What is your role in Universal Audio?
I suppose as a founder, although my dad is really the founder, but as a rekindler maybe. My brother and I came up with concept a few years ago when we were going through a lot of my dad's stuff, and it dawned on us that it would be nice to make these things again. Bill just kind of took it from there and built the company. Pretty quickly actually — I was amazed.
So you're the primary singer/ songwriter in the Radar Bros?
Yeah, pretty much. I write the lyrics and play the guitar, piano and whatever else. Senon Williams plays bass, Steve Goodfriend is the drummer, and then lately we've added Eddie Ruchet who plays keyboards and lap steel, and Sean Fallon plays keyboards.
Where's your studio?
It's in the garage; a one-car garage from the '20s — pretty small. I doubt you could put a Cadillac or anything in it, and that was the original control room. The guy who lived here before me built another room onto it and that was the studio. We did our first EP and first record that way. Then last summer, I built a new control room onto the existing two rooms. Now it's like a submarine, you go from one narrow room to another. It's called Phase Three now.
Do you record other bands besides the Radar Bros?
It's mostly the Radar Bros, but I record other bands too. I did a record a couple of years ago for a band called Half Film. Mostly just friends' bands 'cause it's better when you like the people your record.
What are you recording to?
I just got a 2" machine. All of our previous records were done on an [Otari] MX-70 1" [16-track].
I would assume that you've got some UA gear in your studio?
Yeah, I've got the LA-2A and the 2-610. I can't stop using the 2-610 — it's really nice. I've got some V-72s as well, but they haven't been getting as much use since I got the 2-610s. I've got an API 1604 sidecar console too, which has pretty much been the centerpiece of the studio. I have a Neotek Series II that I monitor off of. I go to tape with the API. I track with a mixture of the API and the preamps. But the API was kinda fucked up for a while, but finally on this record it's working perfectly which is really nice. I actually recapped it myself a while back, but it turned out I only recapped about half the caps. There were these really old brown plastic caps that I think were original, and I didn't think they were capacitors 'cause they looked so far off from what capacitors look like today.
So you've got a pretty solid electronics background as well?
No, I don't.
But you know enough to recap the board?
