Jacquire King: On Eric Valentine and Tom Waits

When I first met Jacquire, he was working at Toast, a studio in San Francisco. He had already developed a reputation for being the man to call when you needed to make something sound unique and captivating. He brings a rare mix of old school recording chops and computer wizardry to every project he works on. When I had no money to pay him for three 18-hour days of mixing my band, Highwater Rising, he accepted an API 525 compressor as payment. He is easy to be around and very good at what he does. It's no wonder that when producers and artists need a man behind the console, he gets the call. He works regularly for producers Dennis Herring [ Tape Op #48 ] and Eric Valentine, with a discography that includes Tom Waits, Modest Mouse, Jars of Clay, Billy Talent, Buddy Guy, Switchfoot, Citizen King, and Chuck Prophet. I spoke with him while he was working with producer Ethan Johns in Los Angeles, CA.

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?

We were recording at Prairie Sun up in Cotati, CA. The set- up there can be untraditional. You're in the control room in one building while the live room for that control room, studio B, which has a Neve desk, is empty. Tom was down the way 50 to 100 yards in a large building that was usually used for storage and an echo chamber. You can't see anybody playing, no visual queues. He doesn't really like anybody to be too rehearsed. That goes for engineers as well as the musicians. That doesn't really give anybody the opportunity to fiddle with anything or learn the songs too well, to comb things over too much. You get something very immediate and honest. So setting up for the session was really important. Choosing your pres and getting all the mics set up around the musicians is your primary goal. Capture a great sounding performance and be able to move things around quickly if the situation arises. After a couple takes, you've either got it or you don't. It was a very amazing process. Like I said, you couldn't see them. There were speakers down there for playback and I could send my talkback mic to them so they could hear me. The foundation of the tracking was acoustic, so I could hear them through all the mics that were set up. Sometimes he'd be at the piano showing a song to the other players and you're up in the control room checking the levels to tape and getting a sound. He would only go through maybe once, so you had to be quick. Then sometimes you'd hear some acoustic guitar in the distance and realize, Tom has gotten up and decided to play acoustic on the song on the other side of the room. Then the bass player would move over to be near Tom. So you'd run down and move the all the mics. It had to be set up in a way to move things around. This was a huge room. The creativity was amazing. You'd start to hear a song in a certain way, with a certain mood, rhythm and tempo. Then in the same session, it would totally change around. We cut some songs multiple times in different ways. I am huge fan so I'd be there in the control room by myself and I hear this beautiful music of Tom's coming out of the speakers. I'd look over at the tape machine in record and watch the meters moving, sort of an out of body experience. It was amazing to be a part of it. When Tom plays it really is magic, the density of the air in the room totally changes.

Prairie Sun is such a unique place to be too. It's a studio built on a farm in Northern California about one hour north of San Francisco. It is so different than the typical studio, split across multiple buildings.

It's an old chicken farm!

Yeah, there are animals everywhere. I know when I was up there I had a ghost encounter in the guesthouse. It's a spooky place. No lack of vibe up there.

I got creeped out a few times. [laughs] It's just a great place. We'd go outside if the inspiration took us and the next thing you know we'd be recording in the driveway outside the old chicken coop. You'd hear a plane go by. The dogs and chickens on that record, that's what's really goin' on. We were in a really rural environment.

You are known for mixing, as well as doing it successfully within Pro Tools. This is something we are all forced to do more and more. What do you do to get such good results?

If something has been recorded well there is less fix it in the mix stuff. I try to only do what I feel is necessary to make a song sound great. When you get a lot of plug-ins going, you end up with all kinds of latency issues. It starts to change the relationships. It is arguable because sometimes it's just a few samples, but if you get a lot of them going, it really starts to deteriorate things. The real key is balance and panning. If you put an acoustic guitar and a hi- hat on top of each other, you've got all this high frequency information flying around. Neither instrument speaks well. It's probably better to put the keyboard over with the high-hat. In the computer I use very minimal processing. The way I do it, nothing goes directly to the stereo bus. Everything goes through subgroup processing. Many other mixers also use variations of this when mixing on a desk. I do the same thing in the computer. Take the drums, I send them to bus 1 and 2, then have three stereo aux inputs looking at bus 1 and 2. One aux input gets a few samples of delay to account for the plug-ins I put on the other two. This is the dry bus. The others get compressors, different styles of compression. One focuses more on the bottom end and the other more on the top end. Then I combine those three, the un-effected, and the two effected auxs, and those then go to the stereo mix bus. This gets a more glued together sound in the computer. I basically do that kind of deal with everything. Once everything makes it to the stereo bus, it all has been delayed relatively equally. Definitely simplifying is the way to go in the computer. Extreme settings, especially EQ in the digital domain just don't hold up. It's also key to understanding how the software you're using handles audio in regards to dithering and truncation, as these also influence the sound of the end result.

How do you use compression both as a dynamics control tool and as an effect?

There are several ways to use compression. When tracking, I end up using a lot of compressors, but not necessarily compressing a lot. Like an 1176 has a way of focusing the sound. You don't have to use compression in an extreme way for it to be useful. If it's just lightly touching the meter, that's okay. I use it in this way for mixing as well. That's one way to use compression. It is also useful to record with a tiny bit of compression and then mix with a lot more, or use a couple of compressors in line. Then you are controlling the sound in stages, sort of reining it in without ruining the tone or making one piece do too much work. Compression is very exciting and because it can be aggressive and it can make things seem louder it needs to be treated with respect because it can also really get you in trouble in the end. You can suck the dynamics out of a sound and get rid of some of the emotional content. On a vocal, if you want a squashed sound without killing the beauty of the performance, you can put a compressor with a soft slope like an LA-2A or other opto-compressor in front of a limiter. In this way, you can tailor the sound in the compressor before you hand it off to the more extreme limiter. Bus compression is another thing. Combining things through a compressor is a great way. Sending a drum sub-mix through a compressor, really sitting on it and making it a solid sound and then combining it back into your mix. Then you don't have to rely too much on individual treatments and work more with blending. The next step is to combine instruments, say kick and bass, through a compressor.

Sort of like glue in the same way analog tape can glue things together sonically.

Yes, exactly. That refers back to how I work in the computer as well. It cooks it down, getting rid of some of the moisture. Giving it glue. There is really something to be said for overdriving compressors. The aggressiveness of the distortion gives sound attitude or edge. Tape does it as well. All these distortion qualities are what can glue a sound together.

How about your studio in Nashville? What's your set-up there?

It's in a little house. I have a late seventies Quad-Eight console. It's called the Coronado. It has discrete op-amps, three-band EQ. The console was designed by some of the same engineers that designed the early API consoles — it sounds very similar to an API. There is a Studer tape machine and I have a Pro Tools rig.

What about outboard gear?

I love my UREI compressors: 1176s and LA-3As. I am big fan of Neve stuff too. I have a pair of 2254s. I have some 1272s and 1099s. I also have some original Helios type 69 modules that are stunning. I have some V72s. I have API pres, EQs, and a 525 compressor, the one you gave me... I still haven't gotten a second.

Yeah, that is a really cool compressor.

It has a very sticky sound. I have been really into using it on bass. I have some Distressors. Lots of tape echoes. There is a Lawson plate reverb there. I have a great old AKG spring reverb. I try to use as many analog devices when working with the computer. I have some Apogee converters that I think sound superior to the 888/24s.

What Apogees?

The AD-8000s. A lot of the older Apogee converters have come way down in price and are really worth the money. They are like 20 percent of what they used to be. I like the PSX-100 too. I use that to print the digital masters. We have lots of great instruments. Lots of stuff that works and stuff that doesn't work. Some of the stuff that doesn't work is kept that way because it does something cool. Just about everything is there that you would need.