I did a search on the web for you and I didn't turn up many articles.
There aren't a lot of them out there.
Is this the first?
There have been a few, but it's kind of weird. I don't get a lot of calls... The last interview I did for anybody was Mix, about six years ago. The guy called me and wanted to know about this Lisa Germano record called Geek The Girl, and he was kind of disappointed. He said, "Well, you know the record sounds really good and the voice is beautifully recorded. What kind of microphone were you using?" I said that actually I just kind of set up this ADAT in Lisa's house with a little Mackie board. She said she didn't want things too complicated and I set [up] a 57 and her little preamp for her violin and her drum machine. I set it so all she had to do is press a and she could assign that to any one of the eight tracks and that's basically how she did the record. I just kind of came in and did some overdubs and then we mixed it together — and he was very disappointed.
Why? It's a great sounding record.
I know, but I guess he wanted to hear about all these expensive microphones that I used and he couldn't believe... He was like, "You couldn't have just used a 57." I said, "No, no. With Lisa, that's her microphone. She's comfortable with that microphone..."
I think that's one of the most shocking realizations for an engineer. It's tough to have a three, four or five thousand-dollar microphone and not use it. And have a 57 beat it out on a particular voice.
Yeah, well I've been going through that because I've kind of been going through a microphone binge this year.
I saw the Lawson out there. Is that the 251 remake?
That's the L47, which is a really great microphone. I have this friend down in Austin, Mike Cordero, and he has a place called Misty Hill Audio, and I know Fletcher over at Mercenary. I have a pretty good rapport with these guys so if I call them up and say, "Can I try a piece of gear?" they'll send it to me. Just to try it out, and if it's something I like they know I'll buy it. If not, it's no big deal. So I got a couple [of] great microphones sent up from Mike and a couple Soundeluxs sent over from Fletcher, which was cool. But in the process of buying a U67 from this guy over in Belgium, the guy said, "Oh, have you ever heard of these Lawson microphones?" I said, "Never."
Really... you had never heard of Lawson Microphones?
No, I'm not a big gear head. When I read magazines it's, like, Photo Journalism or Amnesty Monthly. I'm not really into gear per se, so when the guy mentioned this microphone I called up [Gene] Lawson and talked to him myself. He was pretty cool, a nice guy, and he said, "Well, you know, I'll send you one as soon as we get it built." [laughs] That Lawson microphone is pretty happening. That and a 57 are some of my favorites.
Can you tell me how you got started in the business?
It's a pretty long story, but quite simply I started out as a songwriter and singer in a band up in Canada called Boys Brigade. We were quite popular in Toronto in the early '80s. At that time there were this couple [of] brothers working in a studio out of Hamilton and one of the guys came out to see our band play 'cause his girlfriend said, "You should check out this band," because he was looking to produce something with a government grant. He offered to produce the record and we, at the time, wanted to go with someone with a bigger name. We were sort of looking for a Nile Rodgers or somebody like that.
Well, it was the '80s.
And this guy showed up. You know, "Who is this guy? What does he know about producing records?" [laughs] And we kind of blew him off [more laughter], and about four or five years later I was dating this guy's sister. We had met on a session and started going out, and Jocelyn Lanois said, "My brother's going to be back in town and he can pick you up at the bus station next time you come into Hamilton." So Dan shows up at the bus station and he looks at me and says, "Oh, hey, you know, I remember meeting you about six or seven years ago, and I really wanted to produce your band. You guys never called me back. How come?"
Nothing like being put on the spot.
And I was, like, "Well , you know, I guess we kind of screwed up, right?" And he says, "I think so." 'Cause we made a record with someone else and I remember wishing that we had worked with him. 'Cause in a lot of ways I liked what I had heard about how he made records, as opposed to the majority of people. His sort of approach to making records seemed like there weren't so many boundaries. There weren't so many cans and can'ts in the recording environment — which I always found kind of annoying that someone would tell me, as an artist, "Well, we can't do that," or, "You're not allowed to," or, "It's just not possible." So when I met Dan I had been doing a lot of demos in my house in Toronto on this little 4-track and at one point I asked him if he'd be interested in hearing some of these things. I knew at the time he had just finished working on the Robbie Robertson record, Robbie's first solo record, and he had already finished The Joshua Tree record. I played him these demos and he went, "Oh, I really like that guitar sound you got, it's really fantastic." He says, "You know, we just finished the U2 record and Edge had been trying to get that sound and we couldn't even get it." I didn't want to not impress him by telling him it was done on a 1981 Strat with a Rockman. [laughs] But I think the point is that he was pretty impressed that I seemed able to achieve quite a lot with a minimum of gear. To this day I've maintained this idea that it really isn't the gear that counts, it's who has the good ideas. It's about originality. It's about looking at things in a way, like always knowing that there is always another way to look at any situation. It's never a closed door, there's always an angle.
Given the sonic textures on your albums, you can hear that sometimes convention can go out the door for a performance's sake.
I'm as big a fan and as big an advocate of what we tend to call "hi fidelity" or "hi-fi" type records. I wasn't a huge Steely Dan fan as a teenager. I know Steely Dan made these beautiful sounding records but their music didn't naturally appeal to me. On the other hand, I remember the very first time I heard the guitar solo that James Williamson played on "Search and Destroy" by Iggy [and the Stooges]. When I heard that guitar solo, that was a big eye opener. I remember friends of mine, when I would play that album at parties would say, "Turn that crap off. What's that bull? That's garbage!" And okay, maybe I didn't know. It didn't matter to me, it made no difference to me from a technical point of view.
And, actually, it sounds great when you go back and listen.
I've talked to Iggy about that record and he told me, "David [Bowie] fucked that record up when he mixed it. I had to do it again myself." [laughs] Who knows what the record would really sound like, I suppose? There's that extremity of the record when the guitar solo came in and it's, like, 50 decibels louder then everything else, and I thought, "You know, I like that."
How important is the pre-production stage to you?
I find pre-production often quite exciting and useful and fun. It's the old-fashioned way of doing it. What I am a huge advocate of not doing is demos. I've learned to loath demos.
Otherwise you're always trying to beat the demo?
Partly, yeah. On this record that I'm doing now with this group called Wood, they had done a demo with a friend of mine named Jay Joyce, and Jay did this beautiful sounding demo...
Would you say that most artists are insecure?
As far as their craft goes, most people I work with are not. I think the insecurity often comes into play when it comes to... certainly the bigger the record company you're dealing with and the more tentative the relationship — particularly with the A&R person — may be. That's where there can be an element of insecurity because you realize the bigger the label you're dealing with, obviously the numbers change. So people are kind of more conscientious of the fact that, "Hey we want to sell millions of records, not just a few to our friends and the rest we'll give away." It's easy to be cavalier when the stakes aren't high, but when the stakes get up there you realize it's your livelihood. It's more a sense of conservativeness.
But don't you feel that you don't deliver the same old thing, that that's what allows you to make your living? That's what they hire you for?
Well, I just hope that, ultimately, I've to some degree managed to achieve what I perceived people that I've looked up to when I was younger and starting out had. For example, when I would go to the record store and see these people's names on them... Like if I saw Brian Eno's [Tape Op #85] name on a record, I instantly thought, "That's got to be good. There's going to be something on that record for sure that's going to attack me, because Brian Eno's not going to work with crap. There's gonna be something." And, sure enough, there's Talking Heads, because Brian Eno's name is on it. Harold Budd, because Brian Eno's name is on it. I would have never bought a U2 record, quite honestly, until Brian Eno produced it and I thought, "Okay, Brian produced it, there must be something to it." The same can be said for a lot of people.
Well, Daniel Lanois brought Emmylou, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson to a whole new generation
Most certainly... Yeah, and I think that Dan's been unfairly treated, to some degree, particularly with his involvement with Bob. Dan is an exceptionally caring producer. He really cares deeply about the people he works with and believes in those people. I think with Bob — I don't think he was like trying to bring him back from the dead or anything — but I think he perceived Bob, like anyone else, as this great artist who somehow had gotten lost along the way. At least in terms of what we call making good records. I would love to see someone like Rod Stewart make a great record again. Some of the great singers, you know they've made amazing records, but it's like — what happened? Like Joe Cocker — he's still to this day one of the best singers ever but... the records! Eric Clapton, all these people out there, surely they're capable. As Neil Young consistently has proven, it doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter if your 55 or 60 or 100, you know if you've got the attitude...
The Neville Brothers murked around for years...
Yeah, the Nevilles, certainly. Emmylou (bless her heart and everything), I think Wrecking Ball and Red Dirt Girl, those are records that put her onto a different plane — got her out of the typical. I always find it surprising when people refer to her as a country singer. I don't even consider Johnny Cash a country singer; or Waylon Jennings or Merle Haggard... George Jones — okay, country is the genre they existed in, but they're just great singers, great artists.
