Barry Conley | TapeOp

Having worked with such diverse artists as George Harrison, Miles Davis, Stevie Ray Vaughan, L7, Sugar Ray, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Vandals, B.B. King, Zakk Wylde, Ike Turner, Stray Cats, Dwight Yoakam and Masters of Reality, you'd think producer/engineer/experimental electronic musician Barry Conley would be way into music from this planet. But his obsession with the desert and his eclectic musical mothership, The Aliens, has taken experimentation to new heights. Armed with The OutofControl-atron, an insane, other-worldly instrument of his own design, and a couple of Danelectro baritone guitars, he's been converting quite a few earthlings into devout believers of way out music beyond this planet.

So how did you get into building your own electronic instruments?

Well, I worked with a circuit designer, Tom Doty over at Paramount Recording. I came up with the name first, "The OutofControl-atron." Once I came up with the name, I said, "I'm gonna build this thing." Then I thought to myself, "I'll never build this thing..." The beginning happened at a Cypress Hill session — they showed up about six hours late. While waiting I drew up the initial plan. After I sketched out the OutofControl-atron, all the modules and the layout for it, I talked to Tom Doty about the electrical design. He's really into modular synthesizers and really knows circuit design. He gave me a book on circuit designs. I read the book, and then read a couple of other electronics books just to get a taste for it... but I'm still not that great at it. I laid out the front panel in TurboCAD, then hand drilled it. It took a hundred hours just to design and drill the whole front panel.

Dear God! How long did it take to wire it all up?

The oscillator boards themselves took at least 40 hours. I had to design the entire layout, then solder it all together.

Overall how long did it take to build?

I'm thinking maybe a thousand hours and probably less than a thousand dollars in parts. This OutofControl- atron is worth about 20 grand if you were paying someone to build it. Down the line when I build these, I'll have the circuit boards printed and just drop in the components. I want to have the whole exterior in chrome. The whole thing, chrome knobs, like a mirror, nothing labeled — really pristine and shiny.

You'd have to be a real expert to use it with no markings...

Not really, once you have a little roadmap and get familiar with it. There's the oscillator, there's the filter, there's the output levels, there's the mixer — it's really easy from that point.

Sure it is... Tell me about some of your other creations?

I have another one called "The OverTheTop-alator" and it has a sequencer and spring reverb. It's got a whole bunch of cool shit on it.

Who'd benefit most from The OutofControl-atron?

Really, engineer/producers — I built it for them so they could record through it. There's a nice set of mic pres on it. Put vocals through it, then if you wanna fuck up them up you could always put them through a filter and have the filter modulated by an oscillator. It's a processing unit. Mix your drums, vocals, guitar or bass through it — whatever — for mixing. It's also a performance unit for playing live. So it's basically a tool for engineer/producers — their secret weapon. Pull out the OutofControl-atron and do some really crazy processing!

How does it work?

This particular unit has photo-optical control. It's joystick and light operated. I plug in one oscillator that's modulating the other oscillator. Then the main oscillator is controlled by the joystick on the X side. The other oscillator frequency, modulating the first oscillator, is on the Y side of the joystick. The output of that modulated oscillator is going through a filter. The filter is controlled by a flashlight — "photo optical". [Barry breaks out a Maglite and proceeds to make some bubbling, chirping noises fly out of the built-in speakers]

What if you used a laser?

I'm not sure about lasers. You could get strange variations depending upon the light and the gradation between "on" and "off." These little Maglites have a donut in the middle, so that does weird things. You can also shine the light through the forest of patch cables and get all sorts of crazy filter variations. [Barry shines the light through the cables and gets some insane stuttering filter sounds.]

That's crazy! What if you used a cheese grater???

Exactly. [laughs] These buttons turn on the envelope, a noise generator and a fixed filter inspired by Buchla. There are two mic pres with 48 volts. It's got six inputs good for guitar, vocal, television and whatever else if someone wants to play along. That's how I have it set up for live — two outputs. These up here — I haven't built them yet, but it's gonna be the auto- pan, so you could plug in an oscillator and make it pan back and forth or whatever.

Have you taken the OutofControl-atron into the studio?

I did with Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society. I took all this stuff, the OutofControl-atron, Buchla and EMS Synthi. There's a song on Zakk's Mafia record where the intro is the Buchla. Another song's intro features the OutofControl-atron. When he toured last year, every time he played those songs, he played the intros from a CD. He liked that so he could have a beer in between songs.

So you went from engineering Black Label Society to producing, then to being a musician on most of the tracks?

I co-produced from the beginning — that's how he does it with his engineers. Zakk likes somebody to bounce ideas off of. I've been producing bands from day one since going into the studio — almost any engineer does to some degree. You take more reins depending upon how much you write and play music. When I first jumped into engineering, I wasn't sure about doing that, but got more used to it eventually. Coming up with ideas and guiding people — that's what a producer does.

How did playing on Zakk's records come about?

We hung out on the first record, which took forty-five days. I was telling him, "I like playing on people's records. If I hear something, I might add something, but I don't wanna play on the record just to play on it — only if I'm hearing cool stuff that'll add to it." He didn't really know about any of this crazy shit I was doing at the time, so naturally he said, "No man. You can't do that!" I said, "Let me just put something down, see if you like it — and if you don't like it, don't use it." Finally he gave in. So the next day I played back what I did and he was all excited, like, "Wow that's fucking great! Hey bro, could you play on this song too?" After that, every song we did he'd say, "Oh man, you gotta Barry-ize it. You gotta put something on it!"

Tell me a bit about your approach on these electronic instruments...

I don't play melody lines. If I wanna play melody, I play the guitar. To play melodies on this Buchla is corny. Just get a piano! Just play an upright! That's how I feel about it. Don't play something that wants to be an upright, you know? I don't want a keyboard at all, just a sound generator.

Do you think this unstructured approach has helped your work in the studio with more straightforward artists?

Yes. Some artists need somebody to take it outside. They get too much into a corner with their music. I try to open it up a bit and luckily some people are up for that.

I bet not too many artists are easily swayed when it comes to spicing up their stuff with strange instruments and sounds...

No, not usually. But some people are.

Explain your transition from experi- mental, electronic musician to recording engineer.

It's actually the same thing — sound engineering and writing music on the Buchla. There really wasn't any transition, because when I got into it, that's what they taught me — how to patch up a synthesizer, how signal flows, the theory of sound and sound waves. The Buchla's great for teaching all that. You put up a sine wave, then see how sound travels. There were mixers, so I had to mix — it was a natural thing. I initially studied at Grinnell College in Iowa during the '70s, then later at CalArts with Morton Subotnick and Earle Brown. A lot of schools had these electronic music studios, these cool sound labs. As soon as I heard that I took all the courses and prerequisites, I had to get in there. Then once we learned how to use all the equipment, they asked us to make an electronic music composition. My professor wanted us to get away from your typical music. The Buchla could be very musical, but it could also go way outside and he was thinking more along the lines of abstract painting. So we made these pieces that were all tones and sounds. The professor had us write the piece, mix it and learn the entire studio using all the techniques.

Sounds like the predecessor to the home recording.

Yeah. That's how I got into it. When I was in school I was a DJ, so I'd play all these great records, look at the covers, see where they were done and thought, "Man I know I could get a job doing this. I really wanna do this." It was a big leap for me because I didn't really write songs back then, and I didn't really know anything about song structure. I did study theory, but didn't really know it. When I came out to L.A., I started playing in bands, working in the studio, figuring out how to write songs. In NYC back in the '70s, I was going to school and also working in theater as a sound guy. Then I went to the Institute of Audio Research because I really wanted to learn more about the electronic end of things. Back then studios were really tight-knit places that were hard to get into. It was rare to know somebody who worked at them — not like now where there are millions of studios, schools and people doing it. It's real accessible now.

You think it's way more accessible now?

You could learn a lot on your own, to a degree, but at least you can have a computer and do your own stuff. Back then it was really hard. I bought my first 4-track, a Teac reel-to-reel — that's how I got into it on my own. That was also in NYC. No one wanted to hire me there, so I came out to L.A. In NYC you had to know somebody. I came out here and had a job. There were so many places to work at and very few engineers.

Do you feel home studios affected the large studio business?

The major studios are busy now — busy! Everyone thought they were gonna be put out of business, but no! They are just rockin' because you need a great acoustic environment and really great gear. You could do it at home, but you're not gonna get the same quality that you get at one of these great studios that are really set up. You can't get it with your mic emulator, your speaker emulator — you just don't get that sound. People that have the money want to go into the studio and make it sound great. Go to a great studio and pay the money and you should. There are fewer and fewer of those great studios, but the ones that are out there are making a lot of money... at least in this town.

Has your easygoing personality helped in the studio?

It has. I know from years of doing this how to set up a situation to get the best out of people. That's what my thing is, setting up an environment that's nice and comfortable. Humor's always a really good thing in the studio — keeping it funny and light. There are people that are much funnier than me, but I'm always trying to work at it.

Tell me about The Desert Sessions. Those are the albums Josh Homme [Queens of the Stone Age] produced. Josh recorded my band, The Aliens, doing our song "Take Me To Your Leader" for Desert Sessions Volume 6 — Black Anvil Ego (a title we coined). When we went to record at Rancho De La Luna, they wanted us to set up inside the studio, but we set up outside because they had a fire pit overlooking all of Joshua Tree. Against their will we set up right in the middle of the fire pit and started playing this song called "Black Anvil Ego". It became the title of the record.

How did the collaboration with Josh Homme come about?

Dave Catching, also from Queens of the Stone Age, owns and runs this studio out in Joshua Tree, California called Rancho De La Luna. I know him from years ago, from the Buchla and jamming. He invited me to play on a record by his band, the earthlings?, so I went out there. One day he said, "Why don't you put together a band and open up for us at the Opium Den?" When he asked what we're gonna call the band I said, "Well if you're the earthlings? we're gonna be The Aliens." So we warmed up for them back in '98 and Josh happened to see us play. Every year Josh used to do the Desert Sessions and get all his friends together down at the Rancho. We also recorded another Aliens tune with him, "Hands Full of Moral Decay". The record's on clear vinyl!

Tell me a little about Dave Catching and the desert scene.

It all started with Dave Catching. I know him through The Plimsouls and Baby-O Recorders. David-O [Pahoa] (The Plimsouls' bass player) and I used to work together at Baby-O. We really hit it off well and did a lot of recording in the '80s and early '90s. David-O hired Dave Catching to play guitar in one of his bands. Then when Catching moved out to the desert, he invited me out to his studio. I'd break out all my synths and he'd have all these other crazy instruments and synths too. We'd just have these crazy synth freakouts! He's been a really great soul, very helpful to us. Now he's also the guitarist in Eagles Of Death Metal.

What do you feel are the key ingredients for a great record?

That's a tough one — obviously a great band — maybe not even a great band, but a great bunch of songs and a cool vibe — that's about it. There are a lot of other things that could happen along the way, but I think it's great songs and a great vibe. Look at the Velvet Underground — the records have their own sound. The playing isn't that great but the vibe and songs are awesome. I'm thinking more along the lines of that, rather than a Steely Dan kind of thing — that's great songs, great playing, great studio, great engineer, great everything. You gotta have something great first of all. Listen to Chrome — it's unbelievable. They did a piece on this record in an early Tape Op. It was fucking amazing — I knew that record back in the '70s. It's all about vibe, cool sounds and songs. The engineering — well that's a whole different thing... It's cool in its own way, but technically it's terrible!

What was one of the strangest sessions you've been on (without implicating anyone)...

I used to work at a studio that was owned by some rich people and when they came to town, they would record and ask me to come in and engineer. The really rich owner would go and hire all the best studio musicians in town. We'd record these guys and pretty much "produce" it. He also thought he was a songwriter, but he really wasn't. He had people writing the music and it was all really, really lame — early '80s stuff — just terrible, but with great players. We'd be in the studio and they'd be doing tons of coke, there'd be whores, there'd be pornos on the TV...

Sounds like the awesome '80s!

Yes! Upstairs there was a Jacuzzi going on too. I don't do blow — I don't do that shit. That's why people hired me back then, because I didn't do it and I'd be the guy just working. It was crazy! They had all these great session musicians recording this really lame music, but it was great for me because I was learning. We finished the song, all the blow was gone, all the hookers were gone, the pornos were off. Then we listened back and the owner said, "Puta madre! That sucks! Erase it!" He just spent about ten grand or something crazy. "Erase it!" Ten grand! I'd be like, "Fuck yeah!" put all the tracks on record and "Boom!" all that money down the drain. Then ten minutes later he was like, "Fuck! Why did I do that? Fuck! I erased it! Call the musicians and get them down here again!" And the same thing happened again...

He did it again?

Yes! Ten grand gone in one stroke, man. Throw it into record and "Boom!" Then he got mad again. "Fuck! What did I do that for?" He was all coked out!

I'm sure he was stoked when Pro Tools finally came out!

[both laughing] Yeah, by that time he was probably already dead! Half those guys died from abuse.

Was anyone instrumental in getting your career off the ground?

One guy that helped me out early on was Dusty Wakeman from Mad Dog Studios. They used to be here in Venice, California, right on Lincoln Blvd — a really great place. I ran into him initially at the Sound Factory. Dusty used to work with Dwight Yoakam and that's how I got to work with Dwight, too. He recommended me for the gig. Dusty's always been a really great guy, awesome bass player, and he's produced a bunch of Lucinda Williams records too. Now he's got a very nice studio out in the Valley. There's another guy who really helped me out, Bert Battaglia, a mentor of mine down at Baby 'O — a really great engineer. He won two Grammies for the Bela Fleck and the Flecktones records. He also taught me a lot of engineering, how to mic up a kick drum and get a good sound, how to get great guitar sounds — basic stuff. Now Bert lives in Nashville — a fantastic guy. More recently, Carl Stone from radio KPFK/KPFA, Mitchell Brown from radio KXLU and Michael Jost from the band SugarBitch helped me out a bunch here in LA. Michael's a great guy, great musician and producer.

Any last words...

Make cool music — that's the whole idea. Trip out some minds. Make them think differently about music by taking it to a different place. It could be a sonic palace or sonic outhouse.