A Trip to Athens...

I am a musician. At least that is what I tell my parents when they ask. In early March of last year, my band, The Marinernine, played at a house in Athens, GA, appropriately called The Landfill. The show was sparsely attended, but everybody in that room — everybody in Athens, it seemed — was in a band. Talking to people that night, it was apparent that although there was a resurging network of musicians, there were few resources for them besides the University radio station and a few fledgling record labels in that town. There was only one recording studio that was within affordable price range, a digital studio called Rock Central, but from the sounds of it, they were booked pretty far in advance, and prices were kind of high.

I had told a few people about our studio in Pennsylvania (Miner Street, then located in our living room in West Chester), and their reaction to our $10/hour rate was very enthusiastic. But let's face it, Athens is fourteen hours away from West Chester. It was pretty obvious that no one in their right mind would make a trip like that for a studio, and two "producers" they'd never heard of. It wasn't until a few days later that I came up with the idea that would occupy my thoughts for the next several months. If they needed a studio, and I wanted to be a "producer," then maybe my partner Jason Knight and I could just bring our studio to them.

June 15: Lots of phone calls and three months later, on Saturday, we packed up the Marinernine van and headed off once again for the deep South. I had contacted eight bands, and booked five. Kincaid, The Possibilities, Ceiling Fan, Stunt Double, and The Lost Man all committed to two days each. After we arrived I filled the remaining days with three others: Rug Boy, Gritty Kitty, and Joe Christmas.

We arrived at around 10 PM. Long trip? Yes. We carried our things inside with Ryan and Dan from Kincaid. They were very quick to inform us that Michael Stipe lived across the street in what appeared to be, impressively, a regular, "old shack" of a house with lots of bamboo, and a red porch light (I wasn't sure if it was a "bug-zapper" or not). We would be recording there for the next two days, then the remainder of the recordings would take place at the Landfill where we played in March. Needless to say, as we drifted off to sleep on the floor of their practice space, flashbacks to those tenth grade dreams of someday meeting my high school hero danced in my head.

June 16: We began setting up at around 11 AM. The practice room was a bedroom adjacent to the living room, so we set the recording gear in front of the TV, and ran cables between the rooms, under the door.

One major shortcoming within our system at the time was that our board had no tape sends, and no pre-tape EQs (it was a live sound board). This meant that we had to use the inserts as tape sends and rely exclusively on the quality of the source signal and mic placement in lieu of EQs. This actually forced us to learn a lot about mic placement, a valuable asset for sure. And it's never bad to know how to get a good sound from your amplifiers, drums, etc. I'll say it now: Much of the equipment in our system is actually pretty shitty, but we have made the most of it. And instead of getting angry with it, it has always felt better to cherish it for all the valuable lessons it has imparted on us. (I have this dream of having all of the stuff we replace with higher quality equipment dipped in chrome and hung in the studio where they can be preserved and appreciated for eternity).

The drummer used a very small kit, luckily for us since our board had no sub mix channels. We set up an SM 57 on the snare, D112 on the kick, both to their own tracks with the 3630 for compression. On a third track we decided to use the E100 for an overall drum mix, but with little luck. The room was ultra-carpeted and padded, with everything from extra curtains to styrofoam insulation board and the cymbals, therefore, were instantly soaked up, making an even balance between the floor tom and overhead impossible. In the spirit of "rigging it" we used a Y chord to patch the E100 on the floor tom (with the -20 dB pad on), and my brand new Realistic Electret as an overhead into the third track. (In case you never heard of the Electret, that's probably because it's such a piece of shit - made by Shure for Realistic I had heard, but shit nonetheless.) Later we discovered our D112 was making a "pop" noise, so we had to replace it with the EV 257. The guitar amps (one Fender Twin Reverb, and another solid-state Fender amp) were outside the room around the corner, making it impossible for us to hear much out of the monitors. The bass amp (Fender Bassman) stayed in with the drums, and was recorded with the Revox and the DBX for compression.

"Yikes!" you say. Well, rightly so. The overall set up may have been pretty laughable, but at least we were smart enough to act like it was all okay. It was our first day there, for God's sake. So we pretended everything was just fine and in the end it pretty much was. The Twin Reverb came out great, the other solid-state Fender was okay. (I have a really hard time getting any warmth out of solid-state amps. Jason was much more patient and it ended up paying off.) The bass sounded nice and full. The drums ended up all right, with some (lots of) EQing. By 7 PM or so we recorded eight songs! All were well performed and tight, and everybody seemed very happy.

Then something strange happened. At about 7:15 all of their girlfriends called and they all had to rush home. So we called it a night and drove to The Manhattan. Now, if you are planning a trip through Athens, this is a must see. It's dark, has lots of red velvet and brass, and they sell cans of Schlitz for $1. We made a night of it.

June 17: The next day we began vocals at 1 PM We used the E100 (pad off) through the DBX compressors. That went by smoothly as well, so by about 5:30 we started the mix. Unfortunately we were not very aware of mixing room acoustics back then. The sound of your mix depends greatly upon the room in which your system is located. The size of the room, the height of the ceiling, the hardness or softness of the walls and floor, and even how it is furnished — these all have a large effect on what your ears "think" the speakers are "saying". I don't pretend to be an expert in this area, but I can say in retrospect that this was no "dream" setting for a control room. It was about 15' x 20' but it opened into another similarly sized dining room. This made it too large for our "bookshelf" -sized monitors and fifty watt receiver. Because of this we ended up switching between our monitors and Ryan's stronger stereo system for different perspectives on the mix. After a while we began to rely on his stereo speakers. It was only after five songs or so that I realized that he preferred his stereo to sound really bass heavy. When we mixed, these things resulted in us "undermixing" the low end on those songs. We did some back tracking but in the end it was only a satisfactory mix.

Later that night J and I started brainstorming how we could correct this for the coming sessions at the Landfill. Our final resolution was to set up an equalizer that would correct for the qualities of our next control room with respect to the sound that was going to tape. That sounded easy, but in essence it was still a very "shady" move loaded with all sorts of variables. It was an improvement, nonetheless.

There were some other mistakes in retrospect: (This is the embarrassing part). Using the Y cord in the recording process was probably the worst mistake. It's a bad idea to try to mix two different signals to one track via a $4.95 piece of cable. For one thing, the shielding is likely to be cheap. This is the metal covering which keeps the frequencies intact (i.e. especially with longer cables, high end frequencies can be lost) and protects the wire from picking up outside interference such as radio waves, etc. Also, even if your Y cord has not seen extensive use, the thin bundles of wire on the inside can become frayed causing everything from crackles and distortion when the cable is moved. Cables, connectors and wiring work in a lot of ways by the same principles as your tape format: The larger the tape format, the stronger the signal it can take, and the more your recording has room to "breathe". By the same token, the thicker the cable and the better the solder joints, the stronger the signal it can convey. Also, just as your better quality tape uses better glues and plastics to preserve your recordings over time, a good cable will have heavier, better quality shielding and solder joints to preserve the signal from source all the way to tape. We still occasionally use Y cords today, but only in mixing scenarios.

June 18: The next morning involved breaking down at the Kincaid House, and setting up at the Landfill. Until now the temperature had been pleasant. Today would be different, humidity, storms, the works. By early afternoon we had set up the studio equipment in another "bedroom-adjacent-to-the-living room" situation. This time it seemed like it would work better. We were used to our living room in West Chester, which had about a ten foot ceiling, hard walls and hardwood floor. This was similar. There was also a fireplace (good to put an amplifier in) and a sloped section of the ceiling under the stairs going to the second floor.

When Matt and Bob from The Possibilities arrived (Kevin, the guitarist, was at a doctor's appointment) we began by setting up the drums under the sloped ceiling. He played a four-piece, big rock TAMA set. This time we set the same snare setup, plus the E100 about 1 ft. above the rack tom, picking up the overhead and the tom itself very nicely (I think the room had a lot to do with it), and our PZM on the floor about 1 ½' feet from the kick and the floor tom. It ended up boosting the ride as well. This setup worked really well, and served as the model for the rest of our time in Athens. Their guitars were beautiful. They were a three piece, with bassist and guitarist switching throughout, but when they played their Telecaster (late 60's vintage), they used an old Fender Bassman, and when playing their SG (early 70's), they used an old Marshall amp. (They did this live also.) Whatever the case, both lineups sounded brilliant. As usual, an SM 57 through the DBX, and that was that.

There was one problem, however — the bass guitar. Their equipment was fine enough, nothing fancy, just a Fender P Bass and a big Peavey combo amp. The problem was the sound they insisted on recording. This has been a recurring problem: how do you tell a bassist that he or she does NOT have to turn up the low end all the way on the amplifier? Everyone wants a super-warm, full low end, but if it's not 100% there on the tape, it's not too hard to boost the EQ in the mix. If there is too much, on the other hand, the result is an uncontrollable ball of mush. Well, we recorded it like he had it, anyway, through the Revox and DBX compression.

Kevin's appointment went late. In the meanwhile, a motherfucker of a storm rolled through. I understand it was something of a typical midday summer storm in the South: clouds, heavy rain, thunder, lightening, AND sunshine all at once. By the time it was thoroughly gone (didn't want to trust the surge protectors on our $20 power strips anyway), Kevin showed up. We started at around 4 PM, and kicked out five songs by 8:00 or so, vocals included. These Athens people were proving to be quite proficient. What a great band, too! They were Southern through and through, hard rock at times reminiscent of Skynyrd, but strong country tendencies the likes of Uncle Tupelo and family. What set them apart from those, however, were Bob's and Kevin's accents kicking through — the South's equivalent to Morrissey. Actually, they were originally from Bainbridge, GA, which is true "deep South", but decided to move to Athens for the music. As you can tell, I really liked this band.

June 19: The next dayís mix had to be postponed because the DAT player we were using (a Sony DTC 690) was discovered to have bad head alignment when Kincaid brought their DAT to Rock Central to have a copy made for a compilation. To their horror it was laden with glitches and squeals; when it was played on the machine we recorded it on, however, it was fine. When a DAT player's heads are out of alignment, tapes recorded on that machine will display moments of high pitched "squeals" and "chirps" when played on other machines. When it's really bad, the player won't even play DATs recorded on other machines without similar results. All of this is usually the result of the machine being moved around a lot, which was the case with this machine. Every band in town had borrowed it at one time or another. Nonetheless, Kincaid needed the player for the day, so we couldn't mix. For the rest of the sessions we could mix to this player, but I'd have to find another DAT player that I could copy our mixes to before we left GA.

June 20th and 21st: Ceiling Fan had an interesting setup of guitar and bass. The guitar was split between a Silvertone 212 amp, and one of those tiny plastic Marshall amplifiers that looks like a half stack but is actually about six inches tall. We put the Marshall in the fireplace, although we could have used a shoe box for isolation. The levels were sent really hot to tape to add some "fire" to the otherwise cold solid state sound. The bassist used an upright for a few songs, through a Fender Bassman. In their remake of "God Made the Flowers" (by the late Athens band The Roosevelts) Jesse, the bassist steps on a distortion pedal with the upright causing everything in the room to come through his bass, which had become a giant overdriven microphone.

June 22nd & 23rd: We recorded and mixed Stunt Double, a rock-a-billy Jon Spencer inspired threesome. The session went incredibly well, and when we mixed one of their songs, "Amazing Daredevils", we set up a microphone pointed directly into a fan through a Rat pedal and into the board. At the climax of "Amazing Daredevils" we activated the channel as everyone in the room began screaming and clapping. The combination sounded like fucking armageddon on the mixdown.

Week Two

June 24: The Lost Man. Going down to Athens, this was the only band we had heard before our arrival. We played with them when our band was at the Landfill in March. They were a lot to be excited about: a threesome, playing super intense, sometimes rock-a-billy, other times Louisville KY, stopping and starting rock songs. On top of that they had one of the most unconventional drummers I have ever seen. Not solid not necessarily good, but who's to say? Rob was somehow smooth, and undoubtedly awesome. He actually plays in Stunt Double as well, but at the time he really shined with The Lost Man.

We set up drums and guitar as usual. Matt, the bassist had the same insistence on adding ass-loads of low end to his amp; we just went with it. Rob wanted some grit to his drums, so we ran levels high. We began recording right away, but unfortunately about five songs into their set, we noticed that the DBX was turned off on the machine. Boy, what a fuck up. People criticize the DBX built into the TSR 8, but we have become so accustomed to it that we just weren't prepared to deal with that at the moment. It turned out that of the ten or so songs they had planned to record, the second half were instrumental. So we turned it on at the break between the vocal set and the instrumental set. That way, when we mixed the following Saturday, we'd have consistent levels and EQs for the two blocks of songs. In addition, we added some extra room mics for the second block of songs which we knew wouldn't be requiring vocals.

June 25: Rugboy. This band had no drums. Thank God. They had a cellist who was wired through a solid-state Silvertone 212. We thought he would be playing with effects, or we would rather have put the E100 on it. As it turned out he didn't use any effects. For guitars they switched between acoustic and electric. For all else they had this guy who just did weird shit on everything from percussion to keyboard to bass. They were the first to record and mix in the same day. When they initially said they planned on six songs, we were doubtful. They ended up finishing eight!

June 26: Gritty Kitty. I booked this group after we were in Georgia. J and I figured we should record on the days we had originally set aside to fuck around. This ended up being the best quality recording of the trip. The drums had a full tone with a pleasant ambient ring about them. I think they were vintage Ludwigs, or at least cheap "look-a-likes". The guitarist had a brand new Peavey tube amp. I had never seen the model before. I guess I, like many others, am guilty of harboring ill feelings toward Peavey equipment, probably because it was the only brand my high school would consider purchasing. This amp, however, did change my mind. Lastly, the one thing that set this recording above the others- Polly had a big phat bass, and cabinet.

Unfortunately they were only able to do three songs, of which they were only happy with one. They eventually didn't even use that.

The story behind it is actually somewhat humorous. Gritty Kitty was a somewhat loose cutie-pop outfit that wrote songs with hints of Small Factory and the like. They especially wanted to record their song "Dumpy" for a split with Rug Boy (a highly unusual combination) but it was, as with the others, a bit of struggle involving many takes. We were able to get two takes of "Dumpy" to tape, but when it came time to add vocals I mistakenly rewound to the first take which was to be the throw away cut. J and I couldn't tell the one take from the other, but they both seemed to be on equal ground, loose in some parts, right on in others. Then when J went to mix (sometimes we switched on and off to preserve our ears) he went to the second cut, which was the correct one (even though through the whole vocal overdub the band themselves couldn't tell the difference). They were somewhat disappointed, but mixed the song anyway. About a week after we left they added a new band member, so they decided to start over and record again. We have a copy of the mix and I still think it was our finest quality job of the trip.

June 27: This would be the day of our rescheduled mix session for the Possibilities. We had drawn a model of the board and its settings from the previous week, along with the settings of compressors, effects, etc. People say this never works, that something always changes. But I think it can work, especially if you understand that those levels are only going to be starting points for the mix. Let's face it, we had been listening to that band all day — really loud at times when we wrote out the levels. Our ears were in no condition to make final decisions anyway. But when we put up the reel, and repositioned the settings, we were about 90% there.

The Possibilities mix went really smoothly. We even did some extra mixes of one song, "New Tradition". All sounded great. Like I said before, I'm still trying to figure out how to get this band up to Philadelphia. That afternoon I took a few hours to go to Red House Studio to copy all of our DATs from the machine with the bad head alignment to a good machine. This place was a trip. It was located outside of town on the same property as a tent-city commune. The front door was open when I got there. I peeked my head inside and was greeted by a large man with hair and beard down to the middle of his chest. He set me up in the control room space, a big heap of a mess, with an old 16 X 8 board which he claimed REM's Chronic Town EP was recorded on. Throughout the four hours I was there, probably twenty different people of all ages, shapes, sizes passed through in tie-dyes, loin cloths, bikinis, beaded hair, dreds, I felt like I was tripping. When I was finished he only charged me $20. (Every other place wanted at least that per hour.) Nice people. Another place to stop when in Athens, see the sights.

June 28: This was another "add-on" since our arrival. Joe Christmas was a group of young fella's (some of whom lived in the Landfill) who had just recently returned from recording with Bob Weston in Chicago, and a full US tour. They also had recently filmed a real music video with all the locals in an Athens roller skating rink. Rumors were also about that Michael Stipe had shown up to their recent homecoming performance at the 40 Watt Club. They were, in short, the current "home town heroes" in Athens.

They were only going to record one song for a split 7 inch with Kincaid. I split for a few hours to run some errands, thinking that by the time I'd return, J would have been setting up the mix. When I did return, however, I learned that they apparently hadn't even written the song yet. Worse yet, the process was floundering about rather awkwardly while my poor partner tried to move things along. They began at noon, and by 5 PM they decided to call it quits for a few hours, at which time they all went to sleep.

At around 8:00 they resumed. J went out to get drunk. He had earned it. I would later meet him at the 40 Watt to see Servotron. The Joe Christmas session ended up coming together at about 11 PM and we finished up for the night at 11:30. We hadn't done vocals or mixed though, and the next day, our last day in GA, was already scheduled for the mix of The Lost Man. In the end, Zach, the singer, and I got up at 8:30 AM. We finished it all just as The Lost Man was coming in at around noon.

June 29 : Our Last Day! The mix for The Lost Man came together pretty well. I have to say the whole thing suffered greatly because we forgot the DBX on the first five songs. There were some highlights, though. Rob's drumming, that smooth, jostled, almost arrhythmic style was accentuated well by overdriving the drums through the board (they were already "hot" to tape). We also managed to salvage some of the overblown bass tones. Ryan, Matt and Rob were very excited in the end, as well they should have been. Their music was incredible, and their lyrics were intense and outrageous at the same time. One thing I wouldn't have known from seeing them play earlier that week at The Atomic was that much of their lyrical content was pointed very strongly towards lampooning industry people and musicians of the day, including "Infectious" which is about a local writer for The Flagpole who worships "All things Archers of Loaf", and another song aimed at Kim Gordon called "There's No Such Thing as a Free Kitten."

By 4:30 we had finished and loaded the van. It was late afternoon. We knew we'd have to contend with traffic, but we were homesick. So we said our good-byes and hit the road. This had certainly been one of the most draining, yet rewarding "vacations" both of us had ever had on. In the end we had recorded over forty songs by eight bands in fourteen days and nearly one hundred hours of studio time. We had driven roughly 1300 miles, spent $160 on gas, and less than $150 each on food, beer, and other "recreation".

This brings me to the "Special Thanks" part. J and I became great friends with Landfill Proprietor Phil Waldorf. He not only allowed us to set up all our shit in his living room, bring five to ten other strangers into his house each day and make lots of noise, but he also fed us daily via his management position at The Taco Stand, brought Jason in for his radio show at WUOG (he was the station manager of Univ. of GA's radio), and in all other respects showed us a great time. It was Phil also who introduced us to the music of The Olivia Tremor Control. As their success grows I wonder why we didn't try harder to get them in on our project. (Probably because Phil said we didn't have a chance.) I did call once, but I guess I just didn't have the steam to pursue it.

Additional Shouts go out to Jon Milavec for additional good times, Ryan Lewis and Megan Wargula for allowing me to stay in their air conditioned house while Jason slept with the roaches at the Landfill, and lots of other people — too many to mention.

One last thing: On the first day we were there, J and I met my high school hero Michael Stipe. Fortunately for you all, I have told the story so many times that I can't bear to tell it again. I will say, though, that I found out a few weeks later that only shortly before our meeting in the street in front of his house, REM had resigned with Warner for $80 million. For someone that rich, he was way down to earth. Thank God. If he were a dick, I'd have to reassess my whole high school experience.

Songs recorded during that trip have appeared on the following releases:

The Treble Revolution vol. 2, "Eleanor Roosevelt" by Kincaid, Kindercore Recordís kc003

Rug Boy/Gritty Kitty Split 7", "Place Holder 18" kc004

Joe Christmas/Kincaid Split 7" "Two Ways a Thousand Times", "Eleanor Roosevelt" kc005

The Lost Man 3 Song 7" EP "Natural Disaster", "Infectious" kc006

Stunt Double EP "Swingin' Daredevils", King Tone Records KTR001