David Minehan played guitar, sang and wrote songs for the Boston punk band The Neighborhoods from 1979-1992. After the 'Hoods he played guitar with Paul Westerberg on the 14 Songs tour and even filled in for Brad Whitford of Aerosmith. At his Wooly Mammoth Sound Studio in Boston, which he shares with musician/producer Dave Westner, he has recorded many great New England artists including Scruffy the Cat, Salem 66, Gang Green, The Freeze, Mark Cutler, The Figgs, The Shelley Winters Project, The Gentlemen, Lucky 57, Jabe, The Kickovers, Asa Brebner, Robin Lane and the Chartbusters, Natalie Flanagan and Willie "Loco" Alexander and the Boom Boom Band.
You told me you started out on the Tascam 144. What was next?
I went to a 4-track reel-to-reel, a Tascam 3440 1/4", with the accompanying board. I was recording demos for bands to present to producers and label people, but the bug, the bite, was so severe by then. I remember getting the first ADAT and being so bummed out because the analog 1/4" sounded so much better.
When was this?
Late '80s. The digital age had come upon us. But I was using drum machines to write songs and stuff, and it still was a bit of a cocoon of home recording. I think that when people start to make a room happen and record real drums and stuff like that, it's such a baptism by fire. People don't realize it's a lot harder to make it all fit together when you're a novice. You might have the right mics and a room that sounds decent — but if you don't understand phase relationships or overlapping instrument frequencies they can really create a dangerous overload of certain frequency ranges, if you don't sculpt them properly. I remember being very daunted by that.
So you got the ADAT. What was your next purchase?
After that I found this combination rehearsal space and recording studio up on the top floor of this building, where these guys had built a sort of control room. It was just a glorified rehearsal space, one room, but I found places where I could hide amps in between wall structures and stuff. That was my first foray into recording other people. And that was with the quintessential Mackie and a pair of ADATS. Again, apologies to all my guinea pig clients. Sometimes it just clicked and sometimes it just didn't. But I felt so at home. I got to work with bands, and after a while some of the records I was doing started to come out, like the Freeze and Gang Green. I was like, 'Wow, you can make a big noise!' I remember this guy Mark Cutler, the genius of Providence, who writes 200 songs a year and they're all good. I got to do a record with him and it was just so much fun.
Do you have any pieces of gear or mics that you can't live without?
I have a pair of Neve 1064s that are just so trustworthy. And I have to say that in this world, Manley makes new gear that really works. I bought a Massive Passive, and holy shit! I bought an SE C-2 compressor, it's a one rack space, kind of like the electronics of two 1176s crammed into one. It's a stereo compressor with Neve output trans- formers, so you get kind of a Neve line out thing going on.
What about your board and tape machines?
I got the best I could afford, a Neotek Elite. It's clean, flexible, very dependable, the EQ is damn good, as well as the preamps. I still try to print on analog first most times. It's an MTR-90 Otari, it's a workhorse. When I work just in the analog domain, it never fails to be like, "Wow, this sounds so nice!" And I'm a latecomer to the digital world, but I have to say, with Pro Tools and the automation — it is nice to work on a mix and sit back and listen to the mix when it's going down instead of a physical obstacle course with different people manning mutes and fader levels and sends.
And you mix down to 1/2"?
Half-inch, yeah. That's another one of my favorite pieces of gear. It's an Ampex 102 1/2", it's the flagship of 1/2" mastering decks out there.
How do you like to record drums?
I wish I had the absolute fearless commitment to say, "You know what, let's make these drums three tracks and a couple stereo." But I tend to over-record for the safety net factor. I will commit three mics to one kick. Inside an ATM-25 is my favorite. Outside, away from the blast hole, I'll try a Royer 121. And the NS-10 speaker as a microphone combined does really work — it's really hefty on the sub-octave shit. After that it's pretty standard — Beta 57 on the top of the snare, AKG-451 underneath the snare. I love 451s for overheads. Although a stereo Royer SF-12 for overheads for the right kind of drummer can't be beat. I love the Stapes mics, too. They're omnis, and small, and they rock on room sounds, guitars — they're just uncanny. They're a little fizzy, but that's kind of what you want on cymbals and stuff. At $200 for a matching pair you can't go wrong with them. And I try not to compress much to tape. But room sounds I'm not afraid to let a stereo 1176 situation make the room mics kind of spice it up a little going to tape. There're a lot of old school applications that I still feel comfortable with. If it means putting a t-shirt over a snare drum for a song, or the guy barely hits a cymbal, ever, so when he does you're allowed to compress it so much it goes, "Bwhooooshhhhh!" I still feel like there's so many old school records that have that stuff that still sound so modern and juicy.
Like the drum sounds on Led Zeppelin records!
Right. They said, "You know what? Ambience is a good thing." Everyone else in the '70s was trying to kill any ambience. Ambience didn't re-emerge until U2's Boy record. And that record caught everybody by surprise because it was such a thumb to the nose of the bastions of dry drums. It just exploded. Sonically that record was just like, holy shit — the genie just left the bottle. And it's just ambience.
What about Pro Tools? Do you have any favorite plug-ins?
I bought the HD system, and everyone in the world seems to have cracked versions of plug-ins for the Mix Plus, so they really made that not easy to do. I do use some of the Bomb Factory and Focusrite things all the time. And there's one reverb that I bought, called Altiverb. It's an impulse response type of reverb, meaning that they recorded rooms all over the world. Like Bill Putnam's studio rooms, where the Beach Boys recorded vocals, and concert halls in Europe and stuff. And the thing's uncanny, it's gorgeous. That was a great purchase. I hope to get more, it's just like, 'Is it a mic this month or a plug-in? Or is it a slow month and I can't afford anything?'
What about amps and instruments?
You can't go wrong with a Vox AC-30 and I'm still finding that lots of the preeminent things — a Tele, a Strat, a Les Paul, a P Bass, a Jazz bass — you know, right away it's good. I've got a couple of B-15s, which always sound great. I've got a real mint B-3 with a Leslie speaker and it's the real deal. Throw the Royer SF-12 on that and you're in business.
Is that an old analog synth on top of the Leslie?
Yeah, that's an old ARP Odyssey. It's a beast but it still sounds better than a lot of the digital ones.
And you have a couple of drum kits?
Yeah, we have a Yamaha and a Sonar kit. I still love it [the Sonar], the toms are just mammoth sounding. I think it's worth mentioning Carl Plaster at this point; he's helped so many people get good drum sounds and understand the importance of tuning drums properly. I can't say enough about Carl Plaster, how he's helped so many records sound great in this town. So again, if you're curious, watch the experts. You're gonna learn a lot. Always keep your ears open. If you see something going on that looks wrong, don't question it, it might be right.
How do you see the role of a good producer?
It's a varied role. You can tell when some bands, where the chief songwriter really is the director, and I appreciate that. And I will try to aid and abet that guy's vision. I will spark up and say something when I hear a possibility that's being overlooked. But I feel that many times if a band's chemistry is worth its weight in salt, you almost want to be transparent about what the band's trying to achieve, and hopefully just sonically fortify the vision. If it's a more singer/songwriter thing, and the band is a little more juxtaposed, maybe a good player here and there but no chemistry per se — I think that's when a producer will say, "You know what? I think you could go in any number of directions. Let me know if any of these resonate with you." I just did a record with these two brothers called the Esdailes, and they literally walked in here one day and played a song for me on an acoustic. And that's all they had. You know, good songs, the guy could sing. And I produced that record. I was like, "Okay, here's some drummers I know, let's do some pre-production." And it was a classic producer project for me. I played a lot of bass on it, a lot of guitars, and we were always discriminating about what should and shouldn't be on that record. That was the most pro-active producer's role I've had on a record all year. So you should see that the bands should be producers with the so-called producers, many times. But there are times when the band has the song but not much else, and that's when you step in, and hopefully they trust your intuition. And a good drummer is going to make or break your session.
Are there certain things you do to try to create a vibe or an atmosphere in the studio?
It's all about how you break the day up schedule-wise. It's good if you get your drums kind of all done, a lot of your line checks and sounds all done, and then just take a break so that people can collect themselves, maybe eat something. I like when most people are all in the same room with each other. We might isolate amps for obvious reasons, but I think it's good when people are in the room together, so they can talk to each other or use visual cues. And make sure the headphones make everyone as happy as they can be. Also let them hear, quickly, before you make them work too hard in the big room, what the playback is all about. The playback tends to sound a lot better than the headphones, so you want them to understand that this is a little bit of a leap of faith, 'cause headphones are headphones.
What if the band is doing tons of takes and they're not getting good performances?
I think then you have to look at what's getting in the way. Is it the singer that's also playing guitar, that's frantically playing guitar a bit skewed because of the vocal performance, and that skewed guitar playing is sending the wrong message to the rhythm section? I think you have to find out quickly, "Who's sending the wrong message here?" Sometimes it's just a matter of, "You're done singing, right? Why don't you do another take where all you have to do is play?" And suddenly the dust settles and people gather a new strength within that song context. Recording is different than live; you have to retrain the ear and the concept for people sometimes. A lot of people's rigs live don't sound that good in the studio, they're a lot more blown out than they realize, under a microphone anyway. Or pedal boards — if I see a huge pedal board I can kind of just tell. If it's effect upon effect upon effect it just kind of downgrades everything. I hate to say it, it's almost one of those things, like, big pedal board, bad player. There was a friend of mine, Pete Droge, who brought in this guitar player one day just for me to meet, and I went to see them that night at the House of Blues, and before I heard him play I saw all these pedals onstage. But when the guy played, it was like one pedal every now and then, and the effect was profound. He was a pedal guy but had very discriminating tastes as to when it was effective. If you can afford to record with effects then you should. Some people say, well, you can do that afterwards. And I'm like, well, I don't know. There's not an outboard piece of gear that's gonna interact with an amp the first time like that. You've gotta commit to those kind of things.
Do you want to talk a little about how you approach mixing?
I've learned not to labor over things for so long. You shouldn't spend hours on the kick and snare sound. And if time allows I try to track as accurately as what the mix is going to need. So I try very hard to put things on tape so you recognize, this is the way it should be close to the finish of things, too. And then it's just a matter of trying to marry it all together with various compression situations that help the bass and drums kind of ooze into each other — the vocal, it's so important to have enough headroom so that it can do battle with all the various characters. Is the vocal just a minor player in the sonic landscape? It's just again the pop sensibilities come into it. The vocal and the words are kind of the primary reason we're all here, and hopefully the band is just paying a great tribute to all of that. I like things to kind of sting and not be too flat sounding. I like them to kind of jump out of the speakers a bit. And what used to be construed as just big, gated snare reverbs, digital reverbs of the past, now it's shocking how big you can get drums to sound just with big room ambience. But you've gotta be careful. Is it a drum album or is it a song album? I have a Crane Song STC-8 compressor that I always send the mixes through and thankfully that thing is a miracle worker. It just kind of makes it all ooze together.
What kind of producer do you see yourself as?
I'm kind of hard to figure out as a producer sometimes because I almost don't have a contemporary approach. I just want to see the whole picture in a kind of songwriter's form; it's almost like a play to me sometimes. Obviously I love rock records, and I make big, muscular, hard rocking sounding things when it's called for, but I'm a lot more interested in the variable characters of a song because to me it's a more thespian affair. Who are the actors? How do they interact? What's the relationship of the characters in this play? And also sometimes those roles are more diminutive. There's a tendency a lot of times for music in contemporary terms to be up in your face, up in your nose, blowing steam out your ears, and I just feel like, add that to normalization curves that have less than a dB of headroom, and sometimes it's so loud. Louder isn't always better. I think that's just the history of music as I know it. There were a lot more dynamics in the past that are kind of getting harder to justify now.
Any tips for people just starting out?
I think above all the technical stuff that we all like to talk about and get into, it's still an emotional impact we're all trying to feel, you know? It's like, 'What is it that draws us to this?' I can almost hear in records who the producer was, because of what came to the fore. Is it a technical masterpiece or is it an emotional masterpiece? I like the latter. Like those Big Star records; to me they sound way cool, it's an emotional series of masterpieces. So many people would hear that reedy vocal and be like, "Oh, man, that thing is so thin it hurts!" But it's what he's saying in the way he's singing that way. Take Guided By Voices' lo-fi career with all those great records that were eight tracks or whatever. Talk about an emotional connection! With all the haphazard sonic anomalies on those records, still, I could not get over how powerful the series of emotions were in those words and melodies and just hearing a tape machine get turned on in a basement in the middle of the night. I was just blown away.
