I first met Joe Reineke in early 1989, when he caught our band, Vomit Launch, on a middle slot between Nirvana and Mudhoney in San Jose, California. He had a band called The Mice (soon renamed The Meices), and we began playing shows together. When The Meices broke up, Joe's new band, Alien Crime Syndicate, carried on and he ended up in L.A. Soon, though, he found himself in Seattle, Washington, and in 2002 he opened Orbit Audio, a full service studio downtown. Orbit has hosted Platinum-selling sessions for Macklemore and Vance Joy, along with tracking and mixing for folks such as M. Ward, Pavement [Tape Op #15], Preston School of Industry, and Andre 3000. Not one to miss an opportunity, he and his wife, Karyn Gold-Reineke, also founded Seattle Recording Arts, teaching audio out of Orbit and online. They also recently opened the Temple of the Trees Studio behind their home near Seattle, and it's one of the coolest looking (and sounding) recording spaces I've ever been in. Recent sessions include The Fastbacks and Joe and Karyn's group, Society of the Silver Cross, a dreamy, gothic-inspired project. Check out their new album, Festival of Invocations, to hear some of their best work.
How did we both end up studio owners and producers?
JR: I came from an artist's place. I fell into this. I certainly didn't have a plan. Who has a plan? [laughing] You go through your life and collect bits of information. Sometimes I collect information that isn't correct [laughter] and store it as fact.
I remember getting The Mice record from you, Say No to Cheese, that Jim DeVito produced.
KGR: Joe still talks to him every week. He's like family.
JR: He did the first couple of The Meices records, and one that Kurt Bloch [Tape Op #52] produced. And, full circle, I recorded the Fastbacks' recent record [For WHAT Reason!] here. We took care of Kurt!
Jim DeVito's recordings for you sounded so good.
JR: I learned a lot from him. I still bounce ideas off him. He gave me some great advice. When I was living in Florida, I had a chance to move to California. I called him and said, “I have a chance to move to California. What should do”? He said to me, “Well, have you ever been anywhere?" I said, “No,” and he said, “Well, go somewhere.” [laughing] It was the absolute best advice.
The Meices were signed to a major label.
JR: We were on London Records.
Who produced and recorded those?
JR: The first one for London [Tastes Like Chicken] Kurt Bloch did with Jim DeVito at his place in Florida. We went back there from San Francisco and camped out for a month or so. The second record [Dirty Bird] we did with Gil Norton, and I ended up doing two more with him [From the Word Go, Ten Songs in the Key of Betrayal] after that when I was in Alien Crime Syndicate. That's who I felt I really started to learn how to make records from, by watching him.
What was the production difference?
JR: Kurt was a little bit more of a documentarian and a good cheerleader. With Gil, we wanted to dig into our songs and make them better. We did a lot of pre-production, working out parts, and making it all fit together. All the pieces have to somehow move with each other. Gil's great at engineering as well, but I think of him as the first "producer" that I worked with.
He stripped your songs down and rebuilt them with you?
JR: Yeah. Really talking about the songs. I picked up a lot of information from doing records with him. He would hear a groove in places that we couldn't, and he wanted to sort it out. He worked a lot with the bass and drums and got those to really lock in. On that session, Ben Hillier [Tape Op #112] was the engineer.
That's crazy! Ben went on to do a lot, and Gil had produced The Pixies and Echo & the Bunnymen.
JR: When we did the first Alien Crime Syndicate album with Gil [Dust to Dirt], he'd just done the second Foo Fighters record, The Colour and the Shape. We used Grandmaster Recorders in Los Angeles. Wade Goeke [Tape Op #46] was our tape op on that session!
From Chandler Limited?
JR: Yeah. That was the last session that he did as a tape op before he started his company, making the initial Neve-based gear. We became friends then – he was so cool to be around. He was changing tapes and all that. He'd say, "I've got all these Neves." I'd reply, "I don't care about any of that. I just want to make music."
Yeah! [laughter]
JR: I should have paid more attention to him. But that was his actual last time working in the studio.
How did you end up in Seattle?
JR: The Meices broke up, Alien Crime Syndicate got signed, and I moved to Los Angeles. When ACS recorded our second album [From the Word Go] with Gil Norton, on the last day of mixing the label president came in and said she got fired. [laughing] The record was shelved. I was playing with [bassist] Jeff Rouse. He'd lived in Seattle and always had friends up here. By that time, I was full...
