Did you start playing music on drums?
Piano was my very first instrument. In middle school, I got bored of practicing and watched the film Drumline, starring Nick Cannon. I thought, "I wanna be that." I started drums in middle school band and quickly found out my high school had a horrible football program and no marching band. But jazz band was the thing, so I played drums.
But you went to Berklee [College of Music] for drum performance.
Yes. In the music industry I thought you could only be an instrumentalist or a manager. I had no idea you could be a writer, producer, or engineer. But when I got to college, they had a nice studio program with access to cool gear, and it occurred to me there were people very creatively involved in records who weren't necessarily playing on them. I got bored of drumming eight hours a day all alone, and instead wanted to be in the studio eight hours a day [with others]. So, I moved into their production and engineering program.
Did you study with Susan Rogers [Tape Op #117] there?
She's one of my favorite teachers of all time. She's a nut about recorded music and science. She had a whole psychology and music cognition career that came after engineering Prince for 15 years. Another teacher there, named Enrique Gonzalez [Müller], who has a Latin Grammy and did a Dave Matthews Band record, really got my organization and mix game up to speed and made a big impression on me. Prince Charles Alexander, who did a lot of '90s hip-hop, taught a lot more at the forefront of popular music, which was also helpful.
Were there other production heroes when you started recording?
I got into reading credits; most of the ones who stuck out to me were artists who produced, as well as engineers who seemed to have more say in the production. Susan, for example, started her career as a tech for Prince and she became a real sounding board for him. I was also into Justin Vernon [Bon Iver]; knowing how he approached music as a writer and artist, and that he did a lot of creative sound work. I loved Jamie xx and finding out he made The xx records. Brian Wilson is the obvious answer; someone who's a weird freak and touches every piece of those records, and makes a difference in everything from the songwriting, through arrangement, and through sonic choices. Emile Haynie had a production project. Ariel Rechtshaid [Tape Op #111]; I was hip to him early on. On Vampire Weekend and HAIM, he was so involved, in an artist's way, even though those aren't his bands.
What kinds of bands were you in, back in Boston?
I played drums in a lot of Berklee kids' bands. I didn't do my own projects much. I was writing, but not thinking I'd ever perform it onstage, nor did I try. I'd do a gig that paid me on the weekends, playing Irish rock.
That sounds very Boston.
It was very, very Boston. We'd play at random beer festivals. It was cool to get paid for music. I did a lot of theater and pit band, because I could read music well. As a kid, I played in random punk or ska things.
When you finished Berklee, I seem to remember you called around a bunch of studios to find work.
I graduated and briefly looked in New York City for studios. They were all like, "We'd love to have you intern!" However, I could not move to New York with a zero dollar paycheck. I moved back to L.A. and stayed at home. I started working at a big recording studio; large-format, old school vibe. I don't want to be disparaging, but it was a horror story. I was like, "I can't be cleaning toilets at 3 a.m. for the next three years." I'd call different management companies and make friends with the receptionists, who were usually my age, and ask if I could email a résumé in case their clients needed assistant engineers. I ended up working for the producer Will Wells – who went to Berklee – so I got in through that connection.
And you worked on some music for Hamilton?
Will had worked with Alex Lacamoire before, the musical director of Hamilton, so they farmed out a lot of drum sampling to us. They sent us GarageBand demos that were in disarray and asked us to remake the samples so that they'd sound cool and relevant. We dove through a lot of hard drive samples and some Logic samples and EQed and compressed them to sound loud. We referenced a lot of old hip-hop and figured out what drum machines they were citing. I worked for Will until he left to tour with Imagine Dragons as an instrumentalist. As he was leaving, I got a call from Chris Coady's [Tape Op #113] management company. They offered me a job; it was perfect timing, and I worked for Chris for three and a half years. When I first started working with him, it wasn't that busy because I was new and Chris was on a lot of mixing projects and didn't need me every day. I was also assistant engineering in Malibu at Woodshed Recording, which is run by a film scorer [Richard Gibbs]. It's a beautiful retreat on a point above Zuma Beach. Pop artists come through, because you can stay there and rent the house. Writing and vocal sessions come through, and Macklemore was one of those. They did some writing, and there was a song with Idris Elba on it. We tracked him singing, which was crazy.
What was it like moving between projects of that scale, and bigger but still indie projects with Chris, such as Porches and Weyes Blood?
I loved it. I could flex my taste well: subversive, lower-fi or lower-budget type work, as well as top-of-the-top, biggest names, biggest budgets, infinite time and resources situations. It was cool to have a hand in both. It was really interesting to see what levels of music create Top 40 and what are more fan-based projects. If I was exclusively in the pop world, it'd feel formulaic. Exclusively indie rock might be formulaic, in a different way. At the end of the day, everyone makes music similarly. It's about what tools you have around you.
Did any of those sessions change your approach to production?
Every session I've done is different, and everybody works with their own twist. I'm constantly morphing, even today, to catch up with the artist's requirements. There's a push and pull – how far can I push my own boundaries? How far can I push the artist's boundaries to fit my vibe, if I'm producing? Every good session has pushed me out of my comfort zone, where an artist asks for something that's never been asked of me. How do I do it in the most efficient way possible? There've been extenuating circumstances of all-night sessions – well, in our case [on Haunted Painting] it was a good one.
Nice. Thanks.
But sometimes people are raging, nervous about finishing; that's when the returns diminish by the minute. Suddenly it's 4 a.m. and we haven't tracked a note. There's a mental and physical comfort zone I've expanded in order to work under everyone's creative best-case situations. Not everybody can pull an all-nighter, even if they have to. Some people prefer to do three or four hours and that's all they can tap into for the day.
How do you gauge where to insert yourself as a producer with a brand-new client?
Some of it is catching a vibe. More than any technical or musical skill I've employed in a session, the most valuable skill is "hang factor." Being able to be in a room in a way that boosts that creativity. I've seen it in other producers and engineers I admire; being able to walk into the studio and catch an understanding for someone else's humanity. It's also about trying stuff out. I can ask to push the tempo, you can say no, and I can see, "She knows what she wants. I won't push ideas unless she asks." Other people come in more flailing and I know then that I have an opening to make a suggestion, and the artist will take it or leave it. In some cases, artists are completely reliant on the producer's choices. Gauging the situation, deciding if the suggestion will wreck the vibe, going for it and seeing if they'll choose it or not... I leave my own ego out of it.
It's emotional intelligence on top of the technical training; such a deciding factor in whether it'll be a good work fit. Are there other producers who feel like mentors or peers you can bounce those kind of ideas off of?
Especially in the past year, I've been in the studio completely on my own and I've missed having Chris around, where I can look over his shoulder, see what he's doing, and pick up tricks and mold them into my own thing. Where I get that info from now is from collaboration and trying things out. I don't wanna gas you up, but you have such a cool approach to music, songwriting, and production, and I learned a lot from those Sad13 sessions. I learn a lot from [my bandmate] Collin Pastore who mixes all of [Illuminati] Hotties' stuff. He's open to my ideas; he'll give me his suggestions if he feels there's production he wants to hear. We joke that he's a bit more square, whereas I'm more about throwing random shit against the wall. Where we meet in the middle feels like a great place. Everyone, now, is also a producer! So many artists do their own thing, in a cool way. When I get demos, I'm opening them up, like, "How did you do this? I don't work in this program. This sounds fresh and unheard of." I feel absorptive, and I pick up tricks wherever I can.
Since you brought up Collin and Illuminati Hotties, I'm curious if you're writing for that project in the background of your day job, while you work producing for others.
I've had to set aside time to do that. I generally overbook myself. You might know about this crazy thing where you say yes to everything, and then can't finish any of it? [laughter] I love to work on as much as possible, and then things go over schedule, either because the project is flowing that way or it's my bad.
It's not your bad! It's your attention to detail and your talent.
Totally. It's the creative nature of things. Once you get in the woods, it becomes more consuming than you originally thought it might be. I'm learning to set time aside for Hotties. It's hard to focus on both at the same time. Working for Chris, it was more automatic, technical know-how and less creative juice. It was easy to scheme in the background. Now, if I'm producing or a head mixer, my attention is on the artist at all times and it's hard to turn that off when they walk out of the studio.
Because it's still your creative vision, even if it's not your songwriting.
Exactly that. If I'm producing, it says something about me as a producer. It's my time, myself, my energy. When the clock is off, I'm still thinking about finishing that thing. Working for others, I can feel, "Thank god, I have time to work on my own thing!" But it's been tricky for a couple reasons to generate new Hotties stuff in the recent past. I've been afraid to get into my own thoughts a bit. On Free I.H. (This Is Not The One You've Been Waiting For) I could be hyperbolic and nonsensical and it wasn't a product of emotional outpouring like the third record [Let Me Do One More] was.
You're one of the best mixers I've worked with. Is that high stakes attachment part of why you have Collin mix?
Totally. If I mixed Hotties it would never come out. I take on a lot as the producer, writer, artist, and engineer. Having the accountability, as well as needing to get it off my hard drive because Collin has only so much time to mix it, has been helpful to finish. If I mixed it, I'd spiral on it forever. I'd find things to fix and I'd never get it to the point where it was functional.
