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]
You had already prepped for it.
I said, “Do you want this to sound like your records, or do you want this to sound like a straight, live recording?” It would’ve been an interesting contrast.
Yeah, totally.
I learned to stop fighting with the artists a long time ago! [laughter]
I could talk for a while about that! The last thing we did was an EP [Coda], and we did that with Sonny DiPerri. He produced and tracked it from the ground up. We did that at a beach house and that Trout Lake house.
Did you learn a lot from Sonny?
I was super thirsty about learning everything I could from everybody. [Portland producer/engineer/mixer] David Pollock did a test mix for us, and I was taking detailed notes on all the signal chains. I was also doing that with Sonny. It's funny, because at the beginning of the process of starting to make my own music and learning recording software, I told myself, “I'm never going to be an engineer. I'm going to be a songwriter.” Then I couldn't help it, at a certain point.
You all started Radiation City with that sonic idea at the beginning?
Absolutely. We would write songs by recording them. “Oh, let's put this idea in there,” and then, “What's the next thing?” We'd record it, we’d move stuff around and chop it up. That contributed to the sound, because we would record a whole arrangement, chop it, and stutter it.
You ended up setting up mics, despite yourself.
Exactly. At that point, I had already caught the bug. Listening back to those early Radiation City mixes, I hear where I would do things differently now.
Well, we all do that!
That's part of the process. We were on tour, and I remember sitting in L.A. with Randy saying, “I think I'm going to get good at mixing.” I wasn't sure if I could ever be a pro mixer at any point, but I had that determination. I practiced and practiced and failed a bunch. I’d be thinking my mix was great at night, then listening back in the morning I’d be thinking, “This is total dog shit.” But the process starts to hone in until less of those mistakes get made.
I told someone once that I have a mental list when mixing, and he said, “Write it down for me.” I don't think I can!
“But it's mental.” [laughs] When people ask me, “How do you mix a kick drum” or whatever, I'm always telling them, “Well, it depends.” It depends on so many different things.
“It depends” is the true audio answer.
Exactly. It's funny when I see these videos on YouTube where they're saying, “Here's how you mix your kick drum to make it fat,” and it's some dude bro, “Hey! What's up, followers?”
I've been writing a lot about pushing back on that that type of “teaching.” That's certainly not where art comes from.
Totally. From my own experience, everything I know has been a collection of a lot of tinkering and learning by doing. I’ll think there's a rule, I try it, it doesn't work in a certain scenario, so then I’ll learn a new technique. But if you're always doing the same things over and over, how do you learn? How do you get better? One thing I love is when artists will challenge my preconception of how something should sound. They'll ask, “What if we try this?” I'll be thinking, “That's not going to work,” but I'll never say, “No, we're not going to try it.”
Being an artist initially makes you have empathy. You can easily put yourself in their shoes.
And that, honestly, is exactly how I formed that kind of empathy. I had worked with a few producers and engineers, when we were in Radiation City, who were like, “No. That's not how you make a record.” I was like, “What?”
This is a backhanded version of it, but I’ve told people, “How you're working is not how the records you like were made.” I want them to understand that there was a process that mattered.
Which is good perspective. And then, “If you still want to proceed…”
“…it’s fine. But you're not going to get those results.”
It’s funny. I worked with a guy who had a rock album he wanted to be gritty, and he said, “I don't want it to ever touch a computer, all the way to the vinyl pressing.” I said, “Well, with the gear that we have it's going to be harder to get the sound that I think that you want. But let's do it.” We did it, and at the end he said, “This is really clean sounding.” I don't like, “I told you so,” but... I'll definitely push back with people. There's a way to make it everybody's idea. “What if we try this? I think this could be really cool.” Get everybody excited about it. Then it's a result that neither of us would have gotten on our own.
Right. It’s the push and pull of collaboration.
And the spontaneity of the studio. Plug it in and see if it works. You'll get a result that you never would have gotten with your preconceptions.
One thing I love about the studio is the collaboration.
Exactly. With a lot of records, they'll bring the demos and say, “I know it sounds shitty.” I'm thinking, “If it sounded good, then what are we even doing?” The less that they have figured out, I'll say, “Don't worry about fleshing out every idea, because we'll come up with cool things.” Especially if there's a little bit of urgency with budget. You want to be less stressed, obviously. But sometimes if you have less time, the limitation breeds creativity.
