How did you get into audio?
I started as a guitar player when I was 9 years old. Somewhere around the age of 13, I was playing in bands, and I became interested in recording. Everybody was hit with The Beatles and all the cool music in the late '60s. I got fascinated with the recording process, and I wanted to get a job in a recording studio. My mom happened to know people at the local TV station. She took me down there and said, "My son wants to work in the studio." They had a beautiful audio studio; there was an 8-track Ampex tape deck and this cool Electrodyne console that Jim Diamond [Tape Op #57] later ended up with. I wanted to work there, but they said, "You're too young. We can't hire you." They recommended I go work with this guy [Bob Baldori, #128] in a local studio, Lansing Sound. I went over there, and I immediately got a job. The first day I raked the leaves. Three months later, I was the chief engineer.
How old were you at the time?
I was 15. I was in a little over my head. It was a 4-track, 1/2-inch Ampex AG-440, and a couple of 2-track Ampex decks. They also had a bunch of other tape machines that we'd use for slap echo. They had a plate and a chamber [for reverb]. It was an interesting experience trying to track records to four tracks with the drums and bass, and maybe even the rhythm guitar, on track 1.
What year would this be?
In 1972. After a year or two of this, I was trying to go into quad mixing – everybody was discovering quad mixing. With a 4-track deck, you can't really do that. It'd be difficult. I was playing in bands with Bill Laswell [Tape Op #93]; we were in there all the time, trying different experimental recordings. That's what got me going. After quite a few years, I started my own company. We got a Studer A80 24-track and a Neotek console. It was a good experience to have my own company. Trying to make a living on making records is hard in Michigan. There's not a ton of work. There's work, for sure, but it's definitely not Los Angeles. The music community here in Michigan is cool. There are definitely good groups. People struggle and work hard to get where they're at. People spend a lot of time woodshedding and getting good on their instruments.
I've always attributed that to that Midwestern work mentality. Dig in and get to it.
Yeah, that's true. The Midwest makes you work hard, and your working mentality is different. When I go to New York, or somewhere else, I'll see that a lot of people working in those studios are from the Midwest. But that's how I started. We had that studio for ten years.
Was that in Lansing?
Yeah, that was here in East Lansing. We worked hard to get where we were at. We did a lot of orchestral work and a lot of film scoring. We did jazz, blues, rock, hard rock, and heavy metal. Everything was coming in the door. I was doing a lot of punk. I had a lot of bands coming out to record. The Testors came out from New York; they were a punk rock band from the Dead Kennedys-era. There were a lot of alternative, weird music scenes happening here in Michigan, and we were tracking a lot of experimental music. I recorded bands like Twenty-Two Cave Gods and Tribal Dance Method. There was this whole scene of new music. We were able to survive. We had five employees at that studio. I was working seven days a week in order to pay everybody's salary and keep it rolling. That eventually had to stop.
Were you into production at this time, or were you strictly engineering?
I would do either one. I considered production a little bit bigger of a deal than somebody simply coming in and scheduling a session and recording. That's not producing. If somebody wants me to produce, we have to sit down, look at everything, decide how it's going to work, and spend some time with the songs. We'll arrange, orchestrate, and whatever we need to do for the particular project. That all led to me starting my own company, separately, and slimming it down to make it more efficient. We had built up a massive amount of equipment over the years. I still have Studer [tape] machines and a huge pile of old tube gear.
I'm sure you've had to maintain all of this as the years went on, and you learned that as well?
I had to. If we don't maintain it, it's all going to fall into chaos and then it doesn't work. Then what happens? I'd either have to maintain it, or spend a lot of money on somebody to repair it. So, I learned to repair it. When I was a teenager, I was studying electronics, so it did help to start into that. I spent some time here at Michigan State in East Lansing for a period of time, studying computers, electronics, music, and a huge variety of subjects. Those studies of acoustics and physics at Michigan State were key to helping me with my acoustical design work. I've designed hundreds and hundreds of studios now. It's also one of the reasons I've been surviving, as there's always going to be something to do. It can get a little intense when everything is banging on all cylinders though. All of a sudden, I've got six records I'm working on, three studio designs, mastering work, and whatever else, all piled up on top of each other.
You could still work seven days a week for 12 hours a day.
Yeah. Unfortunately, my wife thinks I do, because even when I'm at home I'm sometimes working until 2 or 3 in the morning on the computer. But that's typical.
Congratulations on your first Grammy award, for Billy Strings' Home.
Oh, yes; thank you!
I know that Greensky Bluegrass was sort of your foot in the door to working with Billy.
Greensky Bluegrass was the first bluegrass band I heard here in Michigan, where I thought, "Wow, I like these guys!" A lot of the bluegrass bands that I'd worked on in the past were more traditional bluegrass bands. I'd recorded lots of bluegrass and folk. Even back into the '70s, I had done a bunch of different bluegrass records that were traditional. I was never huge on straight-up bluegrass, honestly. I was more of a jazz and electronica guy. King Crimson and Yes. I felt like, "Let's go a little more 'out,'" right? Can we take bluegrass and do that with it? When Greensky showed up, that's what they wanted to do. They wanted to run their instruments through amps and put Echoplexes on them. Maybe they'd let me play the Buchla synthesizer. Next thing you know, I was doing these weird, warped-out records that are like Pink Floyd meets bluegrass. It was fun! We did a couple of albums. That led to Billy Strings. He was in the Ionia area, not super far from Lansing. He was a heavy metal shredder when he was growing up, but he had deep roots with his family in traditional bluegrass, a big fan of all kinds of music. His dad brought him up well, playing albums from everybody. Billy could play any of this. He has a natural gift. When Billy came in the door, he had been woodshedding for some serious time. He was playing some songs that were not necessarily traditional bluegrass. Shredding guitar over some bluegrass-y instruments? Nice! That's where we started with Billy Strings. I did Turmoil & Tinfoil; his first album. It was tracked to tape and pretty much played live. There are maybe only one or two lead vocals that were not done live. The background vocals were done as overdubs. I love that type of tracking. Generally speaking, I do that a lot with blues bands, or bands that can play live.
Ones that can pull it off.
We'll track live, including the vocal. Maybe we'll replace the vocal, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to isolate the vocalist. I'll have them in the control room, if I have to. I've done that for years; I always track live if we can. For some other records we can't do that, so then I have to piece it together. Billy and Greensky play everything live. Maybe there are one or two songs where we isolated off the vocal. It was only because Billy felt it was compromising his performance on the guitar. He couldn't nail the rhythm track if he was going to sing.
There are a lot of complex rhythmic parts going on there that could throw him off.
It always fascinates me when I have people who can sing and lay back the vocal, yet also play the groove a little bit on top of the beat.
Like Levon Helm [The Band]?
Yeah. It's always fascinating to me when I hear that, because it's a two-brain thing. It's fun to see people do that. That's no easy feat.
You did the two Billy Strings records. How many Greensky Bluegrass records have you done?
I don't even know. Maybe six or seven. We're doing a new one right now; a double album on vinyl. I'm waiting for test pressings, and the CD will be coming in a while. Those guys are on Thirty Tigers [independent label services], so they get distribution and everything.
Were some of their sessions at Echo Mountain [Recording] in Asheville, North Carolina?
