Richard Swift | Tape Op

"What you can control are knobs, faders, and being a nice person." For ten years Richard Swift's been luring the hippest of indie rock bands to Cottage Grove, in the middle of Oregon, to work with him at his National Freedom Studio in his backyard. In a career that started with solo albums made during L.A. studio off hours, as well as on the road as a sideman for The Shins [Tape Op #39], The Black Keys, Fruit Bats, and others, he's proven to be an asset to many artists. Damien Jurado, Lucius, David Bazan, Valerie June, Foxygen, The Pretenders, Nathaniel Rateliff, The Mynabirds, Ray LaMontagne, Cayucas, and Guster are among the many who've sought his expertise in the studio. I was curious to meet this songwriter, singer, multi-instrumenatlist, producer, and engineer in person, so after a two hour drive down from Portland we had lunch and a wonderful chat.

I grew up in Minnesota. I moved out here when I was 16 or 17. My stepdad and my mom, when she was alive, moved almost every year, and we ended up moving out here. They were on a road trip from California to Minnesota and stopped here. They made some friends and said, "We're moving to Cottage Grove, Oregon." I was like, "Orygone? Where in the heck is that?" Funny enough, they thought that I had some promise as a musician. "Maybe it'd be better for us to be on the West Coast." But in the middle of nowhere on the West Coast? Okay. We moved out here, I met my wife's brother, and then met my wife. I got married at 20 and had three kids by the time I was 25.

Two of my kids live upstairs, actually.

This is a building behind your home.

It's ten feet away. I need to show you the cabin next door that I designed. My buddy Chris built it. I've got a serious history here. It is a bit of a compound.

Entertainment starts to feel ephemeral. You don't need it.

Yeah, exactly. That wears off after a little while. But I wanted to make my dreams come true down in L.A., and they did.

It does seem brilliant, to keep your overhead reasonable.

It's getting lower and lower now that I'm actually buying this place. We almost moved to Portland during The Shins days. I've done a lot of work on the new record [Heartworms]. James and I are really close friends; that's why I ended up in the band. For a while I was thinking about moving to Portland. Then I thought, "I should stay down here and buy this house for super cheap."

People want to come to a fairly remote town in the middle of Oregon and work with you. I think that's fascinating.

Exactly. If I've got Lucius, and Nathaniel Rateliff, and Houndmouth coming here, part of it is that there's a charm to this "small town life." I know tons of people by their first names, whether it's a bartender, our mailman, or whomever. The big city folks come here and it's a bit of a cave. They can be away from Babylon; be away from Trump.

I imagine that between touring and producing records, you end up with a full schedule.

That's the thing. I've been on tour for 21 years. Seven of those years were absolutely non-stop. In between tours I'd have three weeks, and I'd book a session for 19 of those days. I got used to working and working. Now I'm like, "Shit man, I want to take a couple of days off and watch some survival TV shows."

Right, I was going to ask about that!

Chrissie Hynde is a good friend of mine. We email every week.

Your studio's kind of chaotic. I'm not saying that in a bad way!

Yeah. No, I know. Trust me, it's actually cleaner in here than it's been for a while.

I love that it looks like a record store on the left side of the control room.

People come in and we'll listen to records for an hour, and then we'll start recording. Recording is obviously the end product, but if we get a song or two done a day, that's pretty good. I want it to be as comfortable and lived-in as possible. It should always feel like a home studio – like you're in my garage recording and not on the clock.

That guy is fucking legit. I talk to him once a week, and he'll talk my fucking ear off. He's a badass. Dan's modeled his studio after Mark's "thing." Mark was buying vintage gear because it was cheap, not because it was cool.

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He's learned all the techniques, too.

That's the other thing about Mark. I'm a dummy when it comes to technical shit, but Mark's all about it. Like the dbx 165A [compressor] that I got on a whim, Mark said, "Oh, yeah, I've been using those for years." I started using it on the bottom snare, which is great. I do a three-mic technique on the drums. I used to only do a single overhead on a lot of the records that I recorded. Then I thought, "I want some more boom-tat on this shit." I said, "What about a kick mic?" I bought one of those CAD Drum Mic Packs for $200. It sounds awesome! It comes with seven mics.

The studio feels so casual here.

Exactly. I'd rather have this place, which is thoroughly straight-up lived in. All these other places, nobody's fucking living in there. They show up and clock in.

"Where do you put your beer?"

At the end of the day, I love Tascam. I think it's a weird Freudian thing, because I learned on that! Whether it's Foxygen or Tahiti 80, I'm bouncing down to 4-track cassette.

Oh, yeah.

Really? No way.

Yeah. Like that Foxygen record, Tahiti 80, and the new Jonathan Rado record, who's in Foxygen.

Yeah.

It's crazy to mix to cassette.

It sounds great though! The high-end gets round.

But you lose everything above 16 kHz.

Yeah.

People get obsessed with recording equipment, but when I walk into a place like this I see instruments.

Exactly. Really good instruments. I don't have a huge guitar collection, but the guitars I do have are fucking badass. Some of them are super shitty too. I've got this [Fender] Squier fake Jaguar. I've got a '63 [Fender] Mustang bass that I got from Dan. I've got lots of old keyboards. My next move is to get a proper [Hammond] B3. That's why I'm selling the Studer console. Mark Neill's going to get me two channels of Studer preamps. I only need one or two channels of it.

As a sideman or a producer, you can be talented yourself and have your own projects and records, but also you need to be able to sublimate into a band, a project, or a recording session.

I feel pretty fortunate. I've had fans of mine bust my balls, like, "What the fuck are you doing being in The Shins or The Black Keys?" I reply, "I'm paying the bills." And guess what? James Mercer is a really fucking talented guy. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, these guys are really fucking talented. I won't suffer a fool. There have only been a few people who have tried to bust my balls about it personally. I don't know what it is online.

A fan might also think your solo records make you a living.

Yeah, exactly. Don't fucking bust my balls for being in these pretty big bands that actually still sell records. Not only that, but they're really talented, great people.

It's determined by other factors.

That are totally out of your control. What you can control are knobs, faders, and being a nice person. I think it's listening to music, as well as listening to people and their ideas. Being open. I think, also, as much as you can, it's [about] being egoless. I definitely have a certain sound, or you might have a certain sound. But that comes from whatever information we've gotten. Our musical tastes. You're going to connect with that person, for the most part, because of your record collection.

Richard Swift Playlist on Spotify

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Richard Swift : Dumbing His Way In?

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