Radiation City captured my attention back then. Telegraph Mastering's Adam Gonsalves said, “Check this out,” because he'd mastered your records.
Yeah, he did. He was one of the first people we met in Portland. I love his masters.
Where did you guys come from?
I grew up in Portland. Lizzy [Elisabeth Ellison] grew up in the Chicago area and moved out here for high school. We met when I was living in San Francisco after college. I was trying to play in bands and do music, and I was instantly captivated. We started dating, I moved back, and we started Radiation City.
She's got an amazing voice.
Oh, incredible. We started that band with Randy [Bemrose], and eventually brought in Patti [King] and Matt [Rafferty]. We liked the idea of these crunchy old recordings that we were listening to. We did all our own recording; that's where I caught the bug.
There's such a unique sound to that band. The vocals are midrange-y with this big reverb.
Right, totally.
Even at a show, it would sound like that, which was probably hard on the sound person!
I think there were a lot of bummed out sound people. We'd ask, “Can you high-pass it at 500 Hz and low-pass it at 5 kHz,” and they'd ask, “Why?”
Putting it right in the feedback zone.
Yeah, exactly. But we were pretty stubborn about what we wanted, and about specific types of reverbs. I guess what we were going for at the time was kind of a spring reverb sound. Real midrange-y, again, a real feedback zone.
I remember going to see you play and thinking, “How’d they pull that off?”
And with four vocal mics on stage! Hopefully there were moments when the sound people ignored us and made it a little more hi-fi.
Was that a production idea of yours from the beginning, or was that something that Lizzy came up with?
I think it was kind of combined. We fetishized these ‘60s records that were pretty lo-fi. It was also in an era, the early 2010s, when there was a lot of lo-fi music and people were into that.
But there was contrast. There were instruments that had lows, and there were bright keyboards and guitars.
Yeah. We would put [Roland TR-]808 drum samples in there, and we liked that contrast of this weird hi-fi sound against the lo-fi vocal. We were definitely trying to stretch the boundaries of the things that we loved; we wanted to add to them and not just recreate them. There are a lot of bands that are like, “We're going to recreate ‘60's psychedelic” or whatever. But we loved Pink Floyd, bossa nova, The Beatles, soul, and Motown, and we tried to incorporate that into a sound that felt cohesive. I can speak for myself at the time – I was indulgent about being unpredictable at every move and, in hindsight, I could’ve maybe toned that down a little bit.
With the music?
With the compositions. I think we all were like that. “How do we be unpredictable at every turn?” Sometimes the song just wants to flow. I think it elicited a lot of cool results, and things that I would still probably do now. But, at the same time, there are moments where now I think, “Why didn't we just go to the chorus?”
You were recording on your own. Were you using Pro Tools?
We had [Apple] Logic, a MOTU eight channel recording interface, and a bunch of shitty mics.
You were tracking the drums too?
Yeah. I think we had one SE [Electronics] tube mic, an Oktava condenser, a bunch of [Shure SM]57s, and an [AKG] D112. We had cool room sounds. We recorded the first album [The Hands That Take You] in a cabin up in Trout Lake, Washington, and the room sounded great. We put the mics in the room, and we said, “That sounds cool.”
Yeah, as long as you find the right thing to commit.
Totally. It was fun, because we'd be in this cabin recording and there'd be somebody making food in the background. You can hear, “Clink, clink.” A lot of people in projects I work on are worried about taking out all of the background talking, but I think that's the vibe. That's being in the room with people.
There are three Radiation City studio albums. Were all those done in that same way?
Our second album, Animals In the Median, we tracked ourselves and then Sonny DiPerri mixed that at Jackpot! [Recording Studio]. We did the last one [Synesthetica] at Tiny Telephone. That was a great experience, working with [producer] John Vanderslice [Tape Op #10]. He's a mad scientist. I love that dude. But that was tricky because I think we worked on it too fast. We ended up reworking some of it afterwards, because it was the all-analog process. Either you keep those mixes, or you don't.
You were tracking to tape and mixing it down old school?
No computers involved, which was the JV way. That was a cool learning experience. Then we worked with Jeremy Sherrer over at Ice Cream Party [Studio], reworking some parts, doing some production touches, and remixing everything.
Yeah, he’s fantastic.
A super talented dude.
Before your second record, I remember bumping into you and you said, “I emailed you about mixing and you didn't get back to me.” I scoured my computer. I never found that email.
I wonder if it never went through, or I didn't hit send or something.
I was so bummed!
But we did mix the live recording together [Live From the Banana Stand]. That was fun. Looking back on that, I was probably doing the same thing to you that I did to all those live sound engineers. “I’ve got to filter the vocals.”
I remember that. But I already knew that was going to happen! [laughter]
