I heard you got fired once while working on TV scores in San Francisco?
Yes, I had this job in 1988 at Different Fur Studios, which did a lot of Windham Hill stuff. It was one of the few SSL consoles in the Bay Area at the time. We also did a lot of hip-hop, film and TV. We were working on the show Unsolved Mysteries and had been doing that for a couple of months straight. The hours were really insane. It was really late one night; I was getting sleepy in the back of the room and the track sheet wasn't updated properly. It was all MIDI stuff, the only thing that was live was some piano. But something got erased and I was fired to please the client.
That's a brutal situation.
It was kind of a bummer.
There has never been that much studio work in the Bay Area.
No, I couldn't replace that job. I had to get a construction job, paint houses and do live sound. I ended up working with the group Consolidated. Later I had my own studio space and I got involved with The Grill Studios, doing hip-hop and other stuff.
I know you delved into Pro Tools early on, in its initial version as Sound Designer.
When I was working at The Grill I started using Sound Designer. The first thing I got was an AudioMedia II card, which with [Opcode's] Studio Vision gave the option of four tracks of digital audio. That's how I would do a lot of vocal and bass parts. We used a 24-track Otari MX-80 and Studio Vision would drive whatever the producer would bring in, like an Ensoniq ASR-10. We would sync the computer up to the tape machine via SMPTE and the computer would spit out the MIDI.
Audience Member: Where was that?
Oakland, California. We had some very Oakland rap sessions going on — a lot of thugs. I stopped engineering there after my buddy John was pistol- whipped and there were machine guns in the studio. I was like, "Okay, I'm done." Very soon after that session there were some automatic weapons pulled out in the studio and fired in the back of the building. I got all my gear out, and that was that. That would have been around 1994. I'm thankful for all the live sound that I've done and the film sound — all of the odd sessions.
What was the transition like from The Grill to working with Tom Waits on Mule Variations?
Around that time I was the production manager at Slim's [nightclub], so I had that live sound job and I was also interning for Dan Alexander at Coast Recorders — just trying to hustle and do anything I could. There used to be a studio called Dancing Dog that I'd do sessions at as well. I got a Pro Tools rig as soon as I could. Dan Alexander moved Coast from Mission Street to the Harrison Street location. I knew two friends of mine, Craig Silvey and Philip Steir, wanted to open a studio. Phillip was the drummer in Consolidated and I knew Craig from assisting at Russian Hill Recording and also from Different Fur. Since I had been working for Dan I knew of the vacancy, so I called them and said, "Hey, I know the perfect place and I would love to help you open it." They bought the studio with the Neve console that was already there and I started working as the main assistant in Studio A.
That was the old Coast location?
Yes, which is a Bill Putnam-designed room. It was built in 1964 to record West Coast jazz — that's why it was called Coast Recorders. It was a great old room. They had recorded some Janis Joplin and Blue Cheer sessions there. CBS Records had a downtown location, but they would book Coast for their overflow stuff — it had a pretty cool history. The Neve they had in there was really great — Craig has it in London now. Tom Waits was changing engineers, he had used Bones Howe [#64] for a very long time. Then Tchad Blake [#16] made Bone Machine and there was sort of a transition where Tom was looking for somebody new. I had Pro Tools knowledge and traditional recording skills. I also had my own rig. We recorded at Prairie Sun Recording Studios. They didn't have Pro Tools at the time, so I brought my rig up there.
Back then if you went to work at a studio there would be a 24-track tape deck, a console, probably not much outboard gear, and usually not a Pro Tools rig — you would rent those. Engineers would buy a rig 'cause you could rent it to other sessions.
Oh, yeah. I did that a lot. After the Tom Waits session, I owned a second rig. Then I partnered with a couple of engineers and became part owner of four Pro Tools rigs — a little rental company. One I had on a long- term lease, another I would rent to sessions. I was just trying to do anything I possibly could.
The experience with Tom sounded really fun.
Oh, I was huge fan. For my audition I went up to Prairie Sun. He was also auditioning a bunch of musicians. It was kind of a hellish session — I don't think we recorded anything that was keep-able because we were all so nervous to be working with Tom. It went well enough for me that I was able to stay on for the project, as did several of the musicians. The recording situation up at Prairie Sun, at least for the Waits records, was very unique because Tom did not like to be in the studio space. He wanted to be in the extra buildings (that used to be a corn crib and a chicken coop) because it was a former chicken ranch. We would work in the control room, but all the mic preamps and microphones were in another building about 75 yards away.
Did you get a lot of exercise?
Yes, a lot of running back and forth. There were no camera setups or anything. There were some speakers down there we could use for talkback and obviously you could hear them through the microphones. It was interesting 'cause there would be an instrument change, or he would play through a song a couple times and not really be feeling like the instrumentation was the right thing, and he would change it. He would go from guitar to piano, or go from piano to percussion, so you would have to run down there and move all the mics and kind of chase things around. It was fun.
I feel that with artists, like Tom, in order to do a good job on your end it's about being fast. There is no time to "get sounds" or dick around.
To me it is not acceptable to stand in the way of creativity. You really have to be ready. All my live sound experience helped me with speed. If you think it's going to take you a day to set up, well then do that day of set up before somebody is waiting on you. If something goes wrong, work around it — you never want to stall. Just hit "record," even if something is not to your satisfaction, engineering-wise. If you record something that is inspired, it doesn't really matter in a way. Someone might get mad at you, but a Jack White [Tape Op #82] or a Tom Waits isn't going to. That is what they want. They want that risk and that danger; that's part of what they are accepting and want to get — people on edge. Tom would never show a musician a song — he wouldn't let them learn a song. He always had very capable musicians around. And it was just like, "Here it is. Let's go!"
That's pretty fun.
Yeah it is.
Would you go down to the studio early and set up things to have options ready before Tom got there?
Absolutely. I'm a firm believer that you have to set the stage — you have to set something up that is a creative approach. You are taking a creative snapshot, but you have to do it in a way that it is going to work quickly. It has to be premeditated, because you are creating an opportunity for someone. Like on this Punch Brothers record [Who's Feeling Young Now?]: the first day we were at Blackbird Studio, we noticed that they have an incredible amount of microphones. Because it's an all- acoustic band, I knew the microphone choice and the sonic palette I wanted to have. I knew I had to see what all my possibilities were, microphone-wise. So I went in with Nathan Yarborough (the assistant at Blackbird) and Brad Bivens (the guy that works with me all the time) on Saturday and we went through all the mic closets. It was like, "Nate, what do you have that I don't know about? What's cool? What's funky?" I know what all the obvious choices are going to be, and I think we put together a list of about 100 microphones. We got as many stands as we could and spent six hours putting up every microphone. The band was really patient, because I really needed them for this — it was like an assembly line. I had them put up the RCA 77 and then I said, "Chris [Thile], play the mandolin. [Noam] Pikelny, play the banjo." I'd listen to it for about 10 seconds and I'd make a note: "That mic doesn't sound right to me. It sounds great on the fiddle. Sounds kind of subby on the bass." Whatever. We went through all these microphones; I looked it over and we got rid of about half. Each musician had at least three mics on them, sometimes up to five. We put them all really close together and recorded. Each instrument had three microphones that comprised the sound. One mic (usually a dynamic, with a more limited bandwidth) went into a re-amp and into an amp so I could put pedals and stuff on it. Each musician had four tracks. I had them each walk around the room and play — it was like, "Where does this instrument sound the best? The bass projects really good over here. The vocal sounds good over there." So we set the room up like that. We spent a whole day doing that, and once we got that going it was perfect.
AM: Were you walking around with them in the live room?
When I was choosing where they were going to be set up, yes I was. I spent a lot of time understanding the acoustic space. So many times somebody will just put a guitar amp somewhere, put an open back cabinet up against a wall and put a mic in front of it. Maybe it sounds amazing there, or maybe it sounds okay. To me, this amp has a lot of sound coming out the back of it, hitting the wall and returning through the front. It's going to create these positive and negative reinforcements of sound that it's generating. I'm always moving amps around in a space. Is there an angle that kind of works better, if it needs to be in a small space against a wall? Always find the right place. I'll always check a room out for drums with a kick drum. I'll find the general area. Sometimes moving it a couple of inches can really make a difference.
If you go to studios and ask where to put the drums, 99 percent of the time the worst spot in the room is where they tell you it sounds great.
Sometimes I ask who else has recorded in the room. If I am familiar with them and their work and I feel it is valuable...
