Ben Greenberg of the Men

2012's Open Your Heart put The Men on the map. Their aggressive, raw rock 'n' roll was a welcome jolt, a reminder of the power of energetic live performances. Ben Greenberg is the band member and recording engineer responsible for harnessing that spark. Their new LP, Tomorrow's Hits , brings to mind the classic tones of The Stooges and the Rolling Stones.

I hear the step up in fidelity on this record, but you've maintained the vibe and energy of The Men's previous work.

Yeah it's probably just different mic pres or something. [laughs] I mean, we only booked three days at Strange Weather to make the whole record, so we weren't trying to do anything that sounded super big budget. I feel like people do so much to their records these days, and it's because you can and everyone wants to explore their options. We could have spent a week talking about drum tones. You could plug everything into everything in that place if you wanted to.

Strange Weather has some amazing gear. A real Fairchild limiter. Some rare Neumann mics. Have you been working there a lot?

I worked in their old spot for about a year. We were the second session in their new location. It's a really beautiful place. Everything works [laughs]. 

You had your own studio, Python Patrol, for a long time before you started working exclusively in nicer rooms. What was it like to make the leap?

It was definitely a huge relief in a lot of ways, because I suddenly had all these options available. Instead of trying to recreate the sounds in my head through some insane 4 a.m. Pro Tools plug-in chain, I could reach for it and it would be right there. Having the immediate fidelity available just allows you to capture so much more of a great performance. 

You're not spending all your energy trying to get sounds through gear that might be working against you.

Or at least getting the real sounds. With The Men, or any band I work on, it's always about what the band actually sounds like in a room together. I don't like it when there's a contrast between that and the recording. 

I think we can all appreciate when a band comes in and nails it too. It's so different than piecing things together in the computer.

I think it's sad that it's something you have to appreciate and not something you expect. It's one of those things you try and describe to people when they want to make their record to a click and piece it together. You have to explain what will be missing. There's nothing like being in a room with a band. It's not going to be the same unless they're all looking at each other and experiencing that interaction. There's a real palpable difference. I think it will always sound better.

On Tomorrow's Hits you tracked everything live together and even did some of the vocals live. What was the monitoring setup?

At Strange Weather they have these huge ATC speakers that used to be the large monitors in the old studio. They put them in the live room and they sound amazing. We used small amps and put blankets over them and isolated the bass. We sent vocals and a little bit of bass back into the room. There was surprisingly little bleed. Rich [Samis, drummer] plays so loud that it was pretty easy to keep it isolated. 

And I imagine the bleed kind of glues it together?

Yeah, it's nice to capture different ambience. We would catch some drums in the piano mic, acoustic guitar mic, and even some of the guitar amp mics. It adds movement to a mix too. If you leave your picture up the sound moves as the band shifts their playing. It allows things to peek through in subtle ways. I think that was really key in getting the sound of this record. I like when things keep moving and the band mixes itself, creating ups and downs and contrasts. 

On the drums you did a [Neumann] U 47 mono overhead and RCA BK-5A on the kick and ReVox M 3500 on the snare. Why no tom or room mics?

I'm a big fan of the Glyn Johns [three mic] thing but we didn't do it this time. I wanted it to be even simpler than that. That U 47 really gets everything. 

It was nice to put on this record and be reminded of the old Stones stuff. You're not getting punched in the face with a kick drum every single hit. It really lets the mix breathe and clears up the top.

Everyone programs their drums now. People treat drums as tools and not as musical instruments. It's okay to have dynamics with the kick drum. You don't have to hit it with the same force the whole time to keep the song moving. The rhythm is in the whole kit, not just the "boom bap" part of it. 

There's something to be said for a musical drummer, someone who really gets the song and brings it out in the playing.

Exactly. I love the way Rich plays. He writes parts in a songwriter-conscious way. He plays focused rhythms that really carry the arrangement forward and simultaneously give a lot of space for things to be open up top. 

Blow out the preamps. Blow out the multitrack. Blow out the 2-track. And then, whatever you can still hear, that's your record.

Your mixes are generally more natural, rather than going for the maxed out, super sculpted modern sound.

When something from Exile on Main Street comes on at the bar it cuts right through. Way harder than all that scooped-out low mid, attack-meets-huge-sub clap snare. Any Led Zeppelin or Crazy Horse mix is gonna cut through so much harder because they're all about midrange. Stuff these days is not. That's something I don't even relate to.

When you say low mids do you mean 250 to 800 Hz?

Yeah, I'm kind of talking about that kick drum sound where there's a big scoop between like 200 and 600 and there's a big spike at 80 to 100 and a big spike at 3 to 5 kHz for the click. It's the same thing that happened to guitar tones in the '80s when metal got huge. Everyone started scooping out all that midrange. It was the new faux hi-fi sound or whatever. To me, it's like, everyone with Ableton Live figured out how to apply that same dorky guitar curve to everything. 

I definitely notice your mixes being unabashedly not scooped in those low mid frequencies. It's refreshing to hear something with clarity that's not afraid to leave some rumble in there.

Yeah... I guess it's not the HD sound that people expect nowadays. I have Axis Bold as Love on my turntable now. Those are some of my favorite drum sounds. Everything is in that midrange and there's no sub and no hi frequency at all. They rewound the tape for take-after-take and it kind of curved it off and that's a sound I just love. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band : that's one of my favorite kick sounds. It's all mids and low mids. It's not quite boomy but it has resonance. People tend to take that out... with the snare too. I feel like it's okay for the drums to occupy that part of the spectrum.

When something from Exile on Main Street comes on at the bar it cuts right through. Way harder than all that scooped-out low mid, attack-meets-huge-sub clap snare. Any Led Zeppelin or Crazy Horse mix is gonna cut through so much harder because they're all about midrange.

And the majority of the tracks on Tomorrow's Hits are rough mixes?

We initially booked two days and tracked 13 songs. At the end of the second day we had nine faders up on the board. I would listen to the playback of each song and move them slightly to adjust for whatever, start it over, and run it in as a rough mix. We wound up keeping five of those for the record. We booked a third day and went back and re-touched a few, but there are only eight songs on the record. 

Did you do any additional compression or EQ ?

It was mostly just leveling. Every mic was printed through a compressor, so it was already on there. We put the faders back to zero and rebalanced those tracks again because they didn't quite work the first time. 

So you did all the EQ on the way in?

Yeah. We used the EQs on the Neve sidecar and did a little bit on everything. I cut a lot of lows on the way in. On the bass and kick I cut a lot of subs out. I did some mid work on the guitars to get them to speak right. 

Were you mixing to a stereo compressor?

No. We did print the mixes to a Studer 2-track to get some resistance and little glue. 

Were you hitting the tape hard?

Some of them we did. The quieter songs we didn't hit as hard. I think "Different Days" and "Pearly Gates" were definitely in the red. I'm a real believer in the red. [laughs] My favorite blown out records are ones that are not piecemeal... albums like [The Stooges'] Funhouse or a Damned record. Everything is just crazy sounding because everything is being pushed past its limit. Blow out the preamps. Blow out the multitrack. Blow out the 2-track. And then, whatever you can still hear, that's your record. [laughs]

How far were you pushing preamps this time around?

I mean, they were all in the red, but not unintelligible. My favorite zone is where it has a little bit of hair but you're not losing the attack and clarity. Just getting things to sound bigger or thicker in their own way. 

Were you using line trims or jacking it into the converters?

The Burl convertors can handle it, but the Neve sidecar has line level trim pots on each channel. I would balance that with the distortion into the converter, depending on the track. Sometimes it would flatter certain instruments more. There was a lot of work before we hit record. We would take our time and make sure we were getting the sounds we wanted. 

Probably a good idea...

[laughs] You know what it's like when you're working with a band and you're trying to cram in as much as you can in as little time as possible. Sometimes there's a tendency to "templatize" and change things later, instead of like, "Oh I want a little more space here so I'll move that mic before we hit record."