You did a Tom Waits record?
Tom Waits is a hero of mine. When I was traveling around, his was one of the records I took with me and I didn't take very many. The Mule Variations record came my way through a referral. Tom had just left Island and signed up to do a record with Anti. He was looking for an engineer in the Bay Area. He talked to both Oz Fritz and me. I was just stunned. I went up a few days later after speaking with him on the phone. He described to me his vision of recording. We talked about Alan Lomax and field recording. He was trying to feel out my concept of record making. He referred to sound in colors, if something sounds yellow, brown or red, to see if we agreed on that type of verbiage; that making a record is like film- making where the microphones are like lenses. He was just trying to relate to me about this stuff. Trying to figure out my understanding of traditional recording. He had made his first records live to two-track, so there is an element to his recordings that are really hi-fi in that way. He also has the side that came forward on Bone Machine, the lo-fi edge. His records are really a juxtaposition of those two things sonically. Of course his songwriting and personality are at the forefront of the music. I went up and met him and his wife Kathleen [Brennan], who is very much involved in the writing and production. It went well enough that I was asked to come up and do a demo session. He was trying out some new musicians and he was trying me out too. We recorded a couple of songs. The relationship of a performance is everything to Tom and how it's framed sonically. The instrumentation on basic tracks was very simple. It was usually Tom and one or two other musicians. Tom would mostly sing live.
Where was the session?
