How has being married and having kids changed the way you work?
You're obliged to prioritize much more efficiently than perhaps you're used to. There used to be time to "faff" around. Now I don't feel that I have the time to do that. If something is not important, I'm not going to be very interested in doing it. I only take on projects that I really want to do — rather than, "Oh, maybe that would be okay. I'm not doing anything else. I'll do it." It has to be something that I really want to do because otherwise I'll resent being there. I'll be spending my time thinking the whole time that I would rather be home. I wouldn't want to do that to myself and I wouldn't want to do that to a band either.
I noticed you were really good about saying, "When it's time to go, it's time to go."
Yes. I've done my shift. It's a job. [laughter] That's the thing about having kids. It's also about how growing up changes you. I haven't got twenty hours to spend dicking around in the studio because someone thinks it might be a good idea to try tracking with reverb on a snare drum in one chorus. I did my stint of that when I was 16, 17, and I loved it same as everybody. It was fun. Now I can imagine what something is going to sound like before we do it. Maybe it would be cool, but probably it's not so you're going to have to trust my opinion on that. I try to work with good engineers. I don't want to have to be running copies. I don't feel that's a good use of my time. It's also that I only function well in the studio for a certain amount of hours a day. I only have good ideas for maybe ten hours. Sometimes it will go longer because we'll be on a roll — sometimes it will be shorter because we're tired. I'm pretty good a recognizing now when I'm drying up.
Yeah. We had a couple of days with The Magic Rays where we had hit the creative wall.
Yeah. "We'll come back tomorrow and it will make much more sense." Otherwise we're just gonna spend three hours listening to something that nobody is sure about... then we'll come back tomorrow and find that it's rubbish. We'll feel bad about it, we'll be more tired and we won't have the energy to pick it up.
It was nice in sessions that you did that you were always willing to let Nick [Luca] or I voice an opinion.
Yeah, that's because you guys have got good studio etiquette. To be fair, most of the people I've worked with have. Occasionally you work with somebody who is inexperienced or they've only been in one studio or only know one way of working. They've kind of gotten in the habit of saying things... you know, maybe they've done a lot of budget sessions where there was no producer and the band didn't know what they were doing. They've gotten in the habit of getting in the driving seat when it's not appropriate. Occasionally I've had to politely reprimand people I've been working with and say, "I know you're going to have opinions. If I want to hear them, I'll mention it."
That must be pretty rare.
It was more frequent when I was younger. I mean, I'm not exactly a household name by any means, but people within the industry generally know who I am, so if I turn up at the studio to work generally someone will know who I am. It's easier — you just automatically have more respect. When people didn't know who I was I had to earn it. That's fair enough. I don't begrudge that.
Well, you did kind of give The Magic Rays a little lecture but it's because you only had two weeks. You gave them a little rundown, which I found very interesting.
Yeah, on something like that... I like to work fast, but that was very fast. We had twelve days to record and mix an album from scratch. It helped that the band could play pretty well. As always, I had to do a lot of work on their rhythm section.
If you didn't like it, you didn't waste any time. You just said right away, "I don't like that."
That's because I've spent too much time in the past trying to fix bad drum tracks! [laughter] And that's another that's crossed off my list. I do not want to do that anymore. If it ain't right in the beginning, let's do it again! It might seem like a drag, but it's gonna be much more of a drag later on when you keep coming around to a bit that doesn't groove.
You told yourself you could just make it go, but every time it comes up...
You can put on a little more reverb, give it this or that but then it just draws attention to it and it gets bigger and bigger every time you hear it.
Unless it's Giant Sand.
Yeah, in which case it's a beautiful mistake. But then, their records... it's one big, beautiful mistake and that's what makes them special. Speaking of which... the way we flew in Scout's backup vocal. Have you ever seen anything as crazy as that? [Howe Gelb provided John with a CD of their friend Scout singing a backup part with no reference to key or time and instructed him to add her voice to the song he was to mix. We loaded the CD to the computer and selected the sections that seemed the best and flew them back to tape. The back up vocal lined up perfectly and we only had to try once or twice to hit the space bar at the right moment on fly ins] That's Howe. He can never seem to record anybody in the studio. It's always recorded on a bit of gaffer tape in the back of a bus.
But how could it be that six months previously her vocal is at the right tempo and in the right key for a song he hasn't even recorded yet?
Yeah. That was pretty great, wasn't it? You think there is no rhyme or reason behind anything he does, but there is kind of a weird, convoluted logic to things. He did figure out what key — even though he wasn't playing the song in that key at the time — he did figure out what key he thought he would be playing it in when he picked up an electric guitar. So, he gave Scout that key to sing in. Timing-wise, that was a sheer fluke. It was part luck. I don't know how much planning there was in it...
He's just telling her, "Do it again. Do it again."
She's got a really great voice — it's kind of stretchy. Some voices that you can put in and it's not like it's a staccato timing thing. Her voice kind of sits over something. It also works because there's room for that voice to work at that time. It's more having a vision to know that's a good voice for that part. He's got a great mind for that. He puts things together that would appear to be extremely disparate, but in the world of Howe they seem to hang together in a way that I find particularly appealing.
Yeah. Well, you guys have a good relation- ship, it seems. I was surprised even to the level that he was able to be a little bit more gruff and cranky with you.
Yeah, that bastard! [laughter] Old friends always get away with a lot more than others would — we're not going to take offense. That's fine. Howe's a different animal when he's working. He's so laid back and so casual about everything. But he takes his work extremely serious[ly]. You may be hard pressed to imagine that when you see the chaotic way he approaches it...
Oh, I'm well aware of the chaotic way he approaches it!
There is no one more chaotic.
Handing off DATs as he's driving to mastering.
Flipping things around... anything goes. Except for rehearsal. That's out of the question.
Well, the record is really not done until he's forced to hand it in.
Absolutely. And probably not done there! But the thing he's trying to do, and what we should all try to do, is make something really special and really great. That's his way of making it. He gets cranky sometimes because he feels that he's not coming up with the goods. He might then take it out on somebody else. If I think there's the possibility of them coming up with some magic, I'll accept some crank as part of the process. When I won't accept is when I'm in the situation of making some bulk standard project that's just gotta sound good. It's gotta have some energy and you basically know what you're doing. Then I find I'm not very tolerant of that because I find the situation doesn't really warrant that kind of behavior. You're not trying to do anything extraordinary. You can have difference of opinion, but I don't want to mess around with egos too much. It's not interesting. It's not productive. If I want to play with children, I'll play with my kids at home! [laughter]
During the Magic Rays session you brought in a stack of your recent CDs. You brought in Tracy Chapman, the Dionysus, The Eels and your band. When things were getting a little out of focus, you would say, "Let's just listen to something else." But the things you would listen to would be things that you have done. Is that just by design? Is that to get them to recognize...
Recognize the superiority? No, not at all! For me, when I travel, I bring those CDs with me because I know what they sound like. I know what the level the bass is and I know what level the compression is. I can recognize the relative vocal level, or the level between instruments. It's just good for me to hear that. I don't mean it at all as an intimidation thing. It hadn't even occurred to me that it might be. It's not so much to intimidate as it is to inspire confidence.
Which it totally did.
You might think, "Where am I heading with this?" But, you know, most of the time the results I come up with I'm pretty pleased with and the artist is pretty pleased with. I've made very few records where the artist has moaned about it at the end. Even two or three years later, people are happy with the records I have made with them.
You get repeat business that way too.
I'm not a career minded person. I've never been like that. I have a very simple philosophy. I try and make the best record I possibly can with the material that's put in front of me. I'm not really good at focusing on more than one project at a time. I can listen to other things, I can get ideas for things. Some people can go from session to session. They can record something during the day and go mix something else in the evening. I would find that pretty hard.
If you were working with Naim [Amor], even if it was only for a few hours, that's what you were doing. When you came to Tucson we knew there were going to be demands for your attention and time! [laughter] You've actually worked quite a bit while you've been here.
