A few years ago, you took a year off to make furniture, right?
I did, yeah. When your job is something that initially started as the thing you love most – and it was very lucky that it became my job – it becomes a bit of a racket when there are these cyclical patterns of writing and touring, and writing and recording, and then touring again. I wanted to make sure that my relationship with music was in a good place and that it was not habit over heart. I wanted to give myself a little break from music, and the only way I could do that was by immersing myself in something else. Otherwise, I’d end up saying yes to everything again. I took myself off to a tiny little village in the Lake District [of North West England] and I was in the workshop – eight until six every day – and I loved it. But it also made me realize how much I love music too.
Was that woodworking by hand?
Yeah, it was all hand tools. Master craftsmanship. Once you've mastered the hand tools, you're allowed to use the machines, so things get a little quicker.
In an interview I read, you were talking about working on Wilco's Cousin and mentioned a "beginner's mind."
Glenn [Kotche], Jeff [Tweedy, Tape Op #132], and Nels [Cline] especially, they are so in the moment when they're making something. They're unencumbered by expectations, I suppose, or the gravity of an immense talent, that could put them in a different frame of mind. But they were so malleable, responsive, and curious. To work with curiosity; I find that inspiring. The possibilities are all uninhibited, with a forward-motion that I love.
How do you keep your beginner's mindset? Was the furniture making detour a little bit of that?
I guess so. I think it's curiosity, but being porous. I suppose only working with people who instill that sense of curiosity and who don't make me feel inhibited. I don't really have a repeatable process, whether it's my own records or when I'm working with other people, so we can be open to allowing things to happen as they happen rather than trying to impose some process. Your peripheral vision might get a little bit lost.
When I first met you, you were working more as an artist, but around that time you started doing more production work. Was that a conscious decision to do more production?
No. To be honest, I have no desire to be a producer. [laughter] I love producing, but I don't have a desire to spend most of my time producing records. But when people who I love musically – or there's some creative chemistry between us – ask me to work with them, then I'm activated and I want to work with them. I've been lucky that that's happened quite consistently. Huw [Evans], the artist H. Hawkline, was the first person who asked me to produce something. When Bradford Cox asked me to do the Deerhunter record [Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?], that's when it went up a gear. On that session I got 20 years’ worth of experience in a couple of weeks with Bradford. [laughter] I do love doing it, but I would never call myself a producer. But it seems like there's some kind of arrival point, and I like things to be in motion.
It seems like almost half of what you do lately, though, isn't it?
I guess so, yeah. I'll produce your record, but I don't like calling myself a producer. The key for me is to not get carried away and impose what I think something should be on other people. To spend time being open and listening to them if they've sent demos or having conversations with them. Doing some pre-production so that I really understand where, if it's a band, where it all crosses over and where it all meets. It's such a nebulous role. Every artist and every band I've worked with demands something different from me. It's nice to be flexible so that if it does change, I change with it. I can react and respond accordingly to the different needs of the session.
You seem to gravitate towards more experimental or art rock bands. Is that by choice?
I don't really think about it. I'm thinking about my own output, mostly, and then someone will get in touch, and it will happen or not. I say no to a lot of things – not because I don't like it, but because I can't find the right sort of friction or I can't think of where I would fit in. Or because I think they're genuinely better off without me, you know? [laughs] If I work with someone, it's after a lot of thought.
I really like the Devendra Banhart record, Flying Wig, that you did. It feels very much like Devendra when you listen to it, but it also feels different. What was the process between the two of you?
Well, I've been friends with Devendra for a long time. When he asked me, I said to him, "There's going to have to be a transition here from us messing around as friends, going for drinks and having a laugh. There's going to be a change and it's going to shock you. We need to spend a bit of time together talking about music and getting used to our roles professionally, rather than just being buddies." We spent a bit of time listening to music together and then we went to Stella's [Mozgawa] studio in the desert and did some work together, getting used to that kind of working relationship. Then we hired this house in Topanga and Samur [Khouja] kitted it out, so it was a lovely studio. It used to be Neil Young’s house, and we lived and worked there together. It was a beautiful time of becoming closer as friends, but also that trust and that bubble that we didn't burst. We stayed in this little world of the album. You get this lovely little echo chamber where that's all we're all thinking about all the time, and this little sonic world comes from all of that. It all informs the record. A lot of it was one-on-one, sitting with synths and trying to work out arrangements and the character of each song. The band came in for a little bit, but it was very low-key sessions in this front room that Samur took and turned into the studio. It was creating a place for Devendra to feel comfortable and like he wanted to be there, which isn't a studio for him. It was tailored to Devendra to feel comfortable and to feel like he could wake up, we'd have breakfast, we'd go and see the ocean, and then we'd get to work.
He's always gravitated towards that. He and Noah [Georgeson] were doing work in a house in Big Sur for a while, and I helped set some gear up there.
Yeah, he's very sensitive to environment and rightly so. All these things affect the thing that you're making. I think we got it right. He didn't go home, which his manager couldn't believe. All in all, it was about six weeks. He went home twice to water his fern! [laughter]
Is there a different approach when you're working with a solo artist like John Grant or Devendra, as opposed to working with a band like Wilco or Dry Cleaning?
I find working with bands harder because we're dealing with lots of different expectations, and sometimes the expectations of each member opposes the expectations of another member. It's a lot of spending time with them before going into the studio and trying to vocalize everything that everyone wants from the project. To think about where the meeting point of all of those expectations is. If things are oppositional, then having the conversation so that everybody feels heard, but also so that me – as somebody looking from the outside in – can steer the ship in a way that the record doesn't suffer. Sometimes this idea of compromise… I don't know if there's always a place for it when we're making a record. Sometimes you choose to compromise, and then everything gets fucked. [laughs] I think there needs to be a delicate balance of listening to everyone, and then sometimes going, "I think this is actually the way to the path." But doing it in a way of explaining why and trying to get everyone on board with me, rather than this hierarchical, "This is the right path, so fuck you all." [laughter] But, yeah, it's a lot more taxing when I work with a band. There are a lot more conversations; a lot more feelings involved. Making music is obviously hugely emotional. Everyone's invested in so many different ways, so it's important to me that everyone feels heard, as much as that's possible.
So, it's a little less of a bubble with a band?
Yeah.
Is your approach different for a band like Wilco who have been together for several decades and have made many records and explored a lot of different sounds as opposed to a somewhat newer band like Dry Cleaning, whose recent Secret Love LP you produced?
I learned pretty quickly that I have to accept things changing and reacting to things as they come up. If I have too much of an agenda, then I miss those things. I become less fluid in my approach. Wilco ended up being a lot of working one-on-one with Jeff because him and Glenn are the only two who live permanently in Chicago. It was a long process of putting that record together. Covid was still around, so there were days we had booked to work with the whole band and they had to go home because of Covid hitting the group. So, most of the time spent was with Jeff. With Dry Cleaning, without one of them it doesn't work. They're very much a four-piece and they’re the sum of their parts. There's not a leader, they're...
…an organism?
Absolutely. We went to a residential studio in France purposefully, so that everyone could be fully immersed in it and focused. No one was turning up late because the washing machine broke that morning. It was all very much focused and bold, and we existed in that little world. So, two different situations. With Wilco, we were working in The Loft in this space, which is so incredible. It's beautiful; totally tailored to everything Jeff could ever possibly want or need. There's a real comfort in that. But he's also brilliant in sitting in discomfort and not reacting to it. Every band is going to be different. I mean, it's mad that a group of people would come together and play music with each other. It's an insane concept, but because of that, it's really beautiful. But each band, the energy and the makeup of it, it's all wildly different.
How long did you spend on the Dry Cleaning LP? Was that mostly live?
They had some pretty solid demos that they'd made. Some of them they recorded in The Loft and some I think they'd done in Ireland. Eclectic, but also sonically very different, because of all the different studios they'd worked in while pulling the demos together. We re-tracked everything in France. Samur came to engineer so that everything sounded like it was carved from the same piece of rock – that's especially important when there are such varied styles on a record. There needs to be something pulling it all into the same space so it feels eclectic, but it still feels like a record. They’re such a great live band that it was just forward motion.
A pretty quick process?
Yeah. Samur had set up the tape machine for 15-minute tapes. We'd start the day with a drone, so everyone had to come to the studio. Sometimes we’d hear people come in late and then they'd pick up guitars or whatever. It focused everyone; it pulled everyone together. Sometimes tracking can be really boring. So, it just started the day with something where people can color outside of the lines for a little bit. Then we'd get into the record. That felt like an important way to start the day – it was rewarding for everyone. It was a nice start to each day.
I heard that for the Wilco record you were sifting through quite a few pre-existing recordings, stripping them down, and building them back up.
Yeah, that was a combination of tracking some things from scratch and then there were these beautiful recordings that we couldn't redo; everything was so intertwined. We couldn't remove one thing and then re-track it; there was this magic that was going on. Some of those we added to, or we switched things up. Jeff gave me so many songs to listen to, to try and pull a record together from. He was so generous with his trust.
Was Tom Schick [Tape Op #132] engineering all of this?
Yeah.
And then the three of you mixed the record?
Yeah. Then I went back and did the Horsegirl record [Phonetics On and On] at The Loft with Tom too. I was so familiar with it, and I had a lovely working relationship with Tom. Because I mostly work with Samur – and we've been working together for so long – we've got a quick shorthand that we have between us. But yeah, Tom's such a great engineer and he knows that place like the back of his hand.
I was going to ask you about Samur. You two have done quite a few records together.
We're so close as friends, and we absolutely love working with each other. Samur is such a creative engineer. He's so curious; he's got beginners' mind. He doesn't have a repeatable process. He reacts to what is needed. He's so willing to change things up, and he's so interested in doing it a different way. It's always so rewarding working with him. He'll never say no to me. My skills as an engineer are pretty dreadful, so I depend on him to get me what I'm hearing and what I want. He is so understanding. He's also really emotional in his approach to engineering and to mixing, which I think makes him special. Because it is an emotional thing. We just have this beautiful forward motion. It's restorative. Questioning; never reductive. We're always trying to get to somewhere better together, hand in hand, rather than there being any kind of push and pull between us. I feel lucky that we've found each other, and that we have a lovely work relationship as well as a friendship. He's brilliant. I mean, he's mad, but he’s brilliant!
You've worked quite a bit with Stella Mozgawa, as well. I asked her what she likes about working with you, so what do you like about working with Stella?
Watching Stella play drums is just pure joy to me. That's not just something that I'm saying because she's my friend. When I watch her play drums, it's joyous. She is so activated and no one plays like her. Nobody. There's something in the way she puts her whole body into it and her whole heart. So, you get that when you work with her. It's similar to Samur. She wants it. Everything she does is to be as good as it can be, and to deliver what it is that I want. That comes from this restorative, intelligent questioning about things. Again, it's this forward motion with her and her emotionally intelligent playing. She's just joyous to work with, truly.
