At what point did you start to think, "Hey, this could be a long-term career." Was studio work always an ambition of yours or did it come up later?
No, recording was more of a hobby at first. In the early '80s I was playing full time with Phil and the Blanks, and we were having a go at making a living playing music. We were on the road in a crappy little van, playing in clubs up and down the coast, trying to get a record deal and writing. I was recording other bands in my spare time. At one point, about 1985, I was getting really busy in the studio recording 8- track demos and records for people. I think I was charging $25 an hour, which to me was pretty good money. I decided to leave the band and go into recording full time. I got a bank loan and bought a Tac Matchless console, which was made by Amek. I also bought an Otari MX-70 1" 16-track. The larger track capacity and better sound quality enabled me to get more work producing indie records and pre- production demos for major label bands like R.E.M., Dreams So Real and Guadalcanal Diary. By that time I had also accumulated better mics and outboard gear, and I had gotten to the point where I kind of knew what I was doing. I was starting to understand more about the role of the producer, helping bands with the creative end of what they were doing instead of just making mainly "live" recordings. I started concentrating on helping them get better sounds, picking the best songs, zeroing in on vocal performances — emphasizing the strengths and minimizing the weaknesses. It was around that time I produced the Indigo Girls' Strange Fire and Widespread Panic's Space Wrangler. Those records seem to have stood the test of time.
Athens music is known more for attitude and enthusiasm than precision and professionalism. What challenges has this presented over the years, and did it have an effect on the type of engineer and producer you became?
A lot of the early Athens bands were made up of musicians who could barely play their instruments, but it somehow worked when they all got in a room together and did their thing. I found out early on that musicians can become very self-conscious when overdubbing their parts separately. That's why my studio is designed for recording bands as live as possible. That has always seemed to be the best approach, especially with younger bands who haven't had a lot of studio experience. I like to put everybody in the same room whenever possible for tracking and then fix what needs to be fixed. My approach varies with different types of projects. I've done plenty of singer/songwriter projects where songs were built up one track at a time. I find these kinds of projects enjoyable because I often end up playing a lot of the instruments and there's more experimentation.
Is your work inspired at all by a desire to archive the music scene you came up in?
When I was making all those records it never occurred to me that I was archiving Athens' music history. I was just trying to work as much as possible so I could afford to buy better equipment to make better sounding recordings. In those days it was common for major labels to send up and coming bands into the studio for a week or so to bang out demos of all their songs before deciding whether to sign them. These sessions were especially challenging. If the demo didn't come out sounding like a finished product it could really ruin the band's chances of getting a deal, since a lot of record company people didn't have the vision to hear past a demo-quality recording and hear the quality of the songwriting. I had to learn to work very quickly and not waste even a minute of time. Sometimes the preproduction demos would end up being part of the final album. That happened a few times with R.E.M. Over the years they were constantly coming in to demo new songs. They would usually come into the studio for a week and knock out 20 to 30 songs very quickly. Sometimes magic would happen and they'd get a great take of a song and decide to put it on the album. The song "Country Feedback" [from Out of Time] is one example.
What changed in 1988, when they were on Warner Brothers for the first time, and they came and recorded the full album here?
In 1988 I built an addition that doubled the size of the studio and added a vocal booth and a couple of isolation rooms for guitar amps. But R.E.M. didn't come in for an actual album until 1990. By then I had upgraded to a Trident 80B console and an Otari MTR- 90 2" 24 track. That was the first time a full major label album project had been done in the studio.
Was it Green?
No, that was for Out of Time. They recorded the basic tracks at Bearsville [Studios in Woodstock, NY] and then came to my studio for six weeks for overdubbing. During that time we recorded most of the vocals and added all sorts of bells and whistles — keyboards, background vocals, mandolins and such. They brought Kidd Jordan in to overdub horn parts. It was an incredibly exciting time for me. I leaned a great deal working with producer Scott Litt [Tape Op #81]. I'll never forget sitting at the console and hearing Michael Stipe's vocals for "Losing My Religion" for the first time. That entire project was a huge milestone for me.
