Mr. Greg Freeman may be best known to you as a member of Pell Mell, the fine instrumental band with 3 lives...or maybe as a former bass player for the Call, check out the first 2 LPs to embarrass him...but one would hope he is best referred to as a fine producer. From his scratch-built Lowdown Recording Studios in San Francisco, Greg has worked on albums for Barbara Manning, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Faust, Gate, X-Tal, Donner Party, Frightwig, the Dwarves, Royal Trux, Ovarian Trolley, um...Vomit Launch and many others. He's a talented, creative person to work with, and as Barbara says, "I can tell him a song is a color and he knows what I mean." And as if he needs any other acclaim, his studio once featured a mixing board previously used for sound on the Gumby claymation show. Now that's cool!
How did you get into production, studio work, etc.?
My friend Dave Spaulding and I were goofin' around, doing music together after Pell Mell broke up in '84 and he sort of, on a whim, bought a 1/2" 8-track, he saw one for sale and went and bought it, and then it just kind of sat there at his house and we looked at it and went, "Wow, 1/2" 8-track!" He had a mixing board left over from his band, from their live set up, so he had a board, some mics, some mic stands and I had a 4-track reel to reel. So we thought, "Hey, let's put together a studio." This space came along, Dave was in a band with this woman who was also in this other band, Typhoon. We split the space, they rehearsed there and we would, the rest of the time, set it up for recording. It was really shoestring, we didn't have anything. Then he bought a real board, a Tascam board... it was pretty much all his stuff when we started. I would buy stuff as time went on.
When you were in the Call, I remember stories about them spending a week doing the kick drum sound...
Right!
When you were recording with other bands and seeing how it went, did that kinda turn you on to the recording side of it?
Oh yeah, definitely. I was always kind of into it, though at the time I didn't know as much or I wasn't really that involved. The most valuable stuff I retained was the procedure, like what you do first, setting up to record, getting sounds, getting the headphone mix. The logistics I picked up 'cause we did it so many times. Basic concepts, like EQ and compression and how that stuff works I picked up. I wish I'd known more about what kinds of mics and exactly what the boards were doing. In a way, if you know the basic stuff, you don't really need to know that right away. The more important thing is knowing how things go together, just trying to get things to sound good.
Having ears.
Right. That's the thing.
It's true. Maybe you'll come across things that maybe you wouldn't have picked up anywhere else.
I just comes down to what sounds good... There's other things I just learned 'cause I spent so much time in all these different studios and a lot of them are pretty big-deal studios but even so, they had problems or they would deceive you into thinking you had really good sound when you didn't, because of various things. It teaches you that you've got to compare what you're listening to against other things that you know or listen to on different systems. It was also before every studio had Yamaha NS-10's...you'd just have these huge custom monitors or you had Auratones.
There wasn't some sort of reference you could use everywhere.
Yeah, I remember at the Record Plant [big L.A. studio] we would do stuff and we would listen on these huge monitors and the engineer would just crank it and it was like, "Yeah, it sounds great!" But then later you'd listen to it and say, "Jeez, it doesn't sound so great." It's like anything; if you're used to it I guess you could use it.
What's some of the latest stuff you've done?
I did an album for this band, Granfaloon Bus, they're great, I like them a lot. I think a small label in Texas or someplace is gonna put it out. They're a lot of fun. There's just been a ton of stuff.
What's the latest thing that's been released that you've done?
There's the Ovarian Trolley album which is pretty recent. I did this band called Couch from Eureka, an EP for Lookout Records. They're more Thinking Fellers-ish than punk rock...that's not out yet, that'll be out in a little while. This guy, Ian Brennan, did his solo album. I just did something for Pony Ride. Do you know them?
I think I've heard the name. Do you still do a lot of stuff that ends up like "demo-tape" type stuff?
Yeah, a fair amount of stuff. It's been more like stuff that's planned for a single or a record. I still do a fair amount of demos.
Do you feel better when you're doing stuff that's going to be released?
Yeah! (laughs) Oh no! I try to do the same job. Actually, my new scheme, which I'm just now beginning to enact is, I'm trying to only do projects where I've got a creative hand in, where I'm either producing or co-producing. In the past I've pretty much taken on everybody, which has been fine, but it's at the point now where I've done it for so long I have just too many people wanting to record. Besides, I would rather do stuff I'm into or people I've done before that I know I would have a good time with. Stuff that I would enjoy rather than getting calls from some band I've never heard and they come in and it's some god-awful fusion/prog band and I'm miserable. So that's my new thing and I think it's starting to work out. It's not fair for a band to come in and I'm not really into it. I try to do as good a job for everyone, but still, if someone's doing some...if they want to sound like Helmet or something, I'm not gonna care.
Do you feel kinda happy to be in the position you're in?
Well, if it works I'll be happy. If I end up with no business then I guess I'll have to change back!
What's some of your favorite things you've recorded over the last 10 years?
Oh god, I guess the stuff that's come out the best, like some of the later Thinking Fellers stuff, was probably some of my favorite stuff. The very last song we recorded is probably one of my all time favorites. It ended up on a single on Amarillo Records, it's called "Every Day". Have you heard that?
No.
Well, the single doesn't sound so great 'cause it got mastered shitty or something but the original mix is, I thought, really good and I was pretty happy with it.
What about that last Barbara Manning album?
Some of that came out pretty good, I thought. That was kind of a handful 'cause Barbara got really into inviting all these people to add stuff to it and it was sort of my job to go, "Holy Cow, take something away!" It was too much and she had the whole band doing their band version and on top of that would be strings and piano.
It's pretty layered but it's also mixed sparingly, it's got a lot of stuff going on but it's not all mush.
That's good. Thanks, that's the idea. It was tough. Some of the stuff, I thought, came out real good. There's this band called Package, they have a single out. They're more Minutemen, popish, hard rock...very cool songs, interesting lyrics, they're real nice guys, too. We're working on a bunch of stuff, I don't know what's gonna happen to it. I guess they're gonna do an EP. That stuff I thought sounded really good.
What kind of gear are you using now? Do you still have the Gumby mixing board?
It's for sale...cheap! Now I've got a Mackie, 24 channel, 8 buss. It's good. In general I like it, and I have my 2-inch, 16-track Ampex.
Where was that from?
I bought it from a guy who got it from Fantasy [Studios]. Yeah the Mackie is decent. The worse thing about it, I think, is the EQ, but the virtue of it is that it's really clean, the routing's really good...for people recording, their headphones sound so much better, it's really phenomenal. I got one of those TL Audio 2 channel tube EQs to make up for the lousy EQ on the Mackie. There's four switchable frequency ranges for each channel, it's basically a really good mid-range, the Mackie's got a decent low-end but the mid range is awful. If you try to make a snare sound good it's just awful. The next thing I'm gonna get is some kind of Neve mic pre-amp. I tried one out and I was just blown away, it really sounded so good. It'll cost me another $1500 but it'll be worth it. So that's the way I get around the board.
With the 2" tape on the 16-track do you find you can really crank the sound onto the tape?
Oh, Yeah!
Do you use any noise reduction?
No, with the new, higher output tape, like Ampex 499 or 3M 996, it's pretty darn quiet. Because the tape is so huge, you get a lot more "juice" per track, a lot more magnetic "ju ju" going on so it's really quiet and the bottom end is really amazing.
Does anyone ever complain about the tape cost? ($150 if you're getting a deal!)
No. I present myself as, this is what I have, this is what it's gonna cost. I've had a lot of people who've come in and said, "God, Greg, we did our last band on ADAT in the studio...it sucks. We like analog." I'll notice that after I mix to the 1/4" reel-to-reel it gets even more bottom end.
Do you do a lot of your mixing to that?
Yeah, I usually tell people to do both, to run 1/4" and a DAT and use the 1/4" for the master and the DAT as a backup.
Do you have any old, cool gear or strange stuff you use?
Well, most of my studio's old and strange! Nothing too weird...I've got an AKG BX-10 spring reverb, which is more of a hi-fi, older spring reverb, it's pretty cool. I have this Mutron delay that's broken and sounds really weird.
Do you still use the Yamaha SPX 90?
Yeah, not very often. I've got an LXP 5 (Lexicon) and a Roland SRV 2000 which is pretty nice. I have this weird ribbon mic, it's called a Mercury, and it looks like a taxi dispatcher's mic. It's got a grill. I tried it out, putting it behind the drummer's seat, facing the corner, a cement corner, and it sounds real weird. There's the old SansAmp trick, too. That's sort of the hip thing to do, use the SansAmp on an effects send, I use it on snare drums a lot, and it comes back all messed up and you mix a little of that back in for your extra chaos factor. Flood, he does that. I picked it up from Tchad Blake; he works with Mitchell Froom and the Latin Playboys.
What kind of books or magazines were you able to find good info from when you were starting your studio?
I would read Mix magazine. There's a couple of recording books that I think are really good. There's Practical Techniques for the Recording Engineer by Sherman Keene. I highly recommend it. It's the best one I've found. It's more like a procedural thing, how to record stuff. It doesn't talk so much about gear and how microphones work, although it does cover some of that. It has some physics in there and stuff, like Ohm's law, the dB scale and stuff. It is, like it says, practical. It talks about how to edit tape, which is a dying art. It's really good. There's also John Woram's book, The Sound Recording Handbook, it's got a microphone section, he has different examples of mics and explains how they work. He's got a really good bit on mid-side stereo which is neat. It's got a bunch of math, too, if you really want to get into it you can read the math. He's really good, it's very well written. Those two books I think are the best ones. Other than that, I just read the magazines every month and try to pick up info here and there.
What kind of stuff have you been listening to lately?
There's a couple of things. There's this band called Remy Zero, a new Geffen Records band. Have you heard it?
Y'know, I listened to it on a Walkman in Mexico...I thought it was pretty heavy-handed shit.
Oh yeah, it's a little heavy-handed but I really like it, I thought it was really great. I love the bass lines, maybe you couldn't hear the bass lines on the Walkman! The bass player's great and I thought it was pretty darn cool. There's that band Possum Dixon, I bought one of their CDs. It's really cool; it's very new wave.
Really?
But in a good way. It kinda reminded me of the Feelies and Big Dipper mixed in. The last Clean record is really great, Modern Rock. It's really good. The new Tortoise is good, there's that band, Friends of Dean Martinez. It's instrumental, it's really cool. I've been listening to a bunch of reggae stuff, a bunch of dub, like King Tubby...Lee Perry. Have you seen that Grand Royal Magazine? It's interviews with people who've talked with him...pretty comprehensive and I recommend it.
Like how he burned his studio down?
It's got all about exactly how that happened.
This pretty much wraps it up, are there any plans for Pell Mell?
We're trying to get this tour together for Europe, don't know when that'll happen. We're hopin' to get this next record going, too. We gotta make plans still about it but if all goes well, we'll record it this Summer and it'll be out next year. In the meantime, we've got a couple of little song-snippets in this new Kid's in the Hall movie [Brain Candy]. We did some music for it. And we've been poppin' up on MTV on Road Rules, y'know that show?
I've never seen it.
They used a bunch of Interstate. Also NPR, All Things Considered. We just got this last BMI check but radio doesn't pay anything. We had a couple of network TV broadcasts and those pay a lot. Well, relatively a lot, not a whole lot. It's cool.
Be sure to check out the last Pell Mell CD, Interstate, a way-cool, rockin' instrumental release.
