J. Robbins | TapeOp

Tape Op gets quite a few letters and e-mails suggesting people that we should interview, and recently, J. Robbins had to be one of the most requested names by far. J. was in Jawbox for years, a band with integrity and a strong work ethic, and is currently leading a band with the Eno-ish moniker of Burning Airlines as well as producing records for Promise Ring, Jets to Brazil and others. He came into recording and producing through being in bands, much like myself, and Jane and I had a great time chatting with him in the back of Fellini's before Burning Airlines took the Satyricon stage and rocked our worlds. And did I mention how nice he is?

How did you make the transition? I assume you were playing music before you were recording. You worked with a lot of cool people on the Jawbox records. There's quite a few different people all recording in different ways. Was that something you were doing, working in that respect, and then started thinking you'd be more interested in doing recording on your own?

Yeah, I think from the first recordings that Jawbox did I was always compelled by the recording process, but also really intimidated by it too. I have always been an incredibly insecure singer, especially. When we did our first full-length record with Eli Janney, I was going, "Oh-my-god, Eli's a total genius", just really inspired by the way that he would do things, but then I was so busy freaking out about singing that I never really got a decent grip on it. Also, because we had to work really fast, I never felt like I got a grip on the nuts and bolts of recording. Some of the 8-track stuff we did with Barrett Jones was a little bit more relaxed because it was at Barrett's studio, it was really cheap and Barrett's really mellow. So I definitely started being interested from a musician's standpoint. I was always interested in the abstraction of how to translate a song into a recorded version where it becomes a little world instead of it being so much of a performance. For a while I lived in a group house with Geoff Turner, who runs WGNS in D.C., and this house was thesecondincarnationofWGNSStudios, the 1/2" 16 track version. I got to look over Geoff's shoulder a lot. I didn't actually start engineering-recording until Jawbox signed to Atlantic and we got to spend seven weeks in the studio [Oz] with Ted Nicely, and I got to really pick Ted's brain. Drew Mazurek, who was the engineer, is an awesome engineer. Then we bought an 8-track and started doing demos in our basement and that's when I sort of started to really pay attention to what mics to use and where to put them.

The actual nuts and bolts.

I'd gone into the studio with other bands and anytime anybody would ask me to do it, I'd be really psyched, but then I'd also be cursing myself, sort of self-flagellating because I'm just this guy who's sitting there with opinions. Meanwhile there's an actual engineer who really knows how things work, and I would be just like, "Oh, that's the same microphone that you used when you recorded us, isn't it?" I felt like such an asshole that I was so glad to have an opportunity, finally, to learn to actually engineer.

Like know what to do and just kind of hear what does what, right? On the other hand, too, it can be productive to have someone producing, or in charge of the session who isn't so technical, that's just kind of helping the band to get the feel of something.

Yeah, I think when we worked with Ted, when Jawbox did For Your Own Special Sweetheart , at first I kept giving him these side-long glances because he wasn't interested in engineering. Whenever there was a dispute I would always side with Drew, who was the engineer; but now that I've actually worked on a bunch of records, I have volumes of respect for Ted because he knows exactly what role he wants to take. It's good for him that's he's not bound up in the technical matters and he's interested in translating things in a more ephemeral way. I don't know if that's necessary for everybody, for every band, I don't think it is.

The production team kind of thing?

Yeah. But I have a lot of respect for it now.

In a lot of cases, especially on an indie level, you don't get a chance to have an engineer and a producer.

Yeah, 'cause there's no time, too.

Yeah, there's no time and there's no money.

I always think that's kind of a crime, in a way, I know a lot of people who feel that way too. I think Juan (Carrera) feels that way; that it's kind of a drag that bands with no money don't get to spend a lot of time and mull over their songs, how to interpret them and craft them in a recording. I definitely feel that way. It's weird that people don't spend more time in pre-production when you've got no money. There are so many bands that go to the studio and they are like, "We have two days to do everything, so let's just bust it out", but they could be making their record in their heads for a month before they ever get into the studio. But not too many people think of that.

Practicing, taping your rehearsals, listening to your stuff, editing your songs.

Really thinking about it.

Fixing your gear.

Yeah! Intonating your guitars or charting out what overdubs you want to do or whatever.

Definitely. In Vomit Launch I was the guy in the band who would say, "Okay, guys, we're gonna do this and this and this and I'd run the band through rehearsals, we'd work on the arrangements from the beginning to t h e end so they would record well. I became the intermediary in that band and got really into the recording process and was able to help our band focus on the recording. Were you kind of getting that role in Jawbox a bit back then?

No, in Jawbox, the stuff that we did with Ted on For Your Own Special Sweetheart was the first time that anybody came to us and really encouraged us to pay attention to the really nitty-gritty details of performance. That was the big learning experience for us. Before Bill (Barbot, guitarist in Jawbox) and I, it was really me doing that stuff, if anybody did it. When Bill joined the band he and I ganged up, but everybody was trying to pay attention. Jawbox was super concerned about having our shit together, almost to a fault. On a daily level, it was really frustrating because we would do takes and Ted would say, "You realize the drums are behind the beat, but the guitars are rushing." And we were like, "What does that mean?" And we were already doing the record then, but we had a long time to work on it so it was an education because it was then that we were able to listen to the takes and be like, "Augh! That's what he means. I can hear that I'm pushing on the guitar". You learn so much. It was difficult, but we learned a lot. So after that experience, we all collectively were able to pay attention to stuff like that.

Everybody was more tuned into it.

Yeah. It's actually really remarkable. I'm really psyched when I think about it. The difference between rehearsals and writing songs for that record and then the incredible difficulty of understanding what it means to be ahead of, or behind the beat or what a good ensemble performance is...and then getting out of it and doing demos at home and applying all that stuff.

When did you start the full-on engineering?

I produced stuff like Antimony, which was the band after Circus Lupus broke up. It was Circus Lupus without Chris Thompson. The first couple of Kerosene 454 records and the last one I got to do a fair amount of engineering and I mixed that record. The first proper engineering I did was the 8-track demos of Jawbox stuff and then I started working at Inner Ear a couple years ago just because the guy that was running the B studio there quit. I know, when you guys talked to Don, he told you a little bit, but it's like the Fostex B16 that he modified. It's got this awesome monitor board that he built from scratch that sounds so great. It's just pots and toggle switches. There's no faders, there's no EQ's or anything. There's an old Tascam board that's kind of terrible. Don didn't know what he was gonna do, whether he should just sell all the stuff or get somebody else to run it and Ian MacKaye knew that I had been doing a bunch of 8-track stuff, because I was basically doing anybody that I knew that was in bands, I was just like, "Come over to my house, I'll record ya'!"

We're you charging them?

No. Occasionally, barely. Like five dollars an hour just because occasionally my housemates would get pissed off that there was so much noise and so I could say, here's 50 bucks for the house funds. Buy some cleaning products or whatever. So, like Kerosene 454 would come over and do demos or what have you. So Ian suggested that I start the 16-track and I dove in and did it. It went well. It's weird to me because I've always had a great deal more respect for engineers or the idea of engineering than I have for producers, but I've been in a position of producing records. I've done that more than engineering up until the last couple of years. So I have Ian and Don to thank for giving me a chance to get in and record people.

Is the room in one building?

The B room and the A room are wired into the same live room and the live room is awesome. Everything in that studio is designed according to Don's desires and it's a cool space because the live room is a big figure 8 shaped room and one side of it is paneled in open plywood. It's got a drum riser so it's real live. The other side of the room is carpeted. The feeling is like you're in a living room — it doesn't feel huge but it's got 18 foot high ceilings. There's ways to set up in there that everybody can aim towards each other and nobody has to wear headphones but there's still decent isolation.

Yeah, less rattle.

A little bit, but he's got a 24 track room that has automation, so you can deal with it. There's things that I run into occasionally, now that I've been to a bunch of studios, that frustrate me, but when I think about how good it feels to play in that space, I probably wouldn't trade it for anything. It's just such a comfortable place to play. You can do anything you want in there. It's a really fun place to work.

It's important for people to feel comfortable when they're playing too.

It's crucially important. There's a little isolation booth off to the side and I've been putting guitars in there and redoing guitars or whatever. The live room feeds into the 24 track control room and into the 16 track. The 16 track goes way down to the end of the hallway. Like way towards the front door. So when I engineer in the 16- track I have to run back and forth all the way down the hall and I don't get to see the band play. You can only talk back and forth via a speaker and a microphone.

So you could be mixing in there and tracking in the live room?

Yeah, sometimes Don is mixing in the 24-track room and I'm tracking in the 16-track and we're running back and forth and overlapping. I recorded Mike, our bass player plays in another band called Jack Potential, and we were doing that record while Don was mixing the Down By Law record. It was cool because the Down By Law guys got the Jack Potential guys to come do some backing vocals while we were mixing the Jack Potential record. It's a little bit too small of a place to have everything overlap but for some reason it seems to work out.

Do you have a lot of rumble if you've got a whole band playing if you're trying to mix in the control room.

Yeah, but it hasn't been a problem so far. You can envision it being a real nightmare but it hasn't been.

Have you done work at any other studios recently?

I did. Any time I've gone to other studios I've felt like I didn't want to bluster my way in and be like, "I can engineer your records!" because people don't have time. I would rather respect people and their desire to make the best record they can make rather than waiting for me to get used to another studio. The Promise Ring records and the Jets to Brazil record I worked on were done at Easley and Stuart Sikes [ #65 ] engineered both of those records. He's a fuckin' awesome guy and really great engineer. That studio's amazing. For both of those records I was much more of a producer. On the Jets record it was especially cool because I got to know the songs way ahead of time and they invited me to participate creatively and to suggest things. It was so fun. Easley, that place blows my mind. The Promise Ring EP we did at Smart, which was amazing, and that was cool because I got to mix at Smart. I did a Roadside Monument up at Robert Lang Studio in Seattle.

Is that the one with a stone room? Quasi did a couple tracks up there.

Yeah, and he's got these API consoles that he modified so there's LED's that show you for certain whether you're using it. That place is beautiful. Once I again, I felt hesitant to engineer. At Inner Ear, I've worked there so much I feel like I know it very well and I feel extremely confident to engineer there. I want to engineer at other places now because I feel like I can now. But for the last two years it's been getting so it's like at Inner Ear. It's so nice to be able to walk in and to just know that place and to be so comfortable.

It sounds like you did the Burning Airlines record on the 24-track.

Yeah.

Did you use a half-inch 16 on the other?

Yeah, it's a Fostex B-16 and a really old Tascam 20 X 8 with the Playskool knobs. It's weird because it's proof to me that anyone can do good work if they get to know the equipment really well.

That's the Tape Op motto!

It's really true!

Just take time at learning to get good sounds with what you have. You go from there.

But I think this summer I'm gonna go ahead and take the plunge and really revamp the whole 16-track room. I may put a Soundcraft board in or something. Don and Chad Clark [ #36 ] are both really pro-Mackie. The Soundcraft- I know enough people that use them and they sound really nice.

Those are pretty nice. My friend has one at a studio here and I've played with it a little bit.

It's weird, I haven't known how much of an investment to make in the 16-track because I keep getting to do 24-track projects and I really love going to other studios. The minute I went to Smart studios I was so bowled over by that place.

I bet. It's amazing.

When we get home from this tour I'm gonna record a new Promise Ring record and it's my dream come true because I'm gonna engineer it at Inner Ear and then mix at Smart. It's the most neutral sounding control room I've ever been in. You know what I have to do? You know what I feel like really, really, conscientiously bound to do?

What?

If anything I say is going to appear in print regarding recording I have to say that John Agnello [ #14 ] is like a god to me. You know we were talking about the comfort level of recording? John Agnello was the first person that Jawbox ever worked with who really was able to make us feel really comfortable in the recording studio. It was never a question that we were going to achieve the best possible things that we could achieve. It was just a matter of how long it would take. He's an awesome engineer and he's been a great friend ever since we worked with him. I think the record that we made with him is the record that we felt represented our band the best. He came down and he and I mixed two-thirds of the Burning Airlines record together and he brought a bunch of outboard gear. He can take a great deal of responsibility for that record sounding good. I endlessly give props to John because he's an awesome, awesome guy.

I interviewed Trent Bell from the Chainsaw Kittens and he had done a record with him. He is the same way; he's like, "You've got to interview John, he's the best."

You should.

I think he did the last Varnaline record.

Yeah, he did.

They were raving about him too.

Especially for that wonderful, ephemeral thing about feeling comfortable in a recording studio.

In what ways did he do that?

I don't know. It's like the process of recording when we work with John; the process became really transparent and he was a friend who was on the side of us and our songs. He really made me believe that I was a good singer, which was not an experience that I had had up until then. I would get in front of a microphone and just freeze and be looking through the glass in the control room and thinking, "Let me count all the people whose time I'm wasting." This record was so awesome for me because I did the vocals all by myself, just in the control room late at night. I was so happy to do that. Agnello has endless patience but he doesn't make you feel like he's being patient. People should be beating down his door to work with him.

You should interview him for us.

I would love to do that. He has great stories. He has amazing stories about the bad old days because he worked at the Record Plant or the Power Station or something like that in the 70's when people were snorting lines off the mixing board. He recorded the Outfield.

I saw that in a Goodwill bin the other day! Oh, they were horrible.

Indeed. But their record sounded great! Well, for the times. I don't know, I never heard the record but, I guess...

Do yo have a favorite brand of microphone?

You know what is a great microphone that people don't appreciate enough is the CAD E300. That is a fuckin' awesome microphone!

They're cheap too!

They're cheap and when we did the Dismemberment Plan record, we went to Water Music, which is a gorgeous, amazingly great studio, and the band was used to recording at Inner Ear where the E300 was really the hit vocal microphone. So we borrowed Don's E300, we took it to Water music and we AB'd it against stacks and stacks of microphones. It sounded identical to a FET U47. Which is kind of like, that's right, it's good. It was just a lesson in not fetishising the good equipment. I think that's a wonderful microphone. It's weird, my Inner Ear experiences made me familiar with a lot of microphones that are maybe not standard, because Don has bazillions of mics. He's got these Philips omnis that are like twenty- five bucks a piece and sound fantastic. He has the CAD100 which is an incredibly great kick drum mic. Not a lot of people's first choice. I bought one because I loved it so much and that was the kickdrum mic on the Jets to Brazil record.

Do you put it in real close?

About half way in and aimed at the shell, actually. But not by itself.

Yeah, like something else in close to pick up the tap.

No something further away actually. It's all trial and error.

I'm always amazed in interviews where people describe how they do their drums or vocals.

Like, "There's a right way. I have a way, it always works." You know, like that.

Yeah, I mean, it's just things you try or what you can probably start with. I'll be like, "I'm just using this one mic" or other times I'm using all these overheads. I had ten mics up one day and then the next day I'll have three.

Yeah. I remember when I started doing stuff at Inner Ear and I was so hot to use a lot of drum mics. Don used to kind of poke his head in and be like, "Hmmmm...", sort of look quizzically,

and I was pretty happy with the results. Now I realize that with two thirds of the amounts of mics I was using I can get a better drum sound. I love that it's trial and error. It's one of the most fun things about it.

The randomness of recording is something I really enjoy. I'll be on the talkback and accidentally hear something over the wrong mic and go, "Hey!" I'll put that to tape.

Yeah, it becomes like a beautiful feature.

What are your plans recording-wise, are you planning to fix up that room at Inner Ear or...

Operating the 16-track room, which mainly involves getting a new board and just sort of redoing the patch thing. Because I've been doing it, I've been working in there in a way that is not entirely healthy. Just sort of getting to know the foibles of the room and working around them. I've been really pleased with how things have turned out at this point, I want it to be easy to make things turn out well. The main thing that it would take is just to get a really good board in there. I also have a bunch of projects coming up in July and August. I just got demos for the Promise Ring record and we've been trading notes back and forth. The whole band is very sort of production inclined at this point, but Dan their drummer especially is. I'm thinking about the Promise Ring songs, drum tunings and instrumentation and stuff. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm gonna let them take over my apartment and I'm gonna stay with friends. Keith, who plays drums in Burning Airlines, works at this equipment rental place so we'll be able to rent stuff if we want to. Xylophone overdubs or whatever. I'm kind of on the edge of my seat about it. There's other things too, actually, because we're doing Super ESP which is Casey Rice and Damon Mocks, who used to sing in Trenchmouth. They're doing some remixes of Burning Airlines stuff, for a record that we want to do, hopefully by the end of the summer, where we'll record some new songs. Hopefully they'll be a little more studio intensive, like some of the stuff on Mission Control but maybe more so. We'll put that together with the SuperESP. I have no idea what they're doing, I mean, I just sent them some mixes, like individual tracks and then certain things together, and based on the SuperESP record, I imagine it'll be a little far afield from the songs. All I know is Damon said that he put some of the Planet of the Apes soundtrack in it.

That's fun to see what comes back.

Yeah. It's extremely exciting to see what comes back.

Yeah, it could be completely different.

Yeah, I hope it will be, I mean, I'm sure it will be.