Joey Vera | TapeOp

I first learned about Joey Vera in the mid-1980s, when he emerged on the L.A. rock scene as the bass player for the band Armored Saint. Signed to Chrysalis and then Metal Blade/Warner Brothers, Armored Saint took an eight-year hiatus starting in 1992 when singer John Bush left the band to join the thrash metal outfit Anthrax. In a strange way, as one door closed for Vera several others opened. Vera began playing bass in bands such as Fates Warning, Tribe After Tribe, Seven Witches, Engine, OSI, Chroma Key and once again in Armored Saint when Bush returned in 1999. He also took time to hone his studio skills by engineering, producing and mixing sessions out of his own studio, The Bridge. Vera's been at the controls with artists such as Plain White T's, The Polyphonic Spree, Josh Kelly and Anthrax, to name a few. Catching up with Vera's busy schedule is no easy task as he just returned from playing the Evolution Festival in Florence, Italy with Fates Warning. It was only about a month earlier that he was also in Europe playing the Rock Hard Festival in Germany with Armored Saint. As soon as he got back from Italy he jumped right back into The Bridge to continue producing and engineering the new DC-4 album. As I sat down with him in his studio on a recent Thursday afternoon, his demeanor was so relaxed that one would never know he had all this going on, in addition to having just arrived back home earlier in the day from taking his daughter to the doctor for a routine checkup.

With Armored Saint you've recorded tracks separately. Why does that work for you? Also, would you consider recording the basic tracks live for the next studio album?

Well, technically we do record the tracks all at once. It's just that we end up only keeping the drum tracks when we do that. There are two schools of thought. One school of thought is, set everybody up, get good sounds and then just record the band and get the live vibe with everybody together and have that be the basic tracks. The other school of thought is, set everybody up, but really only worry about the drum tracks and then from there build it up, and have guys build their guitar parts and bass parts over it. For Armored Saint's style of making music, we prefer building it from the ground up. To be quite honest, we're a bit of a loose band. If you've ever seen us live we're not like a super tight (at least not in my eyes anyway) group. We have a sense of a loose live thing that we've always had. So in the studio that really, really shows. As they say, the tape doesn't lie. So, if somebody is not quite in the groove with the drums, or somebody is ahead or a little bit sloppy here or there, it really is noticeable. For our style of music it works best for us to do the drums [first]. We record as a band. We all play together in the same room with headphones. We really concentrate on getting a good drum track. From there, we do the bass, guitar... actually that's not really true. This last time with Revelation, which is what we recorded in 2000, we did the guitars first and I did the bass last.

Oh really! Why?

Well, for me it was more of a way to find my place in the mix. When you record loud Marshall [amps] they can tend to take up a lot of room. They can go way down around 100 Hz and all the way up to 6 kHz, or something like that. They can cover such a broad spectrum that for me it was better to wait until the guitars were recorded so that I could dial in a better bass sound and let it be able to find its own place to reside in the frequency spectrum. When you do it the other way, you have no reference. You're just playing with the drums and maybe a couple of scratch guitar tracks. I've done it so many times that way and that's sort of the traditional way. Do drums first, then you do bass, then you do guitars. You can get a killer bass sound when it's just you and the drummer, but then the guitar players show up and they got all this low end coming out of their guitars, and they're covering up this nice mid-range that you'd like to have. It's really hard to make the bass poke out after that. I've actually been trying to do that lately on a lot of sessions that I play on. If I can, I'll ask to be one of the last ones to record. I sometimes get it and I sometimes don't.

You've had some interesting percussion on Armored Saint's last two albums, Symbol of Salvation and Revelation, as well as on your new solo album, A Chinese Fire Drill. You don't see many metal bands incorporate percussion at all. It seems like you have an ear for it. Is that a dumbek on the intro to A Chinese Fire Drill's "Automatic Fantasy?" Also, did you play the percussion parts on your solo album?

I played some of it. What you were talking about is actually a tabla part. The drummer that I hired — this guy Greg Studgio — he's the one that played the majority of the other stuff, like shakers and bells. He [also] played some stuff with the tablas. I don't know where it comes from other than having a liking for a lot of different kinds of styles of music. For me, it's just having a pretty wide spectrum of stuff that I can draw upon.

I can totally visualize that because that's the type of bass player you are.

Well, no one knows of me as being that kind of a bass player. Most people think of me as a metal bass player and sort of one dimensional, but they don't know that I have deep roots in jazz fusion, funk, pop music and R&B. They don't know that about me. And I love improvisation. Once someone gets to play with me and we get to shoot back and forth on stuff, then they see a whole other side.

You've got a deep, solid groove.

I am a closet drummer, kind of going back to your question about playing percussion and where is that coming from. My wife Tracey said it to me recently, "You really want to be a drummer!" I thought about it and I said, "You know what? You're right. I do want to be a drummer."

Let's talk about mic'ing percussion. What kind of mics do you use and does it matter what type of instrument it is?

I think it matters what the instrument is. Something like a tabla or a dumbek you can get away with just using a [Shure SM]57. I don't have an arsenal of microphones. If I'm just using what I have here, I'll just use a 57. I have a couple of condensers that I could use. If it was something more like a shaker or a tambourine I might use something more like a condenser mic.

Will you rent something for a session if you don't have a particular type of mic? It depends how critical I think it is. If we're singing a ballad and we don't have a mic that has really nice detail I might go rent one. But if it's something where we're playing metal music I'll just use either a dynamic mic that I have or even — I've done a lot of things with John Bush [Armored Saint/Anthrax] where we just sing it through a [Shure SM]58.

I wanted to ask you about that because you produced and engineered the vocals for a couple of tracks on Anthrax's album, The Greater of Two Evils.

I did the vocals all here in my studio.

How did that work? What kind of mic did you use?

We used a 58. He [John Bush] stood right here in the control room and I just had the speakers blaring loud.

And so it bled through the mic? How does that work?

Well, once you have all the tracks in there playing you don't hear any bleed through because the ratio between that and the actual signal of him singing is so far apart. You don't hear the drums and the guitars in the background. I learned that trick from producer Terry Date. You know, he's done Soundgarden and a ton of stuff [i.e. Deftones, White Zombie and Pantera]. He just sets up a 58 and lets the singer just sing in the control room, loud, and you just blast it. He's not in the next room. He's not listening on headphones. It's almost like he's rockin' out in his bedroom in front of a mirror. The inhibition goes away and you get a much better performance. The sonic quality for heavy metal music, where it's loud and aggressive, is perfect. The 58 with a decent pre and some compression and you're just going to get a good vocal performance — it's going to sound fine.

It's like two qualities that you are combining here. First, it's engineering with regard to the recording concept — then the producing, where you're getting the person who is performing to feel comfortable.

You have to do that no matter what you are doing when you're working with bands. Even if you're only engineering you still have this element of making them feel comfortable and happy. What they are recording, whether it's singing or playing guitar or bass, it's got to sound familiar to them. Otherwise they don't feel comfortable. It's like they're sitting in the chair and there's a rock in the chair and they can't quite figure out why they're not comfortable. That's something I always ask someone as soon as we plug in and I get a sound that I think is sounding good. My first question to them is, "Does this sound familiar?"

It's a good question.

The person that asked me that was a producer who [I] worked with [when I recorded with] Tribe After Tribe, Jim Scott. I got that from him. He got me all set up and stuff and then turned around and said, "Does that sound familiar?" And that hit me — "It does sound familiar and I feel really comfortable." [laughs]

Speaking about producers, on some of the previous Saint albums you co- produced with Chris Minto and Dave Jerden [ Tape Op #86 ]. What roles did you guys assume if the albums were co-produced?

Well those two projects were different. We co-produced Raising Fear with Chris Minto in 1986. At that point, knowing what I know now, we didn't really co-produce. We were a couple of punks [laughs] who basically said, "Uh, the snare's not loud enough. Uh, the bass needs to come up." Armchair producers — not really producing. Working with Dave Jerden [Alice in Chains, Jane's Addiction] was different. Working with Dave on Symbol of Salvation, my role — it was weird how it sort of happened. Dave's a very old school guy where he just likes to come in, get a good live track and just pile everything on top, and then let's go. He's got a real rock n' roll sense. It's a little bit loose. At that point I had assumed the role within the group Armored Saint as sort of like being the musical director. Having Dave Prichard [guitar, alongside Phil Sandoval in Armored Saint] who kind of was that guy before he passed away from leukemia — I sort of stepped up and took it upon myself to be that person. I had no real part in doing the drum tracks. Dave got the best performance out of Gonzo [Gonzalo Sandoval]. Once the drums were done and we were doing guitars, I was the guy who was sitting in there with the guitar players [Sandoval and Prichard's replacement, Jeff Duncan] — "That could be a little tighter. This note's a little off." I was sort of the one that started to nitpick from there on. After a couple of days of that Dave got really bored and he said, "You don't really need me here because you know what you want. I don't need to be here for this so I'm going to check in every couple of days and see how things are going."

That took a big heart from him to do that.

It did and that's one thing I learned from him right away. The first thing I learned is that he trusted me. He trusted me enough to say that someone in the band has a particular vision and that I feel comfortable relinquishing this until it comes time. He basically was gone until the mix. I was there doing all of the vocal tracks with John, all of the guitars, the solos, the overdubs and the bass I did myself. That was one of the biggest things that I learned from him was to have trust and to have a clear picture of where the project is going and then to just let it happen organically.

He had enough confidence in himself not to be intimidated by that.

Yeah. He knew what he had to do in the end. He was ultimately the one who mixed it. He was the one who put all of the pieces of the puzzle together and he let me cut the puzzle into pieces, which was cool. That was a big learning thing for me.

The sound of that album is very different from the Armored Saint albums that came before it. The latest album, Revelation, which you produced and engineered has some of Armored Saint's best stuff musically, sound- wise and performance-wise.

Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that record. Up until that point we always had a problem with our records in that they never quite represented the group as we were as a live band. I mean so far as the energy and the whole picture — it never quite came across. The records always sounded sort of overproduced, and it makes it all sound a bit tame. Dave, when he did Symbol... that record to me has the closest thing to how we sound live, but it also has a nice quality of production value. Revelation is going back to how we sound live. It does have maybe less of a polished sound than Symbol..., but it kind of jumps out of the speakers.

It does! That's a really good point.

So it's a little bit wild in that sense and less tame — just very aggressive and more how we are when you actually stand in the front row watching us play live. That was actually my intention with going into Revelation. My model for that was Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast, because to me when I first heard that record, that record jumped out of the speakers. I'm a huge Martin Birch fan. He's another one of my favorite producers. That was my model. We were going to make a record that's kind of dry, kind of not so polished.

In addition to your role as engineer and producer with Armored Saint, would you consider mixing the next album?

I've mixed a few things. We did some tracks for Nod to the Old School, which was a compilation CD we did for the fans. There's a bunch of unreleased stuff and then some extra tracks that we recorded. I've learned a lot since then. That was 2001. I would like to mix the next one. I don't know — we'll see. When we did Revelation Bill Metoyer mixed it. I was there every day, but still he was the one who was putting it all together. I think there's an advantage to that in the fact that by the time I'm done tracking with everything I got snow blind. I think it is better to have someone else come in and put it together. On the other hand, if I can somehow stay distant from it I would attempt to mix it because I've been working fairly solidly since and I feel like I've learned a lot more. I think I would like to try it. If it wasn't working we can always go to someone else to do it.

In the song "Automatic Fantasy" from your new solo album there's a really nice electric guitar solo that also has a great sound. How did you record the electric guitars for that album?

Well, that solo that you were talking about — that sound has a certain quality from the actual guitar itself. [A friend] let me borrow one of his Les Pauls from the '70s. It's just a great sounding guitar. The front pickup on it just sounded amazing. Believe it or not, it's not with an amp. It's with my [Tech 21] SansAmp PSA-1.

Tell me about that.

That's my main amp sound. It's got a whole array of sounds that you can dial in. You can use the presets, adjust them and then save them as your own presets...

Do you use that with other projects that you're working on or do guitar players tend to want to go out of their own amps?

I think it depends on what it is. I've done some things with Jeff Duncan [Armored Saint, DC-4, Odin] on his record here, but specifically we wanted a certain sound. It was only for that reason that we used the DI — it's basically a direct way of recording. You know, it's hard to beat a nice old Marshall [head] with Marshall cabinets that you put a mic on.

What other things do you use the SansAmp for?

I use it for some of my bass tracks because they put out a bass version. It's an RBI-1 — I have an endorsement with them. They modeled this thing especially for bass players. I used that a lot on the solo record. I mainly use the PSA-1 for guitars. — it has more parameters to work with.

You can still get such a good guitar sound and not necessarily have to go through an amp.

For one, I don't own a guitar amp. Two, I could have rented one or borrowed one. Three, for the kind of music I was doing — my progressive sort of realm of the solo record that this music is — I felt it was almost appropriate to use sort of a direct processed preamp sound for guitar. So for me it worked out all the way around. I wouldn't necessarily do this for Armored Saint, for instance. For Armored Saint it's gotta sound like a 57 stuck right in front of a 50-watt Marshall.

You've been producing Jeff Duncan's band DC-4. In that band they also have another guitar player, Rowan Robertson, who was in Dio. How were the rest of the guitars recorded?

Other than that it was all Marshall stuff. They have a couple of great Marshall heads. They have a nice tweed cabinet, a Marshall 4x12 with 50-watt speakers in it and the sound's great. We mostly did everything with the Marshalls. Typically I would double mic the Marshall cabinet, the 4x12. I'll stick a 57 on one of the speakers. Usually we'll kind of go off axis just off the dust cover in the center. Then I'll do a [Sennheiser] 421 on another speaker underneath it. That one would be more on axis and away from the dust cover. The 57 is getting a fairly bright sound — a lot of upper mids and a bright kind of fuzziness and the 421 is picking up a lot more low end and beef. There's something that I actually want to show you, something that we did with Rowan. It's a trick that we learned from Dave Jerden, which maybe ties into all this. I was calling it the "Chocolate Pudding Sound" because he uses a Sovtek Big Muff and we ran it through a Matchless combo amp, which is basically modeled after a Vox AC- 30. It's just got a great vintage sound. Dave had an interesting way of mic'ing up an amp like this because the back of the amp is open. He puts a mic in the front and in back of the same speaker with the mic basically pointing at itself in a straight line right through the speaker, but one in front of the amp and one in back of the amp. Of course, this is going to be out of phase. We did it here in my studio. We did it as a supporting part in some of the songs. It sounds like a bulldozer's going through the city. It has a lot of low end to it, but so much where it's below 80 Hz — this low mid growl. Really unusual sounding.

As a bass player you've managed to stay really busy. In addition to playing bass with Armored Saint, over the years you've recorded or toured with Fates Warning, Anthrax, Engine, Seven Witches, Tribe After Tribe, OSI, Chroma Key and more. What type of impact has your varied playing experience had on your approach to producing and engineering bands in the studio?

Well, you learn a lot from no matter whom you work with or under what circumstance. I've recorded with the producer Terry Brown [Rush, Voivod, Klaatu] on a couple of records with Fates Warning, and I've learned a couple of things about how he works. Terry is very relaxed when he works. He takes his time. I mean, I'm not sitting there going, "So when you're mixing do you put like, 1 k on the so-and-so?" I just observe how he works. I've learned stuff from whomever I've worked with. Working with Tribe After Tribe, for instance, I played on the new record which we recorded in March [2007] and it was a total DIY album this time. They were working with an engineer out of Robbi's [Robbi Rob — Tribe after Tribe, Three Fish, Amritakripa, Liber Al] house. They basically converted his house into a recording studio. It's in Joshua Tree, [California]. We did some things at Master Control, which is in Burbank where Saint mixed. Every situation is different. Sometimes you're in a nice $1100 a day studio. Other times you're in Robbi's living room. They rented decent gear — preamps and mics and stuff — and it was a great way to work because I slept there. We hung out, drank tequila, watched the stars at night, and had jam sessions for three days. It was really cool.

That must have been a great place to record too, just because of the desert environment of Joshua Tree.

He lives in the desert. I mean there's nothing around there. The sun goes down, the coyotes come out. It was a great way to work! So you know, you pick subtle things like how to adapt to situations. You can't always be like, "Oh, I'm on a tight schedule and I gotta watch the clock. I'm here to do my parts. Where are my parts?" I think at some point you've got to just immerse yourself in the situation and leave the world outside the door. I'm not saying that it's easy to do that. Sometimes you are on a schedule. Sometimes I gotta go pick up my daughter at day care, but you know if you can let go for a while... those are the things that I picked up from working with Terry Brown, working with Tribe After Tribe or doing a session by myself. You need to be able to do that.