Nestled in a commercial building in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, you can find Crackle & Pop! Recording. Open since 2006, Johnny Sangster, with his business partner Andy Smith, initially began with a smaller place. But in 2018 they moved into a larger space in the same complex, with high ceilings, an amazing Tim Kerr mural, and easy load in. Gear includes a lot of Johnny's guitars and instruments, a Spectra Sonics console from Stax Records, analog tape decks, as well as lots of microphones and outboard gear. Clients have included Mudhoney, Maggie Björklund, Mark Lanegan, Earth, Jesse Sykes, Rusty Willoughby, Lincoln Barr, Steve Turner, Jon Auer [Tape Op #58], and more.
Johnny is also a great musician, playing in his groups The Tripwires and Braly Sangster, plus touring and gigging with Neko Case, case/lang/veirs, Roy Loney & The Longshots, Mark Pickerel's Praying Hands, and Cobirds Unite. Additionally, he also teaches recording at the University of Washington.
Busy? Yes. Talented? Yes. Nice Guy? Completely.
Were you raised in Seattle?
Yeah, me and my brother, Jim Sangster [The Young Fresh Fellows], grew up here. In high school, I was an exchange student for a summer. I ended up in the countryside of Denmark, in the middle of nowhere. It was an awesome experience. I ended up with a family where it was a father, mother, and four daughters. Nobody spoke English except the mom, and she went to work every day. [laughter] So, I learned Danish. The year after I'd been over there, I met a bunch of European kids who were in the Seattle area as exchange students. After high school, I thought, "I can go to Europe and contact all these people." That ended up being 13 years that I lived over there, played in bands, and made records.
When did you move back?
My wife's Danish, and we moved back in '97 when I was in my late 20s. We had one kid who was about four years old when we relocated, plus a newborn. Now, we have three kids who are pretty much out of the house.
You were in a band in Denmark?
The Sharing Patrol, that started here in Seattle with the drummer, Jonathan Stibbard. We'd made a recording, maybe in 1983, with Conrad Uno at the original Egg Studio in his garage basement. Jonathan ended up in Denmark with me and he still lives there.
You ruined his life! [laughter]
We've been playing music together since junior high. My brother had joined the Young Fresh Fellows, and [his bandmember] Scott McCaughey was interested in us. They had made a record with Uno, so Scott invited us over to Egg to make a recording.
PopLlama Records was also Conrad's label. I remember hearing that first Fellows record he put out [The Fabulous Sounds of the Pacific Northwest] in 1984.
This was right around the time that came out, and Scott and Uno recorded us. It was me, Jonathan, and Lou Alexander as a little trio. Pretty rough, but PopLlama ended up putting out a cassette. That was my first real studio experience there. Uno was awesome, and the Fellows went on to do a lot there. When I was in Denmark we got signed to a small label, then we got signed to EMI Denmark, and we made a bunch of records with some pretty good producers. We got to work with Vic Maile. He produced an EP [The Sharing Patrol in Cb]. We were going to make an LP, but then we had label problems and didn't get to do the LP with him. The EP is still one of my favorites; I love his records.
He'd done a lot in the UK.
Yeah. He came up through Pye Studios; he was a tape op there. He engineered The Who's Live at Leeds recording. And then Motörhead, Tom Robinson Band, The Godfathers... Working with him was amazing. He came to Denmark and recorded us there.
What were the studios like in Denmark?
There were nice studios. That place had a 2-inch, 24-track [deck], a Trident TSM [console], Neumann mics, and good gear. There are a lot of good studios there, like Sweet Silence Studios. Puk was out in the countryside; I got to produce a record there. I did start producing records when I was over there, based on being in a band that had worked with some good producers and being the guy who was interested in it. But I didn't really have engineering chops at any point. I was the guy in the band who had a 4-track, would make demos, and think about the arranging.
How did you come back to Seattle?
We came over and played some shows occasionally. It was fun. The Sharing Patrol made a record with Kurt Bloch [Tape Op #52] at Hanzsek Audio over here before I moved back. Actually, that was part of what brought me back. The band started going, "We should spend a year in Seattle," because we had so much fun making the record. Somehow, my wife and I made it work to come for a year in '97. After about a year, we thought, "Do we go back, or do we stay here?" I was never confident as an engineer until moving back to Seattle in the late '90s. I called up Conrad Uno, and said, “Do you need somebody to be in the studio while you're at the baseball game or the golf course?"
I'd always heard Conrad liked golfing!
He's still an avid golfer. Floyd Reitsma sometimes goes down to Arizona to visit Conrad and they go golfing.
I've worked with Floyd at Studio Litho in Seattle. He was so helpful.
Yeah. He comes here a little bit.
There is such a great scene of studios in Seattle.
There is. When I moved back and started at Egg, I got to know Jack Endino [Tape Op #13]. There were a bunch of people who were like, "Oh, cool. You're doing it? Come over. We'll talk." Really supportive. Denmark's a small country. It's not as hard to get to the top of the heap in a little scene, but it's also much more competitive. I feel the same way about the music scene here. It's never ever felt competitive.
Were you working at other studios outside of Egg when you returned?
Mostly I was just working at Egg for the first couple years.
Was Conrad giving you tips on engineering?
Oh, totally. Anytime I needed help, he was there to help. That's when I got obsessed with the engineering part and started reading books. If I had a question, Jack Endino was happy to get a phone call and talk about it. Then I did some work at Avast! Recording [Tape Op #18] before it moved into the Ironwood Studio building, plus Electrokitty and definitely at Studio Litho. Floyd would help me get started, and then I would roll on my own for a while. There was definitely a period where I had growing pains going into bigger studios. Egg was so simple and so small; once you had it down, you could make a good sounding record there. But as soon as I had more gear, more channels, and outboard processors… I cringe to hear some of the records I mixed back in that period.
What were the tough learning curves?
I think that if you get bogged down in the technical, you'll lose sight of, "When is it done?" The technical would get in the way of me getting through the mix and feeling good about it. Now, I've got a process where I can take care of that. I've got listening habits that work, where I have to listen quiet, listen to mono, and listen loud and big. I remember sometimes I'd be two-thirds of the way through the mix: I wanted to plug in an echo, and I'd spend 45 minutes getting the echo going; ruining my flow.
You didn't have a process that made it easier on yourself?
Yeah. One book that helped me was Michael Paul Stavrou's Mixing With Your Mind. That helped me develop a process. He's got such a different way of thinking about listening…
...and tracking.
Yeah. Everything in there is like, "Turn up your ears. Don't turn up the monitors. Learn to listen more intently. Pick up on the differences." His whole thing about mixing is to get all the technical out of the way so you can set yourself up to have a half an hour of fun. That half an hour is where it all really comes together. The magic, the blending, and making it more than just a mix. Your imagination can take over.
Totally. Did you ever work as an engineer under other producers?
Sure; definitely some, but not enough. I worked with Tim Kerr, who's more of a cheerleader, storyteller, and somebody who gets people riled up. He would come to Egg, and we’d do sessions for Estrus Records. But it's mostly been just asking people questions and assisting. Kurt Bloch comes over here and does records, and his approach is very different than mine. It's fun to help him set up.
How's it different?
Just mic choices and the way he mics up things is different. The sounds he wants to hear when he's setting up is very different. His records sound awesome. "Oh, you do it like that?" That’s cool. He's going to be mixing it. I like ribbon mics on the overhead and on the side. Kurt's like, "I don't want all that snare drum in my overhead." I'm like, "I do."
That's what we learn along the way.
And it's different for every room, too. When I was working at Egg, for drum overheads, I didn't want much snare drum because it was weird and phasey from the low ceiling.
Yeah, the old Jackpot! was like that.
There, I wanted just cymbals and hi-hat in my overheads. But now, if it's a bigger room and we've got tall ceilings, I love the snare sound in the overhead mic.
You've got a 20-foot ceiling in the live room here.
Yeah, it feels great! When I was upstairs in this building, I would try to track drums and the ceilings were eight-feet high. It was horrible.
When did you build your own studio space?
And that was in this building here?
Yeah, upstairs. I had a laptop with a MOTU interface. I would sometimes sync to SMPTE and do overdubs in people's houses. I didn't want to buy in to [Avid] Pro Tools just yet; I was still running Digital Performer. I thought it might be cool to have a room to do that instead of bouncing around to people's houses.
That was the first Crackle & Pop space?
Yeah. It developed over the years. There were several other people who got involved, but it's Andy and I who stuck it out. He's not engineering very much at this time, but he gets involved with the musical side of it and we collaborate musically as well.
How does that work out financially?
We both invested in the build out we did six years ago when we moved down here, and the studio raised some money too. The studio pays for itself, and I get paid separately.
Did you set a base rate that the studio has to make per day?
Exactly. But the studio still owes me and Andy money.
How does gear ownership work?
We've kept track of who owns what. When we purchase something for the studio, then it's like the studio's LLC owns it. The studio has been able to pay for itself, but I'm doing most of the managing of it. I lean on Andy for support whenever I need it. He's good on the tech side, with computers too, and he's really good at helping solve problems.
Studios like ours are two things: It's a place for someone that produces and needs a place to work out of. But it's also available to rent to other engineers and producers.
I've got a couple of other engineers who work here. That's great. Right now, it's probably four or five days a month that somebody else is in here, and that's enough to get me out of here some of the time. Jon Roberts has worked here a ton and helped build out this place. He's working a lot at Studio Litho and at KEXP. He’s doing a lot of their live recording and mixing of the live sessions. Recently, Carmella Ortiz has been working here. She's getting to where she's comfortable doing sessions on her own. When anybody else is coming in, she'll do set up as well.
I remember going into some studios in the '80s and there weren't even any instruments present.
This is the opposite here. There are so many guitars, a bunch of good keyboards, a nice drum kit, and a bunch of percussion. All of that makes it fun to get to work right away.
They'll inspire new sounds.
I'm a total believer in that. I visited The Loft [Jeff Tweedy, Tape Op #132] a couple of years ago. The whole concept is as fast as you can turn something on and be ready to record, that's the best way to get a performance. Generally, our piano mics are ready to go, and other things are fairly ready to go as well. There was a while where I was working in an open concept room here in Seattle. I like that a lot, but having some booths is important too. And I do like having a control room.
I worked at WaveLab in Tucson once [Tape Op #10], which had an open room setup.
I worked with Maggie Björklund and the Calexico guys there [Tape Op #13]. I've recorded John Convertino [Calexico, drums] here. He's come up to work on a bunch of records. You can record him with one mic. He's sent me some recordings from his garage that are two mics. That space could be a little more acoustically satisfying, but it's still instantly identifiable as John, because his technique is so amazing. The first time I got to work with those guys was in that space in Tucson.
How did you end up working on that album [Coming Home]?
I know Maggie from living in Denmark. I was in her country band before I left Denmark. I was the invisible male member of her all-girl country group. I first got to meet her in 1992. That was a cool record. She had Calexico on there, plus Mark Lanegan, Jon Auer, and Rachel Flotard sang on it. A bunch of people got involved in this Seattle-Denmark connection.
How did you end up recording Mudhoney?
They came in when they were regrouping after [Matt] Lukin left and Guy Maddison started playing [bass] with them. They'd do a weekend at Egg, a weekend with Scott Colburn [Tape Op #11], or a weekend with Phil Ek [#29]. They did a couple records like that. "Let's go in and cut a single and a couple of others." After a half year, they'd have a record.
Steve Turner's book [Mud Ride: A Messy Trip Through the Grunge Explosion] describes that era well.
That was one of the early sessions where I was thinking, "Wow, those guys want me to record them!" That was through working at Egg. Then, I worked on Steve's solo records, which nobody seems to know about but they're awesome. Folk rock records, where he was singing and playing.
You've got Egg Studios' old Spectra Sonics console here.
It seems like more and more people are getting hip to how cool they are. At the time that this console was being built, they were basically selling the amp cards and the EQ cards. The compressors came later. There was a guy in Memphis, Welton Jetton, making Auditronics consoles. The name plate says Auditronics.
It's filled with Spectra Sonics cards?
The EQ and the mic cards were built at Spectra Sonics. The little routing cards are Auditronics. Then there's a transformer on the front end and transformers on the way out. But, otherwise, there's hardly anything in it. This was purchased from Stax Records when they went bankrupt [in 1975]. It came to Seattle to Ironwood Studios [now Avast!]. They started modding it, and that's where it went wrong. They installed an insert, but they installed it unbalanced out to the patchbay in back. That's like hanging a bunch of antennas on the console.
Oh, dear.
Later, somebody made a direct out for each channel. The thing about these consoles, and about the design, is there's a very specific set of rules of what you can do – where it should be grounded and where it should not be grounded. Once they started having noise problems, they started grounding everywhere. The more we've worked on it, the more we've discovered, "Oh, they grounded it there too." We've stripped it back to as original as it can be. Now, it's fantastic and I can sum through it, which I couldn't for years. We have plans to make some upgrades and add some more line inputs just with pan pots and access to the busses.
People don't realize that early consoles weren't built with insert points, and they weren't built with direct outs. Busses were what fed the tape deck inputs.
Right. You've got another mixer right here.
That's what we've been doing; the Spectra Sonics is the front end and then we're monitoring on the other console and creating headphone mixes. But if I could get another 16 inputs on the Spectra Sonics, then I might completely work on it. I only need 16 in and out, or 32 when I'm working on the 16-track. If I'm on the computer, I can futz around with it.
You've also got an Otari MTR-90 2-inch tape deck with the 16-track head stack.
I have both the 16 and 24-track head stacks.
I've got both for my Otari MX-80s too.
That also came from Egg. The Egg story comes back around a lot. When I started working at Egg, it was a 16-track, 1/2-inch TASCAM with Dolby S that worked great. In the first years I was there, that's what we worked with. I think it was always Conrad's dream to get a 2-inch, 16-track. He bought that one, and we started doing records on it. Digital was coming in and he migrated to digital, but he would do basics to tape. We'd sync up the MOTU or sync up [TASCAM] DA-88s back then.
Do you get a lot of outside mix work? Projects you didn't track.
Sometimes. During the pandemic, I did a ton, and some of that was unsatisfying because some of the home recording that was going on was not great. Some projects were hard and frustrating because if I had been there, or could’ve helped them set up, it would’ve been a lot more fun to mix. But I do get enough outside mixing. I enjoy it.
Is the majority of your work still full album projects?
I think so. If I get involved then, I'm mixing it as well.
I always want to mix the sessions I produce unless we had a different plan.
Do they hear you when you say this?
Yeah. It takes a little bit of sitting them down and saying, "This is how it works," but I think they appreciate it. Give me three or four hours to fuck with it, then we'll work on it together for an hour, and then we'll call it good and move onto the next song.
If it’s not working, then just go back and redo a mix.
What? Whose idea was that?
Well, Dan Peters – who also plays in The Tripwires with me – has been writing music at home. We did a couple of his songs where he started with guitar, so we began with a click track on the guitar, layered a couple of guitars, and then he'd go in and play the drums. I never, in all the years I've known those guys, thought that Dan would play to a click. We didn't do any band tracking to a click, but there were a couple that had loops and a couple of those Dan songs. That was cool. Totally different. Those guys are very open to trying different ways. Other times, they have to play as a band, and we get it, or we don't. There are some of the songs that speed up like crazy, from start to end. It doesn't fucking matter.
So much music is metronome-oriented these days. Even bands I would have never guessed.
Yeah. I've got a band with my friend Leslie Braly called Braly Sangster, and we made a record during the pandemic where I played the drums. It was all click track because I was doing it one piece at a time. It gave me a lot of empathy with my drummers.
There's nothing better than putting yourself on the other side of the glass.
I actually do spend a lot of time out in the live room, doing overdubs or working on projects. I'm still working on my own recordings. I've been recording Lincoln Barr quite a bit. His recent records are definitely more jazz inspired. He's gone off on this chordal tangent that's very jazzy. John Convertino's been playing on his recordings. We just did a session with John, Lincoln, Keith Lowe [bass], Dan Walker [keys], and me. All of that was live, including vocals. The next day we had a string quartet come in and do overdubs, did some vocal overdubs, and that was done. It was so satisfying, and Lincoln's gone with that approach, like, "I'm going to tape. I'm going for a live vocal." I'm going to get musicians to understand how to do that – focus and play to the singer. I like having most of the elements there, if I can, when tracking it.
You've toured on guitar with Neko Case [Tape Op #127] but not recorded with her?
I've never played on a Neko record. Rachel Flotard is her manager, and Rachel and I have known each other for a long time. When she lived here, she wrote songs with John Ramberg (from The Tripwires) when he was in The Model Rockets. She was also friends with my brother back then. A lot of mutual connections. Laura Veirs, k.d. lang, and Neko made that case/lang/veirs record with Tucker Martine [Tape Op #29] and then were going on tour. I got invited to play guitar on that tour, which was amazing. I hope they make another record, because that record is great. After that was done, Neko finished a record and asked me to do a tour. I was gone for maybe seven months out of the year that we built out the studio. Then we opened the studio and there was Covid.
Are there any other artists that you've gone out on tour with?
A little bit. Bronwynne Brent is someone who I've made two records with, and I've toured a little bit with her. I've tried to not be the producer and the guitar player. It's complicated. I'm willing to do everything if I'm your producer for the record, but I'm not willing to be your tour manager when I'm on the road with you. Sometimes those get a little mixed up. If I'm somebody's producer, I'm going to find out about the hotel, make sure everybody shows up on time, and do the budget. But I don't want to do that if I'm going to be on the road. I want to be able to just be the guitar player! But there are a lot of bands in Seattle that I'll sometimes play with because I made their record and I'll have played some parts. It's fun to play some shows.
When you're producing, do you find it helps if you learn the songs?
Oh, yeah. Part of my process is to write the chart as I'm listening to the demos. If somebody goes, "What would it sound like with a Hammond?," I can take my chart and go try it. It also helps me to identify the parts of the song that need work. Everybody's got a different process, but for me I write a chart and then I have a clear roadmap. I feel like anybody who comes to play on a record has to be able to make their own chart, or read a Nashville number chart.
If I play bass on a session, it gives me a better understanding of how the song's working.
If it's a singer-songwriter, we'll get together and make a demo and I'll end up playing bass. I might hire somebody else later, but I'll reference the demo if it’s working. I had a drummer in the other day who was doing this weird, syncopated thing on the cymbal. I asked, "Why are you doing that?" He said, "That's just a rhythm I like to play." He was doing it in a certain part of the song, but it was fucking with the flow of it. I said, "Don't do it because it's a rhythm you like to play. You've got to do it so that the song moves forward, not so you can get your little thing in there." That is my pet peeve; people who are showing off.
Even with the best prog rock, they're playing together through some of the best parts. Or they've got a crazy opportunity to do a drum section or a solo.
Sure, it’s fine if it’s something that is fantastic in its own right. I do think that's why it's great to have a producer. Early on, working with producers, I sensed that the band dynamic that exists gets broken up a little bit. Everybody gets to have more of a say, for one thing. Say there's a producer there who's listening to the bass player's ideas and giving the bass player feedback. But maybe the singer never listens to the bass player. Now somebody's here who's listening, and that frees up the band dynamic. Producers shouldn't get into the van with the band afterwards, so we can be free to be honest and give feedback. I'll sit there, listen to it, and say, "That's working," or, "That's not working."
I tell artists, "I’m vocal, I'm responding, and I'm going to be very blunt."
You have to approach certain players in different ways. I just had some old friends in the studio last weekend, and the bass player told me the funniest story, which I had forgotten, from a record that we made 15 years ago. Apparently, the guitar player was trying to get a solo and was struggling. I'd said, "Play it right, you fuck." I asked her, "Did I say that?" She replied, "It was the perfect thing to say. It snapped him right out of his funk. The next take, he totally got it. He just needed to be sworn at a little bit." [laughter] I was thinking, "Did I really say that then?" Then she said, "You would never say that to me. You were always so nice to me. But he needed that." 
