Malcolm Burn | TapeOp

It was a beautiful sunlit morning the day I headed down to interview producer/engineer Malcolm Burn. While driving, I couldn't help but ponder what the day had in store for me. Malcolm had invited me on a day he would be recording a string section for a group called Wood (from England) for the Sony label. I knew he was set up in an old turn-of-the-century mansion and that this style of recording is something that he has honed over numerous albums with producer Daniel Lanois [Tape Op #37 & #127].

Even as I approached the front door of this unassuming residential house, I wasn't sure whether I should ring the bell, knock or just walk in, as the last thing I wanted to do was blow a string take. This is not the way to make a good first impression. For all I knew, the strings could be just on the other side of the front door. I took my chances and just walked in. Sure enough, as I entered through the front door breezeway into the main section, there were the string players all set up just to the right of the entrance in what normally would be the dining room. Fate was on my side.

The vibe was very laid back and there was a smoothness and calm to the session quite unlike what I was used to. There is really something to be said for recording in this type of atmosphere. Music takes first chair and the session becomes more about the song than the process. Also, the interaction between players and engineers is immediate, which always eases the communication factor.

I first was greeted by James Maddock from the group Wood, who was hanging on a couch opposite the dining room where the string section was. In front of him, in what would normally be the parlor room were engineer Todd Vos and Malcolm Burn. In front of them lay the large Amek console, Quested and big old Advent speakers, the Studer A80 2" 24-track and racks of outboard gear. Scattered about were a nice-sized guitar and amp collection and an extensive amount of keyboard and MIDI gear and vintage U47s, 67s, C37As, as well as new microphones and the ever present Suzuki Omnichord.

What impressed me most about meeting Malcolm Burn was his passion for music. Not content with just putting notes together or coming up with some "extraterrestrial sound", he has a conviction for the meaning behind the words, behind the music. That "music" can be something much more powerful than most are aware of, or at least in touch with. Burns is an insightful person, true to his convictions and not afraid to share those thoughts in an effort to better the industry. I knew that I was in for a very exciting day. I was not disappointed.

I did a search on the web for you and I didn't turn up many articles.

There aren't a lot of them out there.

Is this the first?

There have been a few, but it's kind of weird. I don't get a lot of calls... The last interview I did for anybody was Mix, about six years ago. The guy called me and wanted to know about this Lisa Germano record called Geek The Girl, and he was kind of disappointed. He said, "Well, you know the record sounds really good and the voice is beautifully recorded. What kind of microphone were you using?" I said that actually I just kind of set up this ADAT in Lisa's house with a little Mackie board. She said she didn't want things too complicated and I set [up] a 57 and her little preamp for her violin and her drum machine. I set it so all she had to do is press a and she could assign that to any one of the eight tracks and that's basically how she did the record. I just kind of came in and did some overdubs and then we mixed it together — and he was very disappointed.

Why? It's a great sounding record.

I know, but I guess he wanted to hear about all these expensive microphones that I used and he couldn't believe... He was like, "You couldn't have just used a 57." I said, "No, no. With Lisa, that's her microphone. She's comfortable with that microphone..."

I think that's one of the most shocking realizations for an engineer. It's tough to have a three, four or five thousand-dollar microphone and not use it. And have a 57 beat it out on a particular voice.

Yeah, well I've been going through that because I've kind of been going through a microphone binge this year.

I saw the Lawson out there. Is that the 251 remake?

That's the L47, which is a really great microphone. I have this friend down in Austin, Mike Cordero, and he has a place called Misty Hill Audio, and I know Fletcher over at Mercenary. I have a pretty good rapport with these guys so if I call them up and say, "Can I try a piece of gear?" they'll send it to me. Just to try it out, and if it's something I like they know I'll buy it. If not, it's no big deal. So I got a couple [of] great microphones sent up from Mike and a couple Soundeluxs sent over from Fletcher, which was cool. But in the process of buying a U67 from this guy over in Belgium, the guy said, "Oh, have you ever heard of these Lawson microphones?" I said, "Never."

Really... you had never heard of Lawson Microphones?

No, I'm not a big gear head. When I read magazines it's, like, Photo Journalism or Amnesty Monthly. I'm not really into gear per se, so when the guy mentioned this microphone I called up [Gene] Lawson and talked to him myself. He was pretty cool, a nice guy, and he said, "Well, you know, I'll send you one as soon as we get it built." [laughs] That Lawson microphone is pretty happening. That and a 57 are some of my favorites.

Can you tell me how you got started in the business?

It's a pretty long story, but quite simply I started out as a songwriter and singer in a band up in Canada called Boys Brigade. We were quite popular in Toronto in the early '80s. At that time there were this couple [of] brothers working in a studio out of Hamilton and one of the guys came out to see our band play 'cause his girlfriend said, "You should check out this band," because he was looking to produce something with a government grant. He offered to produce the record and we, at the time, wanted to go with someone with a bigger name. We were sort of looking for a Nile Rodgers or somebody like that.

Well, it was the '80s.

And this guy showed up. You know, "Who is this guy? What does he know about producing records?" [laughs] And we kind of blew him off [more laughter], and about four or five years later I was dating this guy's sister. We had met on a session and started going out, and Jocelyn Lanois said, "My brother's going to be back in town and he can pick you up at the bus station next time you come into Hamilton." So Dan shows up at the bus station and he looks at me and says, "Oh, hey, you know, I remember meeting you about six or seven years ago, and I really wanted to produce your band. You guys never called me back. How come?"

Nothing like being put on the spot.

And I was, like, "Well , you know, I guess we kind of screwed up, right?" And he says, "I think so." 'Cause we made a record with someone else and I remember wishing that we had worked with him. 'Cause in a lot of ways I liked what I had heard about how he made records, as opposed to the majority of people. His sort of approach to making records seemed like there weren't so many boundaries. There weren't so many cans and can'ts in the recording environment — which I always found kind of annoying that someone would tell me, as an artist, "Well, we can't do that," or, "You're not allowed to," or, "It's just not possible." So when I met Dan I had been doing a lot of demos in my house in Toronto on this little 4-track and at one point I asked him if he'd be interested in hearing some of these things. I knew at the time he had just finished working on the Robbie Robertson record, Robbie's first solo record, and he had already finished The Joshua Tree record. I played him these demos and he went, "Oh, I really like that guitar sound you got, it's really fantastic." He says, "You know, we just finished the U2 record and Edge had been trying to get that sound and we couldn't even get it." I didn't want to not impress him by telling him it was done on a 1981 Strat with a Rockman. [laughs] But I think the point is that he was pretty impressed that I seemed able to achieve quite a lot with a minimum of gear. To this day I've maintained this idea that it really isn't the gear that counts, it's who has the good ideas. It's about originality. It's about looking at things in a way, like always knowing that there is always another way to look at any situation. It's never a closed door, there's always an angle.

Given the sonic textures on your albums, you can hear that sometimes convention can go out the door for a performance's sake.

I'm as big a fan and as big an advocate of what we tend to call "hi fidelity" or "hi-fi" type records. I wasn't a huge Steely Dan fan as a teenager. I know Steely Dan made these beautiful sounding records but their music didn't naturally appeal to me. On the other hand, I remember the very first time I heard the guitar solo that James Williamson played on "Search and Destroy" by Iggy [and the Stooges]. When I heard that guitar solo, that was a big eye opener. I remember friends of mine, when I would play that album at parties would say, "Turn that crap off. What's that bull? That's garbage!" And okay, maybe I didn't know. It didn't matter to me, it made no difference to me from a technical point of view.

And, actually, it sounds great when you go back and listen.

I've talked to Iggy about that record and he told me, "David [Bowie] fucked that record up when he mixed it. I had to do it again myself." [laughs] Who knows what the record would really sound like, I suppose? There's that extremity of the record when the guitar solo came in and it's, like, 50 decibels louder then everything else, and I thought, "You know, I like that."

How important is the pre-production stage to you?

I find pre-production often quite exciting and useful and fun. It's the old-fashioned way of doing it. What I am a huge advocate of not doing is demos. I've learned to loath demos.

Otherwise you're always trying to beat the demo?

Partly, yeah. On this record that I'm doing now with this group called Wood, they had done a demo with a friend of mine named Jay Joyce, and Jay did this beautiful sounding demo...

Would you say that most artists are insecure?

As far as their craft goes, most people I work with are not. I think the insecurity often comes into play when it comes to... certainly the bigger the record company you're dealing with and the more tentative the relationship — particularly with the A&R person — may be. That's where there can be an element of insecurity because you realize the bigger the label you're dealing with, obviously the numbers change. So people are kind of more conscientious of the fact that, "Hey we want to sell millions of records, not just a few to our friends and the rest we'll give away." It's easy to be cavalier when the stakes aren't high, but when the stakes get up there you realize it's your livelihood. It's more a sense of conservativeness.

But don't you feel that you don't deliver the same old thing, that that's what allows you to make your living? That's what they hire you for?

Well, I just hope that, ultimately, I've to some degree managed to achieve what I perceived people that I've looked up to when I was younger and starting out had. For example, when I would go to the record store and see these people's names on them... Like if I saw Brian Eno's [ Tape Op #85 ] name on a record, I instantly thought, "That's got to be good. There's going to be something on that record for sure that's going to attack me, because Brian Eno's not going to work with crap. There's gonna be something." And, sure enough, there's Talking Heads, because Brian Eno's name is on it. Harold Budd, because Brian Eno's name is on it. I would have never bought a U2 record, quite honestly, until Brian Eno produced it and I thought, "Okay, Brian produced it, there must be something to it." The same can be said for a lot of people.

Well, Daniel Lanois brought Emmylou, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson to a whole new generation

Most certainly... Yeah, and I think that Dan's been unfairly treated, to some degree, particularly with his involvement with Bob. Dan is an exceptionally caring producer. He really cares deeply about the people he works with and believes in those people. I think with Bob — I don't think he was like trying to bring him back from the dead or anything — but I think he perceived Bob, like anyone else, as this great artist who somehow had gotten lost along the way. At least in terms of what we call making good records. I would love to see someone like Rod Stewart make a great record again. Some of the great singers, you know they've made amazing records, but it's like — what happened? Like Joe Cocker — he's still to this day one of the best singers ever but... the records! Eric Clapton, all these people out there, surely they're capable. As Neil Young consistently has proven, it doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter if your 55 or 60 or 100, you know if you've got the attitude...

The Neville Brothers murked around for years...

Yeah, the Nevilles, certainly. Emmylou (bless her heart and everything), I think Wrecking Ball and Red Dirt Girl, those are records that put her onto a different plane — got her out of the typical. I always find it surprising when people refer to her as a country singer. I don't even consider Johnny Cash a country singer; or Waylon Jennings or Merle Haggard... George Jones — okay, country is the genre they existed in, but they're just great singers, great artists.

Are you typically hired by the label or by the artist?

It varies. The record that I am currently doing was a result of Emmylou Harris being a friend of the manager of the artist, who was expressing some concerns about trying to find a producer and didn't know where to look. Emmy said, "You should try calling Malcolm. He might be the man for the job." And I sort of took it on that way. The first record I did this year was for a man named Eric Tretaun and that was completely a record company thing, Polydor France.

Do you have a management company?

Yeah, I'm represented by a guy named Sandy Roberton [World's End Management], so some of the work comes through that way.

I think a lot of groups don't realize just how they can get to the producers, and that a lot of young groups are intimidated. They look at a track record like yours and go, "We can't call him." And of course you don't want every baby band knocking at your door.

No, but on the other hand, the second album I did this year was with a guy named Chris Grace — who maybe now is going under the moniker Aphrodisiac Jacket because the record that we did sounded more like a band than a solo record — but, nonetheless, Chris doesn't even have a record deal, but he knew exactly what he wanted. In fact, I don't think he wanted a record deal. He didn't want to have to put up with all the bull.

What frustrates you most during the recording process?

The thing that frustrates me the most is that one of the things I've tried to do is push myself further and harder. Like if something feels that it's satisfying, then I'm almost not satisfied because of that. I don't like to stay in one place and I always think there's a place that you can go that you've not gotten [to] yet. So I constantly push myself to go further and, consequently, I'm always pushing the people I work with to do the same, pushing the limits as they were. What frustrates me are people who are satisfied with second best. I don't know if you remember that scene from Amadeus, near the end of the movie where that guy Salieri is saying, "Mediocrity's everywhere, I am your patron saint." That's the idea, whether it's songwriting or singing or sound. It's always, to me, "How can we go a little further with this? How can we make this song really go all the way?" Or, "How can we make this performance go over the top? How can we make the sound of this record extraterrestrial, as opposed to just acceptable?" When I encounter people who don't operate that way, it's just frustrating to me, because I find it like, what are you doing on this planet? You're just taking up space, breathing our air. 'Cause you're not adding anything, you're not contributing. You're just there, like a potato. And not everybody has to do that, but if you're going to be creative, that word inherently implies a question, a big question mark. Creative equals question. Which means questioning yourself, questioning everything around you, questioning all of it. Now there's a huge difference between questioning and insecurity. They're two different things. Somebody can be questioning and that's not insecurity. If an artist comes in and is constantly questioning what they've done, how good they are or have they done their best, I don't view that person as insecure. I view that person as being really true to themselves. Whereas, when someone comes in and says, "Oh, that was great," or, "That was good enough."

Ooh!

Yeah, that one — "good enough". I just want to level someone when they say that. You know, "Good enough for what?" Don't expect anyone to buy your record if you think it's just good enough.

With the level of artist you work with, do you ever find them saying, "That's good enough"?

I've worked with people who've done that. Yeah, some big people — and I've worked with some big people, I just mean big in the sense of their level of commercial success or fame — I've worked with people who are just starting out that are like... They don't seem to have a level of high expectation or self- esteem or whatever it is. So you kind of wonder like, "If you're not even convinced, how do you expect other people [to be]." You have to feel that what you're doing is the best, most original. You can only ask one simple question, I think. That is, "Would the world be a better place with what we are doing, or would it just be...? [Flattens hands outward] Is what we are doing essential in the world? How would the world be without such and such?"

Isn't that the whole point of recording, in general — to live on through the ages?

I think some people are in it to just make enough money to go play golf [laughs], which is fine. Whatever you want to do. I just feel that you have to be convinced that what you are doing is contributing something positive. Not just making people feel better, providing distraction or entertainment. I like to feel that something I'm involved with one day is going to make some kind of difference in the world, for the better, contributing in a positive way, in a way that I and the people I've worked with are capable of doing, the way somebody else might contribute to writing or painting or filmmaking...

I was just going to ask you about drum mic'ing techniques. I've seen a lot of pictures where you guys tend to have a lot of distant mics with a few close mics for, say, kick, capturing the kit as a whole.

In the past, I liked to kind of capture a whole sound as often as possible. I'm a huge advocate, and when I can, I like to record a whole band live off the floor. Including vocals and deal with all that extra stuff later.

Emmylou's Red Dirt Girl — was that tracked "live off the floor" like you were talking about?

Well, the first track, "The Pearl", was. That was as live as it gets. I think we added two guitar parts and some percussion and some background vocals. That record was kind of a mixture. The Wrecking Ball was a lot of live stuff, almost exclusively. Whereas Red Dirt Girl was some of that, but a few things that are done... I'm trying to think of specific tracks, well, like [on] "Bang the Drum Slowly" she did the vocal and the guitar first and then I just added a whole bunch of things bit by bit.

Building the track as you went along?

Yeah.

But, for the most part, you like to track as a whole?

I'm a huge advocate of recording people together. There's something that happens when people play together, even if it's just two people- one person singing and playing guitar and another person playing an acoustic guitar, whatever. Right now we're doing these string parts. There's no way we can achieve what we are trying to achieve without those four people playing together in the room and we just have two microphones and we're close mic'ing the cello and viola.

And what are you using for the room mics?

I didn't want to peek in there. In this application I generally prefer these ribbon mics. These Coles [4038] I find very good because they put out a lot of volume, and they're not too shrill or trebly sounding. They seem to work quite well.

Quite a smooth mic. And for the close mic?

I think we've got a Sony C37A on one instrument and a new generation microphone I'm a huge fan of, the Audio- Technica 4053. It's a condenser mic that's very good for a multitude of applications. I had asked recording engineer Todd Vos to detail the equipment on the string section. Here's what he had to say: "Two Coles 4038s through the 2-610 (mine). I was compressing these mics with two 1176s very gently, they were dealing with the room along with the first and second violin... I had a [Sony] C-37A on the cello and was amplifying that with an API 512, then squeezing it a bit with my Distressor, 4:1ish... I also had a close mic on the viola, a Beyer M- 160, again an API 512 and an Innovonics 201 holding the dynamics together... My desire was to get the whole ensemble with just the 4038s, but the first violin was cranking in that room and the viola parts were either too indistinct or the player just wasn't digging in enough, so... we adapt."

How about a lead vocal microphone?

The two dynamic microphones that I generally like to use are either a 57 or a Beyer M88. I find [the M88] very useful for certain singers. As far as a tube mic, I'm an old U47 person. That's my workhorse. And the reason I ended up getting a Lawson is because I was looking for a stand-in for the U47.

You feel it's that close?

It's not really that close, but it still sounds great and that's all that matters. What I find the Lawson great for is it's a very durable microphone that you can kind of abuse a lot. Or maybe that's just 'cause I'm less concerned about wrecking a two thousand dollar microphone as opposed to an eight thousand dollar microphone. [laughs] We used one on a singer recently that we couldn't get a good sound on any other microphone. He had an unusual voice — a good voice, but an unusual voice. Somehow we found the Lawson provided us with all the sonic quality that we wanted, but also an openness that we were losing with all the other microphones because we had to use so much compression. The Lawson sounds great when you compress the hell out of it.

What are you banging into? An LA-2A?

An 1176 usually using an API 512 preamp or a Calrec, a Brent Averill-faced Calrec preamp.

So you don't lock yourself in and say, "I have to use a 1073 or an API," whatever. You'll use just what's available.

Well, yeah, going back to what I said earlier. I think someone who has good ideas... Look, I don't mean to be boastful, but I know if you put me in an environment where all I had was a two-track Akai reel- to-reel tape machine, this stereo microphone [points at the Sony stereo condenser mic I'm using to record the interview] and a guitar, if you said, "Go make an interesting record," I know I could. I could make something that you would find as satisfying as anything. I know I can do that.