Mr. Trent Bell is the proprietor of Bell Labs, a fine recording establishment in Norman, Oklahoma, a member of the preeminent pop combo known as the Chainsaw Kittens and the soundman for the Flaming Lips. We caught Mr. Bell as he was on a short tour with the Kittens supporting their self titled CD. Not coincidentally, the said recording had been created, written and recorded at Bell Labs in a wonderful, low-pressure environment and it shows. Yes, the record is a treat to listen to. Well, anyway, we whisked Mr. Bell off to the colorful Jackpot! Recording Studios for a quick tour of the facilities and an informative little chat.
So have you been in the Chainsaw Kittens all along?
I played guitar on the very first record, but I wasn't actually in the band. After it was done they were like, "Hey, you want to be in the band?" So I did. It's been a while now. I'm only 26 years old, but it seems like we've been around forever. The Chainsaw Kittens formed when I was a senior in High School and they had another guitar player at the time. They had just signed to Mammoth and at that point, bands like us weren't really getting signed.
Wasn't that in the late '80s?
This was around '89-'90. That was before Nirvana. I think we got $3000 to record the first record and we were like, "Oh my god! We're in the big time now." Have you ever heard of that country band that has sold 3 million records called the Tractors?
Yeah.
The singer, before he was in the Tractors, recorded our first record and he hated it.
Really? Why?
He just thought we were so weird. A couple of years ago we saw a Tractors video and we were like, "Oh my god that's him!" We thought it'd be really funny to re-release that record. It's a really weird record as far as lyrical content and stuff. Re-release it and put real big, "PRODUCED BY STEVE RIPLEY OF THE TRACTORS!" Just ruin his life.
Where was that done?
In Tulsa, at Leon Russell's old studio. A big church.
Did it have good acoustics?
Yeah it did, but the album doesn't really sound that great 'cause he didn't really do that great of a job on it. He had a Neve board and all these Neumann microphones, but thinking back, he didn't use any of the Neumann mics. He used all 57s and stuff. I think he really didn't like us.
Ouch. Do you ever think about that kind of experience when you're working with someone?
Oh yeah, totally. We did a record with Butch Vig and he's such a good guy. He practically did our record for free. We worked with a guy named John Agnello, who I learned a lot from. Working with a lot of these people, I'd just sit back and watch what they were doing. Whenever we had some time off I was like, "I'm gonna put a studio together." When we got signed to Scratchie, the first thing we said to them was we're not gonna do demos for our record and we're gonna record it ourselves. They were like, "Cool."
It's nice to know a label will allow that. So that was about two years ago that you got the studio going?
Yeah.
And that all started 'cause of the Scratchie deal?
We had some time off and this guy in Norman was selling his 16-track and an AudioArts board together. I had saved up some money so I thought I might as well get it. I bought it and I had it in my house for a while, I eventually got mics and outboard gear, two DAT machines and stuff like that and moved it out into a barn. Over the two years we've gotten new stuff. The new board I got I just love, the Neotek.
How many channels?
28 by 28.
28 assignable busses for each one?
Each channel has 28 little buttons. Very flexible. It's huge. It's 7 feet long, 3 feet deep. It has a hundred something point patch bay.
Can you pull out individual channel strips?
Yeah, but all the mic connectors and stuff you have to solder. It's a pain, but it's a good board.
What did you do with the old board?
I still have it. I think what I'd like to do is if I could get a 24-track 2" I could have a studio A and B. But in Norman, there's not a hell of a demand for that!
So this is all set up in a barn on your friend's property.
It's a big, metal, prefab building. What we did is we went in and built a building inside that building. We built it so it's kind of a chapel. We have one ceiling that goes up, at the top point it's about 16 feet. Good for drums.
It sounds like a hell of a project having to make a whole building.
It's Carl's (the guy who's playing keyboards for us) parent's property. I shattered my wrist playing softball right when we were getting ready to build it. I was there for moral support, but I couldn't really help a whole lot.
What inspired you to start a studio?
We recorded all these records with people. One of our records we did out in Los Angeles and we spent five weeks in all these huge studios and spent an outrageous amount of money. We mixed at Ocean Way where the Beach Boys had worked, which was really cool, but we were spending so much money. When we were done, I wasn't that happy with the way that record sounded. I was thinking, "God, if I had my own studio there would be no one to blame except ourselves." I like that.
When you feel like something's being rushed you can stop...
Yeah. We took a really long time to make our new record and we could do that because it was my studio. Plus, since we were in Norman, we were in our own environment. It just worked out a lot better. I think it's our best record by far and I'm happy with the way it turned out.
If I didn't know where it was recorded I wouldn't say, "Oh, it sounds like the band went out to their friend's barn and knocked it out!"
In all the reviews and everything, I've never heard anything bad.
No. It sounds like the kind of record where the band got to spend the right amount of time.
We put strings on everything we did.
And lots of keyboards.
I love old keyboards. We have an old Acetone organ. I did all the keyboards on the record. I'm the guitar player who hates guitar. I like them but I hate guitar solos. I did an interview with Guitar Player magazine and the whole thing was about recording. I never even talked about the guitar.
I think people get a good perspective when they've done a lot of recording. When you've watched a lot of bands work you become a little less self-involved as a player.
Definitely, I know we'll never not record on our own anymore.
What other stuff have you worked on?
I've done a bunch of stuff with the Flaming Lips. There's been a couple of things on b-sides. I just recorded a song for the new Batman soundtrack, but I don't think they accepted it. I don't think the song is what they were looking for! I did this thing for Steve, the drummer of the Flaming Lips. He did this song on a record coming out on Hollywood records that has nothing but drummers on it. There's a lot of bands from Kansas and stuff like that. Hopefully, I'd like to start doing more, mostly mid-west bands. There hasn't been a ton of major label CD's there! There's been some good stuff. The way I look at is that you learn by doing that stuff. You don't want to get thrown into a $100,000 budget record... you want to make sure you know exactly what you're doing before you do something like that.
It's not like you're experimenting on people but you're honing your craft.
Exactly. It's mainly CD's for bands from around the mid-west.
At a reasonable price?
I charge $25 an hour. Considering the equipment that I have... Most of the studios in Oklahoma are ADAT and Mackie boards. This Neotek I just got has a four band parametric EQ that's just awesome.
Four of them?
Yeah, that's a great thing to have.
You use a 1" 16-track. What kind of deck is that?
A Tascam. It has DBX noise reduction.
Do you use it?
No.
Good. Did you try it at all?
Yeah, when I first got it I tried it but it just made everything sound kinda weird.
A little compressed?
Exactly. One day I was recording some friends and I said, "Do you mind if I try something?" I wasn't sure if it was gonna work or not. I took it out and sent the signals really hot to tape and it sounded so much better.
What kind of tape do you use?
I use [Ampex] 456.
And you run it at 30 ips?
Yeah. Whenever people find that we did our record on 16-track 1" they're pretty surprised. It's a 1982 machine and I've never had the thing worked on once.
That's nice. Nothing weird at all?
Nothing. I should probably get my heads relapped.
You said something earlier about getting a Neumann U 87 for $600.
Well, being in Oklahoma, you run into people who don't know what they have. What's really crazy [and this is one of the dumbest things I've ever done], is that I actually found a U 87 for $250 once. The capsule was busted, and it would have been $1000 to get it fixed, but it still would have been worth it. I traded it for an AKG 414 that worked, which isn't too bad. Then I was in a music store in Norman and they said, "Oh, this guy was in earlier trying to sell a Neumann U 87." He gave me this number and I called him and he was like, "I gotta go on this cruise ship and I have to put together this little PA for the cruise ship and I have this Neumann that I'm trying to sell." I told him I'd give him $600 cash right now and he said, "Okay." Everyone I tell that too cringes. That's nothing for that microphone.
We all want to find those deals.
I like that mic a lot. I really like the 414s a lot. I use those for room mics for drums. I use Shure SM 81s as overheads but I really end up using the room mics more than anything. I pretty much never put any kind of muffling in the kick drum. I usually use an AKG D112 inside. Outside of the kick drum, I put the Neumann.
Do you mix those together to one track?
Yeah, you get the big bassy attack from the D112 and then you get the space from the Neumann. I love Ringo-type sounding drums and John Bonham sounding drums. I just love that kind of drum sound - I learned a lot of that from the Lips. They really do that a lot. The guy who does their records, Dave Friedman, I really like the way he does that stuff a lot. I like the way a kick drum sounds without muffling.
It's definitely the way Bonham sounded.
I read an interview with a guy who engineered a bunch of stuff for Led Zeppelin and he said that they'd just put one microphone above the drums and he would play and then listen to the drums and whatever needed to be louder he would just hit harder.
That makes life easier. I wish more people could do that.
I know. That kind of inspired me to use less mics on the drums. I always put mics on the toms and I use a top and bottom snare mic, but if I can get away without using a lot of stuff I'll take it out. I like SM 57s on snares. For my toms, I bought these little Sennheiser 504s and they sound pretty good. Then, I actually use a BBE Sonic Maximizer on the toms. They cut through.
How much EQ do you do on the toms? I find myself pushing them more than I think I should.
That BBE helps 'cause it brings it all out. I tend to roll some high end into the toms. With a room mic you hear the toms pretty loud, but then I use the close mics to get the attack. You really ought to check those BBE Sonic Maximizers out. I wouldn't use them on everything, but on toms they sound cool and they're cheap, like $150 or so.
What other kind of outboard stuff do you have?
I have a Yamaha SPX 90 and SPX 990. I want to make the jump to an Eventide reverb. There's a company in Oklahoma called PAIA. You know about them?
I've got one of their mic pres.
I have one of those and I like that. I use it as an effect more than anything.
It's really gritty.
I use it if someone wants to have that "John Lennon vocal thing". Distort it out a little bit.
And put a gate on it. It's noisier than hell.
Yeah it is! I also have, well it's actually the Lips, the TL Audio tube preamp. Those are really nice. I have a few DBX compressors.
So some pretty straightforward gear. It doesn't seem like you have anything really outrageous.
No, not really. I would love to find some old, weird stuff, but right now I need stuff that works. Sometimes things looks cooler than they sound. I've got a couple of DA 30 DAT machines. My secret weapon (and I don't know if I should even tell people this) is the DBX subharmonic synthesizer. Those things are awesome, put it on the kick drum and it'll make it huge. Put it on the bass guitar and you get some crazy low end.
Do you have to be really careful how you use the thing?
You can totally overuse it if you're not careful. Sometimes I'll put it on the kick drum and you won't even hear it but you'll see the meters on the board going crazy.
You could drive the mastering engineer insane.
I've blown my NS 10s four times with that thing. If you're ever lacking in bass, put that thing on. They're only about $300. I don't compress stuff a whole lot. I never really compress drums, I compress bass guitar and vocals and I never compress the whole mix. I figure whoever's doing the mastering should have the most kick-ass compressors around. There's no reason to compress the whole mix.
It seems that you'll read about how you should compress your mix in some of those "project studio" type mags.
Sometimes compressing room mics on the drums can be a neat sound.
What's that sound at the beginning of your record?
That's a Moog going through an amp with the distortion on full.
Was that fun having people come in and do strings?
Oh yeah.
Was it just two people? Did you double them up at all?
Yeah, on some of them.
Was this the first record you used strings on?
For the most part. It's the first record where we went over the top and put them on every song. They're just little embellishments. When I was thinking of strings I was thinking of the way T Rex would use them. We're still just a guitar rock band, but we wanted to put all these other things on.
That last song, "Speedway Oklahoma" has some great piano on it.
Steven [Drozd], the drummer for the Flaming Lips, plays all the piano on it. We're using backwards reverb on it and while we were mixing I did it off of a tape delay. The piano on the record isn't even a real piano. Steven has a Roland piano thing and we compressed it quite a bit to try to make it sound like a weird old piano. For our next record I'm gonna try to get a real piano in the studio.
We got ours for $500. The tuning guy was just here and complained about how my room has uneven humidity.
I think what inspired me so much as far as not having to use real piano sounds was that Cardinal record. A lot of the stuff on that record is just keyboards. If you use them right they sound cool.
You hear a lot of music where you know it's a drum machine or a cheesy sample. If you use things the right way people don't have any idea.
If it sounds good, who cares how you got it.
What stuff have you been listening to lately? You brought up that Cardinal record.
I love the way that record sounds. I just saw Beck live. I dig his new record quite a bit... Hunky Dory and Transformer, I love Lou Reed's Transformer.
There was some review of your record that mentioned Bowie and Lou Reed.
When we did our record I listened to Transformer a lot. I think Bowie, Lou Reed and Mick Ronson were a pretty good team.
I think Mick Ronson had a lot to do with it.
I think he had a lot to do with everything good that Bowie did. I'm trying to think of good sounding records...
There aren't any!
That's true. There aren't that many.
Do you have enough time to listen to stuff?
Sometimes I don't get a chance to listen to as much stuff as I'd like.
I was watching your soundcheck and I was wondering how you keep your ears intact playing in your own band and doing live sound for the Flaming Lips.
I bought those earplugs that mold into your ear and haven't used them once! I'm lucky. I had my ears checked two months ago and I hadn't lost any hearing. The Flaming Lips are ridiculously loud. I'm starting to worry about that 'cause I don't want to lose any hearing. I've been pretty irresponsible about that stuff so far, but I don't listen to headphones a lot. I think that can really do a lot of damage. I think one of the things that saves my ears is that we don't practice!
Yeah. My old studio was in a little room that we practice in. You walk out of there with your ears ringing. How do you avoid practicing?
When we did our record, we wrote everything as we recorded. I would walk in with what I thought would be the guitar part and Eric, our drummer, would come in and we'd go over it for about two hours and work out the arrangement. Then I'd roll tape and just build on top of that. I'd pretty much get all the music done and then give it to Tyson and he'd take it home and come up with the words. There's one song on there, "Tongue Trick," that took him ten tries of coming up with words and melodies. At one point he was like, "I don't think this song's gonna work out." Then one day he came in and said, "I think I've got it." He did what ended up being on the record.
It's kind of cool that the studio's an extension of your band.
When we started recording our record we had one song written. It's fun to do it that way.
How long did it take?
Probably about three months. Some days, if we didn't feel like being in the studio for ten hours, we'd mess with some vocals for two hours. Not having to watch the clock in the studio is a good thing. My ultimate goal is to record records with bands that I love. I wouldn't mind travelling to New York or somewhere and work in different studios. I hate the way so many records sound that come out today.
I understand.
All the Better Than Ezra's of the world... those records just bug me so bad.
I think there's a lot of fucked up production going on in the "alternative top 40 radio" or whatever that stuff is. Even if it's something that was recorded well, somebody went and compressed the hell out of it for radio play.
I don't know if people listen to sounds that much. Do people know if it's a good drum sound or a bad drum sound?
