Aaron Espinoza

Eagle Rock, California, is just a short drive due east from Hollywood, but culturally, the distance between the two is immeasurable. There is a small block in Eagle Rock with three unassuming storefronts that house three different recording studios: Dave Trumfio's Kingsize (re-located from Chicago), a studio run by Manny Nieto, and The Ship, a collective-run studio founded by Aaron Espinoza and friends. The low-key, almost invisible locale gives the area an anonymous identity, creating fertile ground for creativity.

Espinoza, frontman for the band Earlimart, is also making a name for himself behind the console. In addition to recording Earlimart's new album, Treble & Tremble, on Palm Pictures, he has worked in his studio with The Breeders, Elliott Smith and The New Folk Implosion. He is also slated to work on the new Scott Kannberg/Preston School of Industry (ex-Pavement) record as soon as he can find time when he's not touring with Earlimart.

Aaron started out recording like a lot of engineers these days... in his bedroom. The first two Earlimart records were recorded in his home, dubbed "The Filthy Whore".

"After recording a bunch of my friends' bands for free, I finally got the courage to ask for $100. That was one of the hardest things to do." He continued to record his friends' bands, as well as the first two Earlimart records, but soon came to realize that a larger space was needed to make more "legitimate" recordings. In 2000, Aaron and the other members of the collective found their current studio digs and named it "The Ship". It is a 1000-square foot space with high ceilings, seemingly perfect dimensions for a small studio. Aaron bought a Soundtracs console and found a MCI 2" 16-track on eBay for $900, but all the wires to the remote had been snipped.

"We were soldering for so long," he told me, drawing out each word. Still, it was a bargain. They then spent the arduous hours required for getting a space conducive to archiving music.

"I didn't really know how the studio should be constructed, but I built a few walls and called it a studio. I think all musicians have been carpenters at one time or another, right? When we got the space, it had been home to a bunch of pigeons for a long time, so I was down on my hands and knees scraping pigeon shit off the floor forever!"

Once the studio was up and running, everything seemed to work itself out. There is always the dilemma of how to keep a studio afloat during down times when the phone never seems to ring, but The Ship has never been in jeopardy of closing its doors. "The studio, being a collective, makes it possible to survive every month. There are a couple of bands that rehearse here, and I'm not the only engineer. So we can all do lots of projects without having to worry about the rent."

Another important factor is that that The Ship has not placed itself in grave financial danger by purchasing lots of very expensive equipment and running up a huge debt. This enables them to keep their rates low.

"Having a cheap studio is important to me. If the band is paying too much it takes the fun out of it. If you have someone watching the clock the whole time... you know, sometimes you gotta spend half an hour trying to fuck up the keyboard sound. I like to try out things with bands and being a cheap studio lets me do that. It takes time to be creative. You gotta plug in pedals, EQ things... I don't have a box that says, 'weird fucked up distorted vocal sound.' The technique depends on the delivery of the singer, their particular vocal tone, and lots of other factors."

Aaron continued to record his friends' bands, including Irving and Pine Marten. But soon thereafter, he began getting requests from more recognizable artists. When Aaron was contacted by Kim Deal (Breeders, Pixies) to record demos of some new Breeders songs, he had to repress his excitement and act unfazed. "We were playing in the live room and I'd have to act cool because it was Kim Deal and she was paying me money. It was before I knew her. I was so freaked out because the Pixies were huge, huge, huge to me. I would've never believed I'd be recording with her, ever! Weird things happen, and I had to act all calm and collected and act all professional, which I'm not! I'd walk out back to have a cigarette and be totally screaming on the inside... 'How come friends can't see me now!' But we really hit it off and became friends and all that stuff went away. She is so cool. She was really open to ideas — I even got to co-write a couple of songs with her. I would just mic up everything in the room, drums, bass, guitar amps... and we would just jump around from one instrument to another and make up stuff and record the whole time. Then the band would come in and change parts here and there. My experience with her was great."

Aaron believes that the main reason he has been fortunate enough to work with "higher profile" artists such as Lou Barlow (Folk Implosion, Sebadoh), Elliott Smith and Kim Deal is because the studio is so low-key and comfortable. "For some reason, major labels feel like when they spend more money, it's a better product. Even Lou or Kim, they would get nervous in the big studios because it's so professional and weird. Everyone that's ever come to my studio says it's really relaxed and easy to work in. You can make a lot of mistakes and no one's going to laugh at you. It's just really a safe place. No matter who the artist is you have to make them feel safe, whether they're Kim Deal or Kim Johnson. You're dealing with human beings. Just get comfortable with each other, have a couple of beers together. Establish an open, creative relationship to begin with. And I treat the small, no-name artists the exact same way as Lou, or Elliott or Kim or anyone else. And the roles get defined as you go. As soon as you start having a good time, that's when all the cool stuff starts coming out. I just want the records to sound like the time we had while making them. We were drunk or sober or sad or happy or rich or poor. Everything affects the way the album sounds. And also, if you're paying $1000 a day at the big studios, you may be less apt to pipe up because you're paying that much money for a reason. On the Folk Implosion record I did, they recorded a couple of songs at high end studios — Lou singing through Neumanns and all these huge mics, and you know, I don't have a Neumann in the house but he's just such a good singer that whatever we end up deciding to use sounds great! At the end of the day, who gives a shit about technical shit and what school you went to? If it doesn't sound good to your ears, then it's not right."

Aaron has no aspirations of turning The Ship into what "professionals" call a world-class recording facility. By keeping the studio a cheap, affordable place to record, Aaron has yet to succumb to unfulfilled gear lust due to a lack of excess funds. But he embraces the tradeoff. "I never think I'm limited with the gear I have. I feel like I can get any sound I want. Sure, it would be nice to have more microphones, better preamps, but to me the most important aspect to recording is my ear... way more than any gear. If you can afford gear, it will save you a lot of time in terms of EQing and repositioning the microphone. You're paying for something that will make your job easier. You put up a super expensive mic on a piano or acoustic guitar or whatever and it sounds great. Well, it better! You just paid $4000 on this mic! When you don't have that much money you can still do that. My strength is that I've gotten to the point where I know how to use the gear I have really well and I won't be lazy. I'll EQ it or compress it or I'll get another mic until it sounds right. It doesn't matter how I get there as long as I'm there. If you have a 57 on an acoustic guitar, maybe you just have to work a little harder — tweak it before you go to tape."

This is something Aaron does consistently. He's often manipulating the sound before he records it "so everything is sounding the way I want when I go to mix. Sometimes I'll EQ it twice, send it to another channel before I go to tape, whatever it takes."

Earlimart's Everybody Down Here definitely has a lot of manipulated sounds on it, especially on the vocals. Every song has a new sonic element that wasn't present on the previous track, which makes the listening experience more active than passive. Those interested in the recording process of records will have a lot to mull over. "I hide behind awkward noises because I don't have the best confidence. I'll make the drums fucked up or the vocal fucked up just to distract the listener. Maybe it's all smoke and mirrors. One part is making it interesting, another part is masking. I'm a human being. I get scared to hear my own voice... I get nervous."

The limits of recording on a 16-track have also taught Aaron to be economical with tape space. "You've got to make commitments with a 16-track — dumping things over — so I get it sounding the way I want during the whole process. Making stereo mixes of drums happens a lot. Cross your fingers and start recording over snares and cymbals."

Many engineers and bands have been known to obsess over getting good drum sounds, and there are those who believe a recording lives or dies from the balance and sonic quality of the drums. "I usually spend the first half day or full day getting drum sounds. I learned my lesson on the first two albums that Earlimart made. They were the worst drum sounds ever. If you can get a good drum sound you're three-quarters of the way there. Everything else will fall into place."

He also likes to physically manipulate the drums to get the sound he hears in his head. "For snare, I like that sexy snare sound. Deep and really dry. If I have to, I'll put a lot of tape on the heads or tape things to them to eliminate ring. I'll even put towels on the snare — EQ the shit out of them. I also use tons of compression." This is something Aaron did a lot of on the recent Earlimart recordings. Since the band did not have a drummer during the recording process, Aaron utilized no less than nine drummers, which makes for very different drum sounds. They all do, however, share that dry, close feel that Aaron wanted for this record, a record that he had great difficulty making.

"I was homeless for five months during the recording of Everybody Down Here. I was living at the studio. I recorded it during the worst year of my life. During that time, a four- year relationship ended and I lost my best friend in a plane crash. It was my goal to get all this shit out. Living here day and night made it kind of a sad record. The studio is really dark. That's one thing I would've done differently, made it brighter. There are no windows and the paint is dark. When you turn off the lights to go to sleep, it's pitch black. It's a cave. Whenever I woke up it could've been eight in the morning or two in the afternoon. I wouldn't know. There were times when I hadn't gone outside for three or four days except to step outside to have a smoke. I wasn't interacting with people. I unplugged the phone, people weren't coming over to visit. It fucked with my head. I remember going into a supermarket full of people and they're all doing normal life stuff... all those fluorescent lights... I think I turned into a vampire."

Since the band was just Aaron and bassist/vocalist Arianna during the sessions, Aaron would lay down a click track, a guitar (usually just a scratch) and call up one of his many friends who play the drums. "I just needed something to play to, so every song is done to a click track. It's kind of a crutch of mine but I like the tempos to be the same. Recording this way, doing one song at a time, wasn't very efficient. It took me a year and a half to finish everything. But the luxury of having your own studio is having all that time. I'm more interested in bands that do their own recordings. There's something about it. Maybe you might think the quality isn't as good as if they went to a real studio, but that's what I did, made a couple of shitty sounding records, but I learned from it. If you don't know the rules, you have to improv, and that's why it sounds interesting, instead of everybody's records sounding the same, recorded by a handful of producers. That's why I like listening to Grandaddy, Sparklehorse, Lenola, Fiver, Built Like Alaska... you can tell they all make their own records. There's something fucked up and charming about the way they sound. To make a record is really hard. It's heartache. It's miserable. I've never had a good time doing it. I like getting good results, but it's painstaking. If I didn't do it, I'd probably freak out."

When he has some time to focus on the studio more, Aaron plans on some changes. "I'm going to embrace the computer. I mixed our record with Dave Trumfio in Pro Tools. I want to stay on the 16-track and dump into Pro Tools and just use the computer for mixing only. Being able to save mixes is huge. Just to be able to decide later to turn up the guitar in one part and not have to remix the whole song. I always try to get everything to tape sounding the way I want, so I won't be using the computer effects hardly at all. And I want to get a new mixing board. Maybe a Soundcraft Ghost."

Upgrading won't change the sound of the studio too much. Like Aaron said, it might make the process go a little quicker and smoother, but the sounds will still be captured in the same manor they have always been. "I don't have a routine I go by in the studio. I'm just a working class guy. I throw up mics and see how it sounds. Then I start making changes from there."