Let's start with the first Big Thief record [Masterpiece], which you recorded but did not play drums on and Andrew Sarlo [Tape Op #134] produced. How did that project come about?
My friend Andrew was producing the record – we were pals back in school – and he'd asked me to engineer it. I was aware of Buck [Meek] and Adrianne [Lenker]'s music. I'd seen them play a lot in New York, and we had an overlapping community friend group. I was super stoked to engineer it and to hear them with a full band, because I'd mostly just seen Adrianne solo. They had borrowed a friend's house in upstate New York, and we brought a bunch of gear and borrowed a bunch of gear to make the record. During that session, they parted ways with their drummer. I was already a fan of Adrianne's music and songwriting, but when you get to see behind the scenes it can either be very affirming or disappointing. But during that experience, I was like, "Wow, this is the real deal." Adrianne was writing all the time, and I felt like the music she had put out was just scratching the surface. When they had to part ways with their drummer, I gave it a couple days during the session and then said, "You guys, I am your drummer." They had never heard me play drums. I was playing guitar in a lot of bands in New York and they were like, "Wait, you're a drummer?" But Sarlo chimed in and said, "Trust me. He's going to be a great fit." I knew the songs, and there were a few shows right after the session – at one of those two shows Luke Temple [Tape Op #126] was there and asked us to go on tour with Here We Go Magic the next month, and it just kicked off immediately.
But how did you get to the point where you had the skills to be the engineer for that session?
I had always been engineering and mixing my band's albums since I was a little kid. I got into it early on because of my uncle. I had a band on my block in Chicago called Broken Parasite. We started in fourth grade, and my uncle is this wonderful, eccentric, recording technology hobbyist. His Christmas present to me every year was that he would make an album of me and my friends. It was cute. He would bring a little [Sony] MiniDisc player and a mixer, and he would record us for a day; very lo-fi and simple but he would take it seriously. The first couple ones were in fourth or fifth grade, and we didn't even have influences yet. I was hitting a snare drum, my next door neighbor, Pete, was playing a cello, and our friend Jack from across the street had a guitar that we would put all the tuning pegs at 12 o'clock because we wanted to straighten it out. It was total chaos music. My uncle would say, “Sounds good. Do you want to do another take?" I got the recording bug from him. Then I started recording my own band in high school, and got into making records with my [Digidesign] Mbox.
Did you have any formal training?
I went to Berklee [College of Music]. I went there for drumming but ended up studying Music Production and Engineering. I met some mentors. Susan Rogers [Tape Op #117] was a teacher there who I was drawn to and learned a lot from. I got into formally learning about consoles, tape machines, and all of that there while secretly working on my own records for my bands back in Chicago. I was also recording bands in Boston in all the off hours' time in the Berklee studios.
You mentioned earlier that you were working in a studio in Brooklyn.
It was before the first Big Thief record. I had moved to New York after going to school in Boston; I was mostly playing guitar and computers in bands and recording. I was on a bit of a drum break. I was a little burnt out from the music school experience of drumming, so I was not drumming very much, but I was still playing a lot of music. I started interning at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn, and over the course of a year so I became a staff engineer there. It was, and still is, a great studio. It was mostly a jazz spot, which was good for recording a lot of live musicians together, with a lot of turnovers. A lot of two or three day sessions. Record two days and mix one day. I got to record a lot of amazing musicians. Jazz cats are always bringing in their own kits, and they take pride in the character and sonic uniqueness of what they play. I got to record a lot of different kinds of drums and drummers. It was educational and good practice. I probably did hundreds of all different kinds of sessions. It was a great spot to be able to work in. They had a Neve, an SSL, and all the good mics.
Let's skip ahead a number of years and talk about the Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You record. It's one of my favorite Big Thief albums. The songs on it are just so stellar. You produced it, and that's a lot of trust from the band. But it’s also a fair amount of trust on your part that you guys would survive it, and that after producing them, you would still all be friends, and they'd want to continue to work with you.
