Happy Birthday, Mitch Easter

by Alex Maiolo

One of our patron saints of recording, Mitch Easter [ Tape Op#21], turns 70 today. That's almost irrelevant, as this treasure of a human should be celebrated every day, but it prompted me to write about his impact.

Like anyone, I was blissfully ignorant about how records were made as a kid. The only insider information I had was from shows like The Brady Bunch. You know, everyone in a room, live off the floor, everything including the vocals tracked at the same time by a guy with impossibly dense sideburns.

Around the time I was 14, I started to understand multitracking a little. I saw an ad for the Fostex X-15 4-track machine. Sgt. Pepper's. .. was propped up next to it, and the header was "4-Track Masterpieces."

I thought, "Wow, you can make a record like that with a freakin' cassette machine?" I saved my money and bought one a year later. I'd recently made the transition from mainly listening to Rush, Zeppelin, Van Halen, and, oddly, Kraftwerk, to bands like R.E.M. and groups in their orbit. I was so proud that the South was cranking out music that spoke to me. Being of northern stock, having moved to the South at the age of 6, I just didn't get Skynyrd. As a Byrds fan, Southern jangle pop was what I'd been waiting for.

Mitch Easter's name kept coming up. He was in a great group I was listening to, Let's Active, but also recording some of these combos, including the Paisley Underground cousins. And he was doing it... in his parents' garage? This "Drive-In?" You can make R.E.M.'s Chronic Town in a garage?

I set to work trying to record music my friends and I were doing, in bedrooms and garages. None of it sounded like Chronic Town, much less Sgt. Pepper's. I assumed more gear was needed (because more gear is always needed), and the only way to get to The Drive-In was practice, practice, practice. With no internet and no real information network, it just came down to asking people in music shops. A friend offered to let me sit in on a session for a jingle for a real estate firm in Raleigh. It finally became clear to me that all of those mics I'd see in photos, the desk, the rack gear - it all comes together at a 4 (or 8, or 16) -track reel-to-reel machine, using wide tape and rolling at 15 ips. I assumed this was how records like Chronic Town were made, and I felt duped by Fostex.

Anytime I came across an article about recording, I'd read it. Tommy Tedesco did a column for Guitar Player about his session jobs, and I picked up some clues there. A friend detailed for me what The Drive-In was kitted out with, and I saw it on MTV's IRS Records Presents: The Cutting Edge. Let's just say it wasn't just a garage. I'd deeply listen to records like Murmur, which Mitch and Don Dixon [ Tape Op#8] had worked on together. What was going on in "We Walk"? Eventually I started doing truly maverick stuff like printing tracks with a cheap MXR Commande Series delay or Multivox Big Jam Flanger, both of which I still have. I just accepted that these things would sound like shit, but have a lot of heart.  But I was on my way.

The typical path is you pick up an instrument, form a band, and eventually move on. "It was fun, but time to get on with things." A lot of us who had this adjacent life as recordists were in too deep. What drew us to the technical side reflected an interest level significant to the point that it at least became our golf, gardening, or woodworking, and at most, a vocation. I landed somewhere in between. My day job was a way to support my music habit, a big part of which was recording. Entering that world, eventually finding my family through Tape Op, plus continuing to interact with people like Mitch and others in the R.E.M ecosystem, is why I'm still here, at 56, doing this at my small project studio, Seriously Adequate.

At some point, Mitch and I became friends. We live near each other. We'd have conversations about production, and I truly loved the fact that he rarely dumped on a band. This DIY hero, who'd also worked in truly top-notch spaces, would gush about King Crimson to people who were brought up on legends related to "(I Hate) Pink Floyd" T-shirts.

Years later, a band I was in supported his and I got to join him on stage to play Crazy Elephant's smash hit, "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'". Mitch is a bonafide guitar hero, with an incredible, versatile style. He was actually a bit of a child protégé, with exceptionally cool parents that didn't mind him seeing Zeppelin, Hendrix, and The Moody Blues as a child. Frankly, if he were just a guitar player I think more people would recognize this talent. So, being in that space with him for a few minutes was an honor. It's not unheard of. Mitch does this kind of thing a lot, because he's up for anything. When I was helping Chris Stamey get the Big Star Third shows off the ground, Mitch was there with Mike Mills, Michael Stipe, The Posies [ Tape Op#58], Matthew Sweet, Ira Kaplan, and many other indie heavyweights. Also present was the only surviving member of the band being celebrated, one of Easter's influences, Jody Stephens [ Tape Op#58]. I was reminded, again, that Mitch can pretty much play anything and has crazy good style, including sartorially.

Mitch is also endlessly generous with his time and knowledge. I'm certainly not the only person who has sent him an inquiry by text or email, only to get a beautiful, detailed response, full of anecdotes and good humor, plus bonus tips. That's how I eventually found out that R.E.M.'s "We Walk" crashes were balls on a pool table, slowed down and processed with a digital delay.

Before most, he was doing his part to break up the boy's club. He was the only man in the first iteration of Let's Active, and I'm aware of at least three women who significantly leveled up their studio game under Mitch's tutelage.

In an industry that is often precious and pedantic, Easter always stood out as the guy who was approachable and ready to answer any question. When he built his Taj Mahal, The Fidelitorium, he made it pretty clear that it was a place "to hang out." I've been lucky enough to work in that space; a total candy store for creativity. Mitch is still at it and will mix your record. All you have to do is ring him up.

In these pages, and others, I've regularly celebrated people who you hear about less frequently, but are arguably more important than The Big NamesTM. This is due to their legacy, influence, often at the one-to-one level, and inherent sense of community. Mitch Easter exemplifies this. It may sound meta, but I'm writing this to you, right now, because of Mitch Easter. Whether he knows it or not, he showed me the way, allayed any concerns I had about being a lifer, and above all, I just really like him. I am absolutely not alone.

Happy Birthday Mitch. There is no way to calculate how many people you have inspired. Allow me to offer a heartfelt thank you on behalf of all of us.