and asked, "Can I buy all of your old shit? Can you give me enough so that I can plug a mic into a preamp and into something that will record it, so that I can start off?" Just yesterday I got back the first little board that was in the original Spacebomb. It's a Kelsey 16-channel live console. It looks amazing; black with candy-colored knobs. It was that into an [Alesis] HD24. It was a pretty gnarly setup.
Has the acquisition of gear been a slow process of outgrowing equipment and trying to expand your capabilities?
Yeah, it's been in direct correlation to how much I understand the art of recording. For me, it's been figuring out that there's not a "right" way to do it. That the way that one wants to make music needs a certain kind of gear. You don't really know what that is until you run into problems. Like, "I need a fader for this!" A fader does a thing; I want to "play" it in. There are so many effects where I want to fly a fader up. To do what I need to do, I need a certain amount of channels, or a certain amount of buses. Or I'm listening to some music, and it's like, "How'd they do that?" I start asking questions. I remember when we got a [Lexicon] Prime Time delay in the studio, and we started messing around with that. I was like, "Holy shit! This is the sound of so much stuff!" It's been a slow build for me, regarding where my interests go. I try really hard to not get things that are in vogue. I've purposefully stayed away from the [Teenage Engineering] OP-1 [keyboard] because everyone used it. That's not recording gear, but it kind of is. I try pretty hard to keep it practical. Honestly, I try not to spend a lot of money. I recommend trying to understand what you're buying and dig into what you get and understand it as much as possible. Use the things you have. So much about recording for me is the process that a certain piece of equipment will force you into. Like tape does sound a certain way, but, more importantly, it forces you to record a certain way. It makes you make decisions early on. That's an important thing to me for the process; to not delay decision-making. Don't leave backups or extra mics up that you may or may not use. Get rid of them. The process is informed by the gear you use, and the process decides the sound as much as a piece of gear might decide the sound. Again, once you get into that world, it is a dark art of trying to swim and find your way to the top.
Totally.
It's fun, too. That's what's so magnetic about it. It's a very difficult thing to solve. It's a never-ending journey. Try to keep having fun with it.
When you're producing someone, how soon do you start formulating a vision for how it's going to come across at the end?
For one thing, it depends on what people want from a producer. I try to talk about that early on. A producer is a pretty open job description, and depending on what music people listen to, and what process they've used, people are bringing their expectations of what a producer is into a session. A lot of times they don't know there are other ways of doing it. I try to tease that out almost immediately. "What are you actually looking for? Do you want me to be a heavy-handed collaborator? Do you want me to do this music and you sing? Do you want this to be a completely collaborative work? Do you want me to just be someone to bounce ideas off of? Do you want me to be an administrator that makes sessions start on time, end on time, hand it in on time, and give you the freedom to work?" When I'm creatively involved, which is my preference – to be as involved as an artist would like, the first thing I do is I ask them to share a playlist with me that's what they want the record to sound like so we can get on the same page as far as vocabulary. When someone says "groovy" or "funky" or "dark" or "distorted" or "fuzzy," those mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I try to get their aesthetic background. It's nice to know if their primary listening experience is from the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, or now. That informs a lot of the decisions. What do they want it to sound like? If they want to sound like Prince, then that's different than if they want it to sound like James Brown.
Very true.
There are practical decisions I make based on that. Then I try to get demos. I generally will make a text document and write out thoughts for them before we get in the studio of, "This is where I think this song could go. Here are some ideas." I try to get the idea of what the initial instruments that everybody's going to play are, so that if we have four band members in the studio I don't want to be thinking about, "Oh, is Alan [Parker] playing acoustic guitar, electric guitar, or 12-string guitar?"
Yeah.
