Alan Sparhawk: Record at church, mix with Tchad

Perhaps one of the world's current greatest bands is Low, who hail from Duluth, Minnesota. The trio, consisting of the married team of Alan Sparhawk (guitar, vocals) and Mimi Parker (percussion, vocals) with Zak Sally (on deep bass), create hauntingly beautiful nouveau-American gothic music. It is a mix of some unique desert-sparse folk draped by some clever and eloquent vocal harmonies. In a live se?ing, they attract the entire spectrum of music listeners and are given utmost attention — to the point where one can hear the proverbial "pin drop". If you haven't heard of Low, (you might even have heard their rendition of "Little Drummer Boy", from their Christmas record, which was used for a commercial by the Gap), then you simply should. Alan Sparhawk is also an accomplished recording engineer, and he has committed to tape some really amazing sounds and textures for other artiÌs as well, including his other band, The Black Eyed Snakes.

Can you describe sound/music as an intro to those who don't know about Low?

We are a 3 piece that plays mostly quiet, slower, minimal music. Someone once described us as a cross between Simon & Garfunkel and Joy Division. A lot of people make a big deal about how slow and quiet we are, but I hope there is more to it than that!

You recorded this new album, Trust, in a church?

It's this old Catholic church that they were going to tear down about 15 years ago. Some group of people from the community got together and basically saved it, and turned it into this non-profit community space that, up until now, was basically maintained for weddings and local concerts put on by colleges — like choral concerts. Also, there's one of the last-of-its-kind pipe organs in the place that they've maintained really well — there are two of this particular model that exist in the world today. We had some equipment and they had this interesting place to record so we gave them a call to see if they were interested in some sort of a long-term/temporary rental situation. They agreed and they let us have the crying room.

What's the crying room?

I guess it's something common in Catholic churches — a room off to the side or to the back that's enclosed that has windows in it so that you can still see what's going on. It's for mothers and their crying babies. It's great because it's kind of soundproofed, the shape is irregular, and there are windows — so it made a perfect control room. We moved in this 24- track machine and board, pooled some resources from other people in town, and there we were. Our friend, Tom Herbers, engineered on the tracking for this new record and we were very lucky to have him there. Tom is used to working with us on various projects over the years so he knows our pace, too. I think it would have been impossible to do ourselves because with the studio being in an unconventional space, there's a bit more setting up. You can't just jump every time you have an idea to put down. Plus, we were the first project to record there, so there's always kinks to work out. Tom and our friend Eric Swanson would usually stay behind every night, after we were done, fixing and soldering stuff.

And I take it the church is rather large?

Yeah. It's very large — high ceilings — very ideal for ambience. A cappella choral stuff is really stunning, especially. It's a natural, built-in "large hall reverb". At the same time there are also bathrooms, little corner rooms, and changing rooms, so it kind of turned out perfect. We did most of the stuff in the bigger room with ambient mics. You can hear cars going by on the record. We also did some tracking at a "real" studio in Minneapolis called Third Ear, then shipped it all off to England to get mixed with Tchad Blake [ Tape Op #16 ].

And that was at Real World...

I think he went out there to start working originally with Peter Gabriel and he ended up getting married to one of the engineers there. Now they have a son and everything — meanwhile he is still working on the new Peter Gabriel record. It's quite a facility. It's kind of funny going from our little thrown-together studio to that joint, that's for sure.

So how did you benefit from mixing there? Was it because of Tchad or...

I've kind of talked with him on and off for the last few years and the original plan was when I heard he was going to speak at the Tape Op convention, I thought I'd somehow get him over to Minneapolis to mix our record, but then he said he wasn't going to do the conference and that it'd actually be cheaper if we came out to England and did it there. He said he'd talk to whomever to try to get us a deal on the rate. It was still expensive but we did it in only five days. I guess it was a week where it wasn't so busy there. I think he bent the rules a little to make it work out, but I don't want to get anyone in trouble...

But if he likes the music I am sure people will go out of their way to do it.

Right. I explained that we are on an independent label [Kranky] and we sell only so many records and that we spend only so much money on making a record. He said he could work with that. But yeah, I'm a big fan of him so it was kinda cool.

So what did you intend for the album to sound like, having Tchad on board to mix? I read a lot about his recording methods, but what about his mixing style?

Well for one, it would have been interesting even more to have him as a producer, as he does things like use ratty guitars during tracking and saying, "Let's put this shaker here" on the second verse kind of thing. But, it was interesting doing it this way — he actually said when we went to track to over-track. He said if we have an idea for something, whether we're sure it's going to work or not, to go ahead and track it so that when we mix we'll have options.

More is better than less.

Kind of "more is more", actually.

Right. Because he's probably used to doing 48+ track albums that he's been doing for almost 20 years whereas people on our level are kind of like used to maximizing 16 tracks efficiently.

Yeah. Originally, I was saying, "Let's keep this simple." I was interested in doing it on 1" 8-track, which is kind of fun because it would have been a challenge to get everything pared down. And he was like, "No, no, no. Do it on 24 - do a lot of stuff and we'll pick and choose." I was surprised — with the mixing — you know, he had the SansAmp and the cheap compressors that he was abusing and weird stuff like that — which I knew about him by reading articles and stuff. All of that came into play and it was interesting because I thought it might not have been that different if he had tracked it because it seems to me, at least by the way he was mixing, that he was working with basic clean tracks and that his "thing" was in the mixing. The first time I met him, (the guys from Soul Coughing introduced me to him while I was in L.A. for something) there was a lot of funky things going on — tubes with mics going into them and weird keyboards. But now it seems to me he takes whatever is on the track and kinda messes with it. I was really surprised to see how much time he actually spent with EQ and stereo placement — it seemed to be the thing that took the most fine-tuning — getting everything out of the way from each other.

Your sound seems to be sort of built-in — you have a lot of spatiality to your own guitars as it is.

As far as stuff that Tchad's ever done, I think the thing that's going to make it different for people who follow what he does, is that he still used all the ambient tracks we had, and they're quite spacious reverb-wise because of the room. So it's weird to hear this recording that at times is distinctly Tchad Blake but at the same time has this reverb going on. It's odd because he's, in the past, built his sound pretty much on an anti-reverb thing. [laughs] I thought he'd immediately shut down all the ambient tracks and not use them but he ended up using them quite a bit. It's kind of weird.

Did you use sampling at all on this new album?

Pretty much everything is a natural sound. For example, on the song "Amazing Grace", we close- mic'd a piano and kinda just banged on it along to the previous rhythm track. It sounds like a tank sneaking up on you. I guess some would think it's a manipulated sample because it's so foreign sounding. There were a few things that Tchad manipulated so much in the mix that they ended up becoming whole new sounds. It was usually some sort of distortion. On "John Prine" there is a bell and then a distorted echo of the bell that sounds like a whole other instrument coming in.

Any tips on how to record quiet passages efficiently still with some power to them?

Some of our early recordings were perhaps a struggle to get enough signal on tape. Kramer used compression, I think — but after doing a lot of shows we kind of were able to adjust our technique so we could get a consistent level on the vocals. It's one thing to sing quiet, but if you work at it, you can still get things across pretty well. It's in technique. Mimi and I have used Shure Beta 58s live for a while — they work pretty well. A lot of it is also what you are playing behind the vocals — you have to make room. For the past few records, there's usually a little compression when tracking, but never much. You can't beat a good mic and a good preamp.

The previous two albums — Things We Lost In The Fire and Secret Name — were recorded by Steve Albini [ Tape Op #87 ]. What was his deal in compared to say Tchad's? More natural, sans tweaking...

Well, there's a little bit with Steve's methods, but you know, he does have an ear for mixing and knowing when to do a slight adjustment for a subtlety, but Steve strives more for capturing the right sound — with the mics and the older gear and what not. When he is tracking, he is tracking with more of the end product in mind. Tchad is more like screw-around-with-it-until-it- happens. I don't know — the idea of us bringing our own tracks to Tchad completely makes sense whereas there would really be no point if you brought it to Steve. [laughs] Why are you using Steve Albini unless you can take advantage of his knowledge of mic'ing and capturing the sound? They're definitely opposites. That was weird. We'd been used to Steve for a while here and to hear someone start EQ'ing something drastically made us look at each other and try to remember when we did that ourselves, which was a long while ago. Steve's really great to work with. You work at an efficient pace with him, which is logical really for anyone when it comes to recording. He can work really fast. If we had an idea going, he was right there. Steve's strength is in his knowing the detailed ins and outs of his equipment along with a keen ear for what we were trying to do. He could speak our language and know what we were trying to shoot for right away, almost better than we knew ourselves. In fact, I know that only now, just having been responsible for this one.

When you first started out, you had a couple of releases produced by the legendary Kramer.

Oh Kramer — yeah. He kind of "found" us, got us started and got us going as a band. He made sure our records were put out and he took us on for nothing and recorded us because he liked what we were doing.

Was he pretty much just like a "record" kind of guy or was he...

No, he was more into mixing. As long as he had some basic tracks. In fact, he would often just have an engineer or an assistant do the tracking and he'd step in when it came time to mix. And he was into twisting things around — very psychedelic with a lot of reverb and drastic EQ'ing — very watery, which is what our first few records sound like. He was really great. He doesn't record many people these days — I hear he's in New York and is making movies.

Would you consider your albums to be "headphone listening" albums? There are a lot of odd subtleties when listened to very closely.

I always liked records that had those kind of subliminal things going on, so it's fun to put them in our own stuff — it gives something extra to the few people who listen that close. On the first track there are a couple shakers and someone rubbing their shirt. A good large condenser with a class-A preamp is the best mic'ing technique for shirt-rubbing. A lot of times those subtle things are accidents, like talking between verses, cars going by, a bad tube in the chain, etc.

And you've done some great records yourself at your home set up — called 20 (Degrees) Below — like your Christmas record and those amazing Jessica Bailiff records out on Kranky.

Yeah, I think her records are great. She was very open to experimentation. It was just Jessica and I and that was great because I was just working with one person. It was kind of this attitude of finding out how far we could take some of this stuff. Anyway, 20 Below is just basically a studio in the basement. I built some walls and sectioned off a little control room with a window. [laughs] I used to work at this arena in town and I grabbed a couple pieces of shattered hockey board glass they were throwing away. Anyway, I keep a lot of weird stuff, keyboards and such. I have an Otari 5050 1/2" 8-track, which is a great machine, and I have a lot of broken effects units and pedals.

It's great to keep semi-operational gear around. It certainly wards off any repetitious or generic sounds.

Yeah — they make a weird sound and if I fix them they wouldn't make that weird sound anymore. Its like 20 ten-dollar things that each make their own really strange sound, instead of one expensive piece of gear that does the standard stuff. I've had some pretty good mics for a while — Neumann tube mics, a Crane Song dual preamp, and a Mackie board I should replace. Not tons of stuff. I don't know anything about how to run a compressor or an EQ but...

Well it's best to not know too much. Rules are too constricting.

Right. There's risks involved in both sides, though. When you don't know what you're doing, you just kind of jump in and hope that accidentally things will work out. You might fall on your face horribly a lot but you're also going to, somewhere along the line, stumble upon something that is going to exceed anything you can do if you knew what you were doing. It's kind of like, "This sounds boring — let's mess with this."

You three have a wonderful grasp on playing with ambience — there's good drama and feel. So do you write songs based off of sounds?

Sometimes. I think a lot of the time, once it's all done, the elements in each song are essential. Most of the songs that we write are songs that you'd work out on an acoustic guitar. Then we figure out how we should record it. At least in our mind, once it's done things are not interchangeable. If there is a floor tom hit, chances are we spent way more time talking about it, trying to decide what should happen there and how hard it should be hit — much more than anyone wants to hear about. [laughs] We're very deliberate.

So you are mixing as you are writing — laying out a good guideline so that anything that happens afterwards, should you choose to experiment, is likely positive and goes beyond.

Yeah. Most of the time when we go in to record we pretty much know how we want each song to sound. Sometimes that can be good and bad. In fact, it was kinda weird this time with Tchad — he was like, "I don't wanna hear the tracks until we get them here and put them up [through the console] and I'm ready to mix them". So we talked as a band, figuring we had to be prepared for him to be throwing in some stuff we hadn't thought of. Try to avoid thinking something was going to sound a certain way because maybe he was going to alter it completely. I wanted to keep open to that and I was surprised how much I didn't have to confront that. There weren't as many contrary ideas that Tchad came up with as I thought there would be. I was thinking he was going to, for example, take the drums totally out and keep the shaker and keyboard. He knew what we were shooting for without having to say anything, so it was just a matter of details from thereon.

So what other collaborations have you done? There is the In The Fishtank series with the Dirty Three out on the Konkurrent label, which has that superb cover of Neil Young's "Down By the River".

The Fishtank series is by this label in Holland who'll have bands that they like just come in — well originally it's just one band come in — for 2 days in the studio out in the countryside in Holland to do whatever they want, theoretically to shoot for an EP's worth of material. They asked us to do one and we had just actually finished recording Things We Lost in the Fire so we were worn out on recording, so we thought of something different to do. The Dirty Three were going to be in Europe at the same time so we called them and ended up collaborating, without preparation. Once we were all there, someone would have an idea, we'd screw around with it, and put it on tape. Luckily, good things happened as we were under the gun. I'd rather be under the gun than have a half a million dollars and 2 years to make a record. I think you guys did an article about The Ex recording in Holland — it's that place. Just a farm with a simple 24-track studio in one of the buildings. The engineer is named Zlaya and he was great. It was nice to be a bit looser with structure and playing. We are normally a very "intentional" band — not a lot of jamming and off- the-cuff stuff. It serves us well, though there are times I wish we could be more open to that. Playing with the Dirty Three just takes you out there — they are very inspiring. Also, it's nice to write under the gun like that, sometimes. You need to throw a wrench in the machine from time to time.

And you've worked with Spring Heel Jack. ..

Yeah. Mim and I did some singing with them. They're more like sample-based electronic music from England. It was fun, but a very different experience. Other than that, I get opportunities to record other people. I've got this other band called the Black Eyed Snakes that's kind of just a distorted punk- blues. We recorded a record last summer, which I released on my own label [Chairkickers]. That was fun — just all the 8-track and pretty much distorted everything. Sticking mics up and overdriving the preamps or running the drums through a Marshall battery-powered amp. The band is two guitars, a drummer and a percussion player. I sing through this bullet mic — it's blues but it sounds more like The Fall sometimes. It's fun to record because it's just abuse and blowing things up.

It has quite an authentic dirty, aged sound to it, and perhaps the most authentic out there when it comes to recreating an old sound. Do you see yourself recording more — like other bands/artists?

I don't know, actually. [laughs] I don't think I could see myself sitting in a studio all the time. It's fun once in a while. There's a lot of musicians out there, and you're in a band for a while and you start getting interested in recording and soon it just evolves into running a studio and I don't think I could do that. I just can't listen to music as much as those people do. Once in a while I will record — like Jessica Bailiff, or I just did this band called the Rivulets, or the Winter Blanket — I put both those records out. The equipment used to record the Low record is still installed in this church and some other people have been taking advantage of it and doing some recording. Hopefully it will become permanent.

So you planted a new seed in the area.

I don't know — there are other people in town — we just pooled our resources together, basically. Now we're kind of taking advantage of each other. There's a great music scene here in Duluth, so the studio will hopefully add to it — maybe even bring people from out of town. Next, I need to learn how to play the guitar. That's my goal this summer- to learn how to play. I'm constantly amazed at how many situations there are where I just can't seem to play it, though I've been playing this thing nearly every day of my life for the last 15 years, but oh well.