What's up with your studio, Playonbrother? Is that set up on your property?
Not anymore. [laughter] That's been a studio, but the location has changed a few times over the years. Now I've definitely found a really great spot. I finally have all my gear and everything in one place. For a while I had my studio at home, which is great for me because I play bass, drums, guitar and sing. What happened was a few friends of mine from Boston wanted me to record a couple of albums for them. "Cool, come by." I'm close with them — not a big deal. At the same time I was mixing a lot of albums and FTPing — that kind of deal. The word of mouth starts happening and people are contacting my wife, Kim, because she manages that whole side of things. Everybody who I ended up working with was really cool, but I just felt uncomfortable having people I didn't really know coming to my spot, you know? We have an eight-year- old and a five-year-old. It was hard to schedule things around regular life. I found a new spot and it's just amazing. I'm really psyched.
Is it a barn?
It was a barn. I live in western Massachusetts and I have a buddy who pretty much owns most of the area and he's really into music. My wife knows him really well and she was like, "I'm looking for a space." We meet him, he takes me into this building and oh man. We were walking in thinking, "Yo, this is gonna be incredible." He opens up the door, [makes whoosh noise], the door goes open and it looks like someone has been through with a jackhammer. [laughter] He was like, "So, when do you want to get started on construction?" I'm like, "Dude, that's not exactly what I was thinking of." It just would have been an insane amount of money. On Craigslist I found this one [listing] and the description was so odd. It was like, "Office building/storage area — 2500 square feet." So I emailed. I like to be up front with my intentions. I've done my share of sliding in the back door, then two days later the cops are banging down your door because you're making too much noise.
Oh yeah.
So I write this really long email, tell the person what I'm trying to do. She hits me right back. "I think the place would be perfect for you." We go down there and I walk in. As soon as I put my foot through the door, I'm like, "This is it. It's perfect. She was right." Very high ceilings. I just clapped my hands. It just felt so good — just a big, open area and it has these rooms off to the side. There are two bathrooms and four rooms so I can put guitar amps [in there]. I have my Leslie in one. I have one as a lounge. I have one that is empty now — using it to shoot photos in. In the back of it is the storage area she was talking about, so we have all of Soulive's touring gear back there. Sometimes I just use it as an echo chamber because it's this big, concrete space. You just throw a speaker in there and crank it up just a little bit, [add] some mics and it's just, "Whooo!"
It just adds that real room thing to something.
Exactly. The woman I'm leasing the spot from is just amazing. Back in the '70s people used to hang out in another barn on her property and play music all through the night. Everyone in the area's cool. It was perfect.
On the new record, I hear room sounds on the drums. Is that the natural sound of the room?
That is the room, man.
[laughter] Well, that's a good thing.
Yeah! When I was a kid, my brother and I grew up listening to [my father's] amazing jazz collection. You just have these moments where's it's like an epiphany. I remember listening to a Coltrane album when I was little, looked on the back of it and there were a couple pictures of them walking to the studio from the parking lot and it said, "Walking into Rudy Van Gelder's studio." That was the first time that it really hit me — "Oh, there's somebody who records this music. Who is this Rudy Van Gelder cat?" That's what got me on the whole recording tip right from there.
You couldn't have started at a better place.
Man. That's always been my thing. Obviously we all go through the trials and tribulations and learning process. I'm still learning. But it took me a while to figure out that (at least for me) it's about the room. You can fucking EQ shit for days and do all this kind of stuff, but if the vibe in the room is right, if I can hear the room — ah man. What's that Neil Young album?
Harvest?
Harvest. There's the beginning of a tune where the bassist is playing and you can hear the bottom of the snare kind of rumbling with the bass. Damn. They sound like they were on top of each other. That's definitely the turn we made with this album. This is the album that I've been really wanting to make with this band for a long time. The last album — it was called No Place Like Soul — it took us a year or so. It was just one of those albums. It was fun, but it took a long time.
What studios and producers and engineers have you worked with over the years?
When we first signed to Blue Note we did an album at Avatar with Bob Brockman. We were on Blue Note but the [studio's] clock was ticking. I don't think we got as much out of it as we could have knowing what we know now, but whatever. We worked with Bob Power. I learned a lot from that cat. Then our boy Kirk Yano — this dude's a crazy cat, man. He grew up in Cleveland back in the day and he works a lot with [jazz guitarist] Pat Martino. On the other side, he [engineered] a lot of Public Enemy's albums. He's done a shitload of classic hip-hop. He's one of these dudes that will tell you anything and he'll try anything. He's just like, "Alright Al. Fuck it. We'll just put it through this."
He's learned that you don't say, "No." You just try it.
Exactly. On the last album, No Place Like Soul, we cut that at our producer, Stuart Lerman's place — a little room. It was like hanging out in someone's living room. I guess he does a lot of singer-songwriter stuff. We hooked up with him because we were really trying to focus on the songs, lyrically.
Yeah. That's a song record.
Joel Hamilton mixed most of that album. Another crazy cat. Then Tony Maserati mixed a couple of joints on that.
One thing I noticed on the last record is that you were going kind of nuts with drum compression.
That's Joel. It was a lot of fun hanging with him. He's mad scientist, crazy dude. [There] were a couple of tunes I mixed — "Kim", the one that I was singing on, and "One of Those Days". Tony Maserati mixed "Mary" and "Callin'".
Did you have Joel mix those other songs too and just compare them?
Exactly. Joel mixed the whole thing, and Tony had been in the wings wanting to do something with us. Eric met him through doing a Justin Timberlake track...
Adding a guitar or something?
Yeah. He started hanging with Tony and telling him about what we did, and Tony was like, "Man, I would love to mix some music — cats playing instruments." He really hooked us up because he was just so psyched to do it. So yet again, another cool cat.
And there's no wrong or right with mixing. Everyone's got a different approach.
Exactly. That's the truth, man.
That seems like a lot of different recording scenarios.
Definitely. I started gigging out when I was about 11 or 12. My first studio experience was probably when I was about 12 or 13 — one of these deals where we won a battle of the bands, got some free eight hours of studio time at two in the morning. So the [engineer] wasn't really too happy about that. I was kind of interested in it, because at that point I started to get into Jimi Hendrix and the whole Hendrix/Eddie Kramer thing. I had my questions — it was all very new to me. The dude just didn't want to hear from a little kid. So I was like, "Man, I can do this." So I go home. I had a couple of tape decks and [I'd] record drums onto one, just [kept] bouncing back and forth. It sounded like shit by the end. You couldn't hear anything over the hiss. It wasn't until I moved to New York City in the early '90s when I hooked up with this cat Dave Swanson, who was the monitor engineer for Blues Traveler. My band back in the day was running in that circle with the Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler.
Was that Moon Boot Lover?
Yeah, exactly. That's old school man. Dave was a student, I found out years later, of Kirk Yano. We were working at Greene St. Recording and he was the first cat where I had a question about something and he was like, "Come on over." Maybe it was an SSL. "Really, I can touch that?" He's like, "Yeah, go ahead. This is what this does." I was like, "Wow, finally someone who has some credentials is cool." I remember this one Moon Boot Lover album — we were mixing half of a verse, print it to tape — splicing tape. I was learning a lot about the gear and how to fix stuff. A buddy of mine, Michael Birnbaum, has a studio in Woodstock right now — Applehead Recording Studios. He bought and built a new place, so I got in there. For a while he had a Neve, API and a Trident B-range in there. It was just one big mothership. I was like, "Dude, you are out of your mind." It is a great spot. But he's another cat who really just let me do whatever. He was like, "Yeah, come sit down. I'm gonna go have some coffee. Go mix it up. Do whatever."
So you got to do a bit of stuff in there and use that space?
Yeah. Soulive actually cut something in his old spot in Woodstock. When Mike moved we cut the album Next there. His new spot is great. Mike cut Meshell Ndegeocello's album Comfort Woman there and then Bob [Power] mixed it.
So that led you to work with Bob then?
Exactly. We worked on some stuff with him. The funny thing is, and this has happened to me a few times — I always thought Bob was a brother. [laughter] You listen to A Tribe Called Quest and they're like, "Bob, turn me up." Then D'Angelo — you hear the guitar and I'm like, "Word." I think we finally met Bob at a restaurant in New York. I walked in and he was like, "Hey, I'm Bob," and I was like, "Are you serious?" [laughter] "Okay cool. Right on man."
I guess you wouldn't know, given his reputation and the back catalog.
Yeah. But that's the other funny thing. I don't know, you might know more about this than I do. But in my experience I haven't really met too many black engineers. It's very rare.
Or women.
Exactly.
It's obviously a "white dude" field, and that's kind of disturbing.
