Mark Trombino: Jimmy Eat World, Drive Like Jehu, Blink 182

No matter what the budget or situation, Trombino draws out amazing performances and records that really draw you in. He delivers the results needed to make a record work and has worked with great bands, including The Starting Line, Drive Like Jehu (for whom he also played drums), Blink 182, Finch, Weston, Sugarcult, Creeper Lagoon, Rocket From The Crypt and the Poor Rich Ones.

His hard work over the years paid off this year with the success of Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American, which has become the biggest "alternative" record of the last year. He has worked on all of that band's records, including Clarity, one of my favorite reference CDs of the past few years. Just listening to the productions on these three records, you can see he comes up with appropriate, well done sonic approaches to reinventing a band in an interesting way each time.

Tell me about the new Jimmy Eat World album. You started tracking it at Cherokee with an API board, I assume?

Yeah, we tracked it at Cherokee. At the time they didn't have the API board. They had a Trident. It was probably my favorite tracking room in town... They recently just swapped it out for an API. I haven't been there since they changed it, but I am a little afraid because I was so into that Trident... The room itself was really good. It was one of the best sounding rooms in L.A. that I have found. It's got the size, but it's not cavernous- sounding. Playing drums there feels so good.

Are you still playing drums when you go in and get drum sounds?

Well, I mean I fuck around a little, but I am not really playing very much anymore.

Did you do all the basic tracks there?

Well, no. We had some money to spend, but not a lot of money.

The story goes that the band wasn't on a label then when you were recording. Did you do it on spec?

Yeah. Well, I had done two records with those guys, and I felt really brotherly. I had been hearing demos that Jim had been sending me, and I was in love with the songs and wanted to get involved some way. We decided that we would just make the record and either find someone to release it or they would put it out themselves. One way or another we were going to make it, and we were going to do it right. Fortunately, they had developed a fan base from their days on Capitol and were able to tour and bring some money in. We didn't have to cut too many corners. We were able to go to a place like Cherokee to cut the drums and to save money, go to a cheaper studio to do the overdubs. We went to a place called Hard Drive and spent a month-and-a-half to do the overdubs, which was pretty luxurious.

That's probably why those performances are so tight on that record.

Yeah, well, we had the time to spend. And then we were able to go to a place like Ecstasy and mix it and spend two weeks to mix it.

Did you mix the record from Pro Tools to the SSL board there?

Yes, we mixed through the board but that studio also has a Neve. I need to track and mix on a Neve. I have tried an SSL, but I needed to go back to the Neve. I have also learned what kind of rooms I am into. I am really into a medium/small control room.

I heard that you mixed the new Finch record in Pro Tools?

Yeah, I did. That was my first Pro Tools mixing experience.

So what did you think?

Well, I don't know. I am pretty happy with the way it sounds. One advantage that I had was that I could spend a lot of time mixing it. I didn't have any projects going on while I mixed that thing. So I would work on it for four or five hours and make a CD and drive around or fuck around and stuff, bring it back it the next day and tweak it a little more. I didn't have to get a song a day done. There was no pressure. It was a really cool experience.

Once you get fatigued you can run. Do you prefer to work that way now?

No. Sonically I think the record could sound better, but for the budget I am really pleased with it. I wouldn't do it if I had all the money in the world to spend. I would definitely go back to a console.

And recently you mixed The Starting Line at home, but it sounds a lot different then the Finch record. Do you attribute this to lessons learned from the Finch record?

I also recorded it in a different studio, which I think contributed a lot to the way it sounds. The control room there is nicer and translates better outside of the studio. But yeah, I also learned a lot mixing the Finch record that I applied to the Starting Line. I definitely didn't squash the Starting Line as much as I did the Finch record. I think the sounds were better, so I didn't feel that I needed to.

You do both major label and independent records. You've had the luxury of overdubbing for a month-and-a-half now. What do you do when you have to get the record down fast? What are the first corners to cut?

First thing is the number of songs I am attempting to record. When I have a couple of months to spend, I will record, like, 15 and then cut three. But when I do smaller projects, I am only going to record what's on the record to save time. This is a little more intense in the pre-production. You [have] got to know what the good songs are and cut the songs early. I have done records in six days and done them in three months and it doesn't matter. It's never enough time and it always gets done.

When you go into pre-production, what are you looking for?

The thing I am looking for is that the songs are finished. I am really listening to the drums because that is what I record first. [I] make sure that they are all arranged. It's also figuring out the tempo of the songs, because most times I record to a click, so you have to make sure it feels good.

So with pre-production there is a tendency nowadays to go in and really screw with the songs as well as the performances. Do you stick to the performance? Will you go as far as messing with melodic composition?

Naturally, I want to get the best performance. But if I have to go in and edit, I am not afraid of doing it, nor am not morally opposed to it. But I do not like to rely on it. Sometimes I have relied on it a bit too much, just to keep it moving along. I don't want to have to keep overdoing it.

When I hear your records, they are some of the tightest records I have heard in recent times by far, yet they still sound natural and have good feeling. Are you doing anything different than everybody else?

I don't know. I don't know what everyone else is doing. I don't really talk to other people that do this. I am totally self-taught and have just picked shit up along the way.

In that case, what was your education like as an engineer?

Well, I can attribute how I was able to get started by being in Drive Like Jehu. All [of] my initial work had nothing to do with my skills or anything like that. I was able to track bands that were into that band. I was also really lucky, because when I first started doing it at the time in San Diego there were a lot of bands there, and there was a good sized label putting out all these records.

Which was?

Headhunter/Cargo. It was just kind of like good timing for me, and I found this really cool studio that wasn't getting used very much. So I kind of had my own place, which was a studio called Big Fish.

They were just vacant at the time?

Yeah. This guy built this amazing studio for himself on his property and he built [it] from the ground up to be a studio and it wasn't like a converted garage or something like that. It was awesome. It had a great console and a great mic selection, really cool woody sounding room, but it was barely getting used at all. He wasn't really doing anything himself. So I found it and Jehu wanted a place to work in San Diego when we were working on Yank Crime.

But you didn't record the whole thing there, correct?

No, we did drums at West Beach and then we came down to Big Fish and just finished it up there. We were going to mix it, but actually just wound up re- recording everything. I just fell in love with the place and asked the owner if I could bring some bands in.

You were kind of doing this on freelance basis with bands coming to you and not really getting studio work?

Bands would come to me. Bands weren't going to Big Fish since it was a private studio. I was just working there. It was strictly because of Jehu. Thank god for Drive Like Jehu! [laughter]

It's funny though. Are the bands that you do now still Jehu fans? Because they don't really have a Jehu sound. Sometimes you can hear that cool dissonant guitar sound and that racy feeling, but that's all I hear...

It started bumming me out because after a while I thought it was all about Drive like Jehu. Eventually the bands I was working with never heard of Jehu and I was really excited about that because they were coming to me because of my studio work.

[At] what point did that start to happen?

I don't really remember! I remember the first band that didn't know of Jehu, but I can't remember their name now. I guess it wasn't that special after all. [laughter] But it felt important at the time.

You're credited with playing instruments on the records. What usually preempts you from stepping in? How does that affect your objectivity towards the records?

What I do is usually the stupid stuff like tambourine on a project, or some keyboard thing. I am not an integral player. It's usually just like icing at the end of the project.

What are you using for the electronic synth-type stuff?

I have a little Mini Moog, synth plug-ins like Virus, that Pro 52 thing. That's it. I mostly use Virus, because it's easy! [laughter]

You said that you travel with your Pro Tools system. Is there anything else you travel with?

I have some mic pres I travel with. A pair of Neve 1073s because a lot of the overdub studios I go to don't have much. I use a Tube Tech MP1A for vocals. I really like the Tube Tech stuff. I have their stereo compressor, the CL-2A. I really like that for drums.

I read in an old interview that when you are doing drums, you can't imagine using any mics other than a D112, some 421s, a 57 for the snare and a DPA 4011s for overheads.

I am not picky when it comes to mics. I still use all those. The only things that change are the overheads, which depend on what the studio has. There was a 4011 at Big Fish. When I did the Gob record, I used a pair of Telefunken 251s, which I liked a lot.

What kind of equipment do you like to see at a studio?

Just a Neve. I don't really track with compressors, so that's not a big deal.

Since you track to both tape and Pro Tools, do you find that you have to use different types of gear when you track with Pro Tools?

Well, I am using tape less and less. I am not really a gear freak or an analog freak either. Don't get me wrong — I am all about getting the best sounds possible. With tape on a record I did recently, we used a 16-track, 2" tape — the best you can get. But I also tracked it with Pro Tools. We got the best we could get from the two. At the end of the day, I could tell which was tape, but the differences were so negligible.

Did you scrap the tape?

Yeah.

You don't sound so happy about that.

Well, it's not really the Tape Op philosophy. [laughter] Maybe somewhere down the line the use of tape can make things better, but I still also mix to tape. I hear the benefit and it's good.

I am always very impressed with the vocal performance on your records. How do you push people to get those results? I mean, let's be honest — people aren't on all the time.

I will record, depending on the budget, like, six to nine takes. I don't have the singer sing the entire song many times. I have them sing the verses individually and then the chorus. Then I put it all together. If that doesn't work, I do it again until it's done. I usually just poke them a little bit and tell them what I want.

Do you ever use pitch-altering software?

I use it. I don't use it hardcore. I don't use the auto mode in Auto-Tune. I do it very lightly and by hand. I try to just kind of tuck things in a little bit. I am not trying to correct pitch. I find [that] if you use it subtly, it helps the vocals sit in the mix better. I don't want robots singing on the record.

So you have recently been hired as a mix engineer as well. Since you are used to a high caliber of performances, how do you cope when the performance is not up to standard when it comes to a mix? I tend to have a really rough time with mixing records where the perfor- mance is retarded.

It's a relatively new thing to be hired to mix. I have the attitude that when I am there, I am just hired for the mix. Some people want you to add shit and correct things. I mean, I am still producing records and I wouldn't want people to add shit to mine, so I just mix. Maybe when I stop producing I will see the need to add things during the mix.

So when you have a suggestion for a song and the band is hesitant, what are some techniques you use to get your point across?

I try to be as accommodating as possible with the bands I work with. If they have an idea that they would like to try out, I will pursue it until either we all love it or agree that it's not working. All I ask in return is that they do the same for me. I have ideas in my head that very often sound really lame when I hear them played back to me, but until I hear them I think they're the best thing I've ever thought of! Anyway, usually once something is recorded, both the band and I agree that it's good or bad. It's rarely an issue once we're both hearing the same thing. It's only when we're talking hypothetically that we'll disagree, simply because we're not really thinking of the same things, if that makes any sense.

So who is making records you are fond of these days?

Ken Andrews' work on that Blinker The Star record is really good. I like Tchad Blake's work, Don Gilmore's work on the Linkin Park record... It's perfect in the way that a Backstreet Boys record is.

That record's mixes translate on more systems better then any major label record I have ever heard before. That is a really slick and perfected record. What is the most important ethic/philosophy you have towards production?

Just to let ideas happen. Don't let anyone kill an idea before it's been fully realized. Oh, and to try and do at least one thing on an album that makes you feel uncomfortable, that pushes your personal limits of what's hip or cool or whatever. I like that a lot. It's good to let your guard down sometimes.