You're from a musical family, but at what point did you realize, "I like the recording aspect"?
As a kid, I loved going to the studio with my dad. I was young, but I remember that I loved how the board and all the gear looked. I remember going to Chips Moman's studio [American Sound Studio] in Nashville when I was probably four or five years old. He had a poker machine in the front, and I thought that was the coolest. A lot of people get bored with the studio process, but I remember loving it and trying to understand it. Recording was what I got into about music before anything. I didn't have a desire to play on stage; I still don't. As much as I love playing shows, and have loved that part of my life, the touring and getting up and performing in front of people was never something that I had a knack at. When I was about 13 or 14, I discovered Nine Inch Nails. That was the musical catalyst that made me decide I wanted to play music. Even though I come from this family, and have a lot of experiences from that, it was that band. I was captured by the fact that this dude [Trent Reznor] was doing all this by himself. It wasn't a live band. These were records that were constructed. Nine Inch Nails was the first time that I got into a band and said, "I want to make music like this." I found out he used this product called Studio Vision Pro by a company named Opcode, so I saved up money and I bought that program. Any time I saved up allowance I would go to Sam's Music in Nashville and buy a different MIDI brain. A "drum" brain or a "sounds" brain. I still couldn't afford a recording method, but Studio Vision Pro allowed two or four channels of real audio, so I would play guitar and then I could do a vocal. The rest of it was all live-triggering MIDI. I finally was able to afford ADAT, and I remember feeling, "The floodgates have opened. I have eight tracks of audio that I can record and sync with all of this MIDI." Instead of going to college, I asked my parents for a Pro Tools unit, and they got me one that was good enough for home recording. After that, I moved to L.A. and took my Pro Tools rig with me. To answer your question, I was probably 13 or 14 years old was when I started with the recording side and getting into it.
When your dad made records, I'm guessing he didn't make them using MIDI!
Yeah. It was a necessity for me, because I wasn't cool in school. I had two buddies who were guitar players, and they would play on stuff because I couldn't play guitar. I didn't hang out with a group of dudes and decide to form a band; I was alone. This offered a way to make music without other people being involved.
It's interesting to transition from being somebody who learned the craft on their own, to becoming a producer, which is such a people job.
You're right, it is a people job. It's also a "streamlining of communication" job. When I work with artists, they end up trusting that I'm going to steer this ship and know the right and wrong decision. That I know which way to go, and I can see ahead of the curve a little bit. That's part of the job. I did Marilyn Manson's We Are Chaos record, and we were talking about Trent Reznor. Trent always had a guy who was programming with him – whether it be Chris Vrenna or Atticus Ross – and I didn't realize that. I'd always thought he did it all by himself, so I was training myself to do it all by myself, like him. He's really an organizer. I work with an artist as a hands-on project, in which I'm going to be involved in a lot of aspects. [I treat it] like I'm doing one of my own records. It feels like I'm joining the band and we're making a new record as a band, more than I'm in some position of "executive producing," like somebody who doesn't even show up to the studio!
How much engineering are you doing on these records you're producing?
