Steve Evetts: Remain Human

You were born in Brooklyn, NY, but grew up in East Brunswick, NJ. Was bass your first instrument?

I started on viola in school, and I don't even think they do that in schools anymore. It's a shame, because music is so important to the development of the brain. Why are they not exposing kids to arts now? Now the phone’s their whole life. It’s bizarre to me. I consider myself fortunate to have been exposed to music at an early age. My parents loved music. My mom played piano a little bit, and my dad – funny enough – was a dance instructor. He wasn't musical, but he had rhythm. When he was a teenager, he taught cha-cha and old school dance.

What are some early memories of getting interested in recording?

I was seven when I found an old Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder in my parents' attic. I would record my sister playing classical piano and move the little crystal microphone connected with an RCA plug. I'd go out with an extension cord and record cars going down the street. I also had a hand-me-down Panasonic stereo from my parents that had separate volume knobs for the left and right speaker. I’d put on The Beatles' "White Album", flip the mono switch, and I could fade up the hard panned vocal. I could explore two-channel remixing. When I got my first Fostex X-15 4-track, it could run mobile with D batteries. I’d take two microphones and record my friend playing acoustic guitar by the beach with the ocean sounds. The print ad mentioned that [The Beatles'] Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was recorded on a 4-track. I was so excited, not realizing that you really needed a mixer, a mic pre, and EQs to get a good drum sound.

It’s hard to know that right out of the gate. How did you progress from the Fostex?

Growing up in central Jersey in the ‘80s, there was a whole scene. Tons of clubs, Bon Jovi, Skid Row, and all those bands. I was playing bass in a pop metal band called American Angel, and I would record our demos. We got a record contract and an advance, and I bought a Tascam 8-track cassette [recorder] with a little mixer and an Alesis QuadraVerb. My whole goal was hoping my band went multi-platinum so I could open a recording studio.

You soon began your legendary run of recording bands at Trax East in South River, New Jersey. Your band originally recorded there?

Yes, and I loved being in the studio. I was the first one there and the last one to leave. We did our debut album [American Angel] with Eric Rachel producing, and I was in there, constantly being a pain and sucking up as much info as I could. Fast forward to a year later, and the deal's gone and the band folded. We're not going to tour, and we're not getting another deal because it’s the turn of the ‘90s, and grunge hit.

You must have gone back to Eric and made yourself available in the studio.

He put me in right away, on a simple vocal overdub session, and taught me how to thread the tape machine with 2-inch tape. After pointing out what was plugged into the patchbay, he sat with me for 5 minutes and then said, “Bye!” [laughter] I also attended IAR [Institute of Audio Research], but the first semester was mostly physics and calculus, whereas I was more interested in circuit building. John M. Woram’s The Recording Studio Handbook that IAR used is great and is still applicable to basic principles of signal flow.

You were getting your feet wet quickly at Trax East, and dipping into death metal when you recorded Incantation’s landmark Onward to Golgotha.

There was a whole death metal scene in Jersey with them and Ripping Corpse, whose guitarist, Erik Rutan, is now a killer producer in his own right. When I started working at Trax East, they had gotten a Sound Workshop Series 34 console, which had been built by former API designers. When you’re used to working with an Alesis NanoCompressor at home, the first time you run a signal through a URIE 1176 you're like, "Whoa." I wound up doing Incantation, Demolition Hammer, and M.O.D. [Method of Destruction] all on this console with no automation. It wasn’t until ‘95 that they upgraded the studio to have automation.

Prior to that you’d be riding the mix while printing?

Yes, and I’d dole out responsibilities; I’d assign a number of faders to each person to be in charge of. What we should have done was mix that down to analog. We were mixing to DAT even though we had an Otari MX-5050. It's not the greatest, but we should've mixed down to that in sections and edited them together like they used to do in the '70s.

You cite M.O.D.'s Rhythm of Fear as your first proper production credit.

It was on Megaforce Records, and I had a budget, a contract, and a point on the record. I knew I wouldn’t make much money on it, so I spent it on renting gear. I wanted it to sound killer, so we rented a bunch of Neve 1073 preamps. Jonny Z [Jon Zazula] and Megaforce were in East Brunswick, and they would send bands to us to do pre-production demos. I did the demos for Lucy Brown and for Mind Funk’s second album Dropped before they went to Terry Date [Tape Op #123]. Jonny liked how those sounded, and said [in a thick Jersey accent], “By the way, Steve, I like what you're doin’, so I think maybe we'll have you do the M.O.D. record.”

Jonny Z, rest in peace.

I knew Jonny when I was barely in high school, going to the Route 1 Flea-Market. My dad has a sock business, and his stand was an aisle away from Rock n' Roll Heaven [Jonny's historic metal record store]. I used to go work with my dad on weekends and buy the latest Kerrang! magazine and pick up records based on the artwork. They moved to Clark, New Jersey, and I met Slayer when they did an in-store for Haunting the Chapel.

I always wanted to visit that store. After these early milestones at Trax East, your credits exploded with bands from the New Brunswick punk scene and technical metal acts like Human Remains and The Dillinger Escape Plan.

We were the best studio in the vicinity, so all these bands that were making their way in the scene would come to Trax East. First it was Lifetime, and then all the ex-members of Lifetime. Dave Rosenberg and Chris Corvino were in Deadguy and also Lifetime at one point, and then Dan Yemin and David Wagenschutz went to do Kid Dynamite, which I also recorded.

Wow, they're the L.A. Guns of New Jersey punk!

All these people branched off and then I did Deadguy's Fixation on a Co-Worker record, but the label never paid the bill. The DAT master sat in a tape vault at Trax East for 6 months. So, that's how I got involved with Victory Records, because they contacted Tony Brummel and he paid to get it out. From there, I did about 15 records for Victory.

How did you handle everything ramping up during that time?

It just happened, and everything leads to everything. On the heavy side, Ben [Weinman] from The Dillinger Escape Plan booked time because I did Deadguy. The early Dillinger drew from that sound, but they quickly branched off into their own thing. Then, on the pop punk side, Saves the Day approached me because they loved Lifetime. In the punk and metal world, fans are usually ravenous about the music and they wanna read the credits to see who produced the record. “Oh, you went to Steve? We'll go to Steve.” It wasn’t about social media followers back then.

That was the beginning of quite a run with The Dillinger Escape Plan.

I did the [self-titled] EP and Calculating Infinity at Trax. Then Miss Machine we did all over the place. We recorded drums at Water Music in Hoboken, also R.I.P., and Mission Sound in Williamsburg. Then we set up at their lockout rehearsal place called Backroom Studios. Their guitarist at the time, Kevin Antreassian, has his studio there now. We set up a total guerilla makeshift studio. We tracked all the overdubs at the rehearsal room and mixed at Quad Recording Studios in Times Square, [New York City].

Were you starting to amass your own collection of gear as you were doing this?

Trax East had an insane amount of gear by the time I left. When I left, I had nothing. I left in fall of ‘99 and I didn't move to California until 2004. I was traveling and working a lot. I loved the travel aspect, at that point. I didn't think I would settle into another studio. I’d always try to book myself in L.A. to avoid the East Coast winters, and then I realized I’d only been in New Jersey for 24 days out of the year.

So, you set up at the Omen Room in Garden Grove, California.

Yes, I worked out of the B Room there for 18 years. I set up a Pro Tools Control 24 with outboard gear. I had mixed a couple records completely in the box, like Skinlab’s ReVolting Room. I tried mixing it that way and Andy Sneap [Tape Op #144] ended up remixing it. It was my first real attempt at mixing in the box, and I didn't know how to do it right. I still don't, really. For me, a hybrid approach works better, sounds better, and has way more depth and character. I was trying to mix moving one fader at a time with a mouse. I started getting these crazy pains in my neck. I need faders to mix how I normally mix. So, that's what I've done ever since. I have my small-format Neotek console that I sum through and obviously track through.

Were you still tracking drums to tape?

I wound up getting a Studer A800, but it was impossible to maintain. I couldn't get parts for it. There are only a few remaining techs in L.A., and no one was willing to cross the Orange Curtain [the local term for the border between Orange County and L.A.]! I do think I’d like to get a tape machine again. I wasn't tracking drums in the A Room at Omen, originally. I thought that the live room was too ‘70s style, too dead for my taste.

You seem to appreciate tracking in bigger rooms. Where did you go for the next Dillinger Escape Plan album, Ire Works?

We tracked drums at this place called Sonikwire Studios in Irvine, which had an old Neve and a narrow and tall room, almost like a silo. All the overdubs were back in my room. We wound up adding two more songs and tracked those drums at Omen. They were the first drums I tracked in the A Room. I realized I could make it work because the hallway was wired like a chamber. I could keep the door open and put a mic at the end of the hallway and get a bigger, reverberant sound.

Suicide Silence is an Orange County band you’ve had a long-running relationship with. Was it hard to go out west and connect with new bands, or did you have enough of a reputation by that point?

The location was definitely sweet. All those records by The Wonder Years, they wanted to get out to California and avoid the winter too! I did Suicide Silence’s The Black Crown, which was their last record with [original vocalist] Mitch Lucker. We were in pre-production for the follow up when Mitch died in a motorcycle accident. They took about a year to gather themselves, and then we wound up doing the follow up, You Can’t Stop Me.

You’ve mentioned working at Sound City Studios and later [Dave Grohl's] Studio 606. Were you mostly working out of your own space, or were you traveling around to different L.A. studios?

The budgets weren't what they were, so for the most part I was trying to stay self-contained in my own studio. When there was a bigger budget, I still liked to go to another studio just to break things up. The first Every Time I Die record I did [The Big Dirty], we tracked drums at Sonikwire, and then the second one [New Junk Aesthetic] we did at Castle Oaks out in Calabasas. I also worked out of Cello Studios, which is EastWest Studios now. Later on, the Studio 606 thing came about, which was great. I even got a chance to work up at Indigo Ranch [Tape Op #103] on the last record Ross Robinson [#79] did there.

What’s a project from this period that you feel flew under the radar?

Poison The Well’s The Tropic Rot didn't get a lot of push. Then they called it quits because all of their main equipment got stolen on tour. We made this forward-thinking, post hardcore record with no heavy guitar tones at all. It's all Vox AC30 amps. It's a heavy record, but there's no heavy guitar sounds on it. It's one of my favorite records I've ever done.

In 2004, you went to London to engineer The Cure’s self-titled album. I hear that experience included some pretty historic consoles.

Ah, yes; the Studio 3 board from Abbey Road Studio: The Dark Side of the Moon console. It was an EMI TG12345 MK IV with Painton faders, curved faders that look like they belong on an airplane.

How did they decide to have you come over to do this?

I was engineering and Ross Robinson was co-producing [with The Cure's leader, Robert Smith]. He's a dear friend of mine, and we've worked together on a bunch of records. Ross was working a lot with Mike Fraser [AC/DC, Metallica, Aerosmith] and they were booked for two weeks at Olympic Studios in London for pre-production. Fraser was busy on another project, so Ross asked me to fill in. I loved The Cure growing up, so I jumped at the chance. Two days in, Ross pulls me aside and says, “Dude, Robert loves you. He's going to ask you to stay and do the record.”

Did you jump into recording on this EMI console?

Well, Olympic's Studio One also had a giant 80 channel SSL. During pre-production we were downstairs in Studio Two, and I saw this old piece of gear under a tarp. As I lift it up, I see it's an EMI Mark III, maybe 24 channels, on wheels so they could roll it around. I immediately recognized it as The Beatles' board from Abbey Road, but we found out Youth [Martin Glover, Tape Op #154] was already booked to use it on another session. Being an avid Tape Op reader, I remembered reading that Mike Hedges had the other EMI Mark IV console in storage in France. Robert put me in touch with him and we had it shipped to Olympic.

Wow, the power of Tape Op! So, you set up this EMI with the SSL in Olympic's main room?

This was the room that Jimi Hendrix recorded in, as well as the first two Led Zeppelin albums, Radiohead's The Bends, and the list goes on and on. We were supposed to move to AIR Studios, designed by George Martin, in Piccadilly Circus, but I told Ross we HAD to set up this board at Olympic. So, all of our tracking, every overdub, went through the same EMI console that Mike Hedges owned. The same EMI console that tracked and mixed [Pink Floyd's] The Dark Side of the Moon, "Imagine" by John Lennon, and so on. My only regret is that I wasn’t able to visit Abbey Road Studios.

I wanted to touch on some of your general recording philosophies. The concept of “performance over perfection” seems to be a mantra of yours.

People have told me I can be a taskmaster, but I never want it to be perfect. Perfect sucks. It's boring. The way records are made nowadays, everything is so gridded and perfect. There's no soul. There's no vibe. I'll take a vibey vocal over perfect pitch any day. It's always been a gut thing. I'll say, "Again," "Again," and "Again," until we hit the take that’s awesome. It's never a quantifiable thing to me. I want to get the feeling that I got when I was a kid listening to music, and the hair on my arm would stand up. I'm always and forever chasing that.

What about committing to tones?

The committing thing is huge, and that's the philosophy I grew up with. Friends of mine, like Joe Barresi [Tape Op #81, #23] and Ross, are guys that put vocals through a guitar pedal, print it, and that's it. Not running a dry signal and getting the tone later with plug-ins. I grew up making records on tape; we had a finite amount of tracks and that was it. Also, this concept of [Pro Tools] Playlists: “Keep that solo and let me do another one.” Do you like the one you just did? Yes, or no? Recording to tape, I'd press record and it's gone forever. There's no undo button. So, I still try to take that approach. I don't always win, but I try to treat it like a tape machine and to keep that mindset of commit, commit, commit.

It's a good mindset. Would you say getting sounds at the source falls under this?

It's always the source. It's the source at the amp, what microphone you're putting on it, where you're placing it on the cone. Move it around until it sounds good and that's it. I'm not going to name names, but I’ve been sent 20 tracks for two guitar performances. Two cabinets, four mics on each cabinet, all printed to individual tracks, plus a room mic and a DI for re-amp options.

That sounds painful.

My assistant and I went through them one by one for about three minutes. Finally, I found two tracks I liked best and figured out the ratio to blend the two to get a good sound. Throw out the rest, I don’t want to see them. Take these two mics, bus them together, and bounce them to one track. That's how I mix. I can be a little harsh with my file prepping. If you’ve got multiple mics, get the blend that you think sounds right, print it, and I’ll mix that. “Don't you wanna have options?” No! Give me the sound you like, and I will EQ it and treat it to get the sound for the mix. Not all of these variables; it drives me nuts.

Drums that “breathe” is another concept I’ve heard you discuss.

It's just a level of excitement. I generally like a bigger drum sound, not that I haven't done my share of tighter drum tones as well. Drums in a big room: If I take away the room mics, I'm going to get a more intimate sound, but at least I'll have the room mics to go bigger or smaller as I want. Yes, I can use reverb, but I'd rather do it naturally. I like the feeling of space around the kit, where I can push the room tracks up and pull back on the dry signal to move the drums further or forward. I like to set them so they feel in the back in the room; it sounds more like a band playing together.

You helped usher in the tight, piccolo sounding snares of ‘90 and '00s metalcore on Snapcase’s Progression Through Unlearning and Hatebreed’s Satisfaction is the Death of Desire.

That higher pitched snare was getting to be the trend in metalcore and hardcore in the ‘90s. The one that I’d always get asked about was the snare on Snapcase’s “Caboose.” It wasn’t a piccolo snare, but a smaller 8 by 13-inch drum, and very deep, almost like a marching snare. The drummer, Tim Redmond, came in with Helmet's Betty as the reference. We tuned the drum ungodly high, and even had to ease up on it.

Do you think drums have gotten too loud?

It's the trend now for sure, and I've made plenty of records where the drums are plenty loud. To me, that’s a function of the digital thing. I recorded a couple of Brazilian groups [Huey and Ego Kill Talent] in São Paulo, and we did drums to tape. The next Ego Kill Talent record we did at Studio 606, tracking to tape and then dumping it to digital at the end. There's a thing with tape that’s almost indescribable. The drums have so much more weight without being the loudest thing in the mix. Whereas in digital, it’s like you're watching a TV screen. You can’t look away, and everything's smushed up against the glass. That's the trend now, everything is so limited, but if I go too far in the analog direction, I’ll be accused of sounding too retro.

Unless you add some sub-bass hits to the downbeats.

Those kinds of production tricks, with sub hits and all that, can have an impact, but to me they’re to distract us from the fact that the performance isn't totally there. I would rather capture that excitement of when everybody pushes together and hits on a down beat or a chorus. If you think about AC/DC, why does it sound huge? If you put those tracks in Pro Tools, the bass and drums are not on top of each other. It sounds huge because of the way it hits together. I've used them before, but don't rely on those tricks to generate excitement in your production.

You like to get in the room with the band during takes. How did that start?

Again, I picked up a lot of that from Ross Robinson. When I saw him doing it, a little light clicked. "Why not be in there with them?" I love not being a voice on the other side of the glass saying, “Nope, that sucked.” It’s more like how you and I are sitting here having this conversation. It's an extension of doing pre-production. I go to rehearsals with the band, and it ends up taking some of the edge off during recording. I’ll bring my laptop out here and run the computer remotely.

So, tell me about returning to the East Coast this year. How did you wrap things up at Omen Room?

The Wonder Years' The Hum Goes On Forever was one of the last records I did at the Omen Room. We finished tracking there and Vince Ratti mixed it. I had also just finished up Greg Puciato's [ex-The Dillinger Escape Plan] second solo record. We finished mixing, and that was it. I had no idea we were moving back. It was a sudden thing, with my wife's job relocating. I had been in touch with Will Putney [Tape Op #154] about possibly moving back east, but it got delayed and didn’t happen. He called me one day to say they’d be relocating from Belleville in January of 2021, and the NEXT day my wife got the position back here in Jersey.

Wow. Talk about fortuitous!

Serendipitous! That's the definition.