How'd you get your start?
I went to school, and then I went to both Chung King and Skyline Studios. I figured out that you have to bust your ass. One of my first sessions was with Jack Douglas and Jay Messina [Tape Op #90]. They were making a Local H record and they had a lot of shit going on. At night I would take really close notes, use all the gear, then make sure everything was perfect. The next day when they came in, they didn't know — they'd just start mixing. I'm like, "I just spent all night long with your gear. I'm gonna go pass out now." If I heard my name I'd just pop up and do stuff.
You came to Sear Sound with Steely Dan?
They would come in to do some work at Sear Sound. I was an assistant at Skyline and they had invited me over. Walter hired me the next day as an engineer. It was November 2001.
Can you tell me about the transition from being an assistant on Wilco's A Ghost Is Born to being the engineer on their Sky Blue Sky?
When they started Sky Blue Sky, I was in the middle of something with John Agnello [Tape Op #14], and Wilco wanted me for two days. I wasn't really nervous because [I thought] it was a demo recording, or a rehearsal. It was an easy transition. We were friends and we would hang out and barbecue on the weekends.
Sky Blue Sky was tracked live. There's just the right amount of room sound.
There were a lot of [Shure SM]57s on almost everything. We had a [Neumann] U87 but it didn't sound good anywhere, so I left it in the corner. With the SM57s, there was a little bit of bleed in everything. I was monitoring with Shure [SE 420] isolation headphones and I could walk around them and be in the process. I'd solo everything — I would go out to the drums and move the mic to where it sounded perfect. It took a couple of days to move all the close mics around to just the right spots. We spent a lot more time changing guitars. I remember on one song, John Stirratt's bass didn't sound quite right. I was moving things and it was getting louder as opposed to me finding out what sounded right. John said, "I need to change my bass," and he changes his bass and sure enough that was it. I didn't even have to touch a single knob.
What was the signal chain for the bass?
The bass was a DI and an amp. A [Shure] Beta 52 into an API 512 [preamp]. The DI went to a 512, and then into an [Empirical Labs] Distressor.
So you were actually compressing to tape?
Everything had a little bit of compression on it, but just a little bit. [Universal Audio] LA-3s, [dbx] 160s, [Manley] Vari-Mu on the organ and a [Universal Audio] 1176 on the piano. I would just compress stuff a tiny bit, because it would glue things to tape much better.
Was it mostly API preamps on that record?
There were a ton of APIs that covered the drums and the bass. There were two Daking [Mic-Pre/EQ]s, which were on Jeff [Tweedy] and Nels [Cline]'s guitars. Vocals were John Hardy's [M-1 Mic Preamps], maybe? It was all direct patches — there was no bussing involved.
Walter Sear [Sear Sound's owner] seems like he's got a pretty strict paradigm for the way he works. Do you take that "Sear Ethic" with you wherever you go?
To an extent. Even when I'm at Sear Sound I'm able to loosen up. When I first started here he came in, in the middle of a tracking session. The Fairchild [compressor] was way up and he said, "You can't do that." But a year later, I had one [Fairchild] going into the next, then into the next and into the next, and he said, "That sounds good!" He taught me and he wanted me to learn things right, because he does have a lot of ethics. And even when I would go work somewhere else, he would remind me of what I represent.
The Stephen Malkmus record [Real Emotional Trash] was done at SnowGhost Music [Whitefish, Montana]? What was that like?
That was a weird studio. The setup there was really, really problematic — I got hives. We're in this kid's house — it was basically his living room. He had TV projectors throughout the whole studio. He had lighting scenes — you'd hit a button, and the whole scene would change. To change the room temperature, you had to go online, to an FTP! I couldn't get anything to work right! On this long song ["Real Emotional Trash"] the tape was shedding. We're recording it and the tape is pulling — RMG [International] tape from Holland. We had to use acetone to clean the heads.
That's a ten-minute song!
I know! I think that's when my first hives popped up. The problem was the RMG — it wasn't even the tape machine. I remember at one point thinking, "The azimuth is out." They were cleaning [the heads] like crazy, so I'm thinking, "Well, that could knock the azimuth out." We got everything into Pro Tools, and returned all the reels to RMG. After that disaster in Montana I was so lonely, you know? I didn't know where to go, who to call or what to do. It was hot and I'd gotten a brand new itch, which I'd never known before. [laughter]
That album kind of sounds like that. Like a fun, chaotic mess.
