Andrew Gerhan: Hi! Are you in Marin?
Sonny Smith: West Marin, past where proper Marin ends. It's hippies and ranchers out here; a new life.
AG: I'm in the Catskills, doing dual citizenship with NYC. I'm in the process of converting a barn built in 1900 into a studio and performance space. I want to discuss how we've worked together in different ways, as well as the evolution of our collaboration.
SS: Since it's Tape Op, we should start with tape. For Tomorrow is Alright, what tape machine was that?
AG: Oh, boy… we tracked some on a Pro Tools Digi 002 that Rogue Wave had in the space in West Oakland that I shared, where much of Tomorrow is Alright was tracked.
SS: How come it has such a tape sound? So many people over the years have asked, "How did you get that? It sounds like '50s and '60s tape."
AG: We mixed at Tim Mooney's [Tape Op #47, American Music Club, Sleepers, Sun Kil Moon] studio [Closer Recording]. We mixed to [digital] stereo and then bounced mixes to 2-track tape. I can't remember what his 2-track machine was. He has since passed, so I can't ask.
SS: Some of those songs were tracked on a TASCAM 388. I recorded at Tim Cohen's house with Tim and Shayde [Sartin, both of The Fresh & Onlys]. For "Planet of Women," I remember bringing the 388 to our rehearsal space and recording Kelley [Stoltz] on drums and Shayde on bass, so I must have brought some music to your studio to dump to digital. I remember tracking "Too Young to Burn," "Lovin' on an Older Gal," and "Strange Love" at that studio with you.
AG: You had "Death Cream" mostly recorded. We added hand percussion and backing vocals. You brought the 388 to that space. That's how we did "Loving on an Older Gal" and some others.
SS: That would make sense, because it sounds so warm. The 388 definitely has a sound.
AG: Yeah, it does.
SS: We were all using the 388 at the time. Kelley Stoltz was an influence, a "vintage gear guy," and a lover of the '60s. I hadn't discovered it. I was still "whatever makes a sound." Once I realized that a 388 and [Shure SM]57s were a great sound, recording became fun, easy, and not expensive. Richard Swift [Tape Op #120], who has since passed away, was enamored with Tomorrow is Alright. He asked me how I got that stuff – he was a "vintage gear guy" too. There are people who pursue the vintage sounds, but they use $10,000 microphones, $20,000 tape machines, and $50,000 boards, so they get this shiny, modern version of old music. They're always perplexed at how to sound like Dead Moon or something. It's so easy: You give $100,000 to charity, then you buy $500 worth of equipment, and you make your record. You have to have songs but, technically speaking, the reason you can't get that sound is because you have too much money.
AG: One of the big factors that colors '50s and '60s records is that they were played more live than '70s, '80s and '90s records. There are exceptions, of course, but "Loving on an Older Gal" was 85 percent of the band playing live. And then we added…
SS: A guitar.
AG: …and a couple little things – handclaps and backing vocals. We digitized, did some editing, mixed it through the board at Closer, then dumped all the mixes to tape and back into the computer. It does sound "tape-y." The album is uniform sonically because everything went through the same board and tape machine, even the tracks that weren't 388 but were tracked with Pro Tools.
SS: That's the way to do it.
AG: Mooney had a great Trident board, and we used his groovy outboard reverbs and stuff [Orban 111B and Roland SP-555]. I don't think there's much in the way of plug-ins on there. We were doing as much analog as we could. We were tracking through a [Roland] Space Echo, and we used an [Electro-Voice] RE20 on vocals.
SS: That sound was en vogue in San Francisco at the time.
AG: Are you always writing? When you have eight or ten songs do you say, "All right. Time to do an album." Or do you map out an album and write what you envisioned?
SS: Somewhere in the middle. There are people who conceptualize everything before they embark on the project, but I find that crazy. There has to be a time of unknowing; that intuitive crawling around in the dark and messing around with lyrics in your notebook or your guitar, piano, or whatever, not thinking about the long game. You have to be immersed in discovery, which is hard for artists – it's hard to be in the dark and not know. To me, that's the only way things are created, out of this subconscious place. The conscious state gets in the way. Some songs are maybe, in hindsight, subconsciously influenced by what I was obsessively listening to that year. But, at some point, maybe four or five songs in, I look at it consciously and think, "Wow, I've been making country songs. That’s weird. I didn't realize I was leaning that way." That's what came, and then I can apply conscious will and try to write a few more country songs. That's how I end up with a cohesive record.
AG: Your latest record, Self-Awareness Through Macrame, has a song, "ESP," that we tracked in the Tomorrow is Alright sessions. How did that find its way through the time warp of 15 years and end up on this one?
SS: It's a perfect example. I was making very basic songs during the pandemic with my band, and I don't think there are more than three chords on the whole record. I had borrowed this cool acoustic guitar from a friend, so naturally I was playing that more than I might usually because it was a new toy. After five or six songs, the album started to have some definition. I realized, "This sounds a bit like the first Sunsets record." I had this song that's an orphan from that time, so it fit really well. I wouldn't have thought about including it until I was able to stand back and see what I had made.
AG: I was happy that song found a home because I always liked it.
SS: It should probably have been on Tomorrow is Alright. I don't know why it wasn't.
AG: I don't remember why.
SS: What are your tools in the studio now, as opposed to 2008?
AG: They're almost the same: A hybrid of analog and digital. I almost never do strictly tape for clients because the workflow is not what people are used to; tape is slower and more expensive. I use cool preamps and compressors, and I use highbrow and lowbrow mics. I have my tricks. I get instruments to sound good in the room and point a mic at them. I do as little treatment as possible until it's time to get painterly in the mix, and then I may treat the crap out of stuff. Often, I'll take an element that's already there; I'll treat it until it becomes a different voice, and then I'll mix it back in. "That WAS a guitar," but there are also still guitars. I try not to fixate on the "mojo" of gear, I just want the gear to work. I love a 57. I have a number of them, and I use them, but I also have esoteric tube and ribbon mics. I pick a mic that works on the specific thing – some mics are too shrill for some singers, for example. I'll often put a couple mics up that are really different from each other for options. If I'm tracking a drummer, I'll put a lot of mics on the kit knowing I'll maybe throw a bunch of the tracks out, but it's a safety. I have options so they won't have to book additional days if we didn't guess right at setup. I like to whittle stuff down quickly; I don't want to save all the decisions until mix day. That comes from experience: I try to avoid problems, leave a path around potential sinkholes, even if I don't end up needing it because everybody I work with is limited by budget. I've never made Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, where there's no end to the money. Money is a constraint for art making.
SS: I think an unlimited budget would be a free fall. I was surprised when I read it took The Beatles 25 takes to make a song. I find that the best version is around the third take, usually the take right before the one that you thought was best. When the band does the fourth take, they think, "Fuck. I got it, it's great." But it's usually the one before that, because there has to be some discovery happening.
AG: It stops being a performance and starts being a recital.
SS: That's right.
AG: Tell me about working with different producers. We've worked together, and you've worked with Merrill Garbus [Tape Op #88], James Mercer [#39], and Dan Auerbach [#127]. What do different people bring to the process?
SS: Different producers are as different as human beings are different. Merrill Garbus [Moods Baby Moods] was great. I got pretty far in and started to realize what the record was, and that she would make it more so. She has great ability to do interesting layers, vocal harmonies, backups and melodic ideas. She appreciated that I was open to anything. She pushed me to keep going further until I had exhausted all the possibilities. Whereas Dan Auerbach [Rod For Your Love], you go to his studio, and you go into his world. He's got his toys and things are mic'd up the way he thinks it should be. It's his vision. His guitar work is all over that album and it's beautiful, but it's not a Sonny & The Sunsets record. The sound that he gets out of his studio is incredible, I love it. He has a stable of classic musicians that he brings in. That creates a sound, so there's consistency in the records he's producing. If you like that sound, then it's fantastic. James Mercer [Hairdressers From Heaven] met me on my level. I wanted to make music with friends, drink beers, and see what happened. He was perfect for that. He was very humble. We were like kids in his club. He had a barn behind his house with equipment. He and his friend, Yuuki Matthews – who's all over his records – co-produced it and we were like kids again, making music without a lot of pressure or stress. So, all of the producers are different people, in different phases of their life, and they bring different things. They all have merit.
AG: How do you decide who you're going to work with? Is it a question of timing and who's available, or is it an artistic decision?
SS: Merrill was, "This person is incredible. I'm going to ask if they would help me." The others were more organic and stemmed from my friendship with Richard Swift. He hipped The Shins to my music, and they covered some of my songs. Then he joined The Black Keys and formed a band with Dan Auerbach called The Arcs, who covered "Too Young to Burn." He was the Pied Piper. My intention was to produce with him, but he was on a path of self-destruction, so it kept getting pushed back. At one point, he connected me with Auerbach because he couldn't do it. And I was like, "Well, let's do the next one." Then Richard and I were talking a lot and swapping demos over the phone, but he had to go to rehab, so I worked with James Mercer. "Well, we'll do the next one." And then he died of alcoholism. It was tragic. I never made the record with my friend that we had talked about for years, but he was a key element in introducing me to people that I got to make music with. He was a magical person. None of that stuff was preconceived. You meet who you meet. I don't remember exactly how you and I met, or how we embarked on Tomorrow is Alright?
AG: I was playing in Our Lady of the Highway with Dominic East, who is now the main backline person and confidante for The War On Drugs [Tape Op #102]. Charlie Hall, The Drugs' drummer, also played in that band.
SS: Yeah, I remember that.
AG: We played on bills with you. I got into recording because Dominic and I were making records and hiring others to mix. We were doing basics in a studio and then doing overdubs with a [Digidesign] MBox. I became fascinated by recording and wanted to get better and learn more. We hired Tim Mooney to mix a record that Dominic and I did together, and Tim and I hit it off. I asked if I could apprentice with him, and I spent a couple of years sitting in on his sessions. I became a session player and assistant. That's when you and I started working together. I was sharing practice/recording space with Rogue Wave in Oakland, and they had a tiny project studio. You and I did some tracking there, and I had access to Closer Recording, so that's where we mixed. I think we mixed Tomorrow is Alright in two nights. We pulled an all-nighter or two.
SS: I never do all-nighters now. Not because of quality reasons, I just don't want to. [laughter]
AG: Same. I don't think it needs to be a combat situation. It should be healthy.
SS: I had a kid too. It added a level of, "I've got to get this done now! I have to pick up my kid."
AG: I have a question about your son, Oliver. During the Tomorrow is Alright sessions I remember you told me that you would audition songs for Oliver and that if he responded to a lyric or a melody, you knew that it was simple enough to be universal and that meant it had potential. Does that still resonate? Now that Oliver's not four anymore, do you have another sounding board?
SS: That's interesting. Some partners that I've had are non-musicians. When I play music for them there's no, "I think you should turn the guitar down," or, "It's weird that you have the synth in there." They love music and listen to good music. It's perfect to bounce ideas off of them because they're objective: "Is a song good or not?" It's easy to get lost when you are the song maker. The "je ne sais quoi," we don't know what it is, but it's good – four year-olds and people not worrying about music technically can hear that.
AG: The producer/engineer should know how to fix all the clams and do all the cool stuff, but the real trick is knowing when not to do anything, to decide what matters and what doesn't. Not get overly concerned with "technical perfection" that doesn't add to the impact of the song. I first try having something not matter, not need fixing, and see if that decision is able to stick.
SS: It's a good rule.
AG: You can polish anything down until it's completely smooth.
SS: We're inundated with music that has been glossed over, corrected, and cleaned up. Everyone drank the Kool-Aid on this idea that it has to sound clean, perfectly executed, and polished, otherwise it sounds "amateur." As the stakes get higher for artists, it feels unprofessional to them to have songs go out into the world less than mechanically perfect. It's probably scary being scrutinized by the entire planet. Years ago, when I was making Hit After Hit, on the song "Reflections on Youth" or "Home in Exile," I had recorded it on tape. We were on the road in L.A. and got to bring it to a studio owned by a world-famous rock star – where bigwigs go. I wanted to add tambourines to the song. When we were mixing, I said, "Leave the tambourine really loud. I want it to be like those old [Rolling] Stones songs where the tambourine is up the center and louder than the guitars." I like that shit. But the engineer said, "No, I can't do that. We can't put our studio's name on a song that has the tambourine that loud." He saw it as a mistake, or that others would interpret it as a mistake.
AG: It's art! It's not math, where you do it wrong and you'll get the wrong number.
SS: That's the world that they live in. When you make music for mass consumption, it gets scarier to take risks. The beauty of being DIY, underground, lo-fi, handmade, or whatever is that you are not held, nor hold yourself, to this weird measure that takes the life out of music.
AG: There are epic clams in classic songs that, for me, are old friends. I think about how out-of-tune the guitar is in [Bob Dylan's] "Like a Rolling Stone," or in [Rod Stewart's] "Maggie May" there's an intro and then the band doesn't come in together on the one, they fall on their faces. I love hearing that part, not because I enjoy hearing somebody fail, but it's this idiosyncrasy that I've gotten to know over decades. If somebody "fixed" it, something would be gone for me. It's become an old friend.
SS: Absolutely.
AG: There's the irony that now, with technology, it's cheaper to make flawless, beat-driven pop music than it is to make messy rock 'n' roll.
SS: "Garage rock" that I hear that's new; I'm always surprised. It's so clean!
AG: That's one clean garage!
SS: The good news is that there are always going to be people who want handmade art and music. They might not even know why they're resonating with it.
AG: That dovetails into another thing I want to touch on – your record label, Rocks In Your Head. What made you start it? What role do you see independent record labels playing now? Does the label itself feel like a creative act to you?
SS: Why did I start it? I ask myself that every day! [laughter] I had been on Fat Possum, Polyvinyl, and Easy Eye Records which is under Warner, so I'd experienced that major label game. I could see the pros and cons of being on those labels. I wanted to see what it was like to be DIY. It wasn't like people were beating down my door to put my record out. I had labels that were bigger than Rocks In Your Head that could have spent more money on publicity, but I appreciated being a DIY extremist in this music industry. Then I realized that it would be boring to start a label just to put out my own stuff. It felt lonely. I asked myself what kind of artists I would like to support. At first, I was looking anywhere: Bands that I knew from Australia, artists that I had met along the way in Spain, and that made me wonder why I'm talking to people halfway across the world – there's art happening in San Francisco. San Francisco was getting pummeled by this idea that the music scene was dead. I thought it was bunk. That led me to start listening to music in San Francisco – am I going to be the Alan Lomax of my own neighborhood? Then the pandemic hit, and music kind of fell silent. It's cool to be supportive of young artists, but I wondered about friends that make music that I want to do stuff with. That's how we ended up working with Sun Foot, Virgil Shaw, and you [Nevāda Nevada]. We did a poetry record with Tongo Eisen-Martin. I let my interests go where they would and did whatever I wanted to do.
AG: Is there a community that has grown out of the label? Have you gathered people together who might not otherwise interact, or are aware of each other in a way that they wouldn't otherwise be?
SS: Some. Ryan Wong and Country Risqué – they collaborate; it wasn't anything that I was working towards. Juicebumps and Fake Fruit know each other and play some shows; that's very heartening to me. But there was a point where I was trying to be part of a scene, and then there was a point where I was trying NOT to be. Subsequently, my label has disparate sounds and things that don't seem connected, but that's best for me.
AG: A sensibility falls out inadvertently. All of the releases assemble into something that you're not deliberately planning, but they're all things you've said yes to.
SS: Right. It's fine by me if this label has no cohesion, just different artists from different walks of life doing different shit.
AG: What about the other kinds of art you do? You've written plays, paint, draw, sculpt, and you write songs about sculpting. Is there a hierarchy? How do you decide which form of creativity you're going to do?
SS: That's a good question. At the end of the day, songwriting seems to be my most-everlasting passion. I feel the most committed to it. I'll dip into other things, but they're a way to support songwriting and think about it in new ways. Around Tomorrow is Alright, I was writing comics and the tales morphed into songs. "Planet of Women" and "Death Cream" are little linear comic book stories. I loved writing comics, but it was a way to inform songwriting in the end. 100 Records happened because I tried to write a novel, and it broke up into songs. I've often drawn something in my notebook that becomes lyrics. These tangents support songwriting, even though they might feel disconnected at first. Making ceramic dog portraits for people during the pandemic was rewarding, but most exciting is that some of the dog stories ended up becoming lyrics. I'm working on another 100 Records. It's going to be called 100 More Records.
AG: All new bands?
SS: It's a mixture. I'm adding to some old characters, and I've made new ones. It's really fun. I've been making little ceramic statues and records of some of the characters. Being able to put mediums together is the ultimate high. Way back when I was trying to write plays, it became a record called One Act Plays.
AG: The fundamental unit of measure is the song.
SS: Maybe at the end of my life they'll say, "Well, he was a songwriter, mostly."
AG: Do you have a kiln?
SS: I do. The dog head business went crazy during the pandemic. It was an idea to pass the time when we were all like The Breakfast Club on detention. People send photos and I've made over 100 dogs at this point. I'm building a studio in the woods; it's going to be the world's first ceramic recording studio. We're going to get really sweet sounds out of the microphones covered in clay dust! It's going to be the most precious, scrappy recording studio, but only for a certain type of person.
AG: You can make an echo chamber that has ceramic tiles. I hope I get to see it sometime.
SS: It's very tiny, but it's mine. It's going to have a Tascam 388 and it's not going to have wi-fi or computers. If you can't make the song on eight tracks, then that's not the right studio for you.
AG: A well-chosen set of constraints is one of the best tools you can have to navigate a project. You might not use the same constraints for every project; it's not religion. Additional complexity has to serve a purpose. For me a mix is a two-dimensional expression, not a three dimensional one. I think of the movie set of the old western town where buildings are just painted on plywood. It needs to look convincing to the camera, but if you were actually there on set you'd see that it's fake. That's what a stereo mix is. It's not the same as when you're in the room with a band where it's all around you. It is a distillation. You want it to be seamless, you don't want to see between the layers. You need it to be one thought, and one presentation of the song. That doesn't mean lo-fi, per se. When you make a soup it's better the next day because everything blends.
SS: That's a good analogy.
AG: When you were young, is this what you thought you would do when you grew up? What did you want to be?
SS: I got my first guitar in sixth grade, and I put electrical tape on it like Eddie Van Halen's. I was into music, performance, and rock 'n' roll from the beginning. I played guitar through high school, and I had a little band for the talent show. We played "Fly by Night" by Rush – humble beginnings. I went to college, learned piano, and got my first professional gigs at little bars playing rudimentary blues. It's funny, because at that time I was searching for what I was going to do with my life. I went to Central America, and I lived on a commune. I was playing music every night and writing little weird screenplays. I was definitely an artist, but if somebody asked, I'd say, "I don't know what I want to do with my life." I think a lot of young people are doing what they love without recognizing it. Thinking, "I guess I should be an engineer," while they're playing piano. Around 25, I decided to be a songwriter and try to make it. I went to San Francisco with that in mind. It was hard, but at least I knew what I was trying to do. There's power when you acknowledge what you want to do most, "I'm going to do it, no matter what. I don't care if I have to have part-time jobs for the rest of my life, this is what I am on Earth to do, and this is what I'm going to do." I believe the best art comes from people who are saved by making art.
AG: Over the years, I've worked with a lot of musicians who tell themselves they're not really "doing it" because they're not famous. Not every penny in their checking account comes from music. That's heartbreaking. I have a day job, and I've been in music for 100,000 years. I decided I won't stop until I feel like stopping. Part of the producer's role is telling the client that their artistic voice is real, even though they work in an office or sell coffee. We all have ten jobs.
SS: I've seen good artists squash it, "I want security. I want to have kids, cats, and dogs. My spouse doesn't want to be poor our whole life, so I'm out." I can't fault them. I'm just glad I put all my eggs in one basket. I'm happy that what I do most is songwriting, but it isn't always romantic. My friend Kyle Field [Little Wings] said once, "Maybe you love an amusement park when you are a kid, so you grow up and get a job at the amusement park. But now it's your job and suddenly the amusement park isn't fun anymore." There's truth to that. There's a way to keep your art pure and still endeavor to be an independent business. It takes some effort, but it is possible. You've done it. 
