AH: Why did you move to Nashville?
This town is the most amazing, supportive community I've ever been in. You can make phone calls, and in five minutes literally everybody shows up. I'm from Savannah, Georgia, but I lived in Los Angeles for 11 years before moving here. Every time you meet somebody in L.A., the first thing out of their mouth is, "So, what do you do?" It's never because they want to be your friend, but because they want to further their career. Coming here was the exact opposite. I think this is the only place in the world where art meets commerce. In L.A. I saw the studios go down one by one, the labels move out, and the industry really shrink and die. In New York they were writing checks, but there were no studios in New York. I think this is the only place [where] it's viable to be an artist, have a career, and not die. Besides country music, there's a great rock scene, as well as Americana and folk. It feels alive. I'm not old enough to remember London in the '60s, or California in the early '70s, but it feels like that environment here now. It feels as exciting.
HTK: I read an article that said you played on almost everything you produce.
Yeah. There was a guy, Jimmy Miller, who I love. Jimmy produced the best Rolling Stones records; Exile on Main St., Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers – he did all these records. Those records had a groove – a swagger. That's because Jimmy Miller was a drummer. He'd get in there and play drums, or play shakers with the band. He always seemed to find the pocket. I completely rip him off as much as possible. When a band's playing, I'll play something, whether it's guitar, or percussion, or bass – just something. I wind up playing on a lot of records strictly as a metronome.
AH: Do you do that live with the band?
Yeah, I hate cutting separately. I can't stand it. It obviously works really well for a lot of people. One thing I really try to do is keep all live tracking vocals. Even if the band nailed it, I'll keep cutting takes just to get the singer's performance.
HTK: So the whole record's live?
Almost every record I do has live vocals. If the singer's singing live and they go for it, the guitar player will come down in volume when they're singing. When they're not singing, they come up. I think when I get to mix, I don't have to mix as much. They self-balance. I noticed I can create the perfect track; then, when I bring the singer in, it's hard to make it sit in the mix. But if you let people in the room mix it themselves – as they play and work out their dynamics – it's almost like cheating. It takes a little longer going down, but it saves a lot of time later. I can't punch it in. It won't sound natural.
HTK: The drums on Sturgill Simpson's Metamodern Sounds in Country Music are magical.
It's the drummer; the way he plays. I met Miles Miller when he was a kid – just 16. We've been force-feeding him records, like Hal Blaine and Richie Albright – who played with Waylon Jennings. If you hear the tuning on the drums it sounds so terrible and goofy, but he's just barely hitting them. It sounds big because he's barely hitting. If somebody hits hard, things collapse.
MR: A lot of people think John Bonham was just pounding away.
He wasn't. I got to make a record with his son, Jason Bonham – and Glenn Hughes from Deep Purple – about a year and a half ago. He came in here and sounded like those records. He'd grown up playing with his dad; he hit medium, but he wasn't killing the drums. He said his dad's favorite drummer was Mick Fleetwood, which I never would think. His dad would say, "Listen to that," to a really basic thing. "Listen to that groove. That pocket. That's what it's about." He was infatuated with how simple and straight some part was.
AH: And a good drummer will play at the right volume for the room.
Look at pictures of the Wrecking Crew – the drummer's right there in the middle of the entire band. They're all there together. I'm completely fascinated with records that were made with no headphones, in the same room together. I think you get this human interaction that can't happen the other way around. I always think it's weird how people go into the studio: say you're a young band who's never made a record. You've been playing together in the rehearsal room, but when you go into the studio, they put you in different booths away from each other. All of a sudden, they put this crazy monitoring over your ears. Everybody has themselves cranked at their own headphone stations. I don't think you can feel music the same way with headphones. I think headphones are borderline evil. If the drummer can't hear the singer, he's playing too loud. If the guitar player can't hear the singer, he's playing too loud. That's kind of the rule, for the most part. I say that, but I do use headphones sometimes. With some singers, I'll put a monitor right next to them as we track.
HTK: How do you think singers react with headphones?
