You were born in Brooklyn, NY, but grew up in East Brunswick, NJ. Was bass your first instrument?
I started on viola in school, and I don't even think they do that in schools anymore. It's a shame, because music is so important to the development of the brain. Why are they not exposing kids to arts now? Now the phone's their whole life. It's bizarre to me. I consider myself fortunate to have been exposed to music at an early age. My parents loved music. My mom played piano a little bit, and my dad – funny enough – was a dance instructor. He wasn't musical, but he had rhythm. When he was a teenager, he taught cha-cha and old school dance.
What are some early memories of getting interested in recording?
I was seven when I found an old Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder in my parents' attic. I would record my sister playing classical piano and move the little crystal microphone connected with an RCA plug. I'd go out with an extension cord and record cars going down the street. I also had a hand-me-down Panasonic stereo from my parents that had separate volume knobs for the left and right speaker. I'd put on The Beatles' "White Album", flip the mono switch, and I could fade up the hard panned vocal. I could explore two-channel remixing. When I got my first Fostex X-15 4-track, it could run mobile with D batteries. I'd take two microphones and record my friend playing acoustic guitar by the beach with the ocean sounds. The print ad mentioned that [The Beatles'] Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was recorded on a 4-track. I was so excited, not realizing that you really needed a mixer, a mic pre, and EQs to get a good drum sound.
It's hard to know that right out of the gate. How did you progress from the Fostex?
Growing up in central Jersey in the '80s, there was a whole scene. Tons of clubs, Bon Jovi, Skid Row, and all those bands. I was playing bass in a pop metal band called American Angel, and I would record our demos. We got a record contract and an advance, and I bought a Tascam 8-track cassette [recorder] with a little mixer and an Alesis QuadraVerb. My whole goal was hoping my band went multi-platinum so I could open a recording studio.
You soon began your legendary run of recording bands at Trax East in South River, New Jersey. Your band originally recorded there?
Yes, and I loved being in the studio. I was the first one there and the last one to leave. We did our debut album [American Angel] with Eric Rachel producing, and I was in there, constantly being a pain and sucking up as much info as I could. Fast forward to a year later, and the deal's gone and the band folded. We're not going to tour, and we're not getting another deal because it's the turn of the '90s, and grunge hit.
You must have gone back to Eric and made yourself available in the studio.
He put me in right away, on a simple vocal overdub session, and taught me how to thread the tape machine with 2-inch tape. After pointing out what was plugged into the patchbay, he sat with me for 5 minutes and then said, "Bye!" [laughter] I also attended IAR [Institute of Audio Research], but the first semester was mostly physics and calculus, whereas I was more interested in circuit building. John M. Woram's The Recording Studio Handbook that IAR used is great and is still applicable to basic principles of signal flow.
You were getting your feet wet quickly at Trax East, and dipping into death metal when you recorded Incantation's landmark Onward to Golgotha.
There was a whole death metal scene in Jersey with them and Ripping Corpse, whose guitarist, Erik Rutan, is now a killer producer in his own right. When I started working at Trax East, they had gotten a Sound Workshop Series 34 console, which had been built by former API designers. When you're used to working with an Alesis NanoCompressor at home, the first time you run a signal through a URIE 1176 you're like, "Whoa." I wound up doing Incantation, Demolition Hammer, and M.O.D. [Method of Destruction] all on this console with no automation. It wasn't until '95 that they upgraded the studio to have automation.
Prior to that you'd be riding the mix while printing?
Yes, and I'd dole out responsibilities; I'd assign a number of faders to each person to be in charge of. What we should have done was mix that down to analog. We were mixing to DAT even though we had an Otari MX-5050. It's not the greatest, but we should've mixed down to that in sections and edited them together like they used to do in the '70s.
You cite M.O.D.'s Rhythm of Fear as your first proper production credit.
It was on Megaforce Records, and I had a budget, a contract, and a point on the record. I knew I wouldn't make much money on it, so I spent it on renting gear. I wanted it to sound killer, so we rented a bunch of Neve 1073 preamps. Jonny Z [Jon Zazula] and Megaforce were in East Brunswick, and they would send bands to us to do pre-production demos. I did the demos for Lucy Brown and for Mind Funk's second album Dropped before they went to Terry Date [Tape Op #123]. Jonny liked how those sounded, and said [in a thick Jersey accent], "By the way, Steve, I like what you're doin', so I think maybe we'll have you do the M.O.D. record."
Jonny Z, rest in peace.
I knew Jonny when I was barely in high school, going to the Route 1 Flea-Market. My dad has a sock business, and his stand was an aisle away from Rock n' Roll Heaven [Jonny's historic metal record store]. I used to go work with my dad on weekends and buy the latest Kerrang! magazine and pick up records based on the artwork. They moved to Clark, New Jersey, and I met Slayer when they did an in-store for Haunting the Chapel.
I always wanted to visit that store. After these early milestones at Trax East, your credits exploded with bands from the New Brunswick punk scene and technical metal acts like Human Remains and The Dillinger Escape Plan.
We were the best studio in the vicinity, so all these bands that were making their way in the scene would come to Trax East. First it was Lifetime, and then all the ex-members of Lifetime. Dave Rosenberg and Chris Corvino were in Deadguy and also Lifetime at one point, and then Dan Yemin and David Wagenschutz went to do Kid Dynamite, which I also recorded.
Wow, they're the L.A. Guns of New Jersey punk!
All these people branched off and then I did Deadguy's Fixation on a Co-Worker record, but the label never paid the bill. The DAT master sat in a tape vault at Trax East for 6 months. So, that's how I got involved with Victory Records, because they contacted Tony Brummel and he paid to get it out. From there, I did about 15 records for Victory.
How did you handle everything ramping up during that time?
It just happened, and everything leads to everything. On the heavy side, Ben [Weinman] from The Dillinger Escape Plan booked time because I did Deadguy. The early Dillinger drew from that sound, but they quickly branched off into their own thing. Then, on the pop punk side, Saves the Day approached me because they loved Lifetime. In the punk and metal world, fans are usually ravenous about the music and they wanna read the credits to see who produced the record. "Oh, you went to Steve? We'll go to Steve." It wasn't about social media followers back then.
That was the beginning of quite a run with The Dillinger Escape Plan.
I did the [self-titled] EP and Calculating Infinity at Trax. Then Miss Machine we did all over the place. We recorded drums at Water Music in Hoboken, also R.I.P., and Mission Sound in Williamsburg. Then we set up at their lockout rehearsal place called Backroom Studios. Their guitarist at the time, Kevin Antreassian, has his studio there now. We set up a total guerilla makeshift studio. We tracked all the overdubs at the rehearsal room and mixed at Quad Recording Studios in Times Square, [New York City].
Were you starting to amass your own collection of gear as you were doing this?
Trax East had an insane amount of gear by the time I left. When I left, I had nothing. I left in fall of '99 and I didn't move to California until 2004. I was traveling and working a lot. I loved the travel aspect, at that point. I didn't think I would settle into another studio. I'd always try to book myself in L.A. to avoid the East Coast winters, and then I realized I'd only been in New Jersey for 24 days out of the year.
So, you set up at the Omen Room in Garden Grove, California.
Yes, I worked out of the B Room there for 18 years. I set up a Pro Tools Control 24 with outboard gear. I had mixed a couple records completely in the box, like Skinlab's ReVolting Room. I tried mixing it that way and Andy Sneap [Tape Op #144] ended up remixing it. It was my first real attempt at mixing in the box, and I didn't know how to do it right. I still don't, really. For me, a hybrid approach works better, sounds better, and has way more depth and character. I was trying to mix moving one fader at a time with a mouse. I started getting these crazy pains in my neck. I need faders to mix how I normally mix. So, that's what I've done ever since. I have my small-format Neotek console that I sum through and obviously track through.
Were you still tracking drums to tape?
I wound up getting a Studer A800, but it was impossible to maintain. I couldn't get parts for it. There are only a few remaining techs in L.A., and no one was willing to cross the Orange Curtain [the local term for the border between Orange County and L.A.]! I do think I'd like to get a tape machine again. I wasn't tracking drums in the A Room at Omen, originally. I thought that the live room was too '70s style, too dead for my taste.
You seem to appreciate tracking in bigger rooms. Where did you go for the next Dillinger Escape Plan album, Ire Works?
We tracked drums at this place called Sonikwire Studios in Irvine, which had an old Neve and a narrow and tall room, almost like a silo. All the overdubs were back in my room. We wound up adding two more songs and tracked those drums at Omen. They were the first drums I tracked in the A Room. I realized I could make it work because the hallway was wired like a chamber. I could keep the door open and put a mic at the end of the hallway and get a bigger, reverberant sound.
