John Paterno | TapeOp

Looking at the world of professional producing, mixing and engineering, one could be excused in thinking that certain people only work within specific genres of music. Names get associated with bands, scenes and styles — and in general the recordist in question has to run with it to a degree because they need to work, like we all do.

Then there's someone like John Paterno. John works as a producer and engineer in Los Angeles. He will mention in the same sitting sessions with Grammy-winning Latino pop artist Soraya, engineering for Mitchell Froom, work with Robben Ford and even tracking the new Robbie Williams CD, Intensive Care (with Stephen Duffy writing and producing). Add that he's worked with Mia Doi Todd, Bonnie Raitt, The Warlocks, The Thrills, Joan Osborne, Vonda Shephard, Tim McGraw, Los Lobos and Badly Drawn Boy. It's a hell of a discography, but all over the map.

He's also a calm and knowledgeable presence online, notably on the gearslutz.com forums, where you'll find his experience and patience a guiding light.

But is John Paterno a mercenary, just plying his trade and making money? Is he another cog in the L.A. music industry? I think he's simply a great producer/engineer/mixer who's finding his way along a career path like many other folks. Plus he's a nice guy!

He's also a calm and knowledgeable presence online, notably on the gearslutz.com forums, where you'll find his experience and patience a guiding light.

John, how the hell did you end up in L. A.? You're from Florida, right?

Yeah, I grew up in South Florida. I moved down there when I was 12 and ended up in the University of Miami. When I graduated, there were three places to go: New York, Nashville, or L.A. I did not want to stay in Miami. New York I would've gone to, but I had a lot of friends in L.A. Joe Barresi is one of my good friends and there were a couple of other people who graduated before I did, and so I came out here.

Was that a tough move?

Yeah. I moved out in May 1990, so I've been here for 15 years now. Fortunately I came out here with a job.

Really?

It was the whole thing where you send out a bunch of resumes and nobody calls you back. I had one interview at The Complex as a tech. I figured it would be a job and I could at least get in, but after the interview I found out that everybody quit so I had no place to go. But I had been hanging out here with Joe and the manager of a studio in the Valley called Cornerstone. He liked me, so he said to Joe, "Hey, did your friend John find a job yet?" Two weeks before I moved out, I had a job. Very lucky.

You also have a minor in electrical engineering?

It was either a minor or one, three credits short of an official minor. Miami was great because it's a music degree and also a strong electronics background. You have to be accepted into the music school, then you also have to take the electronic classes.

Which includes math?

Exactly. Calculus, physics, stuff like that.

Was that pretty tough, going through school like that?

Yeah, it was really intense, but I think when you're young you don't really know any better. You're just kind of goin' for it, you know? I would go from a jazz arranging class to an acoustics class. In one class we had to design a studio, complete with blueprints. In the other class, you had to do a big band chart. So I would go back and forth between writing blueprints and coming up with a chart, then writing out all the horn parts. It was crazy, but it was fun.

Does all that kind of come into play in your life now?

Every day. At the very least I spent $40,000 and learned how to read a chart, which helps. I know where bar 53 is. I can say, "Get in on the end of two on fifty-three."

That's nice. I can't do that!

It all helps. There are a lot of people who don't [know], but they can pick it up. It's whatever I can do to be helpful, and sometimes that's the thing that gets the session cruising.

On this project here you're hired as an engineer, but on projects where you're hired as a producer, do you find yourself arranging?

Yeah, absolutely. The production thing is so much fun for me because you're involved from the get-go. With a band like The Black Mollys, they sent the CD and we worked on the songs. A couple of them were just little ideas and I'd make suggestions. Tory [Stoffregen], the main guy in the band, was really great. I'd have a couple of really dumb ideas that he'd be completely fine with trying, but there were also ideas that he hadn't thought of that worked. That was the whole process. You'd go in and rehearse with the band and it was the same thing: "What if you do this? What if you play this figure on the toms this way instead of that way?" And to the bass player, "What if you do this little thing?" Sometimes just these little suggestions can really focus things. I'm totally into that and then, you know, just taking it and making it sound like a record in the end.

One of the things I see sometimes with people just starting out is a bulldozer effect. How do you initially learn to come into a situation and make calls without making yourself look like an ass?

The most important thing is always to make sure that the musicians don't ever feel like they're in a recording studio. They have to be able to feel like they're doing their thing. That's where the whole psychology of production comes in. When do you say something? When do you not? It comes down to trust — once a band trusts that you have a vision and that you're on the same page. You want to make the players feel comfortable with the situation. You don't want to start making a bunch of suggestions after hearing the first three chords they play or after hearing the song for the first time. I've seen it happen! You just want a player to feel comfortable. Obviously you don't want to yell at them or tell them that they're being a jerk. I've seen that happen, too. Mostly you just want to get the best performance out of the performer, but you also want to get what you need. Every personality is different and you just have to really be aware. There's one particular drummer I worked with on a record a few years ago, and he gets bored really quickly. He's a great drummer. He gets bored. So he goes out there and they start playing. It's a great band, but by the third take there's just no energy to it. The producers asked me, because they were in from England, "What do we do?" I said, "Give them a break. Tell them we have to take care of something and to go to the lounge for 15 minutes." The drummer walked away, went out, then it was "Okay, we're ready to go." We got it on the next take.

He was just tired of doing the same thing over and over.

Yeah, exactly. Bored. He had only played through it three or four times, but you know, he's a session guy and session guys are smart. Session players do it all the time — they're hearing it, they know what they want to do. You're going to get their best performance when they're concentrating. That, to me, is the whole game. With other people, you've got to let them find their way into it. Some guys you've got to guide a little more. Do a take, say, "I like this, I like this, I like this, stick with that." It's really context and person-related, but I think if you're aware of that, things go smooth. If you try to superimpose something on it, try too hard, too much or try to get too clever, I think that undermines the thing in the end. There's a line and sometimes clever things work, but it's gotta come from somewhere deeper. Those are the records I always feel like I'm listening to over and over again. And every situation is different. A band situation is completely different than a singer/songwriter. The trickiest thing is replacing somebody in a band because they're not cutting it.

Have you had to do that?

I haven't had to do it personally, no.

You've seen it happen?

Yeah, and most of the time it's actually done okay. Again, that's the producer finding a way to make it work, as long as everybody understands. Honesty is a very powerful thing if you allow yourself to let it happen. I think bands need that. They need to feel like they can trust whomever it is they're working with. Sometimes it's a matter of speaking bluntly, but not maliciously. You can't say, "You suck!" But you can say, "What happens if you try it this way? What happens if you try it that way?" If you bring something positive to it, most of the time you're going to get a good response and good rapport with people. That's how you get something that you're going to want to listen to over and over again. The worst thing is to feel like the whole record has been a struggle. You put it on and it sounds like a struggle. There are a lot of records that have been Pro Tooled to death. They sound like they were such an effort to make. Those are the ones you listen through maybe once and put away. Those are not the records I want to make.

How do you avoid Pro Tooling to death?

Getting good players. Rehearsing. People complain about studio budgets and all this other stuff, but in the '50s and '60s studios were extremely expensive and people were really prepared when they went in. This whole thing about writing in the studios didn't really start until the '60s and the '70s. Sgt. Pepper took six months, but conversely, Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Help! were all done within 18 months of each other, so what's the difference?

Yeah, the songwriting alone is a miracle.

Exactly. But people used to have to be prepared. The Black Mollys — I rehearsed those guys. They were all good players so we rehearsed for, like, four days and went into Sound City and recorded 14 songs in four days. I got all the drums, bass and some of the guitar parts, then we went in and overdubbed guitars and vocals. But the core of the record, which was those guys playing together, which was the way that record had to be done, was done. Yeah, you gotta go in, you gotta tweak some stuff. But I am totally not, "I've gotta be on the grid" and all this other stuff. It's people playing music together. That's the important thing.

Do you find yourself ever working on projects where it's handed over to somebody that does more tweaking?

No. I'm at a point where I don't want to do gigs unless I am doing the entire gig, unless it's for certain clients who I've worked with a bunch or someone I'm helping out. I have some Nashville people who called me because one of their artists is out here in L.A. and they need a vocal fixed. They're really great people, so of course I'm going to do it.

And lord knows where that's going to get mixed down.

Yeah. And this Robbie Williams record, I want to mix it, but I may not get a chance. Clearmountain is going to do it. How do you say, "No" to Bob Clearmountain? [ Tape Op #84 ] You just always do the best job you can and make sure that everything sounds as good as you can make it. Like I told Bob, if I have to pass something on to somebody, I always want to pass it on in the same way I would like it handed to me. I just want it to be taken care of. I want to be able to push up the faders and work.

Don't just send them a wreck.

Exactly. I've mixed a couple of records, low budget things, in Pro Tools this year. On one of them the bass was out of tune on every song. No cross fades anywhere, just everything cut together. So every time you're listening, trying to get into a song, all of a sudden you hear a click somewhere. You got like 30 something tracks, you're scrolling up and down, and it totally kills the flow of work. Mixing has such a performance aspect. People don't realize that. You get into it. And when I mix in Pro Tools, I end up re- recording things a lot and trying to get them to pop, to do what I need them to do. So you get a lot of those things, like stereo vocals where the vocal is in the middle, yet it's a stereo track.

Why?

Exactly. Why?! There are a lot of things — organ parts or piano parts, that are essentially mono, but they're on two tracks. When I hear something mono, I'm gonna want to pan it one way or another, so the first thing I have to do is listen to everything and combine it down. It's a lot of extra effort. But fortunately too, a lot of people will allow me to make decisions, like the Roger Manning stuff [The Land of Pure Imagination]. Roger did a really cool record.

Were you brought in just for the mixing?

I mixed and mastered it. First of all, it was really cool that he even contacted me to do it because he had me come over to listen to some stuff and I just laughed. When you hear stuff that makes you smile, you gotta be involved with it. His thing, it's just so cool, with so many influences, so many little references. He really let me do my thing to it. There were things, filtering things and panning things, stuff that happened that he didn't think about that he was at least open to.

The record blew me away because some of it sounds really '70's L. A. I'd just been listening to a bunch of the Carpenters box set, Pacific Ocean Blue with Dennis Wilson, some early L. A.-era Fleetwood Mac, and it reminded me of that. Where did you mix it at?

I got a little set up in my house, just a room. I've got a monitoring system that makes sense to me, a couple of these little NHT [speakers], the smaller ones. They're called the M double O's [M-00]. I got a pair of those and a little subwoofer. Pro Tools. A lot of this rack stuff comes home with me. I take the computer home, one interface and that's it. Like I said, I do a lot of re-recording.

In what way? Like just piping something back out through stuff and back into certain...

Yeah, exactly. Say I want to re-work the kick sound. I'll most likely run through the Chandler LTD-1s because I have four of those that aren't here. I always use those on drums when I track — if the kick needs more low-end, it needs this, or it needs more of that Neve- y kind of tone. So instead of patching it in and leaving it in the whole time and having to recall it later, I just get it close. I really like the FilterBank EQs in Pro Tools, so for fine adjustments it's the FilterBank stuff runnin' out through a guitar pedal. I'll run it out through the Little Labs PCP and just loop it through that. If the bass needs some more tone, I can re-amp it, go through a SansAmp. I can do a bunch of different things.

Do you ever print effects like spring reverbs?

Sometimes, but I'm really into Altiverb. Roger had some great Master Room reverbs that he was nice enough to lend to me because he wanted that tone on his record. I sampled them in a couple of different ways and used them quite a bit. I got a [Roland] 501 Space Echo and sampled that reverb too. It's great.

And you have plates, sampled plates.

Sampled plates and there's a couple of cathedrals in there that sound amazing. I love them. I started using reverb again because of it.

Do you have a little console?

No.

Really? How are you doing it? Are you mixing it in the box?

I do it all in the box.

With an I/O for the outboard effects?

Yeah, and I have a stereo bus chain that I set up with a stereo bus compressor. I usually use the Alan Smart.

But you're using the internal digital bus?

Yeah. You know, I can't get into that whole argument thing.

[laughing] No, this is good. I was expecting you to say the exact opposite.

Well, you heard it. Both of those records that I sent you were mixed in the box. The Black Mollys thing has a little more edge to it than Roger's thing, but the Black Mollys thing lends itself to that as well.

Are you using Pro Tools HD?

Yeah, this is actually my rig. Studios are starting to have them more and more, but L.A. is still pretty tape machine-based and honestly, I'd rather bring my own rig. I know where it's been. I know who it's been sleeping with. Also there are samples, certain ways of working, session set-ups and all this other stuff that allow you to just work and not have to be screwing around with technology. There's nothing worse than waiting for something technical, you know?

I realized that the other day. I was at the studio trying to get some plug-ins to work and I thought, "God, just give me a fucking soldering iron and a volt meter!"

It's definitely not a lot of fun. And what it comes down to is, the first thing you have to do before you do anything is research. Go on the manufacturer's website, see if it will work, see if it's approved, go on a message board and see if anyone else is having problems. I was just having this conversation yesterday with the producer of this thing, Stephen Duffy. He's trying to get somebody set up so they can just sit down and write. I think the whole thing with Pro Tools, the whole technology, moving stuff around, finally there's been a backlash. But people don't realize that this shit's been going on for a really long time, just in different ways. People used to measure out beats on a tape machine and then cut the tape, make sure all the kicks and snares were accurate. Like Saturday Night Fever... [the track "Stayin' Alive"]

Oh the loop? Yeah, that's just a loop off "Night Fever'" or something, isn't it? I'm pretty sure they looped it. People have been doing stuff like that for a long time. Sly and the Family Stone, drum machines. Ann Peebles, "I Can't Stand the Rain" and all those Hi Records things, some drum machine. It's not like it hasn't been done, but it's cool that people are at least aware of it and they don't want certain things to happen on their records in that way. But it's all context-related. It really comes down to what kind of record you're trying to make. I got a call one time for a gig. Somebody's manager called me up and said, "We're looking for somebody who can fuck up drums." I told him I didn't think I was the right guy. "But you worked with Tchad Blake!" [ Tape Op #16 ] I guess, but anybody can run drums through a pedal and make them distort. I want to make records. I said, "I make records. I don't just fuck up drums gratuitously." So I hung up. The guy called me back and said, "We really want you to do it." So I ended up making it, but I don't think I distorted the drums very much at all. The coolest thing is when you hear something, to me, the fun part is, "Well, how would I do it?" It's going to be different anyway and that's always the fun part, imagining how you're going to get from here to here. That happens on a daily basis for me with tracking. I hear something and think, "This has got a bit of a Bowie influence or a Scott Walker thing. What were they doing or how would I do it or how in this context could I do something that makes me feel the way that made me feel?" Even if it's not exactly the same or not even close, at least it throws you off on a path to be creative and to think about just adding some cool thing.

I think that's part of supporting the artist and helping create. It's their statement, their project, their career.

It's their record. Their name is on it and in the end, hopefully you're hired because of something they liked about your work. I did this record in Miami with this girl Soraya. She produced and did a fabulous job. It was one of those things where you bring in the right players, you work on it and you get it sorted out. You have a little bit of trust and you have an opinion on what you want and if it goes too far, you say, "No." She ended up getting a Grammy for that record. I ended up getting one too — a Latin Grammy.

How do you get jobs at this point? How do things come to you?

It's all kind of word of mouth and reputation. In getting Roger's record, I think Joey Waronker recommended me for that. This Robbie Williams thing, the A&R guy knew me from another project. Another record I mixed, somebody liked the way I posted on the Internet.

[laughing] No!

I had a thing out on Gearslutz. I use my name. I don't hide behind some other thing and people liked what I had to say and they looked. There's a link to my website. You can look at my discography and see what I've worked on. A couple of people contacted me that way as well.

Fifteen years of solid work in the same area, too.

I started out as assistant, then I was engineering for a long time. Now I'm really starting to focus on producing and mixing more. It's another phase.

Do you have management?

No, I don't. About every 18 months I think I need one and I meet with some people, and either it's not the right fit or I don't get what they're about. It may happen at some point. I'm not adverse to the idea.

It seems when I've talked to people that the manager is more to help them get paid than to get jobs.

Yeah, they're not out to get you jobs.

Well, it's probably difficult to sell an engineer or a producer to someone.

Yeah, that's it. I had a really great meeting with somebody where basically we came down to that kind of thing. How am I going to market you? And it was really a good point. If I do a million-selling record, then there are going to be managers interested in me.

I looked up your discography and it's a lot of different stuff. Real varied. Do you ever feel like it's almost a hindrance, as in no, "He's the guy that does that."

Well, here's the thing about my career, and it's a very interesting point because you get a guy like Barresi who does rock records and he's great at it. But I've gotten involved with people who've done singer- songwriter stuff, then I've ended up doing other things. I'd almost like to just work on stuff that's cool and I don't really care about the label. Is it the right thing to do? Not the right thing to do? I don't know. I just have to do what I think is cool. Look at Tom Dowd. When people say, "You don't specialize," here's a guy who recorded Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Cream, Lynryd Skynryd. And he was involved in the Manhattan Project. He's just a smart guy who loves music. If I can have that kind of success and reputation, then great. I just love music. I love jazz. If there's something attractive to me, then let's do it. I can't see the harm in that. There are always people who are going to look at my discography and say, "Oh yeah, he's done this. I don't want to work with him." But that's not my problem, you know? Is it a quality record or not? That's the only condition you would think that should apply.

You're not going to make a jazz band sound like Robbie Williams. How could you?

No, and I may not get gigs from bands because I've worked on a Robbie Williams record. But I also worked on this really cool Liverpool band called The Stands last year. That record is coming out pretty soon and I think it turned out great. You can't worry about that shit. You have to do your thing. People are either going to get it or they're not. The people that get it are the ones you want to be associated with.

You've worked with a lot of different producers too, but you did quite a bit of stuff with Mitchell Froom. [ Tape Op #10 ] Is that still an ongoing thing?

He's been working a lot with a guy named David Boucher [ #91 ] now, who's a really good guy. I had my little run with Mitchell, and hopefully I'll get to work with him again. He hasn't worked with Tchad in a long time either and I know that they kind of miss working with each other. But Tchad lives in England now and has got his own thing going on. I've gotten to work with some amazing producers: Mitchell, Byron Gallimore, the Nashville guy who's done Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, just one of those guys who brings in really good people and sorts stuff out. Even if it's not your cup of tea musically, he puts it together. There's an Italian producer Celso Valli, who does Eros Ramazzotti, a huge Italian pop guy. I've seen Celso with Mike Landau, working on a guitar part and say, "Michael, just change the inversion," and he puts this one note on top and all of a sudden the track goes wide, it goes deep, it goes up, and all of a sudden you hear all this depth. It's like, "Holy shit!" Mitchell Froom is that way, too. Economy. I hope a lot of those things have rubbed off on me because it's amazing. Sometimes if you just do these little things, they have a huge impact on something.

Do you feel like you're at a point where you can pick and choose the jobs you take?

It depends on if I want to make a living or not. I've turned down a couple of things because I don't like the band or I know it's going to be a nightmare. You see the red light flashing. Kevin Killen [ #67 ] gave me a really great piece of advice one time. He said, "Never take a gig just for the money." There's got to be something else that brings you into it and the times where I've not heeded that advice have been a drag. I have times when I'm really busy and times when I'm not.

How do you stay afloat during times when you're not?

You save, you know? You have to. I love gear and I love buying stuff, but at the same time, you can't. You gotta worry about taxes, you gotta worry about rent.

You did a record with Tom Rothrock [ #9 ] last year. What that pretty fun working with him?

Yeah, it's cool. I think we have a lot of respect for each other. He really lets me do my thing.

He's a fantastic engineer as well, so is he producing and you're engineering in that scenario?

Yeah. We co-produced a record a few years ago with this jam band called Particle. That's actually been helping me. And he's been encouraging me more about the producing thing as well because we've become pretty good friends. He's another guy with a completely different approach to producing, but seems to get good results. He's very much about the music and tempos. He's not the musician, like Mitchell Froom, but he'll guide the thing and get results. In the end, you listen to it and that's all that really matters.

Is your website a good vehicle for you, at least for people checking you out once they've heard about you?

I can at least send people there, yeah. If I have a conversation with somebody and hand out a business card, I can say, "Here's the website." I did it to be low-key and just point people to. It gives people an idea of who I am, which is all I really want. "Here is what I've worked on and here is what I do."

Many of us have done albums that never come out. Do you put that on your resume? That's a confusing one, because no one will find it to listen to.

Yeah, or I worked with so-and-so and it turned out to be a B-side. Other people do it, but I can't. I don't know if I still have Sheryl Crow on my discography, but I've worked with her. But it's mostly Trina [Shoemaker]. I had it up there for a while, then I thought about it. I did one overdub on one song and I'm throwin' it up [on my website], and here's Trina doing the whole damn record. I pulled it off.

How often do you get points on records?

It's starting to happen more now.

That must be harder to know if you even got paid.

It's a harder subject to broach, but if you're producing, most likely you're going to get something. When you're mixing or when you're involved in the whole project, it's hard to broach. When you start talking about money, it always gets a little weird. At the same time, you've got to value yourself to a certain degree. Fortunately with most of the people that I work with, it's usually not an issue. Not that I'm making top dollar all the time, because I'm not, especially in this climate. You're not making the same kind of daily rate that you used to make, but if I get a call from somebody who I like working with, most of the time it's great. Every once in a while it's a juggle. Like, "Okay, I can do this part or I can't do the whole thing or if you can wait a couple of weeks because I have this other thing going on." Most of the time, if people want to work with you, they're going to find a way to make it happen. And vice versa. Again, it's a word of mouth thing.