âIf somebodyâs too neurotic, Iâm out. I think music is supposed to be fun, reactionary, and impulsive.â
Dave Cobbâs great record production for Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, The Secret Sisters, Brent Cobb (his cousin), the Zac Brown Band, Rival Sons, Shooter Jennings, and many others have been both artistic and commercial successes. A student of historic recordings, as well as an equipment connoisseur, his minimalist real-time approach alongside such stellar engineers as Vance Powell [Tape Op #82] and Matt Ross-Spang [Tape Op #117] helps right the crucial relationship between singer and track. It was a joy to get to converse with Dave, first in his Helios-equipped home studio and again in Nashvilleâs RCA Studio A, built for Chet Atkins in 1965 â the perfect venue for this accomplished, brilliant, and unassuming gentleman.
AH: Why did you move to Nashville?
This town is the most amazing, supportive community Iâve ever been in. You can make phone calls, and in five minutes literally everybody shows up. Iâm 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, âSo, what do you do?â Itâs 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] itâs viable to be an artist, have a career, and not die. Besides country music, thereâs a great rock scene, as well as Americana and folk. It feels alive. Iâm not old enough to remember London in the â60s, or California in the early â70s, 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 â he did all these records. Those records had a groove â a swagger. Thatâs because Jimmy Miller was a drummer. Heâd 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 bandâs playing, Iâll play something, whether itâs guitar, or percussion, or bass â 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 canât 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, Iâll keep cutting takes just to get the singerâs performance.
HTK: So the whole recordâs live?
Almost every record I do has live vocals. If the singerâs singing live and they go for it, the guitar player will come down in volume when theyâre singing. When theyâre not singing, they come up. I think when I get to mix, I donât have to mix as much. They self-balance. I noticed I can create the perfect track; then, when I bring the singer in, itâs hard to make it sit in the mix. But if you let people in the room mix it themselves â as they play and work out their dynamics â itâs almost like cheating. It takes a little longer going down, but it saves a lot of time later. I canât punch it in. It wonât sound natural.
HTK: The drums on Sturgill Simpsonâs Metamodern Sounds in Country Music are magical.
Itâs the drummer; the way he plays. I met Miles Miller when he was a kid â just 16. Weâve been force-feeding him records, like Hal Blaine and Richie Albright â who played with Waylon Jennings. If you hear the tuning on the drums it sounds so terrible and goofy, but heâs just barely hitting them. It sounds big because heâs barely hitting. If somebody hits hard, things collapse.
MR: A lot of people think John Bonham was just pounding away.
He wasnât. I got to make a record with his son, Jason Bonham â and Glenn Hughes from Deep Purple â about a year and a half ago. He came in here and sounded like those records. Heâd grown up playing with his dad; he hit medium, but he wasnât killing the drums. He said his dadâs favorite drummer was Mick Fleetwood, which I never would think. His dad would say, âListen to that,â to a really basic thing. âListen to that groove. That pocket. Thatâs what itâs about.â 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 â the drummerâs right there in the middle of the entire band. Theyâre all there together. Iâm completely fascinated with records that were made with no headphones, in the same room together. I think you get this human interaction that canât happen the other way around. I always think itâs weird how people go into the studio: say youâre a young band whoâs never made a record. Youâve 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 donât think you can feel music the same way with headphones. I think headphones are borderline evil. If the drummer canât hear the singer, heâs playing too loud. If the guitar player canât hear the singer, heâs playing too loud. Thatâs kind of the rule, for the most part. I say that, but I do use headphones sometimes. With some singers, Iâll put a monitor right next to them as we track.
HTK: How do you think singers react with headphones?
I think they sing way better without them, and their pitch is way better. You put headphones on somebody and they start going sharp or flat, based on volume. You turn it down, and they get flat. You turn it up, and they get sharp. I feel like when Iâm tracking live vocalists I get these great performances with the band in the same room. But if you do it the other way around, or you have to fix something or change a lyric, I put them in the booth and I find we start doing multiple vocal takes. Itâs so hard to get back to that same thing that happened so naturally and easily when they werenât focused on the vocals. Itâs a really weird concept that the band cuts a song, and then the singer goes and is by him or herself. The bandâs all watching and waiting for the singer to get that magic take. I think itâs a lot of pressure on the singer.
AH: When was the last time you recorded someone who wasnât a good singer â someone who couldnât nail a live take with the band?
Itâs kind of a rule not to do that anymore. Iâm attracted to great singers. I think you can have an okay guitar player, but if you have a great singer then itâs awesome. An okay bass player and a great singer is still badass. But if you have a great fucking bass player and a shitty singer, itâs still going to sound like shit.
MR: When youâre listening to records to establish the right environment, what have some of those records been?
That record right behind you, White Mansions, changed my life. That was the first record that really got me into country music. It was produced by Glyn Johns [Tape Op #99] at Olympic Studios and written by an English guy, Paul Kennerley. He had a dream cast of country characters on it: Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, Steve Cash â and the band is Eric Claptonâs band. Itâs just sonically a masterpiece. The feel is incredible. The strings are really simple and haunting, and the piano parts are kind of low-held piano chords. The way everything weaved and bobbed on that record was life-changing. I probably owe 90 percent of my career to copying shit from that record.
AH: When you say copying...
The essence and the feel of it. Thereâs a lot of tension on that record. Itâs a concept record, but thereâs so much restraint in it. Theyâre really waiting and building the tension. They had the most badass players on the planet on this, and no one showed off. I think thatâs a really important lesson.
MR: Whatâs the typical amount of pre-production you do?
I think pre-production is a silly concept. Maybe if you donât have a studio you can record in, then I understand it. Youâve got to go into a big studio and have everything prepared. I was in bands for years, and I know whatever your newest song is, itâs your favorite song. Whenever you hit that right tempo or get that signature riff⌠whenever you play it the first time, you play it the most passionately. If you take that song on the road for six months and tour with it, youâre over it. Weâd get this magic in pre-production when I first started, but we couldnât get it back in the studio. Weâd be chasing this whole thing. âWhatâs the tempo? Pull out the metronome. Letâs find out where we were at.â Youâre chasing a fucking dragon that youâre never going to get again. Youâre never going to get the vocal to feel the same way again as when you were writing the song. I keep tape rolling the entire time when I make records â all day. I think it desensitizes the band, because they just forget that itâs rolling. We may be in there working on a song; when we first started at the beginning of the day, we may get that magic bridge. Then we work out a whole different part, but we have that other thing captured. When we get the final master, we just chop it into it.
AH: Do you mean edits?
Oh, yeah. I donât have anything against editing. I donât care if a band gets it all in one take. I prefer it if we get most of it in one take; but if weâre missing a part of the song, Iâd rather have the band cut it one more time and maybe weâll get that one part of the song.
AH: But you have them cut the whole song each time?
A lot of times. If itâs a really difficult part, and people often forget it by the time it gets to it, weâll just do the one part â kind of ramp up to it and splice it in. Iâd be a hypocrite to say I never tuned anything, or adjusted time, or something like that. Itâs whatever makes it feel right. Even if we do edit or move something, itâs to try to make it feel as if it were played naturally. I say all this shit, but Iâm full of shit too. If it needs to be done a certain way, we do it. Itâs whatever peoplesâ headspaces are, and whatever it takes to keep things moving fast.
AH: If youâre rolling tape and capturing every performance, or capturing moments when the band is working out something, how do you go back?
I have a stupid simple way of keeping a log. If Iâm in the other room, Iâll yell out, âHey, that bridge was really good.â Even if weâre rolling on tape, weâre capturing out of tape and into Pro Tools, because hard drives are cheap and tapeâs expensive. The engineer will have a note of where we said that and log it. With singers, sometimes Iâll have a situation where the singer is on, right off the top, but the band isnât. Iâll keep working to get the band in shape, even though we got the vocals on the first or second take. When I feel like thereâs going to be that situation, Iâll put the singer in the booth or separate them. Then I can go look through those old takes and steal verses or choruses from other takes. Whatever makes the process easy. Whatâs really shitty for singers is when the band may spend two weeks on basics, and you have a handful of days left of tracking and itâs only vocals now. The poor singer has to sing all day. I think that sucks. By keeping vocals going down live, theyâre cutting vocals as we go. It removes all that pressure for them. Thereâs nothing really left to do at the end, except maybe punch in a word or two if you change a lyric.
MR: You sort of know when you get a magical take. Is it just a feeling?
Yeah. A friend of mine, Greg Gordon, was a really big mentor to me. We worked together a lot in L.A. before I moved. He always talked about this thing, where for some reason the molecules add up and that specific take âsounds like a record.â Iâm looking for that â whatever feels warm and fuzzy, like youâve already heard it â like a record youâve heard. Iâm not a fan of figuring it out later. To be honest with you, I hate mixing. Obviously there are people who make records sound way better, like Vance Powell is unbelievable. But I hate that whole process of mixing. I try to make the mixing happen at tracking. Itâs all about balancing. When you hear it, it sounds like a record. Even all the reverbs are committed. I come back to the Sturgill album [Metamodern Sounds in Country Music], because itâs an easy example. When we were doing his album, we were printing all the reverbs and delays live. That sounded like a record because it was live. Itâs about treating it like performances and not going, âOkay, Iâm going to get a mouse out and start automating all these things.â
MR: I have to ask what the reverbs and delays were on that record. Especially the vocal.
The vocal delays were a Studer A80 1/4-inch tape machine going into a [Studio Technologies] Ecoplate III in the other room, with 15 IPS pre-delay. Thatâs all the vocals on that. Also the Moog 500-series Analog Delay. All the weird psychedelic shit was Sturgill with a handheld microphone and a [Maestro] Echoplex â just riding pedals and Echoplex delays after we did the master tracks and were kind of getting stupid.
AH: Was that his idea or your idea?
My idea, but he was laughing all the way and just loving it. There was actually one little hiccup in the studio that day. There was kind of a fight between a couple of guys. It was me here going like, âFuck, what do we do now?â I reversed the track we were working on, and that made this cocained-out, â80s sound. Sturgill came back the next day, heard it, and started laughing. We wrote a song based on the reversed song weâd already done, and incorporated that into it. Since it was already ridiculous, I thought it would be fun to start tape-reversing sounds, and then looping and creating organic shit on top of that. Thatâs all based upon Beatles songs, like âTomorrow Never Knowsâ from Revolver. Thatâs all shit that was done in the â60s. Same thing â making tape loops and goofing off. If tape hadnât been rolling all day, or this had been a pre-production, that probably never would have happened.
AH: What are some of your favorite mics?
The Coles 4038 is probably my favorite vocal microphone. Itâs not sibilant; itâs got a really huge bottom end, and itâs really EQ-able. Iâve been going back to the [Neumann] U87 as a mono overhead [on drums]. Iâve got tube [Neumann] U47s, [Neumann] U67s, and [Telefunken] Ela M 251s, but I love â87s. Maybe because a lot of my favorite records in the late â60s and early â70s were all [recorded with] U87s. I like the mono â87.
AH: Where do you place it?
Looking at pictures of The Beatles, youâll see the microphone right at Ringoâs head. Itâs the same thing with soul music; Iâm a big Stax and Muscle Shoals fan. Youâll always see the mics right here, by the drummerâs head. I try to get it as low as I can. I like that really tight sound. Iâve tried a million different ways to mic. Iâll go through phases where we do the Glyn Johns micâing, and thatâs cool, but all my favorite drum sounds Iâve gotten have always been the three-mics â just kick, snare, overhead, and then sometimes not even using the snare at all. I always put safety mics on toms, and then Iâll never use them. If I had to nail my favorite drum sounds on a record, itâs probably the Rolling Stonesâ âCanât You Hear Me Knockingâ on Sticky Fingers. The drum sounds are fucking insane. You can find pictures of it, and itâs that simple. I think there are a lot of people who are much smarter than me who can put up a lot of mics and make it sound good, but I just start not paying attention to the band. I start paying attention to engineering when I put too many mics up. If I only put two mics up, Iâm concentrating on the song. When I first started making records, in 1997 or â98, there was this process. You had to have 12 mics on the drums and a big drum room. You had to cut to a click. But I donât think anybody cares anymore. I like really simple recording.
AH: What about the rest of the instruments?
Guitar mics change all the time. Mark Neill [Tape Op #29] got me into transformerless [Shure] SM57s for a while on guitar. I like RCA Type 77 ribbons a lot on little amps. Sometimes itâs a Coles [4038] or a U67. Really simple. I find when I put two or three mics on a guitar, I wind up muting them. I get really nervous about how to EQ both of them unless I can put them on the track together. I donât like many options.
MR: How do you typically record bass guitar?
A friend of mine bought out a studio that was selling DIs, the Quonset Hut, here in Nashville. He was buying them just to get the transformers out of them. I kidnapped one and never gave it back to him. It sounds unbelievable. The Acme WolfBox is the shit too. I also mic bass. A friend of mine a long time ago showed me the trick of putting a large-diaphragm condenser right on the cone, right on the grill, but keeping the amp barely on. It uses the proximity effect and natural bottom-end of the microphone.
AH: What about preamps?
The Helios is the best console Iâve ever heard in my life. It sounds like a record, and thatâs with no EQ. Itâs really fast. Itâs also soft in the top-end, so it never sounds sibilant or hard. The EQs are really natural, but I hardly ever use them. I have a Neve BCM10 that Iâll travel with sometimes. I just bought a bunch of Spectra Sonics modules. They remind me a lot of the Helios, but theyâre very American and super fast â they donât need any EQ at all. It just sounds like a record. Theyâre really easy to make things sound natural. You donât have to add any high-end, because the high-end is so fast. You donât have to add any low-end to the kick drum or bass, because the low-end is so fast.
MR: Whatâs the history of your Helios?
Mine was from Love Studio in Finland. Glyn Johns is my favorite engineer of all time. Iâve always read about Glyn recording these records I loved, and the common denominator was always the Helios. I killed myself until I could afford one, and I wound up meeting this guy, David Kean, in Canada who owns the Audities Foundation. He had the Rolling Stones Mobile [truck]. I started picking his brain and asking, âHey man, can I buy some of the documents? Maybe Iâll try to have somebody rebuild modules.â He told me he had the Manor Mobile frame, but no modules. I bought the Manor Mobile frame. Meanwhile, Jeff Steiger of CAPI [Classic Audio Products, Inc.] said he knew somebody who owned a Helios in Tennessee. We went by this guyâs house and his console was working; it had been refurbed by Vintage King. I pestered him until he sold me the console. I begged, borrowed, stole, and sold a lot of shit to get it. Thatâs where all my tube shit went. I had a really good mic collection, and it all went away to buy this console. But you could buy another U47 someday. You can never buy another one of these.
MR: Everything you record goes through this?
Yeah. I love Jeff Steigerâs CAPI equipment; his VP26 preamps are fucking awesome. Itâs either CAPI or the Helios. The Neve BCM10 I bought strictly because I felt like it was a good savings account if some shit went down. Itâs cool, but itâs not a Helios. It sounds cloudy, comparatively, and you have to start EQâing. I donât use a lot of compression. Mark Neill told me about those old records: you hear the vocal, and the reverb sounds so big, and lush, and beautiful. For years, I compressed the vocal pretty heavily, and the reverb just made things sound more distant, with reverb always there in the background. If you donât cut with compression and you sing on the microphone, every time you hit that reverb hard, it comes in and out; and when you donât sing hard, thereâs none there. It rides itself.
MR: Other than Mark Neill, who have been your mentors?
Greg Gordon, who I told you about. Greg worked with Rick Rubin for lots of years. He recorded LL Cool J back in the day. He was from Michigan, so he learned from the Detroit guys. He was the first guy who really taught me about tape effects â how to flange, phase, and delay. I carry a lot of information with me from that guy. [Another mentor is] my buddy Vance Powell, here in Nashville. Also Darrell Thorp, who was Nigel Godrichâs engineer for a lot of years. Those guys get sounds in a matter of ten minutes with a full band. There are guys now making great records. Nigel Godrich is incredible. Ethan Johns [#49] is a badass. Iâm a big fan of the way those Muscle Shoals records sound. I was recording The Secret Sisters there [at FAME Studios]; as I was putting a compressor on the microphone, [owner] Rick Hall looked at me and said, âAre you going to put a compressor on that?â I said, âYeah.â He said, âOh, we donât do that around here.â I was like, âMan, walk me through it.â The drum booth wasnât a proper booth for a while, and he walled it up. I asked, âWhen did you do that?â He said, âI reckon about 1964.â âWhyâd you do it?â He replied, âWell, as soon as I could get those motherfuckers out of my vocal microphone, I did it.â I asked, âHow did you mic the drums?â He said, âI didnât give a shit about it. I put one on the top, one on the bottom, and walled the motherfuckers up. They were there to keep time.â I would also say that Tom Dowd is one of my heroes. A lot of the classic guys. The Ashes & Fire Ryan Adams record that Glyn Johns recorded and produced is a perfect sounding album. It freaks me out. Itâs perfect. He schooled everybody, again.
AH: You also spend a lot of time doing your own research and looking for photographs.
Iâd see pictures of Elvis in RCA Studio B. Why is the mic like that? Elvis is right here, off-center, for figure-of-eight reasons. [Utilizing the null rejection. âed.] The backing singer is angled another way for figure-of-eight reasons. Okay, now it makes sense. I started setting up rooms like this, and lining up the nulls of the mics. Thatâs how I learned how to record in one room. I learned a lot from pictures; itâs like a lightbulb going off. I steal a lot from this shit â no doubt about it. Those guys were real engineers. I think my generation are people who can turn things on and put mics up. Those guys actually had educations as engineers.
MR: Youâve taken residence in RCA Studio A.
I get kind of freaked out every time I walk in here. For years I tried to imitate Waylon Jenningsâ records, like the song, âOnly Daddy Thatâll Walk the Lineâ â the guitar sound, or the room sound. Or [Dolly Partonâs] âJoleneâ â the crazy sound of that record. Itâs like, âWeâre in that room, and all we need now is Dolly, Waylon, and the great players who were on that.â Itâs really humbling. I havenât gotten used to it yet.
MR: Do you have moments of recognition when you bring up a fader and think, âThere it isâ?
You know, the room definitely has a sound, and we try to take advantage of it nonstop. We leave the doors open, and everybodyâs in the same room together. Itâs really easy to have a lot of people in one room, as well as to have incredible isolation even though theyâre bleeding into each other. I think the room was designed so that you could have a vocalist near a drum set and it wouldnât be too bad.
MR: How would you characterize the sound of this room?
Itâs not very live. Itâs really very controlled, contained, and focused. Studio A was built at a time when âNashville Soundâ was next door [at RCA Studios, later renamed Studio B] and Columbia was down the street. The Nashville Sound was making so much money that they wanted some Sinatra and Dean Martin money, so they built places like this to hold an entire choir and string section, full rhythm section and band, and singer all in the same room. Itâs amazing that you can actually get away with that all in one place, and it doesnât sound like youâre bleeding poorly into everything.
MR: The room is a mixer.
Absolutely! Mark Neill told me a long time ago that the sound doesnât come from the control room. It comes from the live room. I completely agree. I think you can accentuate or change it a little bit, but the sound comes from human beings who are playing, as well as from the room itself. You know whatâs weird about this place? Normally I go into a room and the first thing I do, if itâs drums for instance, Iâll walk around the room and hit them, and see what sounds right. This room is really weird. No matter where I put them, it kind of sounds the same. Itâs bizarre. Iâve never, ever experienced this in any other studio. Maybe these guys were a lot smarter than we are now.
MR: Very possibly. Although, in a way, I guess that takes away the ability to move something around in a room and change its sound.
Weâre also sometimes having Vance Powell record drums in the booth, so we can keep vocal takes if we need to fix anything, and he just re-amps the drums back in the room. The room is our reverb. Some of the sessions we do 100 percent in the room together, but the drums are in the booth and we re-tie it back together on some of the other sessions. If you clap in here, itâs just the right amount of live, but itâs weird. Itâs such a weird room, in the best possible way.
MR: Have you been looking into the history of this room?
Absolutely. If I wasnât in music, Iâd teach history. I love music history, and Iâm fascinated with Nashville music history. I heard a story recently about this room. I donât know the validity of it, but they said that Elvis came in here when he first started dating Priscilla. He brought her to a session, and she wanted to watch him produce. Heâd already recorded the session, but he went around and said, âLet me show you what to play on the bass.â He grabbed the bass from the bass player, played the bass line, and the bass player said, âGood idea!â Elvis went around to everybody to âproduceâ the session, even though it was already recorded â just to impress Priscilla. Thereâs so much folklore in this town. Itâs fun to keep hearing all the crazy stories. I think weâre calm now, compared to those guys. I think those guys had a lot more fun than we do now. They were doing drugs, and now weâre doing Vitamin Water and Pilates.
âThatâs how I learned how to record in one room. I learned a lot from pictures.â Andy Hong
MR: Thatâs one of my theories, that to the extent that things have changed and maybe arenât as good as they were, which is arguable. But I think one of the factors is a relative lack of lunatics today.
Absolutely. There arenât a lot of Jack Clements [Tape Op #77] anymore. There arenât a lot of Phil Spectors.
MR: Joe Meek. Sam Phillips.
Yeah, they were out of their damn minds. Itâs fun though. I love that P.T. Barnum aspect to the music industry. Matt Ross-Spang took me to a Sam Phillips book event they had at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and Jerry Phillips, Samâs son, was talking about his dad. He said Sam walked into Sun every day without a game plan. He knew who was coming in, but he didnât know what song they were going to record, how many songs they were going to record, or who was showing up. It was very wide open, and somehow heâd walk out with [Jerry Lee Lewisâ] âWhole Lotta Shakinâ Goinâ Onâ and all these classic Sun tracks that we know. I steal from that a little bit. I never do pre-production. Hearing that Sam Phillips story gave me a little validation for being out of my mind. I think I stress artists out all the time, because theyâll send me a Dropbox full of tracks and I wonât really go through it until we get into the studio. Theyâre like, âDid you listen to everything?â Theyâll get nervous. Then we just kind of wing it. If somebodyâs too neurotic, Iâm out. I think music is supposed to be fun, reactionary, and impulsive.
MR: How are you digging the console here?
Itâs cool. When I was coming into the place, I wasnât going to buy the console. I wanted to move my Helios here. Chris Stapleton â we did his Traveller album here â asked me if I was going to buy the console. I was like, âI donât think so.â He said, âYouâve got to get it.â I said, âWhy do I have to get it? Itâs just an API. There are other ones out there.â He said, âBecause that one has red, white, and blue EQs.â He was superstitious, so I bought it.
MR: I make my students guess what year itâs from. It seems obvious once you know.
Your students werenât even around during the bicentennial year. Thatâs why itâs red, white, and blue. Gear is a weird thing. Itâs really amazing with incredible players, a great room, and great sources. The rest of itâs kind of fun. Just icing. Sometimes I look at pictures of old studios and Iâll see a Spectra Sonics console with 12 channels, one EQ, and one compressor. I get excited about that; the minimalism of not having anything. But itâs also fun to hear new gear too.
MR: Is the design of the control room working for you?
Yeah, itâs great. This is a luxury. Aside from going to Sound Emporium, or other studios like that, I was doing 90% of my records in the back of my house, in a tiny control room that could fit four people. So this is nice. It sounds really good. Iâm not sure when it was redone. Iâve seen pictures of it when it opened in â65, and it looked like an operating room. It was so sterile and white-tiled. Not in the cool, white-tiled way. It looked super bright. I think it was redone in the â70s. Whoever did it really knew what they were doing. Itâs hard to mess up sounds in this room. Youâve got to be really shitty.
MR: Tell the story about the lighting
in here.
Oh, god. I guess Dottie West said that it looked like a grocery store in here, so she complained to the higher-ups and had these hippie steelworkers make the crazy lights above us. They say âpeace and sex,â and have skulls and crossbones. Thereâs probably secret-society messages in them, and they just hung them up. We actually had to take them down when I first came in the building because some of them were about to fall.
MR: Have you had any evidence of the studio being haunted?
I think itâs a really happy place. Theyâve always had a lamp in this corner, and they left it on for Chet [Atkins], so Iâve always continued the tradition. Maybe itâs because we leave a light on for him, itâs not felt spooky here.
MR: Thatâs a theater tradition, a âghost light.â You never let a theater get dark.
Really? Well, itâs working.
MR: Have you found any newer techniques youâre using these days or gear youâre excited about?
My biggest discovery with gear in the last couple of years is the Spectra Sonics 610. I canât believe I never dug into them. Iâd seen them forever, but I probably got my first one about three years ago. Iâve got a whole mess of them now. Those things are just super hip. If you could carry one compressor around, that might be it. They can blow sounds up, but also with that peak limiting, just seeing the light barely come on, it can make things seem somehow bigger and wider, as well as taking off the harsh transients. I donât think any other compressor does that that way. I love that Chandler Limited RS124 [compressor], and their TG1 [compressor] is excellent. Itâs a real renaissance in gear. I love vintage gear, but I donât like maintaining vintage gear. Itâs really exciting that there are new pieces of gear that are coming out that are just as good as the best equipment that was ever made.
MR: I agree. I think some people canât figure out how to use a 610 just by looking at it.
The trick is to have really good engineers who you work with, like Matt Ross-Spang, who know how to use the gear! But, really, itâs about just barely tickling it. You donât even see the meter even move. I just make sure the red light on the right doesnât clip and the input just tickles the yellow light. Usually the slope is all the way to the right, somewhere around there, and I play with it. Itâs impossible to actually explain how to do it without showing somebody how to do it.
MR: They never stopped making them.
Bill Cheney [Tape Op #102], the guy who owns the company now, is making them exactly the way they used to. The past few years Iâve been really getting into mics again. I think thatâs a great place to spend your money. They seem to retain value more than anything else.
MR: What have you been excited about?
Iâll hear all these really nice mics, and then sometimes a Shure SM7 just might be the thing that destroys most everything. Itâs bizarre that $250 mics sometimes beat out your Neumann U47. I like the Neumann M49 a lot. I think thereâs some good newer mics being made too. Those Josephson [Engineering] e22S condensers are super hip. Thatâs a newer mic company thatâs kicking ass. I think itâs great on acoustic and electric guitar. Itâs great as a room mic. I donât like overly bright mics. I donât know what to do when the top-end gets too bright. Iâm not a good enough engineer to start multiband compressing everything and de-essing like crazy on cymbals, so I like things semi-dark.
âI think weâre calm now, compared to those guys. I think those guys had a lot more fun than we do now. They were doing drugs, and now weâre doing Vitamin Water and Pilates.â
MR: Itâs great to see you making records in this classic studio.
I feel like Iâve been really lucky to be part of a team of great people around me: Matt [Ross-Spang], Eddie Spear, Gena Johnson, and Vance Powell. Itâs a lot of good people to help. This doesnât happen with one person; Iâll tell you that. Itâs a whole team of people who have your back and allow you to be crazy. But, in my head, I fantasize about what people did 50 years ago. I wish we could get away with doing those tricks. I love the way that people who came before us made records. Mark Neill took the time to get to know Bill Porter and these legendary engineers. He worked with [Frank] DeMedio. He took the time to get to know where we came from; these icons in this industry. I feel like our generation really got screwed. [Back in the day] you worked at Abbey Road as a tea boy, and you worked your way up. You really got to see how professionals work. My generation learned from going to Guitar Center, buying an ADAT, and figuring it out by reading books. I donât think we had the apprenticeship that those people before us did. I think thatâs great what youâre doing with The Blackbird Academy, because itâs kind of like what it would have been like, had you worked at a major studio back in the day. But the majority of my generation, and probably kids now, are laptop learning. For years I was scared to mic a drum set. Nobody really showed me how to do it, and I felt like I was always getting it wrong. It never sounded like the records I liked. Then I realized that all Iâve got to do is maybe measure it a little bit better; things that I just wouldnât instinctually find out. I think Iâve failed more than Iâve learned by myself. Iâm really good at watching and learning from other people. I feel like the thing that I do is a culmination of copying everybody who I love hero-wise, like John Leckie [Tape Op #42], George Martin, Eddie Kramer [#24], and Glyn Johns. Iâm not as good as any of [those guys], but an amalgamation of all of it.
MR: Itâs amazing that weâre in this building that almost got destroyed.
We did Chris Stapletonâs Traveller here because it was going to be destroyed. Chris really wanted to work here, and we thought we were going to be the last people to work here. Never in a million years did I think that a couple years later Iâd be in this room. I remember walking in this room the first time and thinking, âThis is one of the coolest places Iâve ever been. Ben Folds is a lucky joker to get to come in here regularly.â This lives out a lot of my dreams. Itâs amazing that somebody could pay for this place to be built. I was told that RCA had one of these in Chicago, Montreal, Toronto, Mexico City, Cuba, Italy, Los Angeles, and New York. Theyâre all gone, and this is the last one. Supposedly they were made when an RCA artist was on tour, and they needed to recut a vocal that theyâd cut somewhere else; they could have the same gear and similar acoustics so that it would be unrecognizable that they didnât record it that original day. Itâs pretty special.
