Tell me a little bit about your past in recording. Did you go to school for this?
When I was 17 I had a 4-track and I played in bands. I would record the rehearsals and I started recording other bands. I knew a couple of people that had gone to IU [Indiana University] for their recording program. I went there and it was a pretty intense recording program — way past its heyday by the time I went there — everything was broken. I spent a year there and one of the requirements is to do an internship somewhere. After I had been there a year I got a call from Royal Trux, whom I had worked with a couple of years earlier doing sound for their tour [see Tape Op #11]. They were going to make a record and they had used David Briggs, Neil Young's old producer, for their previous record and he died right before they went to make their new record. Instead of getting a big name producer or engineer to work on their record they spent the money to put a studio in their house and just recorded it there and got someone to mix it. So they asked me a few things, consulted Sweetwater and bought all these ADATS, a board and all these effects. I went there and spent four months making a record. They rented a house for me and the bass player and the drummer. I had to set up their studio and learn how to use everything. I had never used an ADAT. I read a bunch of manuals and plugged everything together. That was a great, intense experience. I ended up going back to school for a little bit and when I finished I needed to find a place to live. My folks own this farm — I don't know why they decided to do it but they fixed this house up. It was in complete disrepair — you wouldn't recognize it. That was in 1997. I started out just recording my band Speed to Roam and recording my brother's bands, which is something I'd done a little of before, and my friend's bands. Just having this great space to do it in. I love it 'cause it's so non studio-like.
What were you recording on when you first started?
Two DA-38 tape machines — Sixteen tracks through a little Alesis mixer. I made a lot of recordings with that. I recorded one of Ned's albums and Will's album, I See a Darkness, on those, plus a bunch of other stuff. About a year after I moved out here I decided to buy a computer with the idea of just burning some CDs. I just got more and more into it and enjoying using a computer — I was able to get better quality recordings. The next step up from a tape machine was out of my price range. I could go from 16-bit recordings to 24-bit recordings without incurring much more cost. About a year after that I bought a Mac and after about six months after that I started using Pro Tools. That was about three years ago when I got that.
How did you find the learning curve of Pro Tools as opposed to other programs?
I used a few other programs before I settled on Pro Tools. When I finally got Pro Tools it was like, finally, something that makes sense. They were all totally usable. The more time you spent with these programs the better you can get at them, but Pro Tools was totally made for the audio recording engineer. Most of those other audio programs seemed to be made for MIDI sequencing people. When I switched to Mac I used Digital Performer because a good friend of mine was really into it. That's what I made Ease Down the Road with. I switched after that.
What sort of plug-ins do you use?
I use a Channel Strip plug-in and a couple of Waves plug-ins. I use outboard reverb and a couple of nice compressors.
What speakers do you like?
The 20/20bas Event speakers are the ones I've had the longest. I bought the NS-10s kind of cheap and they are in every studio so they are kind of nice to have even though they sound horrible. When I mix on one set of speakers for a while and then switch to the other at first it sounds completely different and then after a while I can't remember what speakers I'm working on and that's the point I like to get to. When it doesn't matter what speakers you are listening to everything just sounds good everywhere. I'll also take pointers from whoever is in the room at the time. In ways you'll never know what someone will ask you to change.
Are the recordings you've done recorded live?
Yeah. Most of them I record the band in a live setup in this room. I'll rearrange it a little but the drums would go on this rug, amps over here with a bass amp over there, and that gives a nice almost like a stage layout. I'm mic'ing everything close, so you get bleed on the mics. In digital I try and take away some things that are digital about it. When you're recording to tape you always have cross-talk between channels and things like that and recording live like that you still get that close mic sound but then there is this little bit of stuff in the back that makes everything come together in a way that I like. That said, I will separate things out sometimes, it's not a rule. It's fun to spread out people into other rooms. If I'm recording drums with an acoustic instrument sometimes it's not practical to have a singer and an acoustic guitar player in the same room as the drums. Ease Down the Road we actually put the drums in the dining room and we had the bass in here and then Will was out in the hallway so everything was totally separate. I can run cables to any part of the house.
How much of what you do is knob twisting, or is the "magic" hitting the recorder without much additional effects from you?
There is definitely a thought process: 'I want to use this mic on this instrument or this preamp.' It is thought out. It's not like I'm sitting here having the drummer kick on his kick drum for an hour while I tweak the mic position. I like to work relatively quickly and just set everything up and then do a line check to make sure everyone's mics are working. Sometimes I get everybody together, sometimes everybody separately or eventually both just get everybody to play and record a little bit. And then be like, 'This might work a little better if we move this mic over here.' Just go through it and see what people think. They could say, "I really hate the way my snare drum sounds." "Okay, how do you want it to sound?" "Less mushy," which never makes any sense but you just go with it. It's usually a pretty quick process. I don't use a lot of processing when I mix. I just like to balance things in a way that sounds pleasing. If a mic I'm using is causing a problem there's no second thought, I just put it away. A lot of things just sort of happen. Like that Amalgamated Sons of Rest record — we were all just sort of in here and we'd come in and start playing and I'd hit 'record'. Mics were just set up.
So that was just everybody playing together?
We'd all play and just switch around instruments — I played either bass or drums on any given track. Whoever was singing would go to the vocal mic and it would just sort of evolve from that. Some of the songs were written and they would just pick the one that was the best, some were off the cuff.
