Scott Bomar | TapeOp

Scott Bomar just turned 30, yet he's been playing bass professionally for 15 years, on stage and in studios. His band, Impala, churned out garage rock in the nineties, and eventually Scott's interests led him into the studio while also forming the Bo-Keys with an all-star section of Stax sidemen: Ronnie Williams (The Bar-Kays, David Porter) on Hammond B-3 organ, drummer Willie Hall (The Bar- Kays, the Blues Brothers), Charles "Skip" Pitts (Isaac Hayes) on guitar plus some younger horn players. Their album, The Royal Sessions, is true to the classic Memphis sounds and got me curious about Scott before meeting him in person. We hooked up at his home studio where he's been gathering some cool older gear and instruments.

LC: What got you into recording?

There was a place here called the Antenna Club and I started playing there when I was 15. Where I went to high school, the Memphis City Schools had some really good programs — the school I went to had a radio station. That's where I first learned how to operate a tape machine and a board and microphones. One of the teachers there was a former DJ at WDIA, which was real famous as the first African-American-owned radio station. There were some real great teachers there. I learned a lot about the technical aspects of microphones and mixers and tape machines in that program. Around the same time I recorded at Doug Easley's studio, which at the time was in his backyard. That was the first place I recorded. And then a few years after that I recorded with Roland [Janes] over at Sam Phillips' [Recording Service]. I did a few records over there with him and he used to teach recording at a college. Jim Dickinson calls him "The Guru". He's been doin' this stuff since the '50s.

LC: Man...

He's been around. He's recorded so many sessions and he's been around so many great talents, you know? He was taught by Sam Phillips. I learned so much from him, really. In Memphis there are just so many studios and so much history here and so much music — as a musician and as someone that's interested in music it's hard for me not to fall into it. The more bands I was in [that] recorded the more I started getting interested in the technical end of it and wanted to know, "Okay, what does this microphone do?" There were certain sounds that I knew I liked and I started kinda seeking out, doing research. Easley and Sam Phillips were the two places I've done most of the recording I've done. I've done stuff out of town. I recorded at Egg one time.

LC: Oh at Egg? At Conrad Uno's?

I was in this band Impala.

LC: When you first started recording were you doing your own band?

Well, I guess the bands I was in, when we got into the studio I got more and more involved in the process of it. I got pretty obsessed with it pretty early on and started reading anything I could about it. I guess one of the big breakthroughs for me was the echo chamber, 'cause I recorded at some studios and at the time, this was like the late '80s so everybody had Rev-7s. That just never did sound right to me, you know? The sound of those things just always really bothered me and around the same time I was reading about Phil Spector and about echo chambers.

LC: Yeah. Well you're lucky being in a town that even has any echo chambers!

That's very true. After that I discovered plate reverbs, which I'm real fond of. I think it was getting frustrated with some of the sounds I had gotten in studios and when I realized, "Well this isn't what I'm looking for. I wanna find out how to get these other sounds that I hear on like, say, a Willie Mitchell record or something."

LC: Did you intern at all anywhere?

I did. I interned at Easley and Ardent. I mean anytime I ever went to a studio I was always paying close attention to what the engineer was doing. And working with Willie Mitchell, it's like beyond interning, you know? That's invaluable, you know, to get to work with someone like that and see them work and how they do things. He's a guy like Roland, who's been doin' this for 50 years. You do something for that long no matter if it's somebody that's working on cars or building houses or making pottery. It's anyone who has done their craft that long is gonna really...

LC: They're gonna be good! [laughs]

Yeah.

LC: How did you end up working with Willie?

I play bass and someone called me for session over there and I went in and played bass. You know I walked in and Willie Mitchell was sitting at the front desk. He had his feet propped up and he was smokin' Kools and drinking Smirnoff. And he was just kinda like staring at the walls. Real cool. He wasn't sayin' much. It was so still. I was sort of intimidated by going there. But at the same time he was just so cool and so laid back that it just made me real at ease. He was listening to trumpet player Clifford Brown on cassette tape. I said, "Wow this is really good. This is Clifford Brown." From then on he and I just hit it off, 'cause I knew it was Clifford Brown!

LC: Yeah!

After I did that session sometimes people would come in town and they'd want to go by the studio and be like, "Oh I've met Willie before, I've worked over there. I could take you guys by there." I always wanted to do my own project over there. A few years ago I was working at the Stax Music Academy at a program over there. They've got two programs, one's a summer school program for kids and another one is an after school program. That's where I met Willie Hall and Skip Pitts. I had this band, The Bo-Keys — we'd put that together to back up Mack Rice from Detroit. He was at Stax — he was a songwriter. He wrote "Mustang Sally", "Respect Yourself" that the Staple Singers did. [At Stax] I met Willie and Skip and over time they ended up kinda getting worked into the band. We'd been playing more and a friend of mine who has a record label called Yellow Dog, he saw us play one night at a party and he said, "Man, I wanna do a record of you guys." We were gonna do it at another studio here in town but there was some conflict that happened with some studio time, so at the last minute I had to come up with another studio. I always wanted to record at Willie's with my own project. It went really well and it was just the most fun I ever had making a record.

LC: Were you engineering on that?

Archie Mitchell engineered it. I was kinda settin' up mics and I didn't want to get too in the way 'cause I knew he had his way of doing stuff — he'd been taught by William Brown. William was in The Mad Lads in the early '60s and then he got drafted. When he came back from Vietnam he started engineering over at Stax. He engineered some great records. He's a fantastic engineer. He had a stroke a couple years ago.

LC: That's what I heard.

They got their sound over there and I didn't want to get in the way of that. They've got so much great equipment over there and stuff they'd hardly ever even use. Like those Pultecs and the LA2As — they weren't even really using that stuff. Archie wasn't until I went over there. "Gotta use this," you know? It went really well and Archie was real open to some ideas I had. It was a collaboration between the two of us. He's really good about getting a lot of bottom, you know, he does a lot of rap. His approach to drums is like, he almost wants the drums to sound like a drum machine. He does a lot of stuff with MPCs and Tritons and stuff — he's used to doing a lot of sampled drums. In a way that really works with what we do. It's mostly instrumental and I was really happy with the sound he got — he spent a lot of time on the drums. His approach to recording drums is totally different from any engineer I've ever worked with. A lot of engineers I've worked with have kinda come from more of a rock background and he doesn't really. He comes from more of a rap, hip-hop background. But it works. I also wanted to get the sound of those older Hi records. They usually record at 30 [ips] over there and I said, "Well, let's try it at 15," 'cause I wanted to get more bottom. Willie Mitchell was like, "Man, what's that motherfucker recordin' at 15 for? Don't do that shit." But I wanted to do that and I'm glad I did because I liked what it did. So just the small things like that. They use a lot of RCA 77 ribbon mics over there. I've always been real curious, really obsessed with that Hi Record sound.

LC: Yeah, kinda dry, real meaty in your face.

Well, it's a lot of different things. Those ribbon mics are a big part of it 'cause they use those on just about everything. On that older stuff that's pretty much all they used on the drums. They used one 77 as an overhead. One in between the snare and the hi-hat — that's the same thing they did at Stax.

LC: Really? It picks up on both sides?

Yeah. At Stax I heard that they used an RCA 44 on the bass drum, but over at Willie's they used an RCA BK- 5. That's what Boo told me, "Yeah, they used to use that mic on the bass drum," but now they use a Sennheiser 421 on the bass drum. But they still have that RCA mic that they used on the bass drum. They use that for the bottom of the Leslie now.

LC: Oh really?

But a lot of RCA mics. That place was a studio since probably the mid-'50s. Bill Black had it. I mean, the amazing thing about that studio is that they still have all the same equipment. The outboard stuff and all the same mics. They've got an EMT plate that's not workin'. Willie Mitchell was like, "Man, you know those RCA 77s? Those things were like SM57s." It's funny, he doesn't really talk about the technical side of things like microphones and things but it's pretty apparent to me that he was really up on his shit, man. When you look at the stuff he bought, he spent a lot of money buying gear back in the '60s.

LC: He went and really put some research into it?

There's this place, Gotham Audio, where it looked like he got all of his stuff. Seems like that was like the big place where everybody bought their stuff. That was like the Sweetwater of the '50s and '60s.

LC: So did the session with Al Green come out of you doing your band there?

I was in there about two weeks working on our record. Archie keeps really late hours — I guess that's not real uncommon for engineers. He and I pulled a couple all-nighters on that record. I was just spending so much time over there, it was just kinda like, "You're family now!" We just hit it off. Skip played guitar with us, so I brought in amps and pedals and stuff for him to use. Around the same time they were getting everything together for this Al record. I helped them out on some tech stuff just a little bit. I'm not real good at that but there were a few things that, just stupid things like some bad cables. They hadn't had any big bands in there in a while. At that point it hadn't been too long since William had been in there so Archie hadn't done a lot of live bands, really. They said, "We're doing this Al stuff. We want you to come in and assist on it." And they hired Skip to play guitar. It was really magical there. It was so much fun getting to do that, you know?

LC: I'll bet.

Just a study in how they did the session. Just seeing how Willie Mitchell put the whole record together. They tracked the rhythm section live. They did the horns first and then they did the vocals and then they did the strings. And you don't see too many records like that anymore. He hired Lester Snell to be the arranger. So every day the musicians walked in and Lester came over and handed everyone their music. And they did three songs a day. Having an arranger on a session is just — I mean you guys know — if you cut down on the time you spend in the studio arranging songs, that's where our bloody time's spent.

LC: Yeah... oh totally.

It made such a difference having Lester Snell doing the arrangements. I mean there were no questions. These guys had the music and they were like, "Okay." And the thing is it wasn't like every note was written out for 'em, but it was just like a road map and they all did their thing with it. For me, being a bass player, Leroy Hodges was in the control room playing bass and most of the time I was in the control room and I was sittin' right next to him for the whole session. So I got to sit there and watch him play, and they'd bring the music in and sit it on the stand and I'd be checking the music out and then I'd look over at him and watch him working it out, see what he'd do. Willie Mitchell... I mean he is a producer, you know. There's some people that say they're producers but they're not. He is. He's the real deal, man. And to see somebody like that work and pull a record together and to get performances out of people. Another thing I learned from Willie was — and this is good advice for someone who is producing — I don't think this is always the case if you're working with a band and you have to deal with a lot of personalities in a band, it might not work that way. He would get onto people — he was like, "I'm paying you to come play for me and, motherfucker, you better do what I want," you know?

LC: [He'd] literally say, "motherfucker"?

He would. He would say that. And people respect that. I don't think everyone could get away with that. Seeing him take control of a session and people — you know everybody respects him and his opinions, so it made it run smooth. And having Lester Snell do the arrangements made it run real smooth and it basically made this pillow for Al to come in and sing on, you know?

LC: Did he and Al work on it before? Like sit down and pick out songs and.. .

Yeah they did. Lester and Willie and Al got together. I guess first Al and Willie got together and wrote and then they brought Lester in and he wrote the arrangements out.

LC: You did some of the vocal sessions then too?

I didn't do too many of those, I was mainly there for the rhythm section stuff and for the vocal stuff I kinda just wanted to stay out of the way. I went by there a few times but I just, I didn't want to really...

LC: The less people the better?

That's the way I felt. Another interesting thing, around the same time, right after the Al stuff, My Morning Jacket came in and did horns for their record. So it was cool to see that. Lester Snell did the horn arrangements for their record. There's two or three tracks on their CD.

LC: Did you work on those?

No. I went by there, though, to check it out. It's cool to see how they do horns. They set everyone out in a circle and they close mic everybody and then they use some of the RCA 77s over the horns.

LC: Were they facing each other or were they semi-circle?

Semi-circle.

LC: The first thing that struck me about I Can't Stop was it didn't sound like a new record. Do you think there was a conscious decision going on to do that?

That's just the way, that's what he knows. That's how Willie Mitchell knows how to make records. I mean their studio, it's dated, really. It's state of the art circa 1980 I guess. I don't know how old that MCI console is but the [MCI] tape machine...

LC: Well, not that new.

Yeah. But that stuff, like I said, I'd say 50 percent of the mics they use are ribbon mics.

LC: How many of those things do you think they've got there?

Oh man... ah....

LC: They keep pulling them out of the closet?

Seven or eight. They use them on the bass. They use it on the guitars.

JB: Well, one's labeled "#9".

On the vocals. And then they've got two Neumanns. One they use for an overhead and then another one you they've got a U47 that they use with that ribbon mic. They blend both of them together for the vocals. And then that room has got a sound. You know?

LC: It's got a certain sort of vibe sound to it. It's not just dead.

Yeah. Willie says it's that sloped floor. You know it was a movie theatre, just like Stax was, and the floor slopes.

LC: What was it called, The Royal Theatre?

Yeah. Have you ever seen any photos of American Studios? They've got that same colored burlap. And I didn't know this until I was hanging out over there, that Willie did a lot of sessions over at American and some stuff at Stax too. He did Bobby Womack's "Fly Me to the Moon". Then the first Otis Redding thing that he had a hit on. Probably, "These Arms of Mine," he did the horn arrangements on.

LC: Something else... How was the upcoming Al Green record, working on that? Was it much different or pretty much the same process?

It seemed like on this one, the other one was really, very much arranged and it seems like this one they left a little bit more open for Al to come in and like go in the booth and kinda like get a groove goin', you know? It was like songs were written before they came in but they weren't as arranged.

LC: Do you like that better? Or do you just like 'em both?

I like them both. Al Green's got such a great energy. He just comes in the room and just, whew! The room just lights up and everyone becomes energized 'cause he's got so much energy. When he goes in the booth to sing, it's like he's doing a live show. He'll be soaked with sweat from singin'. For me, the way we made that record was the way I learned to make records.

LC: Yeah.

To me computers are pretty new. I mean they're not new to me but them being involved in the recording process is fairly a new concept for myself and a lot of other people. For Willie Mitchell: "Why do I need a computer? I've got 24 tracks, I used to only have one track. And then I had four tracks, then I had 8. And then I had 16 but now I get 24 tracks. What else could I possibly ever need?" I can't believe I recorded something in a garage on a 4-track with three mics and somebody's putting it out. You know, like that Impala stuff we did, I mean, we had to have a song on a compilation. I did it on that 4-track.

LC: Do you plan on kind of having a home setup for you to work on a few projects?

Yeah. I'm doing a film score and I've worked at pretty much every studio in Memphis and I've gotten to the point where I'm just kinda ready to do my own thing. I love going in to people's studios and working but I kinda got to the point where I'm ready to do stuff on my own time and not have to worry about the clock and spending money. Over these years, sort of by accident, I've just acquired gear. Any time I ever did a record and had any money left over I'd always buy an amp or buy a mic or something.

LC: Are you getting jobs around town working with people because you get this older sound?

In Memphis, when you say "modern music" that means, to me, like a lot of rap and a lot of hip-hop. A lot of the guys doing that stuff, I mean, the records that they're sampling, or the stuff they like, are all old records! The stuff that I'm into, that I'm studying, is the same. "Man, how did they get that drum sound at American Studios?" or, "How did they get the bass sound at Stax?" Muscle Shoals, how did they get the electric piano to sound like that? They're sampling the same records. And all the musicians I know in Memphis that work all the time and make their living as musicians, I mean, hell, they play so many different types of music. One good thing I see happening is this is like a real cross, in Memphis, it's like everything, everybody works with each other. So many different types of people that do so many different types of music. For me, I'd be just as happy to record a rock band as some guy that brings in a track and wants to rap on top.