How long have you guys been working together?
Sean: Probably since about 1981. We had a band called Mod Lang, which was named after the Big Star song, and that lasted about 9 months to a year. We got a bunch of gigs and had some interesting musicians, but we realized we needed a lead singer. Then probably later in 1981 we found one and that's when we became [laughs] our new wave band the Sex Execs. Paul: This was in Boston. Sean: That went till about July, 1984. We had a pretty good time playing the bars and colleges of the Northeast.
When did you start working at Fort Apache?
Paul: We started Fort Apache in 1986.
You founded Fort Apache?
Paul: with two other musician friends...
Sean: Then Gary [Smith] showed up in the latter part of '86, early part of '87. Paul: He came in to produce the Pixies and sort of stayed on as studio manager.
Did you guys work on any of those Pixies records?
Sean: Paul did.
Paul: Yeah, I engineered the first one with Gary...We did 18 songs and sent it to Ivo at 4AD and he picked the 8 that are on the first EP... Come on Pilgrim.
What gear was in Fort Apache at the time?
Paul: We had a Neotek Series 1 console, which was pretty old even at the time, but a good board, and an Otari 1/2" 8-track. It was an 8-track studio with an 8-track board. For the Pixies we brought in a 16-track, one of those Tascam MS-16s. But the best thing about the studio was that it was in this huge empty warehouse. We were really being urban pioneers and it was the very early days of urban renewal down there in Roxbury [a rather chancy Boston neighborhood] — we had this huge warehouse and it was just wide open. I mean, it was the size of a football field. It wasn't strictly speaking our space, but we would just drag mics out there. The Pixies album uses a lot of that space. Black Francis was out there screaming in a room that was just so enormous... with one flickering fluorescent light...
What kind of mics were you using?
Paul: We had a couple of good mics — a couple of AKG 412s... like early 414s
Sean: That was probably the key to the overall sound, because we used those for drum overheads.
Paul: Yeah, we would use those on every session, those were like the main mics on everything.
Sean: We also had enough [Sennheiser] 421s.
Paul: And 57s.
Sean: If you have a handful of 421s you can do a lot. You can use them on tom toms, you can use them on guitars.
Paul: We didn't have a lot of great mics, maybe we had a Neumann KM-86.
Sean: That was probably the only other classy condenser mic we had.
Paul: We just basically used those 412s — we had a pair of those and that was it. I think the first tube mic I got was that Sony C-37B.
Sean: That was a great guitar mic. Also a lot of the sessions used AKG C-451Es for drum overheads.
Do you remember any of the outboard gear you were using?
Sean: It's funny, the one compressor that we ended up using quite a lot, was the Brooke Siren stereo compressor. We had one black 1176 and then we had the stereo Brooke Siren.
Paul: It's called a DPR 402. We used that a lot. Sean: If you look back at the original sound of a lot of the Fort Apache stuff a lot of it had to do with the PCM 70.
Paul: We used that a lot. And we had a TC2290 very early on, which we used for delay and for sampling.
Sean: Another one that we used a lot, especially on the Dinosaur Jr. records, was the Roland SRV2000 reverb.
Paul: That was a really good cheap reverb and if you readers can find one, I would get one.
Sean: The thing that we discovered, kind of by accident, was that we could use a lot of SRV 2000 ambience on drums. Because the room itself was kind of clanky, with a lot of cement. We got a lot of the drum sounds by mixing the overheads with a little SRV2000 on the snare.
Paul: It was sort of the sound of the time too. It was the eighties [laughs], if you remember . . .
Sean: Good point! So putting some sort of artificial reverb on a snare was considered acceptable, where as now you can get thrown in jail [laughs].
Paul: It was the time. It was pretty standard to augment the sound.
What were some of the records you did at Fort Apache in its original location?
Paul: Big Dipper's Heavens.
Sean: Three Volcano Suns records.
Paul: Bumper Crop, Thing of Beauty, and Farced, what else did we do?
Sean: . Buffalo Tom... the Flies... Salem 66... Gwar... the Neats... the Turbines... Barrence Whitfield... Treat Her Right... Throwing Muses... Boston was a hotbed of rock!
So then Fort Apache moved — when was this?
Paul: '87. We went to North Cambridge.
What gear did you guys have then?
Paul: We got a Neotek Elan board and an MCI 24-track. We were psyched because we had the 24-track that George Thorogood had recorded a gold album on. We figured if there was one gold record in it there was probably another... and it was true!
Sean: But let me clarify though, we did go to that location in North Cambridge, but we kept the original studio too. Then the original 8-track studio upgraded to 16 tracks. And then that studio eventually moved, in 1989, to another location in Roxbury. That location lasted through 1991.
Paul: The second 16-track studio was in an even worse part of Roxbury — we took over an existing studio and moved our gear in with what was there... that's where we did Uncle Tupelo's first album, No Depression... there were homeless people living in closets in that building... I think we did Sebadoh's Gimme Indie Rock! in there too... which was fitting... You gotta understand though... we were still booking church choirs and Moonie sessions and answering machine message sessions... every day was an adventure.
Sean: It's funny, I was going through a bunch of stuff in my basement and I found some of the original studio calendars... the first Uncle Tupelo record was recorded in the second week of January, 1990. It was done in 8 days.
Paul: 8-track.
That's an incredible album too.
Paul: Thank you.
Sean: I would say to Tape Op readers that both Paul and I are diehard fans of the Otari 8-track. We both own one. I think it's one of the finest analog machines you can buy because of how much sound you get from each track.
Paul: Then in the early '90s we moved the whole operation over to the Cambridge 24-track and that was sort of a golden age. We really focused on major label album work, and the great thing was that that was possible because a lot of the bands we had started out recording were getting major label deals and doing the records at the Fort... the Lemonheads did Lovey for Atlantic... Dinosaur jr. did Green Mind for Sire... Christmas was signed to I.R.S... It was an amazing time... we really felt like we were winning. Then after Nirvana blew the doors open we did an A&R/label deal with MCA which helped us redo the studio with the ultimate Neve/Studer combo. We got a Neve 8078 that was originally in the BBC TV studios in London. It was a custom ordered one and a little on the small side but powerful! That's what we mixed Radiohead's album The Bends and many others on... no automation mind you!
Then there was another Fort Apache?
Paul: That is now the last Fort Apache.
Is the other one closed.
Paul: Yes.
Let's talk about how you work together.
Paul: Well, it's not really defined. It's not really easy to say.
Does one of you have a strong suit or is everything more or less equal?
Paul: I'm more technical. I would fix something if it broke. Slade is more arrangement oriented. He plays keyboards, I play guitar. We are sort of opposite sides of the problem. If you want to get kinky about it, somebody did our astrological charts once — I think it was Courtney [Love] — she had our charts done. It was staggering: we're the complete opposite on the astrological spectrum. It's one of those things where the two opposites are different, but they're the same. That's the key to our partnership if you want to look at it metaphysically. We see opposite sides of the same problem.
Sean: And sometimes you have to make split second decision on how to solve a problem, so...
The clearest image I have of you guys from when we were working on Gerald Collier's album for Revolution, was you guys were mixing and you had the board split in half. One person would nod — you wouldn't even look at each other — and the next thing you know faders were moving and EQ knobs were turning. You were operating completely intuitively.
Sean: I think that's part of the fun actually. We try to get to that level. When it comes to the mixing thing it's interesting that we do split it up. Because what we're doing is combining two parallel universes. We divide the labor in such a way that it usually works out pretty well.
What's the outboard gear that you cannot live without?
Sean: Black-face [Urie]1176s — plug a guitar into one of those and it creates the harmonic overtones that one so desires.
Paul: I would say for me lately it's been the Telefunken V-72 mic preamp.
Sean: Absolutely!
Paul: It's an old tube mic pre — no controls, no volume controls, no nothin'. Man is it smooth.
And for reverb?
Paul: Well, we like an old Lexicon 224, the very first one. It sounds weird by itself.
Sean: Yeah, it's funny — in a track it creates more of an atmosphere than a reverb, especially a digital reverb, even though it is a digital reverb, it was one of the first ones to try to imitate a plate reverb.
Paul: Unfortunately with the early Lexicon stuff you're taking a chance, because it's unfixable if it breaks. I can't recommend that you go buy one, because chances are it won't work forever. We've really used that machine a lot though It's on virtually every mix that we ever did at Fort Apache.
Sean: I also swear by the [Lexicon] PCM 70.
Let's talk about micing drums.
Sean: It's all about phase. Paul: Exactly. Otherwise the drums won't sound natural and they won't sound right.
How do you get phase right?
Paul: You can only listen. We always start with the overheads. We listen and move the overheads until they are pleasing and the drums sound good in them. Then you phase the kick to the overheads and then you phase the snare. And even though it sounds geeky, it actually works to measure from the center of the snare drum to the two overhead mics and get the distance the same. We've done it — it works.
What mics do you use all the way around?
Paul: There's a basic set up. Let's start with the kick. If you can't have a FET-47, you can use an AKG D-112 or a 421, we've used 57s. You can use almost anythingonakick.
