What were you doing before you ended up working in studios?
When I was 18, all I wanted to do was get the fuck out of the suburbs, move to New York and make records. I did not go to college. I just moved to New York City. My dad helped me with rent for a couple of months; I got some shitty jobs and shared a tiny apartment. I was a shipping clerk. I shipped fake jewelry. Then I started meeting people. I guess I looked in the back of the Village Voice for people who wanted to start bands. I was fucking insane, and I just wanted to make records. I met the Love Camp 7 guys — who ended up starting Excello [Recording] — in that early time when I didn't know anybody. They recorded a record at Baby Monster, and I went to go hang out with them. That's when I met the guys at Baby Monster. I said, "Can I just hang out here all the time and do whatever you tell me to do?" And they said, "Wait, you can operate a computer, fix amplifiers and you want to do that for free? Yeah, okay!" Baby Monster had two rooms, a Studer room and an MCI room. One day Bryce [Goggin, Tape Op #40] was in a session and smoke started coming out of the MCI. Bryce was like, "Uh, I think this session is over." I ran in, popped the front off, started futzing around and reading the schematics. I found the chip that was burning — it was a regular 741 op amp for the servo. I had one, so I popped it in and the machine started working again. That's the point at which Steve Burgh [Baby Monster owner] started paying me. That was my first real job in recording. I started engineering their night jobs soon after that — TV commercials, jazz trios and little orchestras.
Corrosion of Conformity's Blind came out in 1990. What do you remember about that session?
I had worked at Baby Monster for a couple of years at that point. I studied under a couple of engineers there. One of the guys was Steve McAllister, who was a brilliant engineer. He did a lot of New York Lower East Side bands, these Knitting Factory jazz/art/metal people. He knew a lot of people and he was a really cool guy — really creative and nice. He did all the basics for Blind. COC, those guys are so fucking good. That drummer, Reed [Mullin] — I had never seen a guy like that before. I was a house engineer and I was around when they were recording — he's so precise and so powerful. His drums sounded so good. And the guitar players in that band, their sounds were so good. They sounded amazing without the mics. That's one of the things about that and any other great record that I'd seen made; almost all of them had something to do with incredible musicians. And Steve was incredible at capturing that to tape. I think they'd just gotten the Studer A827, which was a really nice tape machine.
If Steve was the tracking engineer, how did you get involved?
Steve did the basics. And the basics are beautiful sounding. But Steve got pneumonia halfway through the record. Everyone's like, "What are we gonna do?" Steve said, "Uh... Garris can do it!" [laughs]
How old were you?
I was 22. But the thing was, I was always at the studio. And I was good! [laughs] I would do whatever they wanted me to do. They weren't that worried about it. They had incredible confidence. John Custer, the producer, knew it was gonna be fine.
This was his first big record too, right?
I think so. But he was a genius. Everybody on that record was a genius, except for me. [laughs] I just didn't get in the way. That was my goal the whole time.
If you listen to other'90s metal records, but Blind sounds very different. Most records around then sounded more like they were still evolving from the '80s.
Yeah! They're all very hype-y, in comparison. This was totally different — that was the point. I didn't come up with the sound — Custer and the band did. Custer showed me a lot about the bottom-end. We were getting the guitar sound and I started to scoop the mids, as well as pushing the bottom and top. Custer said, "No, no." We nulled it out and he said, "Just put [the EQ] on 900 [Hz] and make it a little hotter." And it was kind of magical. On that Neve EQ, 900 is so fucking sweet on guitar. We got into this low midrange for the whole record. We did that, and then we didn't hype anything; not even the cymbals. That's something unique. I'd never seen anybody really go for the midrange.
Yeah, it's not produced like a metal record. The guitar tones are gain-y, but the bass is clearly a P-bass. The drums sound, especially for 1990, like real drums in a real room.
Which they are! There were no triggers. Something that made that record really nice was the room — it was a beautiful wood room. They made liberal use of the room mics. A lot of [AKG] 414s were all over the place.
I didn't think many people did that in the late'80s.
In that room it was really common. There were a lot of places in NYC that were really dead and it was sort of like, "What's the point of putting a mic out?"
Did they track guitars in the big room too?
Yeah. We had lots of gobos that we'd put around. There was one vocal booth that was dead, and sometimes we'd put an amp in there too. They were real perfectionists about all the guitar parts. They would redo them until they were perfect. That stuck with me — if it's not perfect, redo it. I mean, if you've got the balls to say, "I'm just going to throw [the last take] away..."
How long did tracking take?
I don't remember. You might want to talk to Steve. He is an incredibly cool guy. He got out too. He does all computer stuff now. He's a Linux guy.
Oh, really? Wow.
Well, it's a rough life. I don't think he was that happy. You know what he does now — he goes canoeing every day. He went all nature.
So how was mixing Blind?
It was fabulous. I mean, imagine you get to work with these beautiful tracks in this great studio that you know so well. Up to that point, a lot of that was just assisting. So I got really good in the studio. I could patch while I was high. [laughs] I knew all these high-end reverbs and we had this beautiful console that I maintained. I was like Geppetto of the recording studio. And then, all of a sudden, I'm in this situation and it's like some miracle is happening! [laughs] So yeah, it was amazing. Custer was really good and the tracks were perfect. And that singer...
...Karl Agell. It was his only record with COC.
Yeah, they didn't really get along. I was finding the point where the high end of his voice came through the [Neumann] U47. Then I pushed that high end into the [Lexicon] 480L on the flange mode — it created this stereo flange, but it was very pristine. And that, sitting on top of these 900 Hz-bumped guitars — learning to mix that was this whole new paradigm. I hadn't really mixed like that before.
Mixed like what?
Everything about it; these '70s-style [tracks], with this '80s and '90s sensibility. The fuzz on the guitars; they didn't do that in the '70s. It was much cleaner and drier.
Now that you mention it, there is kind of a weird thing on the vocal.
Yeah, that's the one glam thing that everybody asked, "Is this okay? Is this alright?" [laughs] But it was like, "It sounds awesome! I guess so." The guys in the band were very intense. It's amazing the record got done.
There is that one song with Pepper [Keenan] singing "Vote With a Bullet" where it sounds like 1996. Nothing glam about it; it's super aggressive.
Yeah, those vocals went through an amp. Man, the guitars on that one sound so good.
They sound so badass. [respectful group pause]
Another thing was just how much room mic we ended up using — quite a lot. Up to that point, I would really go for a super clicky kick and a super smashy snare.
Yeah, a lot of early '90s kick drums sounded like an SSL EQ, not a kick. They sounded like 4 or 5 kHz.
That's right. But even without talking about all the buttons and the gear, doing something in such an unusual way for the time was the meaningful part. So I feel lucky to have had that experience.
What were you mixing on?
It was a [Neve] 80-series. Half of it was 1081s, and the other half was 1073s. I loved that console.
No automation?
No automation. We were totally mixing hands-on. The whole band was there mixing, and we were all pushing faders.
After the COC record was done, did things change for you?
