Dropping in at Andrija Tokic's Bomb Shelter Studio in Nashville, Tennessee, one might be forgiven for assuming they fell through a time warp. Wood and stone walls harken back to another time, and vintage MCI console and tape decks form the core of the recording gear. But Andrija is also someone with a strong training and understanding of the past as his career hurtles forward. Ever since he ably captured and co-produced Alabama Shakes debut, "Boys & Girls", the phone has kept ringing. But people that knew him were already knocking on his door as records with Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Ettes, Langhorne Slim, Caitlin Rose, Josephine Foster, and others have already proven his skills as a producer and engineer; one with a pretty interesting path at that.
You grew up in the DC area, right?
Yeah.
How old were you when you first sat in on studio sessions?
When I first started interning, I guess I would have been 13; right around eighth grade.
How did you know you were even interested?
I was shoved into music pretty young, with Suzuki lessons.
Your parents were into it?
Yeah, my mom played piano, and both of my parents thought it was a good thing. Takoma Park had bands around. The guitar player at this studio worked at some music stores my mom used to teach at. We had these neighbors who played in a band. They had a cool little basement studio where they'd jam a lot and let me hang out. They upgraded from their Tascam 234 4-track cassette to an 8-track cassette, and then they sold the 4-track to me. They started recording in a studio where a bunch of my gear later came out of, which was called Avalon Studios.
What kind of music were they playing?
They were world beat. They had a bunch of local musicians who were their buddies. Those were in the days of 2-inch and ADAT, where you'd sync them up with SMPTE. They bought an ADAT so that they could do overdubs at home while they recorded in the studio. That's where my tape machine and board came from. They brought me along a couple of times. I
think I was pretty bold. I got that shuttling, punching, and arming tracks was the same on my Tascam as it was on the MCI.
Right. That knowledge translated across.
It was the same thing to me. We wound up hanging out a bunch. I think, as I was younger, I hung out less on client sessions and got to hang out more during after hours studio family sessions; like the bass player's cutting a solo project, or whatever was going on.
That's cool. So they let you punch in and record?
Yeah, totally.
And you were in eighth grade?
I couldn't figure out my way around the board until probably ninth or tenth grade. I think the first week my boss actually took a vacation in Jamaica for ten days. I would have been going into eleventh grade. He left me some easy sessions, like local rock 'n' roll bands doing demos and voiceover sessions. I think he called once to make sure the place was still there.
Eleventh grade? You were young! Were people looking at you like, "Wait a minute"?
A little bit. I think I was definitely often mistaken for older, just by my attitude. I remember people trying to get me to do beer runs when I was assisting. It was a very nice studio, but it didn't look like the biggest commercial facility. It looked like a tried- and-true homemade, owner-operated studio. We had some cool bands come through, for sure; but it wasn't equipped with a huge reception area or hangout rooms. It was a studio. You came in, there was a live room, vocal booth, drum room, control room, and one lounge. There were a lot of small hip- hop sessions that I could handle. They were two tracks already, for the most part.
Like somebody brought in the beats?
Yeah, there was a lot of that going on. I was so into mics and mic'ing, but at that point my boss was more into sequencing. He had [Akai] MPCs and a record collection. He would let me cut a lot of the jazz bands. There would be a jazz band every month, as well as a couple of rock bands. It was a lull in the scene in that era. This is way after punk rock's era, and 20 years after the jazz scene.
Go-go was not really happening?
Nope, not really. I think go-go started making a comeback when I left. I think it's an amazing part of American culture there.
What led you to Nashville?
I was urged to come down here because there would be way more musicians. I dug that a lot more. I love playing with mics and moving things around. To me, getting sounds was so much more fun than anything else. That was the big thing, getting into a scene where that was happening way more.
How long ago did you move?
About 11 years ago. I was 21. A big thing was the leader of a jazz band I got to record. Montgomery College has this amazing jazz program. I got to record this guy, and he brought in some amazing players. He was intending to take it home and mix it himself on a computer. We tracked it all to 2-inch, and he said the sounds were better than anything he had gotten in 20 or 30 years. I told him I'd love to hang out with him while he mixed it. He let me hang out at his house and give him my thoughts when mixing. He was like, "You should move to Nashville. There are a lot of musicians there." I don't have any idea if he remembers me, or remembers it hit me that hard, but it really did.
Where did you start out when you got here?
I always had a home setup: I had my 4-track, an Otari 8- track 5050 1/2-inch, and I had Pro Tools 5 LE with the Digi 001. I probably had $300 worth of microphones. I would record bands in my house. In this town, especially then, every single person was in a band. Now I feel there are a lot more people here — a lot of different kinds of people. For a while there it was weird, like a gigantic music dorm room.
So your home became a studio?
The living room was the machine room and the control room — the everything room. Initially I had a little dugout basement. I sectioned off one area a little bit to be able to knock drums down some, and then I built these little booths that I could tuck amps into. It had really short ceilings. I guess I didn't really intend to start recording out of there. Just out of necessity. It got busier and busier. The ground floor — the living room/control room — got pretty intense, so we used the bedrooms. You'd go down one hallway and there was the piano. You could put the drums in there; it was loud as shit. Or you could put them in another room where they'd be really dark. I'd put things wherever they needed to go, in order to get the sounds I wanted. We tracked plenty of music in the basement back then. It was a big dirt hole. You could get the deadest, thickest sound out of that basement. I kept putting more windows and walls in, putting holes through walls, cutting holes through floors to run cables. It got to the point where it was like, "This house is going to cave in!"
It was a rental?
No, it was my house. If it was a rental I would have been in big shit.
Are you still living in that house?
Yeah, totally.
You got the gear out of your living space?
Yeah, everything's moved out. We started making the house more normal again, little by little.
How many years have you been at the studio here?
This has been going on for four years now.
That's pretty nice. I'm surprised you had a B room back here.
Billy Bennett, who works here, is amazing. He came from Chase Park Transduction [Tape Op #14]. He recorded MGMT's Congratulations. He moved to town a couple years ago, and everyone kept telling us to meet up. He's an amazing engineer, producer, and human being; just a wonderful person. This room was a storage room for a long time. There's been so much overflow work, and I want to be able to help everyone I can. I tried to make this room first a "go and help yourself" room. "There's some gear, so do what you need, if I'm not available." It got to a point where there were clients who needed serious attention but couldn't always fit in. When I met Billy I was like, "Do you want to make this room your home base?" I've done some sessions back here, and I love it as a change of pace. There are other times when both rooms are super stacked up. It got busy enough that I thought I should get another tape machine.
Your MCI console and tape deck were from Avalon, where you started, in Maryland?
Yeah, those were the two things I grabbed from there. The MCI console, I think they call it a 636, even though you can get 38 channels in it.
Were they going all digital at that point?
Yeah. It was part of the times. I think a bunch of people were getting Pro Tools at home. It was a compatibility thing. They were doing less and less band recordings as I left. The tape machine was only getting used for occasional transfers.
It was a good time for people like us!
Totally. At that point, when I got the board, I was working on a bunch of APIs, Neves, and SSL consoles; all these things that had millions of features. When my old boss was talking about letting that MCI gear go, it was more sentimental than anything. I always said I never wanted to own a studio. That was my number one thing.
You shouldn't have said it.
I spent so much time maintaining studios I was working in, and I was always like, "I'm never going to own this."
But in today's environment, if you're producing and making records, you probably have to have a place.
Yeah. It's definitely gotten to be that way. I stay on one format, and we wind up doing the whole thing. It seemed like whenever I worked at places that would track to tape and dump to Pro Tools, projects wound up going through a lot of different hands. Here, for the most part, everything starts and ends here.
Are you keeping things on tape, if you can?
Totally. I just bought a normal Pro Tools rig. I've had a 12-year-old TDM rig this entire time, because I literally do nothing but a final archive with it. On occasion, someone might bring in a project they've started somewhere else, if they want to mix it here. I find the workflow to be way better. I have an easier time tracking on tape; spending the time getting it right on the front end and not trying to reinvent the mix after you've tracked.
It sounds like old-school recording.
It's how I started. Even my boss back in DC, who had gone through all these changes, I remember him one day saying, "I've seen it all. I've seen it start one way and wind up entirely digital. I've seen it go into the computer once and never back out of the computer. At the end of the day, the first way always sounded the best." This was, of course, after I bought his tape machine.
"Sorry!" I think the thing that people sometimes don't get through their skulls, especially these days, is that you can't always apply changes later and make sounds better. It's got to be better from the beginning.
It affects everything. It doesn't matter what you're doing, or want to do. If you're not printing some of your effects, dialing in certain sounds, or getting the right breakup or compression, the musicians don't play the same because they're using their imagination to imagine what it's going to sound like after you mix it. You can do the same thing with a computer that you'd do with tape, but it seems people tend to not. They leave a whole lot of safety of, "Let's get everything clean. Let's get a direct signal. Let's get a distorted signal and a crunchy signal." They get all these different sounds and decide later. If you dial in your sounds and focus on that, you can focus on the performance and really get that feeling out of the band. You can get a take that feels like something when you listen back to it.
We probably have both recorded many people who've never worked on tape before. Do you find the educational aspect of that interesting?
It's fun. Most people are like, "This is what I'm here for." People have all these funny misconceptions. They think that it all has to happen once, and that's it. People don't realize that you can ping-pong, comp, and do backwards psychedelic effects. You can do all kinds of cool things. It's funny because people don't always know all of the things you can do if you're good with your machine.
Like splicing.
Absolutely. I think the misconceptions have put everyone on their best behavior. It's not until later that I'll get the razor out. But you don't want to start with that. You want to keep everybody on their A-game.
You mentioned mic'ing skills.
That's a huge thing. I try to map that out beforehand a little; like being in the same room all the time, and knowing the drum really comes through this way or that way. Deciding if I want guitars to sound super in my face, direct and blown out on the board, or if I want drums to sound like John Bonham. Knowing that before I've set the band up is huge. I think the song and the performance come first, then it goes all the way to your board, and then your mics. How many times have you been in a situation where someone's in the lobby of a studio? They grab their guitar and say, "Let's do this one next!" They play the song on acoustic guitar, it's got all this life, and then you put them in a tiny booth and throw a mic near them. All of a sudden the life is sucked out of everything. It seems it would be a no brainer that you put a mic in front of someone and it sounds as good as if you were sitting there. But mics are nothing like ears. It's about learning how to get what you like out of a sound.
Did you get to watch a lot of other people engineer when you were young?
Yeah, absolutely. Getting to hang out in a project studio environment, I got to hear what sounded different. "The big studio has an AKG C414, and so does the little space. Why does it sound so different on the same drum set?" You learn the room has something to do with it, as well as with the drum tuning.
Do you feel like kind of an anomaly for Nashville?
It's a little different. I don't even think I'm really a part of the main Nashville industry, at least what it was when I came here. I get more clients from out of town than from here. I've had a couple people say, "We're going to try to do this pop country thing." It's a whole different workflow. When tracking a band, I get one mix that sounds like what we're shooting for. Everyone shares the mix and plays to one thing. I've been caught in situations doing union sessions, where someone pulls up, everyone plays their part, everyone's in complete isolation, and then everyone has their own mixing board where they can listen to whatever they want. The bass player and drummer aren't even listening to each other. Everyone's got the click, the guide, and whatever they want to play off. We're all making a song together right now. You're supposed to hear everything in its appropriate place.
On the other hand you've got Jack White [Tape Op #82] who's got a very strong recording aesthetic.
Yeah, probably. I guess when I think of the main industry here, I'm thinking back a few years before. It was a different thing. I got a little bit of time in that world, and it sharpened my skills. It's like being in the Navy SEALS of engineers. When the guitarist walks in to do an overdub, you've got to be dialed in before they even play a note. Then you hit record, and if it's not right, everyone looks at you. You're tracking 12 songs a day with an hour break every three hours.
Three on, one off.
Exactly. You're laying down so many tracks, as well as all these overdubs. The piano player has piano, a synthesizer, an organ, a Wurli, and a Rhodes. You've got to be ready to go. In that world I learned that there's no time to be, "Dude, what's that sound like?" It was a good thing, because it made me want to think about it beforehand. It made me want to say, "Okay, this is going to be a Leslie guitar part, so let's drag the Leslie in while we're listening to this other song."
How long did you do that? What places were you working?
I bounced around a couple places. A couple years at most. I was working my way into that scene, and then I thought, "This is not for me." I've got a couple of friends in that world who I tagged along with. It's cool to be able to run that fast, or to be at an SSL with 74 channels and able to flip and fly through everything. But I found myself getting a recall sheet for a tracking session. It's like, "You want me to set these EQs before you even walk into the room?" I like the speed and things, but I also like listening to what's going on in a room. You still have to have some time for that to be able to get it right. You can't know what your EQ is before you even put the mic on a drum. It makes no sense.
I've never really had to work in that kind of environment. But you can't be disparaging.
No, people do projects that are clearly working.
They're making bigger hits than we are.
Yeah!
What led to recording and co-producing the Alabama Shakes album, Boys & Girls?
Heath [Fogg, guitar] hit me up on the phone, looking to check out the place. I think there were a couple records he was familiar with. I had done Caitlin Rose's first 10-inch [Dead Flowers] and The Ettes' Do You Want Power. I think he was blindly hitting me up at first, then like, "Oh cool, I didn't know you were a part of this or that."
Nobody knows what we've worked on. There aren't credits anymore.
It's really hard to find. Also, I don't think people read that stuff as much anymore. But we hit it off and went into it.
Was that at the house studio?
Yeah. I was building this place while we were doing that. I took them through one night while I was still building it; there were no floors or anything. They were like, "What are you thinking? This is working great. Don't move!" I think it was hard for them to imagine what things would be.
That's pretty funny.
Instrumental mixes were finished here in the new place. I'd already finished the record off, moved in, and then we went through instrumental mixes here and such.
Did you have any idea Boys & Girls might be something that took off?
Not exactly, but kind of. I immediately felt it should be. As soon as Brittany [Howard] started singing, I thought, "This should be a household name. I think it might be, immediately." At first there really wasn't anything going on, but publicity spread really quickly. Then there was a point when it was like, "Okay, this is going to get a lot of attention and be released." It was on Bandcamp for free while we were still recording it. I remember them going home and putting it online.
That record sounds very immediate. Everything's very clear and up front.
Well, every room was 10 by 10 and plaster. It is immediate. Sometimes I actually miss that. I wanted to figure out how to run a wireless snake to one of the same rooms, just to have one really gnarly small bedroom. If you're in a garage band that's what you'd practice in; a living room or a bedroom. It's loud as hell and makes a really mean sound. I've seen big stone rooms and studios that have all kinds of different treatments, but I've never seen a 10 by 10 plaster room. I feel like there are some plug-ins where you could set it to Living Room.
Get samples of your old home set-up. "These are for my private use only."
Yeah, right!
How do you see your role as an engineer/ producer? What kinds of things do you bring to the table for pre-production and meetings?
It depends on the project. It always changes a bit regarding how people like to work. Generally speaking, if I'm in any way producing it, then I like to get demos up front. I like to plan out how I think things can go and make myself a spreadsheet of, "This song can go here on the album. This will be the down song. We should get really weird here, and straightforward there." I map out certain ideas. Sometimes we'll do a rehearsal, or a show. It really depends. Projects come in all different ways. There are bands that are super dialed-in, who already have a sound, and your job is to turn that into something that feels like that when you listen back to it. Then there are times when people come in and it's like, "We don't have a sound." Or an artist says, "This is my song, and I love these things. What can we create?" It's all over the place.
Is Hurray for the Riff Raff a little bit more in the latter camp, where it's more open-ended?
I would say almost the opposite. Hurray for the Riff Raff is very specific. The job there is translating, "This is the feel that we like and we're performing." How do we capture that? There's not a whole lot of open-ended experimenting. So far, there has been none. They usually have already spent a lot of time playing their songs in different ways. A lot of those recordings are the exact opposite of what I was saying earlier about being able to move quick and be ahead of the game. Every single song that we've ever cut has been a complete tear-down and re- setup. Completely. I don't think we've ever cut two songs in a row.
With the same mics and instruments?
No. Like drums on a different side of the room, or in a different room. Every song comes with a totally different set up.
Now I've got to try to listen back again and pick that out.
It's like, "On this song we need live vocal spill." Or, "This song we want the vocal to be so intimate, with zero spill." Or, "The drums are supposed to be really tight and dull."
That's coming from you and the band?
I think both. They'll say what it is, and then I'll try to figure out who's confident in what parts. Like this one needs half the band to sound live and open in the room, and the drum sounds need to be tight. But the banjo player, fiddle player, or guitar player isn't necessarily sure on a certain part, so we need to isolate that, but also create the ability to feed it back into the live room and get a bleed when needed. Each song always has a set of parameters. Every song has been almost a complete tear down and build up.
You have to budget more time for working that way, right?
Yeah, it slows things down a little bit. Also most songs happen quick. Real quick.
Once it's all ready to go?
It takes a while to move. You get things dialed in, and everybody says, "Whoa, this sounds like what we want it to sound like!" Everyone's happy, and you hit record.
Do you find that people sometimes don't get what producing is?
I guess nobody quite knows what it is. I find there are a lot of extremes. There are bands that let the whole thing go, like, "All right, you figure everything out. Everything's on you. How happy we are about our performance is on you." There's definitely that. What if it involves getting a really cool sound and doing something like tuning a drum a certain way that might change the entire song? You could call that engineering or producing. I don't know. Where that line really is, I don't know. It's all one and the same. I guess that, to me, part of engineering is producing. There could be a simple arrangement change that you suggest in either role; producing or engineering. You could suggest an arrangement change that alters the arc of the song, and it's an arrangement change that helps engineering. Great engineers are great arrangers.
Sonically, even.
Yeah. It's like, "There are too many notes on the bass drum," or, "You guys aren't linking up." It's generally a really blurry line. I know people who are great engineers, and I consider them producers too, and vice-versa. It's the greater sum of everything. Everybody works together to make a good product, so what are the roles exactly? I don't know. Are you an arranger if you suggest cutting a part out? You try to make it all come across. I think the goal is that there's an energy in the room, and you want to try to record it so someone can listen back to it and it feels good on speakers.
Knowing when to step in and what role to play is always different.
Sometimes you've got to be invisible. Sometimes you're almost doing more by being quieter.
A lot of times when journalists talk about you, they'll write, "Oh, he's using tape and he's doing sessions in this different way. East Nashville..." You're helping people make a good recording. You're a producer.
Yeah, you nailed it. There are a lot of lines drawn. People have all these ideas. There's amazing music coming from all over the world that could be done on anything and with anything. There's a lot of red tape: analog vs digital, or this scene vs that scene. Trying to make good music is the end thing.
A lot of the time the press has too much of a fixation on it. They want to say, "Oh, they went to your studio and did it on tape." But then you look at it and go, "My input on everything else we did had no bearing? It's just the tape deck?"
It's the tools you know how to work with. That's number one. I know people who are incredible with all kinds of different formats. I think the tools should be invisible, really. I guess my least favorite thing is when you listen to a record and it sounds very "engineered in the studio." I love music that transcends where it came from. You put on an album and your first instinct is imagining the musicians, the singer, or the performance. When your head immediately goes into a more creative spot versus, "That's a really interesting tom snare trigger thing."
I imagine your profile got a boost after the Alabama Shakes record came out. Did you have to get management to help, or do you still manage yourself?
I still manage myself. I do have an awesome lawyer who does negotiations for me. He'll play a little bit of both roles. I got approached by quite a few managers, but I'm so busy already. I was always intrigued, because people might be in different markets that are interesting. I love meeting new people. But every time there'd be a whole lot of talk and a whole lot of fun, and we would always end with different goals. I'm not really looking for someone to make me a bunch of fast cash. No one's in it for the long run, at least so far that I've met. Knock on wood. I'm at a point where I can't handle how much I have to go through, and I'd love to have someone. But I haven't met that person who's got the same goals. Things definitely got busier. It took me a minute. I used to weed people out. But getting an album like Boys & Girls that gets that much attention, suddenly there are people coming from all different directions that I may or may not jive with. I already had people coming in from other countries even, but they were still in some way connected with smaller music scenes. I've definitely had to make an effort to make sure that I'm staying true to the things I like.
Right, but it takes time to sort that out.
It does take time. I've been learning that. I also take everything as it comes. I always want to be accessible to everyone, but I also have to pick what comes through and make sure I'm working on the things I'm going to enjoy the most, and that I can help somebody the most. I tend to also really love the development side of things. I like new experiences with people. I guess trying to balance that is a big thing. Definitely I had to get some help on the managerial/legal end of things. It happened so quickly that I'm so behind on the social media side of things. Not everyone realizes how far out I'm booked.
How far is it?
Right now around five months. I might get a band that's like, "We're going to be cruising through Nashville next week, and we'd love to hop in for a day." It's a super cool band and it would be a great opportunity, but I'm already booked. Having somebody who I can really count on has been a huge thing. For instance, today I'm unable to track [the band in the front studio] as we'd had this interview scheduled. This was my day to do a bunch of things. I'm like, "Billy, track this one for me and I'll mix it." I have enough time to mix it, but not to do both. I know I'm going to walk in mixing this in three or four days, it'll all be laid out beautifully, and everything's going to sound like I love it to sound.
You've got to have a team around you. I have people at Jackpot!
Yeah. How would you even get out of town?
Right. People are in there doing something right now.
My favorite thing on earth is to go and record in remote locations. There's this band, Mendrugo, which is a side project of Josephine Foster and Victor Herrero. We did this really cool record. It's going to come out on Fire Records. I brought a couple of really cool mics, as well as a Tascam cassette 4-track. I mixed the hell out of it when I got home.
Where did you record it?
Outside of Cádiz, Spain. We recorded it in the mountains in this tiny little villa. It sounds so groovy. We brought a digital recorder so I could have a back up and we could A/B. We A/B'd them and everybody agreed the cassette had a little something. It was pretty noisy, but I knew I could clean up what I needed to when I got home. I brought it back here and ran it through the board, some filters, some nice Neve compressors, and it pops. It sounds like an old record.
It's interesting how those decks sound.
A couple of years ago I did a thing with Clairy Browne & The Bangin' Rackettes. We did a couple of days in Australia, in a really cool studio out there.
Does anyone ever send you to different studios in Nashville these days?
I got to do a project where we were double-booked, and it was one I really wanted to do. There's a really small studio called Cream Puff Sound Studios. I think it's the best studio in Nashville. They have a tiny little 18- channel MCI board, a 16-channel, 2-inch deck, a 1-inch Scully 8-track, and a Scully mixdown deck. Brent Little, the guy who runs it, is an amazing human and has everything so dialed in. He has one of everything. One amazing vintage Ludwig drum set. One awesome Wurli. One awesome Hammond. There are already mics set out. I think we booked two days there, and on both days we got more songs done that we anticipated and left early. The vibe is incredible.
Fond Object
"The Animen is a Swiss band that came to record here. I'm super excited to see what they do. We threw them a fun Record Store Day show at an amazing record store called Fond Object. Fond Object is run by members of The Ettes. They have a petting zoo in their backyard and a boutique shop in the front where [bandmember] Maria Silver makes clothes. It's super cool secondhand items. Sometimes you'll find some cool instruments there."
Are there other studio owners or producers you're in touch with in town?
There are a lot of people I hang out with in that world, but outside the studio doors I try to keep as in touch with not music business people as possible. It keeps the music better if you have other interests out there. In this town it constantly comes back to the same thing, but it's nice to try to break that up.
What projects do you have coming up or currently in operation?
There are dozens of projects in the works right now. I did an EP for a band called Chrome Pony. It's super high energy. It's not quite psych rock, and it's not quite power pop. I've got a lovely singer coming in, Alanna Royale, and her amazing band. It's got a definite, tough, hard- hitting soul edge to it. The drummer sounds like he's in The Meters; he's a light-hitting, super syncopated, really funky drummer. I did Langhorne Slim's new record [The Spirit Moves] last winter. I just mixed a band called Communist Daughter. That was super fun.
Is it always interesting to mix other peoples' tracking and see how they approached it?
It is. Absolutely. Sometimes it's really frustrating. For the most part, it's super fun. It's refreshing. You get to hear tracks and think, "I wonder how they did that?"
Do you ever find that people are scared to approach you, thinking that you're too "big time" for them these days?
Yeah, which is a bummer! I've seen someone assume that I'm too big to do their project and then not get their project done right. I'm like, "Man, I really like you guys. I would have made whatever you needed to have happen in order to do this." It's a real bummer if I can't help someone because they're on a timeline. That's where the B-room has been awesome.
What would you tell someone who wants to be the next version of you? Someone who looks at your career and thinks, "I want that!"
I don't know. I guess you have to eat, breathe, and sleep it for a long time. I think that drive is gigantic. I've read things that make me want to keep working, and working harder. You have to be super passionate, and also nuts.
Some sacrifices have to be made.
Definitely. I feel like you have to be willing to sacrifice an entire span of your life to get to something that's going to take 24 hours a day to maintain. I wouldn't trade it for anything else, but through all my teen years, this is what I was in all of the time. I stayed in it. It took all of that to get here; every bit of it.
Are you happy to have your house back?
Yeah, it's cool. Having a little bit of separation is a good thing. I had a little more time on my hands working out of my house, because you get done with a session, break down your mics, and you're at home. This takes a little more time, but it's nice that there's a solid separation. Life's a little more normal now, I guess!
