How did you get into being on the other side of the glass?
Necessity. You know, you start out and you try to do all this stuff and you realize you are the mercy of all these people who know a lot more about what you're doing than you do, in terms of recording. And you say, "Well I want to do this." Then you try to figure out how — that's how it started.
When was that?
It started when I started the band — the first thing you gotta do is make a tape of your band. Now in 1969 that was difficult. That was like major hobbyist kind of stuff. So I had to learn how to run a sound-on- sound tape machine. Then I learned a little bit about acoustics, because we'd build these rehearsal rooms and would try to make 'em sound right. Then I started to get frustrated with producers and engineers that I couldn't communicate what I really wanted to do, so I learned about that. Then I wanted to produce records. So I produced our first live album, started to learn about gear, and I learned about recording.
I've heard that you've done some significant research with some gear designers. How far have you taken that?
Oh, we build mic preamps, we build direct boxes, we have worked in chip design — I don't know anything about chip engineering and I couldn't tell you a dang thing you're talking about — but we have ideas and they just use my ears sometimes.
Well that makes sense.
Yeah, exactly. Find out what the end user wants. So I've done a little bit of that, informally. But mostly we build our own stuff. We have only sold maybe three things to acquaintances because so much of what we have is based on vintage components. Can't find those and they're not building them. So we make a mic pre with vintage components and new components but we don't want to be a manufacturer.
Is that just the studio techs?
Yeah, Chris Burns (Bismeaux engineer and tech). It was a journey that began many years ago with a bunch of friends of mine from California, old radio guys. I'd get all this old tube gear. I would go to these radio stations — little ones — I'd say, "Book me in the smallest radio station for an interview." I'd go there and ask if they had any old gear and they had all this stuff. I got a Teletronix LA2, and an original 1176, for free. And I would get these boards. I got one from Memphis, TX, one from Santa Cruz, CA, which are these RCA boards. We took the mic pres [out] and they are just unreal. Learned a little bit about the circuitry and basically used the components, transformers from those old boards and then redesigned a couple of features. Variable impedance, which was one of the ideas we had. We also played with the concept of the power supply. We noted that when we used the power supply from the board, I'm talking about the old radio board that had a 6" x 8" transformer and a big rectifier tube, we found that they sounded better. So we built one with a vari-ac on the output so you can vary the voltage and change the tonality of the mic pre. Then we built in a second circuit to add gain with another 12AX7 but we made sure you can take it out because there is a magic that happens with that original mic pre. But that's what we did, we figured it out, added the features and we've got twenty-some-odd channels of it lying around. We've got a whole collection of RCA mic pres, but the one, the magic one, is one of the ones we don't understand why... well, I know why, it's got these two little cans that make the sound. We also make a DI box out of new components and it's the best.
Is that a tube?
Tube DI. I use Avalons on the road, and to me the Avalon is the best DI box made, and this is better. The only reason we don't take 'em on the road is I can't replace them if they're lost.
Is that something you make to sell?
We've sold one to Bob Dylan's bass player — my old bass player, Tony. He's my pal and tried it live once and the engineer had to have it. It replaced some $2,000 DI he'd had custom-made in New York or somewhere. It's an amazing thing. We have two and they stay in the studio. I do my guitar stuff directly to it because it's a tube amp without the speaker distortion.
Was there anyone who helped you out when learning how to record?
When we started the band 30 years ago we experimented with trying to record like they did in the '30s and '40s.So we did a lot of that and it is all mic placement, duh. You move it here and it sounds different. That was a lot of what we did. Then I became a producer and started doing other things. I had to learn how to do multi-tracking like everybody else was, and I do that too. But the lessons that were learned were that A) magic is magic and you can't replace magic with machines. B) The simplest path from performance to tape is the cleanest and best, if you have good components. In other words, microphone-mic preamp-tape. But live performance is really everything. Years ago we really tried to recreate the sound of those old recordings — we spent a lot of time with just a couple of mics. And I thought it sounded great, really warm, great takes. But those songs came out right about the time Steely Dan started — and don't get me wrong, I love that band and how they sound, but what they were doing was totally different from what we were doing, and the record company didn't like "warm". They called it "muddy".
Is all the Asleep at the Wheel stuff done live?
It's all tracked live then we add or subtract. We use Soundscape.
Something that really struck me about your recordings is how great all the acoustic instruments sound. A lot of people have problems tracking acoustic instruments, much less a whole band of them, but yours sound great. How do you do it?
