Al Schnier: moe. & more

The band moe. has been going strong since forming in Buffalo, NY, over 20 years ago. Guitarist/vocalist Al Schnier joined up in 1991; the band has been busy on the road, as well as releasing albums, ever since, even putting on the excellent moe.down festival (The fifteenth year is happening in Turin, NY, August 29-31, this summer). I dropped Al a line as moe. were wrapping up their 11th album, No Guts, No Glory!, to discuss the band's studio history, his home studio, and thoughts on recording guitars.

You guys are working on a new record?

Yup. We've finished all the tracking at this point. We were working at the Carriage House Studios in Stamford, Connecticut. We'd been there once before, around 2000, working on our album, Dither, with John Siket. It was one of those places where we had a really good experience and good memory of it. Originally we had planned to be on the West Coast to do the recording, but for personal reasons we had to do it in the Northeast. It was good to be back there.

What is it that you like about Carriage House?

There are a couple of things. We've spent enough time in a lot of different recording studios, and a lot of different residential situations. We've even gone so far as to rent a house on one of our records, as well as move in all of our own gear to build a makeshift studio setup. We want a space that's conducive to getting the work done. It has to be comfortable, but you also want the right gear. You want everything to work. Carriage House has the right combination of those things. You have a great collection of gear, but also a comfortable place to work. In this day and age, the personal customer service part of it really goes a long way. It's the easiest record we've ever made. We never felt like we were on the clock, or in somebody else's space. They helped us get our job done. If we needed anything, they were there to help out.

That should be the situation most of the time.

Well, it should be; but a lot of times you get into a studio where you might be dealing with some complacency, or maybe some gear that's not quite in shape that hasn't been cleaned in a while. You spend time putting out fires and checking the gear yourself, when you should be recording.

When you set up a house as a recording studio did you find yourselves pretty distracted with equipment?

Not so much. I have a really good friend named Mark Cochi who has his own recording company called RDR Location. He's got a 48-track HD rig with [iZ Technology] RADAR, a Sony digital desk [DMX-R100], 48 channels of API preamps and outboard compressors, and $100,000 worth of microphones. We weren't wanting for any gear. The only distraction was that several of us were geeking out over the gear while we were doing the recording.

I've gathered that you have a propensity for that, when it comes to recording equipment and guitars.

Yeah. We'd be recording a guitar part and say, "Why don't we do a mic shootout first to see which mic will be best?" An hour and a half would pass by, until one of the guys in the band would finally say, "Hey! Are you guys done? Can we record this guitar part?"

You want to understand what those options are.

Right, exactly. It's cool because everybody in the band has been working for so long, so we're all pretty particular about the sounds we're going after, as well as what we're trying to produce and create. Some of us are more involved on the technical side of things. I personally have to be careful not to get bogged down in that, because I could spend days in the studio having my way with the equipment, more than the songs themselves. I could spend an hour trying to create a sound like I have in my head. I want to build sounds from scratch. Those are fun days in the studio for me.

What was the first experience that you had going into the studio with moe.?

moe. had actually recorded some demos before I started playing with them. There's this great vintage guitar shop in Buffalo called Top Shelf Music. One of the luthiers there, Andrew Buscher, was also a guitar tech with the Goo Goo Dolls. He lived above the guitar shop and had a studio in his apartment with a 16-track, 1-inch machine. There was probably a Soundcraft board and a few random pieces of outboard gear. We made our first two albums there, but he'd gotten a better tape machine by the time we did the second album. We were working at night, after the guitar shop closed. We'd go in at six or seven at night, and work until two in the morning. Some of the guys were still in school at that point, and we had neighbors and things to contend with, but it was a great process.

That's pretty awesome.

It was good that we were in his hands, because he had a certain appreciation, not only for the recording process, but also for the gear. I remember sitting down with him and comparing our Les Pauls at one point. He was explaining why the '68 Goldtop that he had was different from the '72 Goldtop that I had. He was a big fan of The Who, so everything was informed by their musical vocabulary. It was good to have him reinterpret what we were doing through that vernacular.

You mentioned having a month at Carriage House and not feeling so "on the clock." Has that been a goal?

Absolutely. Every time we try and create these situations in which we can get the work done. On one of the records we did, we tracked in a theater in Portland, Maine. We knew the theater was going to be empty for a couple weeks. We had a really good relationship with those people, so we asked them if we could move in for a couple of weeks. It's nice for us to work when we're left alone that way. We're all fat and old at this point, but we still worked 12-hour days for a month straight. Once we get into the process of making a record, we're pretty dedicated to it. It's nice to be able to do it that way, rather than have to be on the clock, work around a schedule, bounce around to different locations, or move in and out of a studio. When you go to a nice, quiet town in Connecticut, the only thing to do is make the record.

How much pre-production do you guys do? Do you take songs out on the road for a bit and come into the studio to rethink them, or vice versa?

Both. We've worked out a song on the road for two years before bringing it into the studio — really putting it through its paces. A typical soundcheck for us is about an hour and a half. A lot of it are songs that we've been playing for ten years, but we're constantly evolving the songs. Somebody might have a new idea. We're always tweaking the arrangements. The newer songs get more attention and work until everybody settles into their parts. The changes have the right feel. But we've also done the exact opposite. We've written songs in the studio and kept the third takes — that's the one that's on the record. This new album has both. We have brand new songs, where we literally walked in with demos that we recorded on an iPhone — like one of us with an acoustic guitar. We had to flesh out the band versions.

Do you find that sometimes that a song comes out on the album, but then you take it on the road and it morphs again?

Yeah, absolutely. Especially with a band like us, because we're a live improvisational band. Even when we're writing a song, we get to a particular section and know that it's going to be great to mine later live. We might not explore that to the full extent in the studio, because listening to a studio album is a different experience than being at a live show.

Is moe. a band that pretty much produces themselves?

Yeah, we've been self-producing for a long time. It's a combination of that and co-producing with our engineer of choice, who, in many cases, was John Siket. John has always been an asset, and a great partner in crime when it comes to being a gear monkey. At the time we did our first recordings with him, he had this Helios desk. He was so over the moon about this thing. When there's that much passion about the tools being used, it makes the process that much more enjoyable.

What other producers have you used?

We worked with Bill Emmons a few times. Our last record we did with John Travis. We didn't want to co-produce — we wanted him to produce it. It was a really liberating experience for us, because we didn't get bogged down in the diplomacy of what parts, or whose songs, were worthy. We could defer to this third party; he could be more objective about things and make the call. It made the work a lot easier for us. This album was the same thing. We worked with Dave Aron [known for his work with Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, and Dr. Dre]. He's actually an old friend of ours, and an unlikely partner, in terms of producer choices, but he's someone we like to hang out with. It actually turned out to be the easiest record we've ever made.

That's a good sign!

It was great. We deferred to him on a lot of those decision-making things like, "Which song has the good vocal?" And, "Does the solo stay or go?" In many cases he went with the flow. More so than ever before, after we recorded a couple of takes of something, we were ready to leave it, be done, and go on to the next thing. He wasn't about to have us start moving things around, or trying to get things perfect. He was all about having the right vibe, even if it was a bit crooked. I loved it. I'm so glad we finally had someone who gave us the freedom to do that.

In the pop realm things are very controlled. I tend to wonder what's going to happen with the future of recording.

I had a really interesting job come up recently, in which I had to re-record a Bruno Mars song for a TV ad. Somebody I know works in production and asked if it was something I could do. I had to go through the process of analyzing a Bruno Mars song. It's one of these great pop songs. I'm blown away by the production and the meticulous work that they do. It's a totally different school of recording than I come from. I walked away with this whole new level of appreciation for the artist, the song, and the crack team of scientists involved.

I think the problem is when someone tries to apply that ethic on something where it's not really going to help.

Yeah. It would never work with moe.!

Have you had situations in the studio where you were getting the wrong input or feedback about how to capture moe.?

Not really, which is why we worked with John Siket or Bill Emmons when we did. We never really found ourselves in that situation. But, by the same token, we were co-producing a lot of that stuff and doing it ourselves, so we were driving a lot of that. We never really wound up in a situation where it's like, "Who's this guy, and why's he putting us into a corner?" We've been an independent band for the majority of our career, so it hasn't really been an issue for us.

Have you personally produced other peoples' records as well?

Yeah, a few. My wife, Diane Schnier, is a musician, and she's put out five records. Being married to her, I get to make all of those. Then there are a few other bands whose records I've worked on. Some of them were my projects. I've put out three solo records that I produced and engineered, and then there are a few other bands I've also produced and engineered. I have a pretty ridiculous studio in my house, which I've tapered back on a little bit over the last couple of years. For a home studio it was getting excessive, in terms of the collection of outboard gear and mics that I had.

Is your studio, Basemental Studios, part of your house?

Our house is like a contemporary ranch style, so it has 20- foot ceilings upstairs, with a finished basement. That's where the control room is. The control room is big enough that I have a bunch of amps, as well as a drum kit, plus ten keyboards. You could track a full band if you needed to, but that's primarily what we use for mixing and overdubs. The whole house is wired. We actually have patchbays in the living room, as well as several other rooms in the house that all terminate to the studio.

It's good you married a musician! That sounds like it could get out of hand.

Yeah. It's funny how much it's evolved over the years, because the first recording that I did here started with me working on a folding table down in the basement. I had a laptop and my first MOTU 828. I needed a space to work, and this was before the basement was finished.

When you're working on a moe. record, do you ever bring home tracks to do overdubs?

Oh, yeah. I mean, not intentionally. Like I said, we try to finish our work while we're there, but sometimes it happens. It's nice that we're able to do that. If I need to finish a vocal, or add a guitar part, I can always do that. I've mixed a couple of moe. tracks here too that were bonus tracks, or different things we did for alternate releases. It's nice to have the option.