Did you start playing music on drums?
Piano was my very first instrument. In middle school, I got bored of practicing and watched the film Drumline, starring Nick Cannon. I thought, "I wanna be that." I started drums in middle school band and quickly found out my high school had a horrible football program and no marching band. But jazz band was the thing, so I played drums.
But you went to Berklee [College of Music] for drum performance.
Yes. In the music industry I thought you could only be an instrumentalist or a manager. I had no idea you could be a writer, producer, or engineer. But when I got to college, they had a nice studio program with access to cool gear, and it occurred to me there were people very creatively involved in records who weren't necessarily playing on them. I got bored of drumming eight hours a day all alone, and instead wanted to be in the studio eight hours a day [with others]. So, I moved into their production and engineering program.
Did you study with Susan Rogers [Tape Op #117] there?
She's one of my favorite teachers of all time. She's a nut about recorded music and science. She had a whole psychology and music cognition career that came after engineering Prince for 15 years. Another teacher there, named Enrique Gonzalez [Müller], who has a Latin Grammy and did a Dave Matthews Band record, really got my organization and mix game up to speed and made a big impression on me. Prince Charles Alexander, who did a lot of '90s hip-hop, taught a lot more at the forefront of popular music, which was also helpful.
Were there other production heroes when you started recording?
I got into reading credits; most of the ones who stuck out to me were artists who produced, as well as engineers who seemed to have more say in the production. Susan, for example, started her career as a tech for Prince and she became a real sounding board for him. I was also into Justin Vernon [Bon Iver]; knowing how he approached music as a writer and artist, and that he did a lot of creative sound work. I loved Jamie xx and finding out he made The xx records. Brian Wilson is the obvious answer; someone who's a weird freak and touches every piece of those records, and makes a difference in everything from the songwriting, through arrangement, and through sonic choices. Emile Haynie had a production project. Ariel Rechtshaid [Tape Op #111]; I was hip to him early on. On Vampire Weekend and HAIM, he was so involved, in an artist's way, even though those aren't his bands.
What kinds of bands were you in, back in Boston?
I played drums in a lot of Berklee kids' bands. I didn't do my own projects much. I was writing, but not thinking I'd ever perform it onstage, nor did I try. I'd do a gig that paid me on the weekends, playing Irish rock.
That sounds very Boston.
It was very, very Boston. We'd play at random beer festivals. It was cool to get paid for music. I did a lot of theater and pit band, because I could read music well. As a kid, I played in random punk or ska things.
When you finished Berklee, I seem to remember you called around a bunch of studios to find work.
I graduated and briefly looked in New York City for studios. They were all like, "We'd love to have you intern!" However, I could not move to New York with a zero dollar paycheck. I moved back to L.A. and stayed at home. I started working at a big recording studio; large-format, old school vibe. I don't want to be disparaging, but it was a horror story. I was like, "I can't be cleaning toilets at 3 a.m. for the next three years." I'd call different management companies and make friends with the receptionists, who were usually my age, and ask if I could email a résumé in case their clients needed assistant engineers. I ended up working for the producer Will Wells – who went to Berklee – so I got in through that connection.
And you worked on some music for Hamilton?
Will had worked with Alex Lacamoire before, the musical director of Hamilton, so they farmed out a lot of drum sampling to us. They sent us GarageBand demos that were in disarray and asked us to remake the samples so that they'd sound cool and relevant. We dove through a lot of hard drive samples and some Logic samples and EQed and compressed them to sound loud. We referenced a lot of old hip-hop and figured out what drum machines they were citing. I worked for Will until he left to tour with Imagine Dragons as an instrumentalist. As he was leaving, I got a call from Chris Coady's [Tape Op #113] management company. They offered me a job; it was perfect timing, and I worked for Chris for three and a half years. When I first started working with him, it wasn't that busy because I was new and Chris was on a lot of mixing projects and didn't need me every day. I was also assistant engineering in Malibu at Woodshed Recording, which is run by a film scorer [Richard Gibbs]. It's a beautiful retreat on a point above Zuma Beach. Pop artists come through, because you can stay there and rent the house. Writing and vocal sessions come through, and Macklemore was one of those. They did some writing, and there was a song with Idris Elba on it. We tracked him singing, which was crazy.
What was it like moving between projects of that scale, and bigger but still indie projects with Chris, such as Porches and Weyes Blood?
