Thanks for meeting up to do this interview.
I have to say, I, in no way, consider myself to be an engineer, producer, or a full-time recording studio guy, like many of the people you talk to, so I sort of don't feel like I'm qualified to be in your magazine. I'm obsessed with records, old and new, and to me there's a fascinating process of listening to those records and thinking about how they made them. I feel really proud of being able to come up with some really cool sounds of the past and present in my recordings, as well as in some of the other things I've produced.
I think that makes you someone worth putting in Tape Op! How does work come to you? I'd imagine that people come and search you out?
Yeah, [that's what happens] whenever I get hired to out-and-out record or produce somebody. But it seems like a lot of these sessions are things that I come up with in my head, like, "The Trashmen must make another record!" Then I realize that nobody's going to support that, unless it's me. So I do everything out of my pocket, just to make it happen. I did a record with Nokie Edwards from The Ventures. That one turned out really cool.
To some, these people are bygones, but they're stylistic icons to us.
That's the thing. It always pisses me off when you talk to 20-year-old know-it-alls, and they talk about guys in their sixties, seventies, or eighties as being all washed-up has-beens. Nokie Edwards has magic in his hands. He will come up with licks that you never could have come up with.
How did recording music enter your life?
I never really set out to record. I was in a band, and we did the whole thing where we saved up a bunch of money and went to a local recording studio. But after, we were like, "Man, this sounds like crap! We just spent a bunch of money, this guy seemed like he knew what he was doing, but it sounds like a Steely Dan record or something."
Was that with Untamed Youth back in Missouri?
Exactly. It all boils down to the fact that you have to have somebody on the same wavelength. The guys in Missouri were all competent engineers; but they were hippie guys, and they recorded blues and hard rock. So when I moved out to California, I discovered this whole new world of people, like Wally Hersom, Tim Maag, and Mark Neill, who I wound up recording several records with. It was like this blanket had been lifted, and I could actually make records that would sound good — or, should I say, what my personal taste thinks is good. I thought that was something that had literally vanished forever. You start realizing that it's really an approach to recording, and by using certain pieces of gear, that you can achieve those sounds. Right around the time that eBay started was when I started picking up pieces of gear, because I found them for cheap.
You'd always been involved in finding guitars, instruments, and amps, like you talk about in your book.
I was always a junk hound, so I figured that I should really focus my energy on picking up recording gear when it was cheap. I just had this feeling that it was all going to go sky high, which it did. I was lucky enough to pick things up, like an RCA 77[-DX ribbon mic] and a Sony C-37A [mic] at a flea market for a couple hundred bucks each. I started watching the local Recycler [classified] paper, which was one of the things that predated Craigslist. I picked up a couple of Ampex tape recorders, a couple Altec mixers, and some other basic items to start with. That's when you have the harsh realization that this is not plug-and-play. It starts you down this whole path, where you realize you have to learn about +4 and -10, balanced and unbalanced. And if you're using tube gear, you find out what a world of difference things like quality capacitors, resistors, and low-noise tubes make. Tube gear, when it's well maintained, can sound shockingly good. On the other hand, I've been to a lot of studios that have some noisy old tube gear that sounds like crap because it all needs to be rebuilt. I do think I'm lucky, in that I was sort of the last generation that learned how to record audio with reel to reel tape recorders. I used to do this radio show back in Missouri. They had a production room with all these ReVox tape recorders and a Studer mixer. I spent hours in there with these guys teaching me how to chop tape, as well as clean and demagnetize the heads.
Even how to feed the tape through the rollers?
Exactly. I feel like I was lucky to have a hands-on experience with all of the analog stuff. When the whole digital thing came around, I wasn't helpless. At some point I decided I wanted to start recording bands so that I could learn how to use some of the gear I'd gotten together. My first few efforts were atrocious. I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent guy, so I sat down and tried to figure it out. I thought, "If Sam Phillips, or any of these guys I idolize, were able to make such great-sounding records with so little equipment, what is it that I'm doing wrong?" Eventually you start figuring out that it really has to do with the musicians and the sound that's coming out of the instruments, along with their performances and musical interaction. The gear has a little bit to do with it, especially when you're dealing with chasing a tone. Mark Neill was the guy to teach me this. He comes across as a real hard-ass a lot of times, because he'll tell musicians, "You're not good enough to play on this recording." A lot of times, he's right. I took notes on that.
But, on the other hand, you and I are also fans of garage bands from the '60s. How did those records get done?
I really love extremely well produced records that are played by virtuoso musicians; high-fidelity and magically great records. Think about those incredible records produced by Bill Porter in Nashville in the 1950s and '60s — Roy Orbison, The Everly Brothers, that Nashville period of Elvis Presley's. Those recordings are shockingly good, from every aspect. They're perfect records! On the other hand, I really love messed-up sounding records, and I think there's a whole art and science to messed up sounding records. For me, when I've recorded bands in the house, I always try to ask myself, "Is this guy really not a good musician, and should he not be on this recording?" Versus, "I don't want to be the guy who stops the next Velvet Underground from happening." What if the Velvet Underground had walked into a studio, and they told them, "You guys suck! We're going to get some studio musicians in here and let Lou Reed sing." I always try to ask myself if things are actually working and genius in their own way, or if they actually need to be improved.
What's your home recording setup like?
I was really lucky when I bought my house, because I was planning on converting the two-car garage into a floating-floor type studio room. But first I started doing some band rehearsals in my living room. It's wood all around, with hardwood floors, wood on the walls, and a vaulted wood ceiling. All of us were like, "Damn, it sounds good in here!" The last four or five albums I've done there, with the band in the living room and all of my gear set up in one of the bedrooms. I wouldn't go so far as to call my setup a full-on commercial studio, but I've got top gear and a good sounding room. I'm open for business!
You've got a label, your writing, the various combos you put together, plus recording and producing people — you've got all these different ventures going, but are you making a living?
Well, yeah. The reason I do all those different things is to attempt to make a living. Most of the guys I know who quit their day jobs have to find out some way to juggle all the bills and make it happen. For me, the whole record industry thing sort of imploded around 2000.
Were you in a genre or niche that used to see more money, like from direct CD sales and such?
Yes and no. I was on HighTone Records, which was a mid-sized record label. I signed with them in 1998, and when the first record came out, it was all the good, old classic record label deal. I got a good-sized advance, they did a radio promo, took out ads in local entertainment magazines when I went on tour, and they gave me some tour support money. Within two years, by 2000, it had turned into one-third the size of the record advance, and nothing else. It was like the entire industry had back-ended itself in two years. You can sit there and drive yourself crazy thinking about, "Man, if I had only gotten signed six years earlier." I realized I was a good hustler of merchandise, so I started putting out my own records. The first record I did after HighTone was a record called [Deke Dickerson] In 3-Dimensions! I sold 9,000 CDs all on my own, without taking out ads or anything like that.
Are you still on a quest for perfect guitar tones?
