Pete Anderson: Raising the Kids to Punk and Roots Rock

Pete Anderson is known to many as the original guitarist and producer for Dwight Yoakam. These days Pete's life revolves around his label, Little Dog Records, and studio, where he's recently produced, recorded and released records for Moot Davis, Cisco and even Kirk Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets. The studio space here is modest but flexible, and with his partner-in-crime Sally Browder [ see interview this issue ] , he's able to do anything he needs to do at their own space. Pete's also done a handful of solo records featuring his melodic, twangy, great guitar playing and superior tone. His last, Daredevil, is a fun outing — the kind that's great to leave in your car stereo for the summer!

How did being a musician lead into being a producer for you?

Pete Anderson: Well, I hate to admit that it was sort of backwards, but I think I was supposed to be a producer and the musician thing was more of an avocation. I just wanted to play guitar once I saw Elvis Presley as a kid, though it was really Scotty Moore. I love the sound of a guitar, and it's been a lifelong pursuit. Coming to L.A., I helped people do their demos. There was a lot of scuffling in my mid-twenties with guys doing demos and demo studios, songwriters, helping somebody to work something out. I never thought of myself as a producer, more just facilitating so that I can play guitar on the session, really! So it was kind of backwards when somebody said to me, "You're a producer." After Dwight's Guitars and Cadillacs came out, Warner Bros. wanted me to produce Rosie Flores. I asked, "You mean, as in what I did for Dwight?" And they said, "Yeah, that's called producing." I'd done some producing prior to that — a soundtrack for a student film, a single for an R&B vocal group, made a couple of records on my own. So I told them, "No, not really," because I just wanted to go and get in the van or bus and drive around the world and play guitar. They said, "Well, we'll pay you," whatever it was at the time — $20,000 — which was a fortune at that time. So I told them I could do that. I just went in there and followed the same pattern of basic organizational skills: get everybody here, and kind of judge people's personalities and performances. I don't mean to say that I have basic rules for making a record, because I think that's dangerous.

I've noticed on your three solo CDs that there's no producer's credit from you.

PA: When I decided to jump off a cliff and make my first record, Working Class, I wanted the luxury of not being the producer. I also think it's extremely difficult, if not almost impossible, to successfully produce yourself. I think a lot of people say they produce themselves because their ego wants to be called a producer, or they want to be artists that co-produce their records. But you know, coming up with a few ideas is not producing a record. So I wanted the luxury of not having to produce any of my records and leaning back and saying, "What do you think?" I can shut off my producer's head and it allows me to fill up more of the artist space in my head when I'm playing. Of course I'm going to have all kinds of opinions about the groove, key, tempo and the arrangements. But the actual production, like Sally, Tony Rambo and Jason Robbins on the last [record], Daredevil — they were the engineers and subsequently the producers because I felt that's what all three of them were really doing.

You've also worked with those three on other projects in the past, right?

PA: Yes.

So those are working relationships.

PA: Yeah. You know, I sympathize with anybody that has to pick a producer. I have no idea how a kid, or even an established artist, picks a producer. How do you do it? They say, "I listened to your records and I picked you to produce me from listening to your records." But how do you know unless you've sat there and watched me work? How do you know I did anything? Now sometimes, doing nothing is the producer's job. Like in baseball, it's knowing when to bring a pitcher in or take him out. A guy will say, "Dude, if you were there from day one, if you heard what they brought me and what I did with it, I'm the greatest producer in the world ever." But you don't know that, so you just judge my end product. I really sympathize with someone when they're choosing a producer. I'm not sure how one really goes about it.

Have you ever had a project where you were pulled in as a producer and didn't feel it was the right match?

PA: No, because the majority of my career as a producer for hire was via manager. I had a manager and it was an interview process. There was always an early part where I found something in what they were doing that I could attach to and say, "Okay." Most of it was people coming to me saying, "I know you're a guitar player. I'm a guitar player. Those guys are like aliens to me. Can you help me?" They had somehow gotten a record deal and were in the middle of it and I couldn't say, "No." There were a couple times where I got snookered, thought it was going to be good and it got increasingly difficult. But that was later in my career when I was a little less tolerant. I come from a really blue-collar background. You get up in the morning, have your cup of coffee, drive to the factory, punch your card and go to work. So I'm like, "It's time to make a record. Let's go." I'm not going to frou-frou around, light candles and have it catered. You know, have [the artist] read books. I was in an interview with one guy and he said, "I have my artists read certain books so we can collaborate on it."

Like works of fiction?

PA: I don't know. They weren't even psychological. It wasn't like, you know, The Lord of the Rings.

Partly as a producer, you've not pigeon- holed yourself 100 percent in a genre, and I know your background is more eclectic. Do you ever find yourself searching for things you'd like to work on that are a step outside of what someone might assume you do?

PA: Yeah. I only work on stuff I really like, so my taste does have boundaries. But I've always been fascinated and in awe of really great songwriters, and that comes in all packages. The Meat Puppets, Michelle Shocked, Dwight Yoakam. The majority of the work I did in and around that twelve year run in the mid-'80s to late in the '90s [involved] English, Irish and New York artists that were way off the map. But the basic thread was that they were all songwriters and I found something in their writing, something in their voice or writing ability that inspired me. I only want to make great records and some people don't have the ability. Some people don't want to. Some people don't know how and aren't going to let you. And you've got to look them in the eye, talk to them and listen to what they have to say. You've got to be a good listener. If you've done it long enough, you know what I'm saying. You can read between the lines. Records last forever, and I don't wanna make bad records. I only want to make great records.

We interviewed Jim Dickinson and at one point he said that you've gotta steal the record from the artist. Have you ever felt like that?

PA: Jim is a pro. He's done it forever and he's got some wacky ways of doin' it. He's funny, but you can't knock it, anyone that's had the experience he's had. But yeah, I've said that too. We were making this record with Little Dog for this artist Cisco, and he was saying, "Blah, blah, blah." I said, "Look, I'm here to save you from yourself." So it's the same thing!

What prompted you to start doing the label and to build your own studio?

PA: Because I was very independent-minded, and when Dwight's career took off and I got a producer manager, I produced five records a year for five years in a row. Five records a year is a full year for me with some normal breaks. Back in the analog days, pre- production, rehearsal, recording, mixing and mastering was about a ten-week process, so ten times five is 50 weeks. That leaves two left...

And you're on tour for those.

PA: Exactly. And I also didn't like waiting for the phone to ring — the cyclical flavor of the month, week or decade. I never was one to want to work inside the system, like to be a producer or to have a situation with a label. I wouldn't do well with that. So I ran into an artist named Anthony Crawford who was out here to sing harmony on a Steve Forbert record. I listened to his songs and thought they were great. He asked me to help him get a record deal. This was in 1990 or something, and it was like, "Multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning producer Pete Anderson. This should be easy." But I'd tried in the past to get Lucinda Williams and Jim Lauderdale record deals, and people would just look at me like I was nuts! Everybody would sit down and have meetings with me, but then there was that dumb look on their face and they'd play me something they'd just signed. They'd play me some out-of-tune, cackling hen that couldn't sing or play their way out of a paper bag and say that they — Columbia, Warner Bros, whoever — were investing all of their money in it. Although I'm sitting on the other side of the desk, I figured they would think that I knew something, but no. Their egos don't allow it, and I realized after taking about five of these meetings that I was sitting on the wrong side of the desk. I hated taking meetings with those people because I'm talking to people that know less than I do about music, and I have to acquiesce to their ideas. It was upside down — backwards. So the only logical thing to do was to make a record with this guy and put it out. That's how it started. I never wanted a recording studio, but with the advent of digital, so many things changed. I bought a Pro Tools rig when it was, you know, point one. I don't even know what the number was. It was the beginning of it. In '92, we used Pro Tools to do a record called This Time with Dwight. Somewhere around '97, I was convinced that Pro Tools was actually a studio in a box. I still looked at it as a post-editing device. I had some partners earlier on in the record company that had a studio. They fell out of the business and eventually it was that box and I in a 500 square foot office thinking, "I need a place to make records." I stumbled into this place. Some Armenians had an ADAT studio for Armenian television. They had a contract and it ended.

Was it already built out then?

PA: All of the heavy construction was done: air conditioning, alarm, double walls. Cosmetically, we did some changes, but the carpet and walls are pretty much the way they were. I put in the skylights. It's been a great workspace for us and it's morphed in a way that I'm comfortable with, with how I make records. We scored Dwight's movie and did the last couple of Dwight things here. Sheryl Crow has been here, Ricky Skaggs, Bill Gibbs. A lot of people have come through and no one has complained that it's not a real studio.

You don't want it to be a commercial place?

PA: No. We're not going to be competitive. All of this stuff is for the way we like to make records, the way we like to make them sound. It works for us.

Sounds like an extension of you and your whole career. There's the game you can play of running a studio and it can be exhausting.

PA: You're in Portland with a place and you got a situation, but can you imagine the competition in Los Angeles? The studios are going out left and right. If you don't have a reason to have a studio, you shouldn't have one. But look how easy it is to have a studio! I have a portable desk. There are no troughs. That thing's got a cover on the back — you roll it out and you go down the block. It's pretty simple, but we're real happy here. We've flattened the room out. We've actually mastered in here.

Really?

PA: I don't want to get too enthusiastic, but it's the best mastering I've ever had. And I've had the best guys master. It probably brings a lot less pressure on the label, too, if you're not chalking up and blowing budgets.

PA: Getting over the hump was figuring out how to mix here. We dropped the ceiling, made a phony compression ceiling. This is a bass trap. We had our guy come in and sound it out and it was pretty flat. There were some pretty ugly frequencies in here before. There's a window behind there for the studio that we covered so there's no bump off the glass. To be able to mix here now is just incredible.

You're mixing on digital?

PA: Everything is mixed in Pro Tools and when it's done, it's rinsed onto tape. We put an analog splash on it and bring it back. It never touches the Mackie. Most of the mic pres go through the APIs, so it's sort of like a little mini API/Studer thing — which is a pretty good combo if you like that sound. I was trying to get a board that [the engineers] could mix on because I'm so old school with faders, but they said, "Nah. I mix with the mouse." I don't know how they do it, but Sally and Tony all mix with the mouse.

SB: That was the hardest thing to get over, and then once you get over that, it's just mixing.

I turn the wrong side of my brain on as soon as I grab the mouse. I lose my intuition.

PA: I looked at it. It freaks me out. SB: I didn't really know anything about computers when I started working with Pete in Pro Tools. I could email and that was about it, so I didn't have that same association. I have that association of computers having to do with music.

How have you found people like Sally, Jason and Tony that have been working here a bit? How have those people found their way into your orbit?

PA: Well, I was sort of wandering around looking for a producer/manager later in my career. Sally was managed by the same guy, so I met her that way. Then we were up and running here and had some interns coming in. I have no desire to engineer. I don't want to. I'm not going to reach over your shoulder. I don't want to put up a mic stand. It's just not fun for me. And I see engineers that are into the mic stand — they take a mic out of the box and [makes a sound like they're in awe]. God bless you! Because I don't want to do that. You make yourself useful and that basically has been the principle.

You also studied music theory. What would you say to someone just starting out about how that can help as a musician and a producer?

PA: Well, there are two languages in the studio: the language of music and the language of electronics — or lack of them. I know what I want. I've been around the studio and I've learned the hard way how to get what I want out of equipment, how to interpret to my engineers what sounds I want, frequencies, things like that. But I had to learn the language of music, especially to produce and interpret an artist who is musically illiterate to musicians, the majority of whom are moderately literate. I've got to take whatever sensitivity this person is bringing and turn it into musical language. So it's extremely important to be able to talk about bars of two, upbeats, that five-bar section where you're playing a two minor with a ninth. Or somebody comes in and they play a weird tuning, but don't know what it is. I was an illiterate musician that played a lot of blues and country, and I put it all together, studied and learned music theory and jazz harmony. Once I'd learned that, my communication skills just ramped up to a new level. It was a huge step.

And you studied at GIT when it first opened up?

PA: Yeah. I think it was the second year that it was open.

Before the metal years...

PA: Oh yeah, way before. I think it was the Larry Carlton years: The Princetons, the 335s and the leather jackets. Everybody had to have that rig. They've changed the concept now, but when it first started, Howard Roberts distilled everything down for the guitar. Prior to that, you learned from a classical base. You couldn't even study on the guitar. At certain colleges, guitar wasn't considered a legitimate instrument, so you had to play piano. This was the cutting edge, the beginning. I mean, the guitar has been around, but we're talking 1978, '79, when it actually became legitimate in the academic world. It was pretty heavy.

I never really realized what a breakthrough that was.

PA: Roberts was a genius educator. Whether or not you know or have heard his music, he had a gift for education. Prior to GIT, he traveled around doing seminars in major cities — three-day seminars. It was like one of those born-again things. I went on a Friday and came back on Monday. I remember I was working at this little music store and this good bass player comes in. He asked me what I'd learned and I told him that I knew everything there is to know about music. He said, "Oh, come on!" But I did! I might not have been able to use it, but it was in five little pamphlets, all stapled together with about six or seven sheets in every one. Now to get that down, get that into your head, somebody's got something going on inside him. It was amazing. And he instructed it.

Did it change fundamental ideas you had about the way you approached music?

PA: It just unlocked everything — mysteries. Music was a mystery prior to that. I never knew the rules. I was a blues guy. If it was a 1-4-5, I could play it. There's a lot of fear there. Fear in playing. You know, you could get into a band and learn the blues culturally or learn songs culturally from memorization. But after that it was like I know everything!

It would be real apparent when you hear something.

PA: Sure. I was hearing the six. I was hearing the two. I was hearing diminished chords, augmented chords. I knew what they did, knew what they meant and what they said, where they were going. I remember I went to GIT for a full year, studied music from 10-4, then I'd play gigs at night in country bars, 9-1:30. I'd go to the club that night and play "Silver Wings" in thirds. Nobody's listening [sings a bit of "Silver Wings"] and it sounded good! I was just takin' my lesson to the bar because it was Thursday night and no one was there. I remember talking to somebody and saying when I got done with a full year of it that I had to go back and put on my B.B. Kingand Fleetwood Mac records, my old blues records, and play along with them because I had no feel. I was totally immersed in it and that's where the Charlie Parker quote about "learn everything about music so that you can forget it" made sense. Put it all in there, shuffle it in the back — way back — so all the rules are in there, so that they're floating around like little ghosts, and then just get back to playin'.

I know you've done some stuff with the Line 6 boxes. Do you have a relation- ship with the company?

PA: Actually, a guy that I went to GIT and studied with, Tim Godwin, became a representative. Fortunately for Line 6, he's a real musician! Most companies don't have one of these guys and they make some silly mistakes. So Tim was the saving grace of the company and he brought me one of their amplifiers. I was over at Mad Dog Studios and he had these amps that he tried to explain. I couldn't get it. There are no tubes, no anything! He put the black face Deluxe on, I dialed up and — bing! Not bad. I told him to leave me the amp and I played with it. I had some really good black face Deluxes then. Later I got the clone [amp], the mother and the software version, Amp Farm. I played a song through all three under pretty good clinical conditions. Totally just electric guitar, no other instruments, identical song. The engineer put them on three tracks, then I did a blindfold test. I could always pick (at that stage) the amplifier, but I could never pick the software from the mother. So that's how I started using Amp Farm. Just a no-brainer. It sounds just as good or better when you combine tube sag, ghosts in the machine and electronics. It works! I haven't recorded with an amplifier in probably six years.

Really?

PA: Yeah.

Daredevil?

PA: No amplifiers.

Really?

PA: Nothin'.

Wow.

PA: It's amazing. Then they started making more and more advances with their amplifiers and got them sounding better. The last two years of touring with Dwight I used the Vetta — the big amp. And on the Moot [Davis] thing, I have two little Flextone IIIs. They're awesome.

When you're using those in the studios, are you mic'ing them at all?

PA: I never use them because it's all in Amp Farm.

Are you doing DIs out of them onstage?

PA: Yeah, there are DI lines out back. I mean, it's a no- brainer. Plug it in right here — click — there's my sound.

Do you create custom presets for yourself a lot?

PA: Yeah. I cancel all the cabinets, so I program everything into the cabinet that I use. I put Peavey speakers into the amps that I use and the majority, like in Dwight's situation and Moot's situation, is sort of like a collection of twins that I keep changing the knobs on with tweaks for rhythms and leads. Then there's a Deluxe and a little Gibson Explorer or some sort of Supro junky amp for darker stuff. I kind of walk between those.

[to Sally] Do you ever get mad at him when he's recording and ask him to put up a "regular amp"?

SB: Never. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing when I first heard about it. Then I took a listen. It's like any other piece of gear. If you're musical and creative, you're going to make it sound good. It's great not having to get up and move the mic around and fix it when somebody trips over it, or listen to the amp the next day and think that isn't what it sounded like yesterday. Plus it stays pretty liquid until you commit it to something, so the other thing that we've been doing here is a stomp box patch bay.

Really?

PA: I told my guy, Dave Gallo, "I want a place where I can plug all my stomp boxes in and I don't want have reverse and DIs and busses. I want it to work." So we created a stomp box patch bay. So one thing that we do now (different than back in the day), is a lot of post, not high-dollar EQ, but stomp box EQ, where we'll come in and dial in the bass. Depending on the key of the song, the bass is going to change and acquiesce as you build a track. We can go in and add more midrange to certain instruments, beef things up, just kind of build this wall of good, cool, chunky- sounding shit that's the really ugly, organic, "EQ-y", stomp box shit.

What kind of boxes do you like?

PA: The Aphex Acoustic Xciter will add more midrange or lower mids into the guitar, depending on where it sits on the track. Engineers may use some limiting initially, but I never use compressors — but for post, this Keeley Compressor is incredible — totally rockin'. From Oklahoma. Go look up www.robertkeeley.com.

Cool, I've been looking for some good stomp boxes.

PA: You know how the Dynacomps were so radical? You might use them on the left hand [side] of a piano or put it on a kick drum. Who knows where you're going to use it? You don't always have to use them in the [predictable] places. So we just haul this crap over here and start plugging stuff in and do our stomp box patch.

So it has the impedance-matching and everything built in?

PA: Everything is rigged up so that it doesn't buzz.

What's a way to get a really great, clean guitar tone?

PA: Part of it is your concept. Tone is in your head, but it depends — if you're using Amp Farm, I mean.

One of the things that drives me crazy is, say you've got a Fender amp of some sort and you're trying to get a good, clean, straight tone. If you put the reverb on, that hum comes through the reverb tank — and there's some hiss always coming out of the speakers and all you want is the tone.

PA: There's no way to get rid of that stuff. Keeping your amp maintained is one way to do it. Make sure that all your power is clean. But the rest of it is just inherent in the sound of that amp. There's actually hum in the Amp Farm. They couldn't get rid of it.

Coming from pick-ups?

PA: Yeah. But it's kind of endearing. I think from day one engineers have been more concerned about hum than I ever have. Sounds fine to me! Is there gonna be bass and drums on this? Guess what? We'll never hear it! You know, we've been hearin' it forever. Let's just rock.