Andrew Gerhan: Hi! Are you in Marin?
Sonny Smith: West Marin, past where proper Marin ends. It's hippies and ranchers out here; a new life.
AG: I'm in the Catskills, doing dual citizenship with NYC. I'm in the process of converting a barn built in 1900 into a studio and performance space. I want to discuss how we've worked together in different ways, as well as the evolution of our collaboration.
SS: Since it's Tape Op, we should start with tape. For Tomorrow is Alright, what tape machine was that?
AG: Oh, boy… we tracked some on a Pro Tools Digi 002 that Rogue Wave had in the space in West Oakland that I shared, where much of Tomorrow is Alright was tracked.
SS: How come it has such a tape sound? So many people over the years have asked, "How did you get that? It sounds like '50s and '60s tape."
AG: We mixed at Tim Mooney's [Tape Op #47, American Music Club, Sleepers, Sun Kil Moon] studio [Closer Recording]. We mixed to [digital] stereo and then bounced mixes to 2-track tape. I can't remember what his 2-track machine was. He has since passed, so I can't ask.
SS: Some of those songs were tracked on a TASCAM 388. I recorded at Tim Cohen's house with Tim and Shayde [Sartin, both of The Fresh & Onlys]. For "Planet of Women," I remember bringing the 388 to our rehearsal space and recording Kelley [Stoltz] on drums and Shayde on bass, so I must have brought some music to your studio to dump to digital. I remember tracking "Too Young to Burn," "Lovin' on an Older Gal," and "Strange Love" at that studio with you.
AG: You had "Death Cream" mostly recorded. We added hand percussion and backing vocals. You brought the 388 to that space. That's how we did "Loving on an Older Gal" and some others.
SS: That would make sense, because it sounds so warm. The 388 definitely has a sound.
AG: Yeah, it does.
SS: We were all using the 388 at the time. Kelley Stoltz was an influence, a "vintage gear guy," and a lover of the '60s. I hadn't discovered it. I was still "whatever makes a sound." Once I realized that a 388 and [Shure SM]57s were a great sound, recording became fun, easy, and not expensive. Richard Swift [Tape Op #120], who has since passed away, was enamored with Tomorrow is Alright. He asked me how I got that stuff – he was a "vintage gear guy" too. There are people who pursue the vintage sounds, but they use $10,000 microphones, $20,000 tape machines, and $50,000 boards, so they get this shiny, modern version of old music. They're always perplexed at how to sound like Dead Moon or something. It's so easy: You give $100,000 to charity, then you buy $500 worth of equipment, and you make your record. You have to have songs but, technically speaking, the reason you can't get that sound is because you have too much money.
AG: One of the big factors that colors '50s and '60s records is that they were played more live than '70s, '80s and '90s records. There are exceptions, of course, but "Loving on an Older Gal" was 85 percent of the band playing live. And then we added…
SS: A guitar.
AG: …and a couple little things – handclaps and backing vocals. We digitized, did some editing, mixed it through the board at Closer, then dumped all the mixes to tape and back into the computer. It does sound "tape-y." The album is uniform sonically because everything went through the same board and tape machine, even the tracks that weren't 388 but were tracked with Pro Tools.
SS: That's the way to do it.
AG: Mooney had a great Trident board, and we used his groovy outboard reverbs and stuff [Orban 111B and Roland SP-555]. I don't think there's much in the way of plug-ins on there. We were doing as much analog as we could. We were tracking through a [Roland] Space Echo, and we used an [Electro-Voice] RE20 on vocals.
SS: That sound was en vogue in San Francisco at the time.
AG: Are you always writing? When you have eight or ten songs do you say, "All right. Time to do an album." Or do you map out an album and write what you envisioned?
SS: Somewhere in the middle. There are people who conceptualize everything before they embark on the project, but I find that crazy. There has to be a time of unknowing; that intuitive crawling around in the dark and messing around with lyrics in your notebook or your guitar, piano, or whatever, not thinking about the long game. You have to be immersed in discovery, which is hard for artists – it's hard to be in the dark and not know. To me, that's the only way things are created, out of this subconscious place. The conscious state gets in the way. Some songs are maybe, in hindsight, subconsciously influenced by what I was obsessively listening to that year. But, at some point, maybe four or five songs in, I look at it consciously and think, "Wow, I've been making country songs. That’s weird. I didn't realize I was leaning that way." That's what came, and then I can apply conscious will and try to write a few more country songs. That's how I end up with a cohesive record.
AG: Your latest record, Self-Awareness Through Macrame, has a song, "ESP," that we tracked in the Tomorrow is Alright sessions. How did that find its way through the time warp of 15 years and end up on this one?
SS: It's a perfect example. I was making very basic songs during the pandemic with my band, and I don't think there are more than three chords on the whole record. I had borrowed this cool acoustic guitar from a friend, so naturally I was playing that more than I might usually because it was a new toy. After five or six songs, the album started to have some definition. I realized, "This sounds a bit like the first Sunsets record." I had this song that's an orphan from that time, so it fit really well. I wouldn't have thought about including it until I was able to stand back and see what I had made.
AG: I was happy that song found a home because I always liked it.
SS: It should probably have been on Tomorrow is Alright. I don't know why it wasn't.
AG: I don't remember why.
SS: What are your tools in the studio now, as opposed to 2008?
AG: They're almost the same: A hybrid of analog and digital. I almost never do strictly tape for clients because the workflow is not what people are used to; tape is slower and more expensive. I use cool preamps and compressors, and I use highbrow and lowbrow mics. I have my tricks. I get instruments to sound good in the room and point a mic at them. I do as little treatment as possible until it's time to get painterly in the mix, and then I may treat the crap out of stuff. Often, I'll take an element that's already there; I'll treat it until it becomes a different voice, and then I'll mix it back in. "That WAS a guitar," but there are also still guitars. I try not to fixate on the "mojo" of gear, I just want the gear to work. I love a 57. I have a number of them, and I use them, but I also have esoteric tube and ribbon mics. I pick a mic that works on the specific thing – some mics are too shrill for some singers, for example. I'll often put a couple mics up that are really different from each other for options. If I'm tracking a drummer, I'll put a lot of mics on the kit knowing I'll maybe throw a bunch of the tracks out, but it's a safety. I have options so they won't have to book additional days if we didn't guess right at setup. I like to whittle stuff down quickly; I don't want to save all the decisions until mix day. That comes from experience: I try to avoid problems, leave a path around potential sinkholes, even if I don't end up needing it because everybody I work with is limited by budget. I've never made Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, where there's no end to the money. Money is a constraint for art making.
SS: I think an unlimited budget would be a free fall. I was surprised when I read it took The Beatles 25 takes to make a song. I find that the best version is around the third take, usually the take right before the one that you thought was best. When the band does the fourth take, they think, "Fuck. I got it, it's great." But it's usually the one before that, because there has to be some discovery happening.
AG: It stops being a performance and starts being a recital.
SS: That's right.
AG: Tell me about working with different producers. We've worked together, and you've worked with Merrill Garbus [Tape Op #88], James Mercer [#39], and Dan Auerbach [#127]. What do different people bring to the process?
SS: Different producers are as different as human beings are different. Merrill Garbus [Moods Baby Moods] was great. I got pretty far in and started to realize what the record was, and that she would make it more so. She has great ability to do interesting layers, vocal harmonies, backups and melodic ideas. She appreciated that I was open to anything. She pushed me to keep going further until I had exhausted all the possibilities. Whereas Dan Auerbach [Rod For Your Love], you go to his studio, and you go into his world. He's got his toys and things are mic'd up the way he thinks it should be. It's his vision. His guitar work is all over that album and it's beautiful, but it's not a Sonny & The Sunsets record. The sound that he gets out of his studio is incredible, I love it. He has a stable of classic musicians that he brings in. That creates a sound, so there's consistency in the records he's producing. If you like that sound, then it's fantastic. James Mercer [Hairdressers From Heaven] met me on my level. I wanted to make music with friends, drink beers, and see what happened. He was perfect for that. He was very humble. We were like kids in his club. He had a barn behind his house with equipment. He and his friend, Yuuki Matthews – who's all over his records – co-produced it and we were like kids again, making music without a lot of pressure or stress. So, all of the producers are different people, in different phases of their life, and they bring different things. They all have merit.
AG: How do you decide who you're going to work with? Is it a question of timing and who's available, or is it an artistic decision?
SS: Merrill was, "This person is incredible. I'm going to ask if they would help me." The others were more organic and stemmed from my friendship with Richard Swift. He hipped The Shins to my music, and they covered some of my songs. Then he joined The Black Keys and formed a band with Dan Auerbach called The Arcs, who covered "Too Young to Burn." He was the Pied Piper. My intention was to produce with him, but he was on a path of self-destruction, so it kept getting pushed back. At one point, he connected me with Auerbach because he couldn't do it. And I was like, "Well, let's do the next one." Then Richard and I were talking a lot and swapping demos over the phone, but he had to go to rehab, so I worked with James Mercer. "Well, we'll do the next one." And then he died of alcoholism. It was tragic. I never made the record with my friend that we had talked about for years, but he was a key element in introducing me to people that I got to make music with. He was a magical person. None of that stuff was preconceived. You meet who you meet. I don't remember exactly how you and I met, or how we embarked on Tomorrow is Alright?
AG: I was playing in Our Lady of the Highway with Dominic East, who is now the main backline person and confidante for The War On Drugs [Tape Op #102]. Charlie Hall, The Drugs' drummer, also played in that band.
SS: Yeah, I remember that.
AG: We played on bills with you. I got into recording because Dominic and I were making records and hiring others to mix. We were doing basics in a studio and then doing overdubs with a [Digidesign] MBox. I became fascinated by recording and wanted to get better and learn more. We hired Tim Mooney to mix a record that Dominic and I did together, and Tim and I hit it off. I asked if I could apprentice with him, and I spent a couple of years sitting in on his sessions. I became a session player and assistant. That's when you and I started working together. I was sharing practice/recording space with Rogue Wave in Oakland, and they had a tiny project studio. You and I did some tracking there, and I had access to Closer Recording, so that's where we mixed. I think we mixed Tomorrow is Alright in two nights. We pulled an all-nighter or two.
SS: I never do all-nighters now. Not because of quality reasons, I just don't want to. [laughter]
