Varnaline
So lets talk about Varnaline first. Did you record that on an 8 track cassette or a 4 track cassette?
A: Actually, its the first 4 track that went on the street. An old Tascam 144. An ancient machine. I bought it for $50 off someone 'cause one of the channels was busted. I would use it once a year. I recorded some of my older bands occasionally. It sorta gained inertia as I went along and the last few years I really started to understand what was going on with it.
Any noise reduction on it?
A: You know, I don't think there is. It's really funny, 'cause when the tape is moving you can hear creaking, so on certain songs, at the very end of the fade out, you can hear eerreek, eerreek from the machine just because the mechanism is so loud.
How did you get all that stuff onto 4 tracks?
A: For the stuff that sounds pretty layered, I would do 4 tracks and fly it down to my cassette deck and tape that back to 2 tracks stereo on the 4 track. Some of the songs were 6 tracks, basically.
I thought it was an 8 track, given the layers.
A: Yeah. I experimented a lot with stuff but that was the best thing that came out.
Did you mix that anywhere else, or did you mix it at home?
A: All the mixes are basically first mixes. It was always the first mix that was there. You're in that space where it just happens. All I did was when I went to make the tape, I took the original mixes that I'd done off the cassette and mixed those down to a portable DAT player that somebody let me borrow. Then I did some EQ. When it went to CD, I went to the mastering studio at Zero Hour and did a final EQ and mastering compression.
On the new single ["Party Now" & "Iron Horse"] was that recorded on the same kind of setup?
A: Yeah, basically. I got a new 4 track about a year ago. On "Party Now", if you listen to the sound, there's this ominous death-rattle to it. I taped the PZM mic to the door of my room and John's bass was making the whole room and the door vibrate. So, if you listen to it you can hear the mic vibrate.
So that was recorded with a full band?
A: "Party Now" was done live and "Iron Horse" was just John and I. He played keyboards and bass and I played drums and the guitars.
So, where did you record the single?
A: It was recorded at my folk's house in New York.
Could you make a bit of racket there?
A: Yeah. We could turn up. All the stuff on the Varnaline album was done mostly at conversation level. I couldn't turn it up. I had this friend who lived across from me, it was this U shaped apartment building, and she told me she could hear everything! In the summertime she said, "Oh, I listened to you all day, it was great."
Have you got a whole, new album ready to go?
A: We're gonna record a new album in May after we get off the tour. We're gonna record at a 16 track studio this time.
Big jump!
A: Exactly.
Are you gonna record with Adam Lasus [at Studio Red]?
A: Yeah. We did the Space Needle album there on 8 track and it's kinda the same attitude...whatever goes. Any idea is open to use. He had one thing where he would use a [recording] Walkman, run a line out of it, and just put it by the drums, and it sounded amazing. It totally overdrives the Walkman. He's just got that anything-goes attitude, which is great.
He's probably not really expensive.
A: It's pretty reasonable. He works with this guy, Jason [Cox], they're like a demented co-producing team... they're pretty crazy.
Back to the home stuff; you were talking about the PZM mics. What were they picking up?
A: Just for the room. We did the basic tracks live, bass drums and guitar. One mic on the guitar, direct out of the bass, one mic on the drums, and then the PZM to get the sound of the room.
Mix those all together and run them to one track of the 4 track?
A: Pretty much.
On the stuff you did earlier, the Varnaline album, how did you do the drums?
A: It was all brushes, actually. The one mic that I got was this pretty cool Tascam condenser mic that has a screw-on head for omni and unidirectional. I used that for the drums and some of the vocals. I'd have a snare drum, a bass drum, a high hat and a ride cymbal and I'd stick it right over the snare drum, kind of between the snare drum and the high hat. Sometimes, I'd put something in the bass drum, like this shitty kind of Audio Technica mic that I use for all the guitar miking.
You'd throw that in the kick drum?
A: Yeah, but sometimes I didn't even need it. I had a wood floor so it would come through the mic stand. Other times I'd put the stand on a pillow, so you wouldn't hear the vibration through it.
You don't see that in pro studios! A lot of the sounds, like the drum sounds, are about to crack up on that. Are you pushing the inputs on that?
A: Totally. I would drive it really hard. I knew on some of the songs I would do more than 4 tracks. I knew if it wasn't really hot I'd get all sorts of tape hiss. I wanted to make it really hot, especially between the 4 track and cassette and then back to the 4 track and then mixing down again there was so much possibility of losing the signal. For me, the one rule of 4 track is to drive everything really hard.
When you did that where you mixed 4 tracks down to stereo and than added 2 more, what was on those tracks? Vocals?
A: Usually on all those songs I would use one mic, that condenser mic, and do acoustic guitar and vocals at the same time. Instead of doing the vocals last I would do them first. Except for "The Hammer Goes Down," the vocals came later on that, but usually on the 5th or 6th track would come a backing vocal or another guitar or something like that.
So, on a lot of the songs you would record you just playing the song and would build around it with other instruments.
A: Yeah, exactly. Half the songs, maybe over half the songs, were originally done with acoustic [guitar] and voice over the first track. I would do it to one track, I didn't separate the two. I have a hard time singing after-the-fact, to kind of get a vibe or whatever.
Reservoir
Did you do the Reservoir album at home?
J: Yeah, at my apartment on 4 track. All direct [into the tape deck] except for the first song which was a PZM [mic] on my guitar amp. Other than that everything was direct.
