Scott McMicken is a founding member of the band Dr. Dog. Along with Toby Leaman, Scott began writing and recording songs in his Philadelphia basement with very primitive gear, like the Tascam 388. Some of these early recordings found their way into the hands of My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James, who invited Dr. Dog to open for MMJ on a US tour. Upon returning, Dr. Dog recorded Easy Beat, which landed the band record deals, simultaneously being released in North America by Park the Van and in Europe by Rough Trade. The success of Easy Beat allowed Dr. Dog to devote all of their time to recording and touring, and also allowed them to vastly expand upon their humble basement recording setup. In 2006 the band bought a studio, American Diamond, along with longtime friend and engineer Bill Moriarty. Besides Scott and Toby, Dr. Dog's current lineup includes Zach Miller, Juston Stens and Andrew Jones. I've had the pleasure of working with Scott and the band on a few occasions and really enjoy his approach to making records. It was great to catch up with him recently and talk about his recording process.
Tell me about your new studio.
I used to be a studio called SoundGun that was run by Edan Cohen in Kensington, in the northern part of Philadelphia. It has this big, beautiful room. Five or six years ago our old band, Raccoon, saved up a little bit of money to record there. Edan had a very sort of professional operation. It was kind of spry and uncomfortable, and sort of is a part of why I think we've always avoided studios to begin with. You'd go in there, you're just watching the clock and it's like 40 bucks an hour and you don't really even know what the hell's going on. You have to be forced to put your tracks down based on what you've done as a band in practice as opposed to treating the recording separately from that. Ironically Bill Moriarty was apprenticing with Edan in those days and we met him there, and just sort of maintained a relationship with him since then. About a year or so ago Bill told us that Edan was moving out and we decided to move in there together and share the space. It's been a really cool relationship there with him — it's nice to have someone else involved that isn't too invested in it but is always willing to help you out.
In what ways does Bill work with the band?
When it came time to mix the record [We All Belong] he spent so much time because we ended up mixing into Nuendo. Our plan was to do analog mixes to an Alesis Masterlink, but as the process of tracking went on that became more and more difficult and less and less fulfilling. So we resolved to do a little of both. We would get the mix up on the board and get it as close as we could to a good average mix, ignoring any little changes that needed to be made. Just sort of level and EQ, as well as any effects we wanted to add through the board. Then we would send all of the individual tracks to the computer, so it was ultimately receiving a 90% mixed song. Then we would just use the computer to do the dirty work of having to turn things up or down, or take something out and bring it back in.
Did you mix that way on the previous Takers and Leavers EP as well as on We All Belong?
Takers and Leavers wasn't really planned for — essentially it was just part of recording We All Belong. At that point there was a whole new level of intent placed upon everything we did in the studio, but still we would be in the studio on some random night or whatever, and just come up with some extra tracks. It had been so long since we had released anything so we came up with the idea of putting out an EP. All those mixes were just analog mixes straight off the board. That's kind of what I like about it. I think it makes a lot of sense in the progression from Easy Beat to We All Belong, because it is coming from a more incidental approach to recording, as opposed to the new record which was about putting an obscene amount of work into something until it's right.
So that's really a new way of working for you?
Yeah. In the past the idea of recording something twice was just absurd to me. We worked endlessly on We All Belong. In the past it was, "Let's go into the studio and see what happens," because there is barely anything more fun on this planet than doing that. So for the first time we kind of submitted to the fact that we had a certain expectation beyond, "Let's just have some fun tonight." If it doesn't work or if ten percent of it works, we'll just keep those two tracks and build from there. It's a more difficult way of working, but it's really exciting now to listen back because a lot of the songs went through five or six versions and I can remember how they began.
Did you do a lot more of the songwriting before going into the studio this time?
That's actually the one thing that hasn't changed with our band, even from like ten years ago. The songs are always written before we ever get to the studio. I think it's a better way to work — to sit down and write a song and know that it can stand on its own with just an acoustic guitar and a voice enables you a lot of confidence in the studio. The structure and the lyrics are almost always complete — the only thing that might change is the overall approach or mood. Songs never make it to the studio unless everyone's happy with them in their most essential form.
There are a lot of interesting sounds on your records. If you keep the recording chain so simple how do you go about getting them? I know you have a unique approach to getting drum sounds.
My sense of getting drums on a recording has a lot to do with what I feel they sound like in real life. I feel like the general approach to recording drums is a little unrealistic. There's so much character in the sound of a drum that has more to do with it reacting to the room than what it sounds like coming directly off of the drum. We always kind of damp the drums a lot or stuff them. Just really trying to get the impression of the drum as opposed to some whole massive nuance and body to it. We almost never record the drums tracks with any hi-hats or cymbals — they get added later. Sometimes we break it down even further than that. On "The Girl" I did the kick drum first, then I set up two more tracks of snares (one was a close mic'ed one was more of a room sound), then I did the toms and then another track with a cowbell and a tambourine. I just composed a part and did it more like a percussion track than a typical drum set. For me, ninety-nine percent of the character of a recording has to do with the way the drums sound. So we really kind of obsess of the drums. There's never really more than one mic on a given performance.
How has going from your old setup of an 8-track home studio to a 24-track studio changed the way you work?
There were several major things that occurred for me in making that change. The first was when we started off with this new gear I was preparing myself for an entirely new way of looking at recording. I was naively thinking, "Okay. Now we can do it." Not that working on a 4-track or an 8-track can't be as fulfilling as anything else. I've always looked at each little piece of gear as, "What is the most this can offer me?" The pursuit of that feels roughly the same as sitting in front of the 24-track and thinking, "How good can I make this?" You're trying to sort of take in the full range of whatever it is you're working with.
And somehow that is lo-fi?
We've become this band that gets tagged lo-fi a lot. I'm still not 100% sure what lo-fi means. I understand the comparison of one recording to another. For me it is knowing the machine I have in front of me. Within this context how can I make it as hi-fi as possible? Maybe the problem is I think of the term "fidelity" in too abstract of terms. If you think of fidelity as a range of frequencies available to your ears, then sure, lo-fi and hi-fi are very easy and definitive terms. But fidelity seems to represent a lot more. Certain smaller sounds can have way more impact. To hear a Daniel Johnston song with him singing into a [cassette] tape recorder offers you so much more information. You get the song obviously, you can hear the melody, the chords and the lyrics. But you gain a sense of intimacy, of being there with the person. So the experience is in no way compromised by the fidelity. I think that's what I'm always juggling about these terms lo-fi and hi-fi. When Bill came in on the studio as a partner with us, and all of his gear, I was going to — for the first time — pursue different kinds of microphones, preamps and compressors and all these things I wanted to absorb. But I realized about four months into it that none of that was really working for us. Since then it's been a balance to take what it felt like to do what we were doing over the last eight years and feel as though we are doing essentially the same thing as that in this new context. Logistically that meant that we needed to stop fucking around with all these preamps and compressors. We stopped trying to think like, "Well here's this big fat fancy mic that might make it awesome." For me pursuing that stuff too rapidly was a downfall. So we just went back to using a [Shure SM]58 or the [Rode] NTK.
I've used the NTK a lot.
Yeah, I love it. Bill has all these mics but they always sound like something else. I don't want any mic that has any sort of characteristics inherent to that mic. The Rode mic just does that for me. That's part of simplifying the whole process. If Zach [Miller] has a piano part I grab the Rode mic, put it near the piano and turn up the trim until the level is good. Then it's like, "Piano's done. Someone has something going on over on the other side of the room. Let's move it over there." A much quicker pace of doing things became necessary to me.
As an engineer you have to be ready to go before the musicians are.
Definitely. I think you're more likely to realize that if you've been consistently on both ends of it. I think if there's too much emphasis placed on the gear my imagination kind of dies a little and it becomes too scientific. The best results always come from being a listener of the songs rather than a technical approach. In the new studio, as we had more options added we realized pretty quickly that we had to fend off as many of them as possible. My firm belief is that with one microphone, an acoustic guitar and a tape recorder there are a million possible results. Even under the most primitive circumstances there's never any lack of choice. So we had to sort of make that mistake in the new studio. In essence we made the album and then listened to it and it didn't sound like us and didn't feel like us doing it. So we had to add things in slowly, instead of looking at the new place like this big beast and not really knowing what the hell it's about. For us it's really important to be really, really comfortable in our circumstances, which is why we'd never really consider going into another studio to make a record. Not that good things wouldn't be possible!
