You joined Los Lobos in 1984, correct?
Well it was kind of weird. We started working on the first EP — it wasn't even a record — called And a Time To Dance. And when we started that I was in The Blasters, and by the time we finished the EP three months later, I was in Los Lobos. So on the record I was listed as producer, but by the end of it I wasn't in The Blasters anymore, I was in Los Lobos. So there's kind of a grey area of when I officially joined Los Lobos. I would say late '82ish, maybe.
You also produced one of Dave Alvin's [of The Blasters] first solo records, Romeo's Escape.
Yeah, I did. As far as I know, that was Dave's real first time singing. He was pretty anxious about it and it was a blast. We put a great band together and went to a great studio called Radio Recorders on Santa Monica [Blvd.] in L.A. The whole thing had a really nice vibe about it. Dave's sort of a mildly nervous guy, but I remember that he was really happy about how everything sounded, and he dug the whole vibe of it. And you know his brother wasn't there chewing him out like he usually does — The Blasters were so high strung — so just being in the studio without everybody fighting all the time was probably a relief to Dave. Consequently, it was a very emotional recording. Everybody really put themselves deep into it and it was a blast.
When we first met, I remember us talking about the limitations of recording onto analog tape and how those limitations can actually be a good thing, creative-wise. Has this been your approach essentially?
Well it's not necessarily a philosophical outlook on my part, but it seems that if you have a certain set of limitations — and that's really one of the problems with Pro Tools — is really the only finite limit is either money or patience or talent, really. If every choice is possible, how do you really distinguish when you are actually done? I think it's arguable that some of the finest music ever made was made with the least amount of options. You know, Sgt. Pepper's..., Howlin' Wolf, or Robert Johnson records — they had few options, really. It just had to be great music right off the floor, and then creatively manipulate the available options. When we do a Pro Tools session, which we do way more often than not these days, I like to subconsciously operate as if there is tape involved. To say, "That's about the track limit right there" — you can have 24 or 30 or whatever and say that's it. And perhaps that's not a hard rule — I break it all the time — but I think when you think in those terms, it forces you to make choices and go down paths. If you had endless options then you might try to save those options for the mix days, and in the end you're really fucking yourself over. I was just talking to Mitchell Froom [Tape Op #10] about [Los Lobos'] Kiko yesterday, and the fact that we had relatively few options helped the record to come together rather quickly. We had so many well-processed tracks that were demos, so the record was pretty effortless to make. You know, I'm certainly not an anti-Pro Tools guy. I certainly love the economy — I love the fact that it's easy for you to make demos in your own home and you can take those sessions anywhere and not have to worry about the tape azimuth and two machines being different, etc. I mean those are certainly wonderful things, and also being able to rescue things that in a tape-only universe might not be able to be rescued, is really a godsend. You know as often as I decry the tendency to sort of wank on a hard drive, there's also times when you are able to rescue something or capture something that, had it been a tape machine, we would have just had to start over.
So, I know on our record we did most of the stuff to tape, then some editing and overdubs in Pro Tools. Is that how you'd prefer to work? Maybe using the "best of both worlds," so to speak?
Well, in a perfect world it would just be tape, to be honest with you. I think tape sounds better, or at least I like the way it sounds. I like that there's 15 seconds or so of reflection after you do something so you can think about what you just did. But you know, I understand the world how it is and I think that it's a pretty healthy marriage to go to tape and then dump to Pro Tools for the next step or whatever. But really, I've done it every which way — all Pro Tools, all tape, both, either/or, back and forth — and I will say that the quality of the plug-ins have improved amazingly. And the phase stuff that used to bug the crap out of me pretty much no longer exists in Pro Tools. You can actually make a really good sounding record just in Pro Tools with the modern plug-ins and not have to worry about those things.
You mentioned Kiko earlier. That's arguably one of Los Lobos' best records. How was it made?
Well, it was all tape, and we recorded about half the record on a 16-track 2" at a place called Paul and Mike's, which was in the poorest neighborhood Los Angeles — down on the "nickel"- 5th Street downtown. Then we moved to Sound Factory Studio B and finished it there — overdubs and mixing too.
You won a Grammy for the first Los Super Seven record, which is an incredible record. Was that the one that was done in several different countries?
No. That was the second one. The first one was pretty much all done in a studio called Cedar Creek in Austin. It was pretty much all rough mixes! With the exception of two or three of them, they were done in like 20 minutes on the last day we were there. We had a 2:00 flight and started at 10:00, and sort of just blew through the thing, and those roughs ended up being unmatchable. We moved to the Sound Factory studio in L.A. to try and mix it, but couldn't touch it. The whole record was done in a week. The idea was that everybody would come to Austin with two songs in mind and we'd just bang 'em out and see what happened. The shorthand version of the concept was just East L.A meets Austin. The revelation of that record, to me, was Ruben Ramos — who I think is one of the most fantastic singers alive. He's an Austin guy that not many people had known about, but he is one of the most amazing people to hang out with. The guy has this '50s, Frank Sinatra vibe about him and is always dressed in perfectly tailored clothes. The guy's like 60 years old! I once saw him jogging and his jogging suit was pressed. Amazing! The other cool thing about that record is we captured Doug Sahm's last performance. We had talked about having him involved, but for whatever reason he was sort of in and out and never there at a time when we could actually do anything with him. So he was stopping by one day sort of toward the end of the process and he poked his head in and said, "Man, that sounds great!" and then left the building. I remember thinking, "Damn, we've got to get Doug on something!" We were working on that song "Rio De Tenampa" that David Hidalgo and Louie Perez wrote, and there's this bridge section that I thought would be perfect. So he was literally pulling out of the parking lot when I ran out and jumped on his Cadillac and was like, "Doug! Get in here! We want you to sing something!" And literally, he got out of the car, engine running, door open, and came in and sang the bridge of that song, got back in his car and drove away! And unfortunately, I'm sad to say that it was the last time I saw him alive. He died about a year later. He was there in spirit nearly through the whole thing, but it totally blew my mind to hear him just come in and do that part and take off.
You've made all kinds of different records. You did my record, you've done singer/songwriters like Dave Alvin, and you've done bands like the Tragically Hip and Faith No More. You've done Latin records, etc. How do you manage all of that? Is there anything you prefer?
If I like it, I'll record it! Basically, that's it. You know, I can't imagine what it would be like to just record one genre or just one thing. I don't think people really listen that way anyway. I mean doesn't everybody have Thelonious Monk and George Jones in their record collections?
That's a good point.
All my friends do. I just think it's important to do that, and I've been unbelievably lucky and blessed to have had the opportunities to work with different artists and make records in all these different styles and genres. You know, hopefully I can bring stuff from one to the other — you know, mixing and matching musicians and stuff. I mean, we definitely did that on our record [American Myth]. Bringing in guys like Rene Camacho, who is the best salsa bass player that I know — I mean, he played the shit out of a beautiful folk song on your record.
