Did you start out in the New York area?
Yeah. I started out playing in bands, but I always had an interest in sound. I had a [TASCAM] Portastudio, an Otari 8-track, then [TASCAM] DA-88s. I was always buying gear. I was that guy.
At a certain point I had enough gear to open up a studio, and I did.
Did you do that in New York?
Yeah. I got a spot out in Williamsburg in a basement and recorded indie bands. I was in New York for 20 years, mostly playing in bands and for the last six years I had a studio as well. I toured a bit, notably with Debbie Harry [of Blondie].
What's your main instrument?
Guitar. I always had my own bands, but I played in other bands as well. Not so much sessions, but live and touring. I moved out to L.A. because I had been in New York for a really long time. My friend had a publishing deal and suggested moving out to L.A. to start a production company. We were trying to do pop writing stuff. I just wasn't good at it. I moved here in 2006 and had a studio in my house. The first band I worked with was The Airborne Toxic Event, and that record did pretty well. I also met some really good musicians at the time, which led me to doing three records with Meshell Ndegeocello. From that, I started getting jazz and slightly R&B-ish sessions. I come from indie rock, but I don't a lot of indie rock sessions. A lot of studio musicians come through my studio and enable me to get great sounds easily.
We both know the difference.
Every once and a while, I’ll get a novice player playing the kit I always have set up, and I think, “Why don’t the drums sound good? Oh my god, I suck." A lot of the session drummers I work with hit the drums lightly. There are some people who hit hard, but they know how to hit hard properly and sound great. With drummers who play quietly, I turn the mics up and let the mics do the work. It sounds huge because they're not choking the drums. They're not hitting them so hard that they sound smaller. I recently made a record with Joey Waronker; he hits very lightly, and the drums sound beautiful. Jazz sessions are fun as well, because the musicians are so good that they make me sound good. [laughter] They set up, play two or three takes, and move on. Those records are done in one to three days.
From what I've seen, walking in here today, there are always instruments and mics set up.
I try to get out of the way of the musicians. When somebody says, "Hey, I've got an idea," I try to have everything set up as much as possible so they can execute their idea quickly while they’re inspired. I don't get to experiment as much. If they want to, that's fine; but usually bands don't have budgets to experiment. People who have recorded here know that sessions go quickly. I can generally get a band going in about 30 minutes, depending on the set up. I notice that people are happy when they don’t have to wait around for set up. Some people like to bring their own instruments, but a lot of people use the instruments that are here.
How is work coming your way?
It's really just word of mouth. I don't advertise. Instagram helped in the beginning. I'm trying to promote Colorfield Records more than I am promoting Lucy's Meat Market. I built a B room (studio b) because there's a lot of pop production where they just need a room, a microphone, and a laptop. It also has two pianos, a Wurlitzer [electric piano], synthesizers, and drums in there. For a lot of pop sessions everything's in the box, so clients are happy there are instruments in the room. I recently put a studio in my house so I can even work when both rooms are booked.
Finish up things?
Yeah, I can mix, edit, or record. Do you know [the pianist/producer] Larry Goldings?
He was at my studio, Jackpot! Recording, with case/lang/veirs.
Oh, yeah, with k.d. lang. Larry's amazing. We actually recorded some of that here with k.d. I also did a record [Big Foot] with Larry on my label, with Melinda Sullivan, a tap dancer. We did a bunch of days in studio b and it worked out great.
Do freelance engineers book studio a quite a bit?
Yeah, it’s happening more and more. When I first had my studio, I was always in here. When I thought about building studio b, I had recently bought a Neve 8058 [console] and was thinking I'd make studio a more commercial and I could float to the b room. I’m a bit selective about who comes in, as there’re a ton of instruments in here.
Sometimes it's crazy what damage people can do.
Yeah. It's not their stuff. Headphones get dropped on the floor all the time. One time I rented out my place, and my [Neumann U] 67 [microphone] got dented. I showed the client the dent and the response was, “Wow, that’s a big dent.”
So, what happened?
That was the end of the conversation.
Really? Damn. This is a spectacular assortment of analog recording equipment and outboard gear.
Thanks. I've been buying and selling gear for so long. I generally think of gear as investments and tend to buy vintage. If you buy an original Moog [synthesizer] instead of a reissue, they both sound amazing. But if you have the money to buy the original one, in five or ten years it's probably going to be worth more money. It enables me to keep my business going.
Certainly.
You use it, and you're making money off of it. When you sell it, hopefully you’ll make a profit. I don’t think you need vintage instruments to make great music, but they are better investments.
Do you get a lot of projects sent to you to mix?
I mix all the Colorfield records and some outside projects, but I'm not a "mixer." You know what I mean?
You are, though.
I am, but since I have a studio I get more calls to engineer.
Right. You're not just in a room mixing all day.
I have friends who are mixers. They generally have smaller rooms, a computer, and a pair of speakers. They can mix, and their shit sounds amazing. And that's all they do, so they get great at it. I like being in a room with people making music. To me, mixing or mastering is a very solitary job.
I do a lot of remote mixing, and I'm almost shocked when they say they're going to attend.
Does that happen, where people want to be there?
Yeah. I like doing attended mixes.
It makes it so, "We're done. You signed off on it." I generally like to get mixes together alone. After a revision or two, if the client is in town I’ll have them attend so they can sign off. I definitely mix way faster than I used to.
How do you present yourself when someone's hiring you? Do you say, "I'm the engineer and producer"?
Usually when people hire me, it's more just for engineering.
Is there a producer in the room?
Sometimes. A lot of times it's the artist, which is not usually a great thing. Or it's a communal thing, which can work. I might chime in if something gets stuck, but I generally don't say much. I try to get everything going really fast, and everybody's usually happy if that happens. If it goes south, I might say something. But generally, I stay out of it – it's not my record, and they didn't hire me to produce it.
Right.
The Colorfield sessions are different.
What was the impetus to start Colorfield Records?
During Covid, I was getting together in my studio with a couple of friends to have fun. We were just messing about, and I loved what was happening. Very little thinking, and a lot of responding. That’s where the impetus of the label came from. I want people to come in here with no music and try to avoid intention or thinking. I want to base the songs on musical ideas that happen when the musician is just messing about. There are serendipitous moments that happen that would be hard to compose. If somebody walks in, like Nicole McCabe, I might say, "Play percussion." I might have her not play to click. Just randomly. I might take that, flip it onto my tape deck, go down an octave, and then back into my computer, and hit quantize. Then ask her to pick a tempo and I’ll hit quantize again. Very rarely is it not useful after a bit of editing.
Right. It'd be interesting.
Then I'll suggest, "Nicole, get on the ARP 2600 and try to get some crazy sounds." I might take little bits of it and cut it up. Then, "Play another percussion thing." I might take that thing, quantize it – and move it over an eighth note so the rhythms that she did are displaced. If it sounds better, we keep it. If it doesn't, it doesn't.
Right. It's more the Brian Eno [Tape Op #85] process.
Eno is my hero.
Gathering and manipulating.
Manipulating, putting things together, and seeing what it sounds like. We come up with stuff that you would never come up with if you were trying to do that. Some people have a really hard time with this process. They want to control it. A great piano player explained to me, "We spend our whole life trying to control and master it." I said, "Right, that's my point. Let it go." Get out of your own brain. So, that's the ethos of my label. Sonically, there’s a lot of manipulating, tape deck pitching down, and also chance – moving stuff around and seeing what happens. I also push the frequencies down. It makes for cool sounding stuff, right?
If you slow down the tape, the high end drops.
Totally. It gets this weird murkiness. If you're not a drummer, I'm going to quantize you because we can get to the end result much faster. Some musicians recoil when I quantize them. There’s so much music that is quantized and no one says that’s cheating. The cool thing about quantizing live percussion or drums is that the hits are all different, so it’s less static than a sample being hit over and over.
Yeah.
Abe Rounds' record [the confidence to make mistakes] wasn't done like that. It was the first record that I did. Because I’ve done over 20 records, I have ways to jump start the process. Rhythm is a great way to start a tune, so I’ll have people play percussion, drums, drum machine, etc.
But it certainly also helps you, because you get to experiment further than you would on a regular session.
Way more! I have a ton of instruments. Some people have never played a balafon [a wooden xylophone from Mali], but it's pentatonic, so it doesn't matter what you play. All the notes make sense. Play the Simmons drum synthesizers. You can tune them so they sound like marimbas. That gets recorded to the tape deck; we go down two octaves, and it turns into crazy sounds. Slow motion always looks great, and going down an octave is a similar effect. The tape deck gets used all the time for this.
As processing? Mixing to it?
Mixing to it for sure, but also just sonic manipulation. Sometimes the rhythms turn out completely different than the initial intention. When it’s double time or half time, it becomes this other thing. It's super fun. I want Colorfield records to be sonically like Pink Floyd records, but instrumental. Fun aural experiences. That's my goal.
Do you pick from artists that you know and try to have fun with it?
Yeah, different people that are in my orbit. In L.A. there're so many talented people now. I always have about ten records that I'm in the process of making. I'm trying to do five records a year. Each record takes probably 15 to 20 days.
Are you pressing them to vinyl?
Yeah, vinyl. RTI is our pressing plant and we use Kevin Gray to master all the vinyl.
How do you manage the economics of all that?
I’m not making a profit, but the studio ends up subsidizing the label.
Do you see it helping people recognizing what you can do?
Ultimately, the label has gotten a bit of recognition for its ethos, which is nice. When I first started it, I had no big goals. It was something that I wanted to do. It's an art project. Art projects cost money, unless you're really lucky. In between paid sessions, I'm doing my label stuff. It's usually with people who live locally. I'll do a day or two week with different people, depending on the week.
Is it a good way to fill in the schedule here?
My schedule is always booked, because in between paid sessions are the Colorfield sessions. It’s when I have the most fun. I'm in with friends trying to make cool music.
Do some of the projects hit dead ends?
Yes. I'd say 95 percent of the projects end up with finished records. There are some that don’t finish. I did one where we did six days, and at the end of it she said, "This isn't for me." I said, "No problem." It's not for everybody.
You did a record with Brad Allen Williams [œconomy]. He’s written for Tape Op.
Yeah, I love Brad and we’re friends. I love the record we made. He’s an amazing musician. We had a brief moment where he expressed some frustration with the process, as it wasn’t very intentional. But, ultimately, we got past it and I think we made a great record.
It's a true collaboration.
Yeah, and I like to work fast. I do not like going into the myopic holes… It's just music!
Move fast and see if it works.
If not, then we'll move to something else. It's not the end of the world. The whole point is to have fun, not think, and react.
It's also a great way to recharge ourselves as engineers!
Totally.
