I'd heard that your first solo LP, Break Mirrors, was intended as a calling card for session work. I guess that worked out?
Yeah, it was an experiment. I had left the band Simon Dawes, and I was continuing to write without a goal of what to do with those songs. The obvious conclusion was to make a record, but I had no intention of performing that material. Being in a band at such a young age, I was always struggling to represent my artistic ideas over those of my bandmates. I was in the studio constantly with the engineer, Shawn Everett, during the making of the Simon Dawes record, Carnivore, stressing over all these little parts that everyone played. I'm sure that I was such a pain in the ass for everybody. So when I made a solo record I had carte blanche to do all of those kinds of things, without the stress. I went into a friend's house in Malibu with an engineer named Andy Brohard. We did some live tracking and then brought the record back here, to Tony Berg's studio in Brentwood, California, to finish it with Shawn. My hope, at the time, was that people would hear it and go, "Oh wow, what an interesting sounding record. We should get these guys to work with us. We should make all our records with them!"
You're also well-known as a guitarist. Was this an attempt to get more session work as a player, or was the goal to get into production?
It was to get into production. It was me coming out of a period of time where everything I did was collaborative – being a guitarist in a band [Simon Dawes], and co-writing the songs with Taylor [Goldsmith] – so it was really a way to try to create some record that felt inherently like me and my sensibilities. It was a process for the songwriting, as well as the sonics in the engineering, to sound the way I had wanted my music to sound at that time. My hopes were that someone would hear it and be aware that this was a part of what I was interested in doing. There wasn't that much focus on the guitar playing on that record – it's serving the writing and production.
And you met Shawn around this time?
I met Shawn working on the Simon Dawes record, Carnivore. I think that was around 2007 to 2008. A couple of years after that we started working on Break Mirrors together.
We interviewed Shawn for this issue as well. How do you divvy up your workload and responsibilities when you're working on a record with him, and you're either producing or co- producing? Do you do some engineering yourself?
I care a lot about how every sound is created and captured. I'm definitely more hands-on in that way than many modern producers, but I'm certainly not as schooled in engineering techniques as most of the traditional record producers were. I'm catching up on the jargon, and trying to remember the model name of the microphone that I liked so much on the guitarrón. When I'm working with Shawn, he can largely inform the process for the artist or the band we're working with. He is an engineer who, in a very unique way, captures the essence and transforms it without pretension. Traditionally it seems that great- sounding records were tracked in such a way that the engineers were trying not to record anything improperly. Maybe they would get clear sounds and counteract some deficiencies in the equipment, but the major sonic shaping was done during the mix. But with Shawn, he alters some sounds in real time. He reshapes the character of the sound, and it informs the way someone will sing or play. It can inform me too; like I'll build a record around how great the snare drum or that guitar tone suddenly is. It's influential to work with Shawn; it's like he's a band member. He's certainly an artist in that way. I would say my approach isn't something that I've figured out, beyond reacting to what I want out of the music – [which is] for the intent of the song to be clear, and the performance to be inviting. It feels like that's the only thing I can rely on being a constant in record making, and to inspire that I'm forced to react spontaneously – like a musician.
So is your role a little more musical, and Shawn's more technical? Is that a fair statement?
Well, it really depends. Sometimes Shawn's role is more musical. Sometimes Shawn's role is that he creates something, or that he has an idea on how to record something, and it becomes a part of the music. Sometimes he goes for a unique sound on something basic; he makes it surreal and interesting on its own, but perhaps there's no longer any high-end on it and the track is just piano and vocal. I might need to get technical with him in that sort of situation, to make sure that our song doesn't sound like all of the air has been sucked out. So it becomes a balancing act – we're chasing our tails, in a fun way, and hopefully arriving at something that feels like an interesting and exciting new way to present a sound that we've heard before. I'm, perhaps, more critical that the spectrum of sound isn't overtly low-fi, small, or anything like that. He and I both like exciting-sounding records, but I'm never after zaniness. Making a record with Shawn is unlike making a record with anybody else. He's truly one of a kind.
You mentioned earlier that your method is to react to what is happening in the studio. Is it purely reactionary, or when you're driving to the studio are you plotting out the day in your head?
