Let's start with the late '90s. What brought you to Chicago from Florida?
The main thing I wanted to do was get the hell out of Florida. I'd been there for so long, I just had to get out. A guy in my class [at Full Sail] was from Chicago. He was like, "Oh man, you should move to Chicago." I got a call from a studio owner in Chicago looking for an assistant, so I packed up all my shit and drove there. I'd never been there before.
What studio was that?
It was called Studio Chicago. Most of the sessions we did there were hip-hop and pretty much all tracked to tape. I did get to work with this guy Fluffy [Keith Auerbach] — he's the guy who engineered [Ministry's] The Land of Rape and Honey and The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste. I learned a lot from him — there's one vocal processing thing I still use today, on every metal record I do.
The Al Jourgensen vocal sound?
Yeah. You take a [dbx] 160 and turn the threshold all the way off, then you turn the ratio all the way down so there's no compression at all, and then turn the output all the way up to where it distorts. Then you send it to another 160, or any other [compressor] — I usually use an [Empirical Labs] Distressor. Then I dial back a reasonable amount [of level] to tape and that's the one I use for my compression. It's cool because you talk into the mic and it sounds completely fine; but as soon as you scream, it starts to hit the output of that 160 and breaks up — to me it just sounds natural. I've recorded vocalists that had no idea I even put that on there. It's so funny too; there're so many vocalists who say, "Man, I might have to do one song a day... my voice... I hate recording." And we run through the song and every time it's like, "Dude, I sound great! This is way easier than I thought!" And I'm like, "Yeah, you sound great man!" [laughs] I don't ever say a word.
Good distorted vocals are tricky — getting them to sit with guitars and distorted bass is hard.
It is. I generally have a bit of distortion over everything; even the drums. I always use a smash mic on the drum kit — just compress the fuck out of it. That generates a little bit of distortion.
Do you strap something across your drums at mix time too?
The thing I'm really into these days is running the drum submix through Neve line input transformers.
Hitting them really hard?
Yeah. It adds this nice little top end crunch. It scoops out around 200 Hz, so it gets rid of a little bit of mud.
How did you end up at Semaphore Recording?
After Studio Chicago, I started working for a goth label. They had a built-in studio that was Pro Tools based; it was nothing fancy. The owners basically ran it into the ground. It got to the point where it was hard for me to get paid. That's when I decided that I was going to build my own place. I went in with a couple friends and built a studio called Volume. I had that for about four years until the lady who owned [the space] decided to sell the building. They offered it to us, but there was no way we could afford it. So we were scrambling, trying to find something. This was the top of the real estate boom — rent was insane everywhere, nothing was available. It's the complete opposite now — every other storefront in Chicago is available, practically free. Jeremy Lemos owned Semaphore at the time with two other guys. He does sound for Sonic Youth, Iron & Wine, Pavement — a bunch of bands. So he started touring. Elliot [Dicks] does sound for Shellac and Tortoise; he was always on the road. Scott [Adamson] does sound for Ted Leo And The Pharmacists, so he ended up moving to Brooklyn. Basically they had a studio just sitting there. Jeremy contacted me out of the blue one day and said, "I just bought this CD and it sounds really good. I wondered who tracked it andI saw it was you — good job, man!" I was like, "Cool, thanks. By the way, do you know of anybody who has a space? We're a month away from losing ours." He said, "That's funny, because I just got together with Scott and Elliot last week and we're talking about closing our studio in a month. Why don't you move in?" It was literally as easy as that. All I did was take all my sessions and move them over to this space that was already a studio.
What was the business relationship?
Everybody was responsible for certain things. Jeremy took care of paying the bills. I brought in the majority of the work — I did 90% of the gigs that were brought in; the other guys were always on the road. We had a guy, Eric [Block], who was kind of like a studio manager. His payment for managing the place was that he would get the cold call stuff. If somebody called and said, "Yo, you got some beats?" — Eric would do that gig. The studio rented out for $250 a day. We could charge anything we wanted over that and keep the difference, but we have to put at least $250 [of each session] into rent, bills and whatnot.
And why did you guys close up? Were you busy there?
Between myself and Eric we were booked almost every day. Closing the studio had absolutely nothing to do with lack of business. I've got a wife and we'd just bought a house. I can't work at a studio 15 hours a day, plus come in on my days off to fix broken mics and pay bills. Don't get me wrong — I love being in the studio more than anything. But I also like hanging out with my wife and doing normal shit that people do. [laughs] The nail in the coffin was doing this gig that wanted to go to Pachyderm [Recording Studio], but it was too much traveling. We ended up at Electrical Audio. I called around to some other studios; I also called Engine [Music Studios]. I'd done a session there a few years ago. [I talked to] the studio manager, John [Humphrey] and asked, "What are your rates now?" He's like, "The B room is $300 a day and the A room is $500 a day." I said, "So for $300 a day, I can get this totally pimped out room with a Trident 80B?" I thought, "I can get [all that] or I can spend $250 [a day] for this building that is basically falling apart. Why in the hell am I doing this to myself?"
It sounds like moving to Chicago was a great choice.
Oh yeah. Chicago is a great city. It's still really affordable, people there are great and it's centrally located. Chicago is a recording town. There are a lot of really good engineers here. I mean, Bob Weston [Tape Op #18] and Steve Albini [Tape Op #10]. [Steve's studio] Electrical Audio is amazing — it's my favorite studio to work out of. It's amazingly built, the staff is the friendliest crew I've ever met and the studio manager's a really good friend of mine. It's a great environment.
What records have you done at Electrical?
I've never done a record from beginning to end there. Usually I'll do drums or basics. I did Unearthly Trance, a Rwake record and a record for Bloodiest.
It's easy to associate Electrical with Albini and that certain type of drum sound.
The first time I worked there, I put up a couple of room mics and as soon I brought 'em up, I'm like, "Huh, there it is." [laughs] But that's not what I want. Obviously I approach it a completely different way.
It sounds like you're a spot mic guy more than a room mic guy. Your drum sounds are kind of tight and close. If there's reverb, it's reverb.
I always record room mics. Usually I'll do a stereo pair and put one [mic] three-feet out front and smash the shit out of it. But I don't go crazy with the room mics. What I've been into lately is doing a lot of stacking — using samples and all sorts of shit. The more records I do, the more stacks I start to use. The last record I did, I had five different kick and five different snare sounds all going at once. It's not like I use it as a crutch. I want a specific snare sound. I've got thousands and thousands of samples that either I've made or I've gotten from random places. These samples are like -20 dB [in the mix], so they're not loud at all compare to the original snare. This is just to add little effects. You know, at the bridge they go to half speed and you just want the snare to — "craaaaaassshhhh" — instead of trying to dial in a reverb just for the bridge, I'll take a snare sound that has a huge decay and pop that over the snare drum for that one section so it changes with the part.
Do you do a lot of synthesizing and layering on other instruments too?
I love doing that shit. Running guitars through CV [control voltage] inputs on synthesizers, running them through filters, using envelopes to create crazy sounds and shit like that. Another thing I've been doing a lot is using a vocoder on the vocals, but instead of using a synth [to control it], I'll use the guitar or bass. It creates this cool effect that kind of blends the guitar and vocals together.
