Do you guys do a lot of projects together?
Yeah.
Who owns the space?
Both of us.
When you're buying equipment for the studio, do you buy it as a partnership or does one of you say, "I want to buy that. You buy the next thing."?
It works both ways. We each had a lot of gear to start with. When there are things we really need, like Pro Tools HD, the studio buys that. Then there are certain things I just want. I went to an AES show and I came back thinking, "I can't live without one of those [Chandler] TG1 limiters." So I bought the TG1. Eric is constantly buying instruments.
Tim, give us some of your history. What lead up to Cowboy Technical Services?
I started work in the eighties at Media Sound, which was on 57th Street. In those days you were an assistant and before that you were what we called a "shipper". A lot of people call them interns. You were a shipper, and then after a while you got to go in and help set up these huge sessions. Some of them would be forty to fifty piece orchestras — things like that. Then there would be rock 'n' roll going on downstairs. I became an assistant and then an engineer. Then MIDI kind of took over and tracking rooms started fading away. Jingle companies used to do demos [at studios] all the time but then they started doing them all in- house. That had been the bread and butter of the larger studios. Someone started putting up a huge building next door and that ended up closing the doors of Media Sound, because of the construction. I got out of Media and started going freelance. I met Eric [Ambel] at Media when he was with the Del Lords. Then I ended up living down the street from him. We'd stop and talk about anything but drum machines, so we thought maybe we should work together. "Man, you actually play guitar and I could move some air with this signal?" In those days a lot of people would come in to do a session and it would consist of a drum machine and four racks of synthesizers and they gave you a patch cord. I didn't really think of it too much as engineering.
Did you keep working during that period?
I did keep working. For a while I got into this place that was doing karaoke. Other than being an assistant to engineers like Mike Barbiero and Michael Brauer [Tape Op #37] at Media, karaoke was one of the best learning experiences I've ever had. A guitar player sits at home, listens to a CD and says, "Okay, what did he play there?" He can back it up, play the lick over and over and figure it out. As an engineer you don't really get to do that. However, imagine if someone gives you a Neve console, two 24-track machines, a CD player and says, "Match that drum sound. Here's a ton of vintage mics to do it with." That's basically what I did. I matched drum sounds. I did it from ten to six. If I was in the middle of a record at six o'clock, my co-worker would take over the session and I would tell him, "You better punch out at the chorus." I did that for a year. It started getting boring after a while.
Were there revelations for you too, as an engineer, trying to match sounds of different eras?
Yeah, it was really cool. I loved trying to do the old Motown stuff and then doing some '80's hit by Bon Jovi. By this time it was probably 1990 or something. There were records that I probably never would have listened to, but I did learn something. For the majority of time that I worked there, I got pigeonholed as the guy who did the drums or anything that required more than one microphone. I always loved to track a band playing — that's the exciting thing to me — so I was always better at it than most. Some of the guys knew how to program synths much better than I did. After that I was just freelancing. I worked at Studio 900 a lot, which was small, but I met Keith Richards there and I got to be a part of Main Offender. That was a lot of fun.
You got to go from mimicking The Stones' drum sound for karaoke to tracking a Stone.
I didn't tell him what I had been doing. I was just in the right place at the right time to get on the Main Offender project. I also worked with Keith when he was putting songs together and it was great. I had stations for him to play. The piano setup, a couple of guitar amps and a bass amp. He had a DAT of Charlie Watts' or Steve Jordan's drum beats and I'd play them over the speakers and he'd start playing stuff and getting riffs together. He was trying to organize the things in his head, but you had to keep up with him. He always knew if you were listening or not. When I was at Media I worked with Rickie Lee Jones doing the same thing — where she came in and had all these ideas for songs and she was trying to put them all together. There was a drum machine, so basically it was use of the drum machine as a click — that was it. She would play different instruments. When the record came out I thought, "I remember that chorus, but it didn't go with that verse." That was interesting for me. This kind of work helped when Eric and I put together our own place. We wanted a place where creativity could flow.
I know you also write songs, so to be able to watch Keith or Rickie Lee Jones and see their methods — did that ever motivate you to start working in different ways?
Working with Keith was pretty inspiring. There are certain artists that I've worked with that are probably lesser known but I really liked their songs. I would get inspired again and perhaps write lyrics a week later. With Ricki Lee I saw the editing process going on, whereas with Keith, he was developing the music at that time so he was trying all sorts of ideas. He just wanted to keep playing. He's happy when he's got a guitar in his hands. I do remember writing a couple of songs the summer we were working on Main Offender. Popa Chubby covered one of them. It was kind of an exhausting summer, though. We worked from 9:00 pm to 9:00 am just about every day — five days a week.
Oh man. A strange weekend after that.
I would go home and sleep all weekend. Keep in mind that Keith's project was four months long. I'm not working like that anymore. Most of the time I work during the day, start late in the morning and work into the early evening, but there are times when I keep going. Sometimes I go in and work on a project where I'm required to record one song and it has to be completed that day. It may take fourteen hours and there's nothing that can be done about it. There are also times when people are working on their song and they say, "Oh, I've got this idea. I've gotta put it down." You have to be ready to record. It doesn't count if you don't record. Record, because the musician is playing and sound will be dealt with later. Maybe the level is not really up, but the whole point is to get the most inspirational performance you can. Don't stop somebody that's playing to say, "Wait a minute. I've decided I need to move the microphone a half an inch to the left." Don't stop the whole band because the high-hat mic has moved.
That is a vibe killer. If you push them out of the zone, you're focusing on the wrong thing.
To me, it's all about vibe. You've got to find a vibe for mixing. You have to listen to the way the singer sang. If you solo the vocal track and you think, "He's angry"; then make the bass drum slap! Push all the gear. That affects the whole mix. My mixes are more about vibe than about being technically correct, but I hope they are technically correct! When I listen to music I want to feel it. I want it to pull me into where that person was when he or she was writing it. Listening to a Daniel Lanois [Tape Op #37] production will put me somewhere else. If anyone asks, "How do you set up your [UA] 1176?" I say, "I don't know." I have general rules about where I start the process. You can see we have a lot of outboard gear we've collected over the years. Every piece does something [unique]. I like music to breathe like it's supposed to.
What projects happened after working with Keith?
After that was when I met Eric [Ambel] again. He was working with Nils Lofgren [Crooked Line] at the time. We thought maybe we should work together. I'd kept freelancing. There was a time when practically everything I did was in another studio. I was floating around working with all kinds of people in places throughout the country, as well as overseas.
At a point like that, how were you getting the work?
Getting recommendations. Eric was producing a lot of things at that time as well. I knew a lot of people via my work from the years before. Godfrey Diamond, an engineer I had assisted at Media, started producing and he called me to engineer. There were a few jobs like that. From there, somebody would say, "Maybe you should work with Tim." I'm kind of a laid back human being, and not quite as intense as a lot of people — on the outside.
That's your selling point.
Yeah. If someone requested, "I want somebody that's not in my face and gets a good guitar sound", my name would come up and I would get a call. You do one project and you meet somebody that's doing another project, so it just keeps going.
Does that world seem a little different to you now as far as freelancing and [working in] different studios?
It does to me now. I still do it occasionally. Freelancing of that measure has slowed down for me, mainly because of Cowboy — people love the vibe here. All of the sudden I had all my tools in one spot. Not only the outboard, but the instruments that are here. People come in to this studio and see there's a banjo, there are great guitars everywhere, of course great amplifiers.
You can see where everyone is at in the open room and start rolling.
Right. Some studios have three cue systems. You might be talking to one person, but the other two aren't hearing you — that kind of thing. Or, they have a private cue but they've got the talkback switched off or something. It makes it a little difficult to communicate. This way communication is much easier. Most people think, "How do you do hear what you're recording?" When you put a snare drum mic into a Neve mic pre, you pretty much know what it should sound like and if that is what you want. If the microphone is in the right place and the sound is the sound you want to record, what is the problem? I get a good signal to work with and later I can manipulate it anyway I want to.
Do you get a lot of jobs where you're working with a producer or producer/artist?
We've been doing some projects where Eric will do pre- production, or pre-mix production. He will be in charge of arrangements for people, or helping artists get their arrangements together, and then they bring me in to mix. I recently finished a project where we worked like that called Miss Ohio. Really great songs.
EA: We have the same iMac based Pro Tools rigs at home now. If I came to the studio with my hard drive, I could grab a few things to work on at home.
So when you go home, what are you working on? Are you working on editing or comp'ing?
EA: My rig had gotten really slow. Now that my rig is good again, I've been doing some songwriter stuff that works at my house. We'll come in here later for a real rhythm section.
Like adding real drums onto a session recorded to a click?
EA: Yeah, [Toontrack's] EZdrummer. I love that thing.
Our rigs at home are pretty much the same thing: EZdrummer, Pro Tools LE and I use Reason as well. When we get in the studio we simply balance it through the board and use whatever outboard gear you want.
You've got plenty of rack gear as well as a console.
This is something that has recently developed because of the technology. We've been doing the digital thing for a while. I was one of those people who was forced down the road, or went down the road, kicking and screaming. I didn't want to give up the tape machine and I haven't given it up totally. I have my addiction under control so that I can use tape for tracking and mixing. Overdubs get done in the computer. We have a 16-track headstack, and a 24 as well, and we'll put down the rhythm section — usually bass, guitars and drums — and then we drop that into Pro Tools.
How long have you guys been working in this space?
