John Parish: Working with PJ Harvey, Giant Sand, more...

John Parish is a well-respected musician and producer. He has made records for and with PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse [ Tape Op #12 ], the eels, Giant Sand, Dominique A and Tracy Chapman, to mention a few. In the fall of 2003, John and his family rented a home in Tucson for three months so his wife could work on her book. During that time John produced an entire record for the Swiss band The Magic Rays (in twelve days), as well as found time to finish a Howe Gelb [ #12 ] solo record and mix a record for the group Amor. John's daughter, Hope, loves to drum and never missed a chance to be hoisted onto the drum throne and whack away whenever the family came to visit. Nick Luca and I were honored to assist and engineer with John during that time at my WaveLab Recording.

How has being married and having kids changed the way you work?

You're obliged to prioritize much more efficiently than perhaps you're used to. There used to be time to "faff" around. Now I don't feel that I have the time to do that. If something is not important, I'm not going to be very interested in doing it. I only take on projects that I really want to do — rather than, "Oh, maybe that would be okay. I'm not doing anything else. I'll do it." It has to be something that I really want to do because otherwise I'll resent being there. I'll be spending my time thinking the whole time that I would rather be home. I wouldn't want to do that to myself and I wouldn't want to do that to a band either.

I noticed you were really good about saying, "When it's time to go, it's time to go."

Yes. I've done my shift. It's a job. [laughter] That's the thing about having kids. It's also about how growing up changes you. I haven't got twenty hours to spend dicking around in the studio because someone thinks it might be a good idea to try tracking with reverb on a snare drum in one chorus. I did my stint of that when I was 16, 17, and I loved it same as everybody. It was fun. Now I can imagine what something is going to sound like before we do it. Maybe it would be cool, but probably it's not so you're going to have to trust my opinion on that. I try to work with good engineers. I don't want to have to be running copies. I don't feel that's a good use of my time. It's also that I only function well in the studio for a certain amount of hours a day. I only have good ideas for maybe ten hours. Sometimes it will go longer because we'll be on a roll — sometimes it will be shorter because we're tired. I'm pretty good a recognizing now when I'm drying up.

Yeah . We had a couple of days with The Magic Rays where we had hit the creative wall.

Yeah. "We'll come back tomorrow and it will make much more sense." Otherwise we're just gonna spend three hours listening to something that nobody is sure about... then we'll come back tomorrow and find that it's rubbish. We'll feel bad about it, we'll be more tired and we won't have the energy to pick it up.

It was nice in sessions that you did that you were always willing to let Nick [Luca] or I voice an opinion.

Yeah, that's because you guys have got good studio etiquette. To be fair, most of the people I've worked with have. Occasionally you work with somebody who is inexperienced or they've only been in one studio or only know one way of working. They've kind of gotten in the habit of saying things... you know, maybe they've done a lot of budget sessions where there was no producer and the band didn't know what they were doing. They've gotten in the habit of getting in the driving seat when it's not appropriate. Occasionally I've had to politely reprimand people I've been working with and say, "I know you're going to have opinions. If I want to hear them, I'll mention it."

That must be pretty rare.

It was more frequent when I was younger. I mean, I'm not exactly a household name by any means, but people within the industry generally know who I am, so if I turn up at the studio to work generally someone will know who I am. It's easier — you just automatically have more respect. When people didn't know who I was I had to earn it. That's fair enough. I don't begrudge that.

Well, you did kind of give The Magic Rays a little lecture but it's because you only had two weeks. You gave them a little rundown, which I found very interesting.

Yeah, on something like that... I like to work fast, but that was very fast. We had twelve days to record and mix an album from scratch. It helped that the band could play pretty well. As always, I had to do a lot of work on their rhythm section.

If you didn't like it, you didn't waste any time. You just said right away, "I don't like that."

That's because I've spent too much time in the past trying to fix bad drum tracks! [laughter] And that's another that's crossed off my list. I do not want to do that anymore. If it ain't right in the beginning, let's do it again! It might seem like a drag, but it's gonna be much more of a drag later on when you keep coming around to a bit that doesn't groove.

You told yourself you could just make it go, but every time it comes up...

You can put on a little more reverb, give it this or that but then it just draws attention to it and it gets bigger and bigger every time you hear it.

Unless it's Giant Sand.

Yeah, in which case it's a beautiful mistake. But then, their records... it's one big, beautiful mistake and that's what makes them special. Speaking of which... the way we flew in Scout's backup vocal. Have you ever seen anything as crazy as that? [Howe Gelb provided John with a CD of their friend Scout singing a backup part with no reference to key or time and instructed him to add her voice to the song he was to mix. We loaded the CD to the computer and selected the sections that seemed the best and flew them back to tape. The back up vocal lined up perfectly and we only had to try once or twice to hit the space bar at the right moment on fly ins] That's Howe. He can never seem to record anybody in the studio. It's always recorded on a bit of gaffer tape in the back of a bus.

But how could it be that six months previously her vocal is at the right tempo and in the right key for a song he hasn't even recorded yet?

Yeah. That was pretty great, wasn't it? You think there is no rhyme or reason behind anything he does, but there is kind of a weird, convoluted logic to things. He did figure out what key — even though he wasn't playing the song in that key at the time — he did figure out what key he thought he would be playing it in when he picked up an electric guitar. So, he gave Scout that key to sing in. Timing-wise, that was a sheer fluke. It was part luck. I don't know how much planning there was in it...

He's just telling her, "Do it again. Do it again."

She's got a really great voice — it's kind of stretchy. Some voices that you can put in and it's not like it's a staccato timing thing. Her voice kind of sits over something. It also works because there's room for that voice to work at that time. It's more having a vision to know that's a good voice for that part. He's got a great mind for that. He puts things together that would appear to be extremely disparate, but in the world of Howe they seem to hang together in a way that I find particularly appealing.

Yeah. Well, you guys have a good relation- ship, it seems. I was surprised even to the level that he was able to be a little bit more gruff and cranky with you.

Yeah, that bastard! [laughter] Old friends always get away with a lot more than others would — we're not going to take offense. That's fine. Howe's a different animal when he's working. He's so laid back and so casual about everything. But he takes his work extremely serious[ly]. You may be hard pressed to imagine that when you see the chaotic way he approaches it...

Oh, I'm well aware of the chaotic way he approaches it!

There is no one more chaotic.

Handing off DATs as he's driving to mastering.

Flipping things around... anything goes. Except for rehearsal. That's out of the question.

Well, the record is really not done until he's forced to hand it in.

Absolutely. And probably not done there! But the thing he's trying to do, and what we should all try to do, is make something really special and really great. That's his way of making it. He gets cranky sometimes because he feels that he's not coming up with the goods. He might then take it out on somebody else. If I think there's the possibility of them coming up with some magic, I'll accept some crank as part of the process. When I won't accept is when I'm in the situation of making some bulk standard project that's just gotta sound good. It's gotta have some energy and you basically know what you're doing. Then I find I'm not very tolerant of that because I find the situation doesn't really warrant that kind of behavior. You're not trying to do anything extraordinary. You can have difference of opinion, but I don't want to mess around with egos too much. It's not interesting. It's not productive. If I want to play with children, I'll play with my kids at home! [laughter]

During the Magic Rays session you brought in a stack of your recent CDs. You brought in Tracy Chapman, the Dionysus, The Eels and your band. When things were getting a little out of focus, you would say, "Let's just listen to something else." But the things you would listen to would be things that you have done. Is that just by design? Is that to get them to recognize...

Recognize the superiority? No, not at all! For me, when I travel, I bring those CDs with me because I know what they sound like. I know what the level the bass is and I know what level the compression is. I can recognize the relative vocal level, or the level between instruments. It's just good for me to hear that. I don't mean it at all as an intimidation thing. It hadn't even occurred to me that it might be. It's not so much to intimidate as it is to inspire confidence.

Which it totally did.

You might think, "Where am I heading with this?" But, you know, most of the time the results I come up with I'm pretty pleased with and the artist is pretty pleased with. I've made very few records where the artist has moaned about it at the end. Even two or three years later, people are happy with the records I have made with them.

You get repeat business that way too.

I'm not a career minded person. I've never been like that. I have a very simple philosophy. I try and make the best record I possibly can with the material that's put in front of me. I'm not really good at focusing on more than one project at a time. I can listen to other things, I can get ideas for things. Some people can go from session to session. They can record something during the day and go mix something else in the evening. I would find that pretty hard.

If you were working with Naim [Amor], even if it was only for a few hours, that's what you were doing. When you came to Tucson we knew there were going to be demands for your attention and time! [laughter] You've actually worked quite a bit while you've been here.

Yeah. And I've enjoyed it quite a bit. I would've liked to have had more time to hang out here, but it's hard to resist. I love music and I love being involved in it. If somebody is doing something interesting and they ask me to help, my instinct is to say, "Yes." It's hard for me to say no.

Well, you were more freelancing when you were here. As opposed to when you're home and you're booked.

Yeah. I'm gonna go away and come back. If there was a WaveLab in Bristol, that would be great. I would stay and make all of my records there. There are a couple of quite nice studios available for doing low budget records, but then you've got to jump up into the Real World.

Have you mixed at Real World? Is it nice?

Yeah, it's amazing. But it's more than what I want. I'm not sure that I've made good recordings in extremely high- end studios. I think it's very difficult to record guerrilla fashion in a high tech setting. Tchad Blake does a lot of work there. He's jigging things all the time, I'm sure. I've worked there with Tchad. I would be totally happy to do that. Who wouldn't?

You mentioned something earlier, that you're not a household name. Do you want to be a household name?

Well, that's the nice thing about being a producer. You can be pretty damn successful and no one in the wide world would know who you are. No one is going to hassle you in a restaurant. It's a good line of work to be in. You can have the respect of your peers, but be generally anonymous. I'm very happy with the situation I'm in because I get asked to do interesting things all the time. My problems are things like, "Which interesting thing do I turn down?" Maybe that's not very big on the problem scale as far as I'm concerned. It would be nice to be a bit wealthier. It would be nice, in an ideal world, to have a studio of my own attached to my house.

Is that something you would like?

Yes. I would love to have it if I could have it and not use it when I don't want to. I would hate to have it if I had to use it to pay for it. That's why I say it would be nice to be a bit wealthier. That would be a way for me to be at home a bit more often, but to still be away if I wanted to. Everyone I know that owns a studio comes from a place where they have to pay the rent and pay the bills. You are going to be obliged to take on more projects — and more projects than you probably want to work on at all. I'm lucky in that I don't have to do that in the current position I'm in. I feel very fortunate to be where I am but it just would be nice to have a space that I could work in by myself. Then, if I wanted to produce a band or an artist I would have that option.

In your dream studio, would it be tape or would it be digital?

It would definitely be tape. Which is the other thing... I'd need space. I'd need a big space. If I was gonna have the studio, I'd want them to sound like when I record at WaveLab or when I record at the Plant in San Francisco, which is where Tracy [Chapman's] album was recorded.

What do you make of the whole "vintage" craze that's become so much a part of recording?

I'm not interested in the financial value — I'm interested in what they can do. I love vintage gear because it sounds nice. I like to have old guitars because I like the sound of them. I only have three or four guitars and they are all old. I didn't buy any of them because I thought I was going to make money and hang it on the wall.

You can still find something to do with an instrument even if it's broken.

Oh, yeah! I think you need to mix and match those kinds of things. I love to hear, as you know from the sound of my records, I love to hear really cranky things. I love cranky things mixed with plush sounds. To me, that's when something is exciting. Some kind of comparison. That's why I don't like modern mastering techniques where everything is slammed. It sounds really impressive for the first fifteen seconds and then there are no dynamics. That becomes the norm and it's not exciting after you've had that initial hit.

That Tracy Chapman record is mastered really well. The dynamics are very well done.

We spent a lot of time doing that. What was nice about that album was we mastered it in the same studio that it was recorded so we could take it back and reference it on the monitors. It's a quiet record. I was nervous about it because people expect albums to be louder. Tracy was really good. She said, "I want the dynamics and if that's as loud as it can be..." I respected that and I think it worked out really well.

That's one of those albums that you have a reaction on the first listen, "I like that." Was that a challenge for you to make sure her voice stayed front and center?

Not really. It's the obvious way to mix it. She likes her voice up loud. She's got a fantastic voice, so why wouldn't you put it up loud? She's a singer/songwriter. She's got very personal songs that people relate to, so you want to hear that voice up front. And I always mix vocals loud.

I've noticed that.

I mix them loud and dry. If I'm gonna relate to a piece of music I have to feel the connection. I have to hear the identity of the person or the people that are doing that. Sometimes if you treat a vocal in rock you want to hear a weird, treated vocal because it's all about atmosphere. It's not about putting across an emotional point. But if it's something that is about emotion of the song, anything that obscures the vocals — be it reverb or burying it in the mix or instrumentation — my instinct is to remove that. Then you can hear it [the vocals] and it makes you feel like someone is talking to you in the room. It should feel that close to me. Then it works. You're gonna feel the emotion. It's like so many pop records. It's all fake emotion. You're gonna hear reverb and overwrought singing. I don't know why anybody falls for that!

[laughter] You said you've been lucky because you've worked with so many great singers. It's probably enabled you to have good experiences with vocals.

Yeah, it's true! It's never been a problem to put a vocal up loud! It's surprising how loud you can put a vocal and the track still sounds powerful. Everything still sounds good. It sounds more exciting to have the vocal up in front but there's got to be a good character there.

With a singer/songwriter in their native tongue it's pretty easy to wrap your head around what they are trying to say. How do you find yourself emotionally pulled into a song when you don't understand the lyrics?

It's surprising. You can still feel the emotional pull if the singer is giving a good performance and the arrangement and the music is right. Dominique A's was the first project I had in a language I didn't speak. I've done a couple since then. My next project will be my second project in Italian. I like to get a translation if possible. I don't sit there with the translation in front of me — I'll read it once so I know what it's about, but then I'm going to use their lyrics so I know where I am. Some things to me were still unclear. That might be the way you always pronounce that. A native speaker of that language to help you know what the joining word was — to know to push the vowel.

What I've noticed is that you don't seem to think the gear is important. You don't seem bothered by the fact that we have a little Soundcraft board.

I'm not a gearhead and I'm not a tech-head. In an ideal world I'd like to record on an early '70s Neve with a nice 2" 16-track and a bunch of old U47s. Great! But you can make good records with other stuff. I've made recordings I've really liked with an old 4-track, one SM57 and no outboard gear whatsoever. I hate to drag out this hoary old cliché, but it really is about the music. Then it's gonna sound good. You've got to really work to fuck it up. I'd rather you have a bit more than that. You have to work within your budget. I'm totally happy to do that. If I've got the budget, I might go to a place with better sounding gear. But I'm not going to turn down something because of the budget. I know I can make a good sounding record in a budget studio.

You like mixing. That's pretty obvious.

I do. I didn't used to. I think I got more into mixing as I got better at tracking. I liked mixing more. [laughter] I grew up with (and intimidated by) the, "You can fix it in the mix" myth. That's what people used to tell me. I came from the musician standpoint. I'm not an engineer producer; I'm musician that started to produce by default. A lot of my approaches to production are rectifying things that went wrong when trying to make my albums as a young artist. One of those things was, "Don't worry about that, we'll sort it out in the mix." I soon learned that things don't get sorted out in the mix. It's something that becomes very time consuming in the mix, that doesn't get sorted out. It ends up sounding very unsatisfactory. You sort it out when you record it. To me a mix should be a relatively fast thing. You should push up the faders and if you've made the right decisions in the tracking it's probably going to be very close. You might put a little bit of compression — you might need to ride the vocals a bit. There might be a few pops or clicks that you need to take out if you have the time or the inclination. Maybe then you'll hear it and think, "Actually, it needs something. It needs one crazy guitar line or it needs a little bit of organ to just pull it together."

I really dug that with the Magic Rays when, in the middle of the mix, you would say, "Nope. We gotta redo that guitar."

Yeah. I like that. That, to me, does make a mix exciting. I like that fact that you can think you've got it done. Then you hear it and think, "Oh. If I just did that. If I just recorded that, it's just gonna set it off." It's a good time to record something, because it's just about to go out the door. Then you can realize, "It's just not working for me." You can fiddle with guitars for ten minutes in the mix, or you can just do it again.

You also don't want to be told, "Oh, we'll get to you later because we have to sort through this."

That's something I have to remind myself occasionally of when recording people. You have to give them the opportunity to do that. But it somebody says, "I've got an idea" when I'm the middle of something else, it's easy to tell them that I'll get to it. But then I have to remind myself that maybe that idea just came to them and it's exciting for that person. They might not be able to hold it. It could be great and it doesn't take long to tell whether something's got legs or not. It's worth okaying it unless I'm in the middle of something I can't reconfigure. I'll try and say, "Let's hear it. Let's see what it's like." [Usually] I have a good conception of songs as I whole and I think that does help enormously.

And then you extend that to the vision of the album as a whole.

Yeah. When I'm working on an album, I really do think of it as a whole thing. I'm thinking of how it fits together. When I'm working on one song, I'm thinking how it's going to relate to another song on the record. I've worked with some people who definitely don't do that and can't think like that. They can only think about the one song at a time and it absolutely hurts them if I say that one song won't work because of another. There could be two songs with a similar idea and they could cancel each other out. I'm insistent when I point out that if you want them both on the album, you have to think about them together. If they are not going to be heard in isolation, then you have to conceptualize it as a whole. I think the art of the great album is harder to uphold in the age of CDs and record companies wanting radio-friendly songs at the beginning of the CD. You know, it's all about the first two or three songs and then nobody cares.

It's funny how music has become a commodity that requires no work on the listener now. It's not the same. There's not that passion.

That's life, isn't it? Entertainment. That's what it's become. It's become something that people don't expect to have to put anything into it in order to get something out. Of course, what that leads to inevitably is thoroughly mediocre entertainment. You cannot have great stuff that doesn't require some input from the other party. It just doesn't happen. It's not possible. It's like the end of Western culture in many ways, isn't it? It's the slow death of Western culture.

Yep. We were handed the keys to the kingdom and we don't care to open the door anymore.

No. It's too much hassle.