Where did you learn how to do all this? Did you just pick it up over the years?
It's pretty much just bits and pieces.
Did you have any formal training in anything related to recording?
Nah. Well, I took electronics classes in high school. My father used to work as an electrician during summers, because he was a principal, and we always tinkered on stuff. I've always had a bent for electronic stuff. And then at some age I got a musical thing and started playing guitar.
What was your very first experience recording something?
A dumb, old Panasonic 2-track reel-to-reel that someone gave me. I recorded a really horrible song I wrote. I think it was just guitar on one track and singing on the other track.
When did you begin any serious kind of recording?
I was in bands that did some recording, but I never really got involved in the process until I bought an 8-track, 1/4" Fostex reel-to-reel, and then shortly after that, Titanic Love Affair started up. At that point, my musical career and recording career were permanently fused.
I remember looking at the liner notes on the Ice Cream Funeral cassette that Titanic Love Affair put out in 1988. It was almost apologetic about how quickly you guys recorded it, but I thought it sounded great.
That's just a disclaimer.
At that point, was it a pretty quick recording process? I know that on some of your recent projects — I don't know if "bogged down" is the right phrase to use, but you've spent a long time working on songs.
That's the musical side, not the engineer side of me. The engineer side of me is: Put a mic in front of it, and if it sounds good, it sounds good... or put some mic that shouldn't sound good, and see if it sounds weird enough for you. But I've gotten bogged down way more on the music side. Confidence issues. Too many ideas, as well. But as far as recording, what I do hasn't changed a hell of a lot. I have 24 tracks instead of eight. I have good preamps instead of the ones on the board. I have good mics, if I choose to use them, everything from a mic that came with this Wollensak tape recorder to a $4,000 tube mic. And I'm not certain that either one sounds better. We did some drums the other day where we purposefully grabbed every crappy mic we could. We figured we already have a bunch of good-sounding drums on the record that Dave [Vandervelde] and I are doing right now. I don't know if they sound any better or worse than the others. It seems as the engineering stuff gets easier for me, the more I think about the music and not the engineering. Let's face it: I've never had a song ruined for me by a bad snare drum sound — with the possible exception of "Born in the U.S.A." I have everything that I'm supposed to have to do everything right. It's totally spontaneous whether you feel like doing something right or wrong, you know? And that's where it becomes a musical decision. With rare exceptions, if you throw a mic on something and get a good level on tape, you won't wreck the song. The band can wreck the song, but you can't.
You told me once before you don't like seeing the recording levels that show things going into the red.
Yeah, if you see something go into the red, and you're staring at it, you're going to get nervous — or in the case of analog, the needle spinning around twice, going off the screen... If you saw that, you'd start to think about it. There's a story about someone, Bob Rock or somebody, who just comes in and puts a piece of cardboard over every meter in the entire house. Why do I need these? I'm using my ears. [He shows off the Mackie HR 824 monitors in his control room, which are mounted on poles so that they can be spun around.] I've never seen this in a studio, so I'm proud of it. I sit here and mix until I think I've got a good mix, and then I spin them around and chill out there. So when I'm mixing I'm on the other side, and then I can come over here and listen like a normal person. It keeps the whole band from cramming in, back behind there.
Talk about some of your favorite pieces of equipment.
The more important parts of the studio, I think you can tell. Because this room [the control room] is a lot littler than that room [the performance space]. And this room has a lot less gear in it than that room. So it's the instruments.
Talk about how you set up microphones and instruments in the main room.
I have all the good mics you're supposed to have, with the exception of Neumanns, because I hate them.
Why do you hate them?
