Lewis Durham is the guitarist from sibling trio Kitty, Daisy & Lewis. Their songs and style are heavily influenced by a variety of genres, including: rhythm and blues, swing, jump blues, country & western, traditional blues, Hawaiian music and early rock 'n' roll. All are multi-instrumentalists; they play guitar, piano, banjo, lap steel guitar, harmonica, double bass, ukulele, trombone and accordion between them. Lewis and his father Graeme Durham (head mastering engineer and owner of The Exchange Mastering) built a home studio where Lewis has recorded all of the band's releases, including their new eponymous album. This is no ordinary home studio however, featuring vintage equipment like an Ampex 350 tape deck, RCA and STC mics, huge Tannoy Red monitors, its own cutting lathe — and, most notably, no computers.
You're in a band with your family?
Yeah. Me, my two sisters and mum [Ingrid Weiss] and dad — we used to go to an afternoon pub/club thing and some guy we knew said, "Come and play a tune." That was just me and then slowly, as we did more stuff, my sisters joined in and then finally mum and dad. It happened organically — it wasn't planned or anything.
Did you all play instruments before the group started?
We didn't really know our instruments, but with drums, for instance, you just hit it... That's what we do — it's not complicated. It's simply whacking the snare.
How old are all of you?
I'm 17, my little sister [Kitty] is 14 and Daisy's 19.
Who does what?
We all swap around — guitar, piano, banjo, accordion, ukulele, lap steel, trombone, harmonica and we all do vocals.
You obviously like music from previous eras.
I wouldn't say I like all music from the '20s to the '40s. To be honest, there's a lot of shit in the middle. I don't get a lot of white rock-n-roll. I don't stop at 1959-I like a lot of '60s beat and soul music. I'm not really into the '70s, but then I'll be sitting in a club and Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" comes on [starts tapping foot] and my head starts nodding!
So how did you and your sisters get into R&B specifically?
We heard Louis Prima from The Jungle Book [soundtrack] and took an interest in what else was like that. That [song] was more swing, but then we got into Louis Jordan and that's all R&B. There's a lot of artists people aren't aware of, such as Wynonie Harris and Roy Brown.
Where did all this gear come from?
My dad built the desk before I had any interest in any of this stuff. It's pots mounted on a piece of wood. What I don't like about big studio consoles is the crap that your signal is going through — a lot of cheap components. All I need is a volume and pan.
Did working with vintage gear come before doing music?
No, the music came first and I'm not really sure how I got into it. After looking at old pictures I probably said to my dad, "Have you got a tape machine?" He had a lockup in King's Cross and there was an 8-track Studer A80 Mk1. We brought it back to the house and got it working. I didn't really know what I was doing; I simply grabbed a mic and was doing overdubs. I'd have some tracks on sync and some tracks on repro. Then I thought, "I need a mixing desk." One day we were coming out of my dad's studio and saw this desk left over and I said, "Can we take this home?" So we had that and the tape machine. At that point I didn't have a mic amp, I was plugging a [Shure] SM57 directly into the Studer [tape deck] and whacking the record gain up. Then I got a Vortexion [valve mic mixer]. We had an STC 4033A [ribbon mic] and I put the mic in the room with the band and we played. It sounded like shit but we had our first recording!
Does the board have mic preamps or is it purely passive?
It's passive — level and pan. We have RCA BA1A and a BA11a line amps for gain makeup — not even a pair. [The board] goes out into Leak TL/12 [amplifiers] and Tannoy "Reds" in Lockwood cabinets! These are British standard monitors from back in the day.
Does the band record live?
We're all in there at the same time. The room is very small, so there can be a lot of spill, but we usually work with it. Sometimes if the vocal isn't great we'll redo it, but we never build up the parts one at a time. A lot of what we're doing comes from the feel of playing together, so you need to record together to capture the energy. Occasionally we'll add a couple of things on the top.
Do you try to screen everything off?
Yeah, we hang fur coats behind the mics — it looks like you're in a grannie's wardrobe! We try to separate things as much as possible. The main problem is obviously the drums.
What's your usual set up? You've got eight tracks, stereo drums...
Hell no. We throw a Reslo [ribbon mic] over the kit — one channel! One mic per instrument to one track on the tape. I originally wanted to record everyone straight to mono tape — Sam Phillips style. We've got an RCA 76D [mixer], which is the console he [Phillips] used. My dad and I are getting it running — when that's working we'll be set. At the moment we run all the mic amps direct to the tape machine and then monitor through the console. When we mix down we take the stereo out and go into the Ampex 350 [mixdown deck] — that's from 1954.
Do you ever wish you could EQ?
If we need to we'll throw a Pultec [equaliser] on it! We rotate them from home to the mastering studio. We have to decide who can use them day-to-day. I think if you've got a lot of EQ available, you can start to rely on it — people start EQing before they've even heard [the music] back because they "know" that it's going to need more top end or whatever. It's not easy recording with this stuff though — we've got to put in a lot of work to get a half-decent sound, never mind a good one! It'll all sound good and then we play it back and something's muffled or something starts cracking up — then we have to change a few capacitors or whatever.
Do you keep all your multitrack reels for archival purposes?
Yeah, we keep everything. Quantegy tape was still around in some places when we started recording the album. Now there's RMG tape but I haven't used it. We ordered in a box. There's the new ATR tape. I'd like to get some old Scotch tape. I really like the sound of the records that were recorded on that — 7" spools. Tape's expensive though...
The Exchange's recording studio that your dad built was all one room. Why did you choose to have a control room here?
It took a lot of convincing, because he doesn't really know about how they used to do it back in the day. I wanted a control room so we could record the band live straight to mono. I had to tell him that they didn't use plates until this point in time. We're not trying to copy photographs — we're using gear that has the sound we want. It doesn't matter if it's got transistors. We've got a couple of EMT plate [reverbs] now.
Do you find the music mixes itself?
Sometimes we get really good recordings. I push up the faders and think, "This is great!" But other times, because we focus on the performance rather than it being great fidelity, we end up battling a drum track that's constantly in the red. That's why we record to tape — it seems to capture the energy of our performance better than digital. When we recorded at [BBC's] Maida Vale [Studios], the sound was there but I just didn't feel any energy from it. It's a well spec'ed studio. We were recording a song with a banjo and on playback I said, "That doesn't really sound like a banjo." I got this, "Listen here Sonny Jim, I've been doing this long enough to know what a banjo sounds like!" We wanted to do our own thing in our own time. Being at school; we couldn't take a week off to record whenever we felt like it — we needed a way to fit recording around that. Plus we wanted to do it ourselves.
Do you find it difficult to know when a song is finished?
We did do a lot of takes and a lot of mixes- maybe it's not perfect or maybe there are still things we'd like to change, but it is what it is. Our label, Sunday Best, were very good with deadlines but there obviously still had to be an end to it.
Do you record in other rooms of the house?
We did some recording in the living room to use the grand piano, but if we're not all in the same room it doesn't really work. It would be much easier to mix if we could put everyone in different rooms but it just doesn't work as a performance.
Do you want more gear?
I'm happy with our monitoring. However, my dream would be an 8-track Ampex 350 like they had at Motown and Atlantic. That would sound amazing but that'll never happen because they only custom-made a few. I like our 8-track, but it depends what tape we use — we recorded the album on [Quantegy] 456 tape but then we accidentally put some [Quantegy] 499 on and we were like, "Oh shit. We've recorded our album but I think this sounds better."
Do you have any interest in recording other bands?
Yeah. Yesterday I was writing a track with Paloma Faith [London soul singer] and I think we're gonna record it here. I think that a lot of musicians would find it refreshing to record in this pure and simple way. I am looking forward to being involved with other artists. But, if I'm not into the music, I'm not too bothered — plus, at the moment, it's my way of doing things or nothing. If a band is going to get annoyed if I say, "You're not working with headphones..."
You don't use headphones here?
No. When we're tracking together, we're all in the room listening to each other. When it comes to overdubs we'll do it old school — rock a speaker, hear it and sing along. We try to put the speaker or the other instruments in the null points of the ribbons — but sometimes we'll be really happy with the sound and we'll find the microphones are facing a different way. Then, in another session, I'll try to do it that way and it sounds completely like shit.
Plus old gear seems to be a little less consistent...
It changes daily, with the temperature as well. It can get really hot in the control room.
So you cut discs here too?
Yeah, it's hard though. I cut acetates of our stuff for when I DJ, before the songs are out. I cut drum -n- bass acetates for DJs at my school. We've got a mono Grampian system — they used them in the late '40s to late '60s to cut 78s or 45s. It takes a lot of work to get the results, but I think it's actually one of the best disc cutting systems. When it works properly I think it sounds better than a Neumann SX74, the good '70s disc cutting system. I wanted to cut 78s because that's what I listen to. Dad took me to work and showed me his Neumann VMS70 and there's so much shit involved — helium cooling, heated stylus, variable pitch, vacuum hold down [for the lacquer]. I said, "No. This isn't what they used in the 1930s. There must be something simpler." He knew of the Grampian system. With some help from friends, we figured out it was the simplest way to cut a record and I just got going. It's not a thing where you can read the manual — it's an art. r
www.myspace.com/kittydaisyandlewis www.sundaybest.net
Check the bonus articles on tapeop.com for the full sized typed text of Lewis' Brief Recording History
