With the music business undergoing so many changes these days, a few years back Jim made the wise move from freelance producer/engineer to studio owner and created himself a place to work. That joint is now known as PLYRZ Studios in Valencia,California — right across the freeway from the Magic Mountain amusement park! Our pal Jason Hiller helped set this interview up, drove us to Jim's and even put us up — it turned out his former band, The Freewheelers, had done an album years ago with Jim Scott engineering and mixing. So we start walking around the giant warehouse (full of amazing instruments) and studio space (with classic Neve 8048 console) Jim has put together...
LC: This place is pretty large.
It started as just an empty warehouse — 5000 square feet. But over the last four years we built what we needed to build, rooms within rooms. We put in proper walls, air conditioning, ventilation and dropped the ceiling. The actual studio area was like a carport inside the warehouse. It had 14-foot ceilings, which got dropped down to 10 feet just to hide all of the ducts and sprinklers. At first it was a big, square room — very live. Initially I did a record in here with King Wilkie, a bluegrass group from back east. It was a live record and it worked out pretty well, even though it was a really ambient, square space. After I finished that record I thought, "I'll have to do better than that." We changed the ceiling and built one iso-booth (for a year or so) and then I built the second booth and got the grand piano. The studio we built is big enough that we can do it live performance style. We can set everybody up with their amps right in front of each other or we can spread everybody out, utilize the booths and closets and get some isolation.
LC: Can you throw things out in the big side room too?
Yeah, we do that — gang vocals and handclaps and the odd trumpet or big guitar solo. It's a big sound. It's also great if you have a lot of people. I've recorded a couple of different choirs up here. It is a warehouse and it can be kind of noisy at times. But if you've got the right kind of attitude you can record whatever you want. We have it wired for headphones and mic lines out there. We can also use the whole upstairs lounge area as an iso booth.
LC: You like rugs.
Yeah, well I want the place to look nice, so I covered almost every surface with Indian rugs, tapestries and Christmas lights.
LC: Where do you put amps when you want some isolation?
There is a room underneath the stairs. It's an amp closet. I put the amps in there and I make doghouses out of baffles if you want a little isolation. It's not total, but it's enough — it's old school. You just put a baffle between the amps. I figure if it was good enough for The Beach Boys, it is good enough for me.
LC: What's the name of this studio?
PLYRZ is the name of the studio (pronounced "pliers"). It's also the name of my friends' rock band that rehearses here. We couldn't think of a better name, so we called it the PLYRZ Recording Studio.
JH: Do you mix to tape much?
If I have to do any analog mixing I'll rent a tape recorder. Most artists don't. They can't afford it. I mean, budgets — the only ones lately that have used tape have been Wilco, because they really care and they can hear the difference between tape and Pro Tools. You can't get away with anything around those guys, especially Jeff [Tweedy].
JH: Do you guys stay on tape the whole time with them?
Well, it depends. On Sky Blue Sky it was tape all the way. That's why that record was mixed by hand, because there was no track for time code. They recorded on all 24 tracks. But on the recent record, [Wilco (The Album)] we tracked everything to tape and then transferred it to Pro Tools just because some of the songs were to be more developed. At a certain point we did a shoot out. Jeff likes the sound of tape, but he's not anti-anything. After we did the transfers and worked a little bit, we had a big listening playback and the straight tape sounded a little soft compared to the tape transferred to Pro Tools. Pro Tools and tape transfer just had a little flick that was good.
LC: With the Wilco record, were you involved from the beginning to end on that?
Yeah. I got a co-production credit with the band, which is spectacular. I'm very, very proud of that after all these years of working with them. I've been working with Wilco since 1996 or '7.
LC: On Being There?
Yeah, Being There was my first one. I've done several records with them since — Summerteeth and Sky Blue Sky and a couple of other projects. Last fall Jeff called and wanted to know if I would come to Chicago. The plan was for me to come to The Loft, hang around for a couple days and just see what was going on. TJ [Doherty] was there working with them and they had been recording demos on and off for a few months. They played me several songs and I was there while they were doing some overdubs. They're all very busy. Jeff has a family and he's dedicated — kids are coming in and out. It's a little chaotic up at their Loft, but it's a good, healthy kind of a thing. They were going after it the way they had gone after Sky Blue Sky. The difference was that Sky Blue Sky was really great and this was a little underdeveloped for whatever reason. Even though I admired some of the songs, there was a darkness to it and a sleepiness to it. The excitement of discovery wasn't there — what you can get with a live track or a track that's somewhat new. After I had been home for a few days, Jeff called and asked me what I thought. I said, "I think the songs are great, but I think we need to do this for real. We need to start over and get great takes and great sounds. That was that discussion and he asked me if I would make a record with them. Later we ended up all being in New Zealand around Christmas [2008].
LC: Right, for the 7 Worlds Collide [compilation album to benefit Oxfam]?
Yeah. Only in rock 'n' roll. It was an opportunity for a bunch of diverse artists to work together. I was invited to produce, mix and engineer. We were down there for about six weeks and people were co-writing and collaborating. Neil Finn from Crowded House has an organization called 7 Worlds Collide, and in 2001 he invited his brother Tim, Phil Selway and Ed O'Brien from Radiohead, Johnny Marr, Lisa Germano, Sebastian Steinberg and Eddie Vedder. He assembled an all-star cast to come down, rehearse up a show, do a couple of concerts, raise some money for Oxfam, put out a live record and a live DVD and have a fun experiment. Flash forward to Winter 2008/9. He decided to go one better — get more people and do an album of original songs that were created for the project in collaboration, as well as to do some gigs, film those and make a live album and DVD. Over Christmas and New Year's we all went down there. It was chaos for a month — people running up and down between three studios. "I need you to play a guitar solo. Hey I need a bridge for this song. I need a drummer! We need percussion. We need horns on this. We need strings on this song." At the end of it there's a double album — 24 songs recorded, mixed and mastered. We also did three gigs over three nights and we recorded those, and that will be a DVD and a live album. It's just terrific. Everybody donated their time, all of the songwriters donated their publishing and we all got to go to New Zealand [during] their summertime. We were on fire, studios were working, mics were everywhere and things were always set up. The original plan was when that was done to do the Wilco record in Chicago. But one day Jeff said, "Do you need to go home?" I'd already been there five weeks. "Could you just stay and we'll start our record?" I thought, "That's a good idea." We were already all set up in Neil Finn's studio.
LC: I've heard it's a nice place.
Roundhead Studios — it's beautiful, with a terrific old Neve console that used to belong to The Who. Unfortunately we didn't have the whole Wilco band, so that was the only kind of curve ball. We only had John [Stirratt] and Glenn [Kotche] and Pat [Sansone] and Jeff. Nels [Cline] and Mikael [Jorgensen] didn't come down. We cut all of the tracks for the record except for a couple. Jeff sang live as the guys played and we recorded on tape and it was rockin'. After that I went to Chicago and did the overdubs with Mikael and Nels. The parts that had been worked on earlier that year were then put onto the music, plus new ideas too.
LC: Like flying things in?
No. New playing, although I think we flew in an organ part from one of the demos. That's the beauty of Pro Tools. Different tempo, but same key and same arrangement, so you just slide things in and out. I've got to say it was a better organ sound. Good is good, you know? And other things — background vocals, horns, synthesizers, experiments, noises and what not...
LC: Did you end up doing any arrangement shifting when you got to that point?
No, not much — I would say no. Maybe there were a couple of edits during mixing, just to get to the point. Then we came back out and mixed it here. Jeff and Patrick came out. We did some emergency vocals and a couple of overdubs here and mixed until we were happy. It didn't take long. The whole thing from the first date in New Zealand to the final mix I think was about eight weeks. And add a lot of travel time, too. I went in and out of New Zealand, in and out of Chicago three times and then out here.
LC: Were you juggling other projects in that time yourself?
I was juggling the 7 Worlds Collide project around Wilco. That needed to be mixed. That wasn't really done done, so I mixed on my days off. On Sundays I was down here mixing 7 Worlds Collide songs and sending them to Neil Finn in New Zealand, which is four hours earlier, tomorrow. It was a lot of fun. You've got to just laugh at those moments and feel fortunate that you're able to work every day. One of these days the phone will stop ringing and that will be it for me, but so far my career has been great. I've been very lucky.
LC: I was doing a lot of research on you. You really dove in and tried to learn as much as you could from the get go.
Without a doubt. I was at least ten years older than everybody else at the time that I started. I came out of USC with a degree in geology and worked as a geologist for about six years or so. By the time I went to work at the Record Plant as a gofer I was almost 30. The guy that trained me to be a gofer was 18. Everyone was a little younger than me. Being a little older actually worked out to my advantage — I already had life experience. If my job as janitor was to clean the bathroom, I just did it right and then I did the next job they give me right and I got a reputation for doing things right. "Who should do this job? We need somebody to take this guy to the airport." "Ask Jim because Jim will get him there on time." "We need somebody to go get five sandwiches. It's Brooks Arthur and he's not having a good day, so we need the sandwich to be right when it comes back." You make sure if somebody wants pickles, he has pickles. You check the order. You check the cassette when somebody says, "Make a cassette of the new Rod Stewart record and take it over to Rod Stewart's house." You don't just make a cassette and run up there. You make a cassette and then you listen to it. If the cassette doesn't sound good you make another. I don't think it's hard, but you've got to have a pride in it — in anything. Just do a great job and somebody will recognize it and hire you again. If you do a really crummy job they definitely will not hire you again. It's not just about recording and engineering. It's about anything, any job.
LC: Were you studying the recording equipment, reading manuals when you could?
No. I was studying the people. The Record Plant had an all-star cast of talent. Tom Dowd was there every day working. You know, Tom Dowd was there. What else do you say to that? There was Lee DeCarlo, Ron Nevison, Andy Johns, Gary Ladinsky, [Reinhold] Mack, John Boylan, Brooks Arthur, Bob Margouleff and Pat Moran — the list goes on and on of great producers and engineers that I was able to observe and work with. I worked with Andy Johns and Lee DeCarlo as an assistant. That's a treat and an experience. You learn a lot and you learn really quickly. Despite whatever is going on, at the end of the night something happened to the music, something really good and exciting. You watch where they put the mics and you listen to how they mix and when they call you in the middle of the night and they say, "Set me up for tomorrow," that meant, "Do what I always do and I don't need to tell you because you should know by now." You get the mics and you get the compressors and you patch it in and you set the mic pre back. It's not that hard, but you've got to pay attention. Even my contemporaries, the guys that I worked with — there was a competition amongst us to be great. We had pride in the Record Plant and we wanted it to be the best. That led to some really good careers. I've been very lucky to work almost 30 years in the business, but so have Mike Clink, David Bianco, Paul Broucek, Ricky and Eddie Delena, Mike Beiriger and Bill Benton. They all have had long careers and gone on to win a lot of Grammys. It was a really good place to be at the right time.
LC: Do you think anyone is getting that kind of mentoring these days?
Well, they get it here. [laughter]
LC: Do you have interns or assistants?
I've had a couple. I have a great engineer who I work with — Kevin Dean, who is a veteran of Sunset Sound. Kevin's been up here for a couple of years as my Pro Tools guy and as an engineer. He's done his own projects here, but he works with me all of the time. Before that I had Steven Rhodes, who was a Cello guy — a fine recording engineer and he has a nice career going now. I've had a couple of interns. One of them was my nephew, who wanted to try to get into the business. He lived with me and worked here for a year and learned a lot. He's in college, playing in all kinds of bands, combos and orchestras and scoring films. I had another kid who was here for a quite a while. It didn't actually work out for him, but he gave it a shot. It provides a better service if there's a third person here, because I don't want to leave and get the coffee and Kevin can't leave. It is nice to have a runner, but I can't really employ anybody and the whole intern thing is suspicious. They need respect too. You can't just say, "Well, you can intern whenever I call you." That's not fair. They need to get something for their commitment. For my next runner, I think I will call CalArts and see if there is somebody in the recording program who is interested.
LC: A lot of the schools make their students complete a certain amount of internship time to fulfill their credits.
That's true. It would help me. The place needs to be dusted up. There are a lot of people in and out of here and it needs attention. It's all part of it. I want PLYRZ to be perceived as a real, professional recording studio and not just a little home studio. Between what I bring to the table, the equipment that I've chosen and the space itself, all of it — the mics and the compressors, the instruments and everything — I have a huge investment here. I take it really seriously. I've mixed and produced enough records in here in the last four years to feel confident in what I've built.
LC: In a way you're not selling the space — you're selling you. That's a whole different thing.
That's a whole faction of the record business right now. For me to get my fee I have to provide all this. In the old days I would get my fee and go to Cello, the Village, Sound City or Sunset Sound — any of the great Neve rooms in town. But that's when there were budgets. Now there aren't. It's pretty terrifying, but we still keep a high standard and we still do good work. But now people ask me, "How many mixes can you do in a day?" Not, "How many days on a mix?"
LC: [laughter] That's true.
They are straight up. "Can you do two a day? Can you start a third?" The answer is, "Well, I don't know. I'll try, but it's still got to be a great mix and I don't always know who is voting. How many people get to comment on the snare sound and the bass up and the hi-hat?" There are only so many hours in the day and you can't mix the song any faster than the tape will play. But honestly, starting this place four years ago has really been a godsend. I've been able to provide a really great service for my clients. I can keep the budget down because I can earn my fee and I can also charge a reasonable rate for the studio and I cover everything else. If you work quickly, don't goof around, don't put off the obvious and just concentrate on what you have to do, it can go very quickly. I think the records are better for it. A spirited three- or four-hour mix is way better than a drudge- filled two-day "mix-by-committee back and forth to the record company, back and forth to the artist, back and forth to me" mix. If I rock a mix in four hours and you don't like it, I'd rather rock it again two days from now in two hours knowing what I know about the song and what you tell me, and it's still quicker. It's way more exciting and it's way more fun.
LC: Does the Neve console have automation?
No it doesn't, but I have a [Digidesign] Command 8. It's like a mouse, but it's "fingers on faders" and it controls the output of Pro Tools. It's not exactly the same as pushing up the fader on the Neve, because you're actually pushing up the output of Pro Tools to the console. If you're compressing something and you turn it up it gets quieter! But you can still automate your mix.
LC: Do you have the engineer or intern write down what you patched in and the settings?
I don't. When I was an assistant engineer at the Record Plant, I wrote down a million mixes on a lot of records and it was all for nothing. Taking pictures of the console, mix sheets — we'd draw up perfect versions of the console on paper and write down every setting and then even with total recall on the SSLs, there was still a lot of notation. Before I had my own studio, labels would insist on recalls and my poor assistants that worked for me all of those years just broke their backs writing everything down. In my humble opinion there's no reason for it — not [on] the kind of records I make. I make feel-good, loud rock 'n' roll records and that's what they are. Now that I own the place, I decree that we will not write down a mix. If you don't like the mix I will happily do it again for you. You tell me what you want or what's wrong and I will try my hardest to do that. It's not about, "Oh wait! Did we have a 'guitar up one half dB' mix?" I can't back that anymore. I cry for the landfill that's full of tapes of alternate mixes of albums that we've never heard. I believe that our favorite records had very few alternate mixes. They might have had a mix on Wednesday and another mix on Friday, which might have been the mono mix or something, but there are not a lot of alternate mixes on all of our favorite records from the '60s and '70s. It didn't become that way until later. It's unnecessary to me. I think if you make a mix and it moves you and moves the artist, you are done. And you might just for the sake of the mastering engineer do a vocal up and a vocal down and maybe a bass up. But that's about it.
LC: Yeah. I do a cappella and instrumental mixes of songs and I figure we could maybe save a mix if needed by combining them.
Absolutely. TV and instrumental mixes are the norm.
LC: What about stem mixes?
I have never had any luck with stems myself. Some people do. I've tried to do stems but to me the whole sound is the sound. I haven't had any luck printing stems and combining them and having it sound anything like the mix. If the vocal is wrong or you want to change the lyrics I would rather just put the vocal back in on top of the instrumental mix or just do it again. Mixing is fun. How long does it take? It's not that hard.
LC: You've gotten more mix jobs over the years as your career's progressed. Do you find that kind of fun, to pull up someone else's material?
Absolutely. It used to be a lot of fun when you had other people's tapes. You run the risk these days of really bad recordings coming from inexperienced recording engineers with bad technique in bad situations on Pro Tools. It used to be that you could only record at a recording studio, and hopefully that studio had a tape recorder, a microphone, a mic preamp, a compressor and a trained engineer. In some cases, and for some artists, those days are gone because great recording studios are kind of a thing of the past and people are recording at home. After a young guy buys his computer, does he have any money for an expensive German microphone, a tube compressor or anything that sounds good? The answer most of the time is, "No." There are still a lot of fine recording engineers, talented kids that are really learning and doing great things, but some tracks come in in bad shape. Unconsolidated and edited improperly — there are clicks, pops and ticks and things aren't ready to mix. Kevin spends a lot of time de-essing vocals and doing new crossfades and fixing edits. This is precious time over here — they should have done that at home.
It's not total, but it's enough — it's old school. You just put a baffle between the amps. I figure if it was good enough for The Beach Boys, it is good enough for me.
LC: If one of our readers was getting some tracks ready to send to you, what are some things that you would caution them on?
Digital distortion. I know everybody wants it loud, exciting and really fantastic, but when the red light goes on in Pro Tools you've got a problem. Just turn it down and turn it up someplace else. When it goes red, there's a noise there that isn't good. That's not like a good, Sly & the Family Stone kind of distortion. It's a bad "I wish that didn't happen" kind of distortion. Everything has a limitation. My car only goes so fast. There's another car that goes a lot faster. There are mic pres that are tougher and there are microphones that sound better. But you should try to not distort the vocal. There's just no reason for it. There's a difference between just monitoring and really listening. It took me a long time to learn how to listen to hear things that you can then control and make work better. There was a whole other learning curve for me a few years ago with Pro Tools. I was used to tape. You had to really, really work hard to distort a tape recorder. In Pro Tools the tipping point is right there. It took me a long time even on my own recordings to figure it out. I'd be thinking, "You're kidding me. That's as loud as it's gonna go?" When I was recording kick and snare drums, my assistants would be telling me, "It's in the red! It's distorting!" I'm turning it down and down and the sound's getting worse and I'm thinking, "That's all I'm going to get out of this thing?" But you can learn and I feel like I've learned how to record really beautifully into Pro Tools. You record a sound into Pro Tools and you play it back and it's going to sound a lot like what you just heard — so close that nine people out of ten would never hear the difference.
LC: Do you run into situations yourself where you're fighting against an artist's manager or such about the quality of the recordings?
There's stuff that comes in and it's very delicate. If something's been processed and that's all you have — let's say a vocal's been tuned really hard and it has that ringing kind of keyboard, processed, synth-y vocal sound — it's very, very dangerous to say to the artist, the manager or the record company, "I don't think this is good. I think we should re-sing this." They probably had to work for a month to get the guy to sing that and that's the best they got. But you can't go barging in like that. My spirit is, "I'm going to make this sound really great. I'm going to fix it and make it better." I think I do — that's what I do. But honestly, the people that find me and seek me out like the same kinds of records that I do, which are just traditional, singer/songwriter rock records — they're not all fancy.
LC: You engineered (along with David Bianco and Richard Dodd) — Tom Petty's Wildflowers. People always comment on how good that record sounds.
Tom Petty is very influential and that connection has been great for me. I have to say that I would love to take credit for the entire Wildflowers project, but it was mixed by Richard Dodd and he's terrific. He's also one of my main mastering engineers now, along with Bob Ludwig. They are both spectacular. They tell me the truth and they don't blow up the music. When I send them a record to be mastered it comes back sounding better, just like the good old days. There was a decade where I would send records away to people and they would come back sounding worse because they were all too concerned in trying to figure out the level.
LC: Yeah, it was confusing.
I've got really powerful amplifiers and great speakers. I can turn it up as loud as I want and it sounds great. I think that's almost one way to tell how good something sounds. If you can turn it up really loud and it's sweet and it's warm and it just kind of hugs you and you just say, "That's really great," that's the sign of a really nice mix. Then you get it mastered and it comes back, you go to check the mastering and you turn it up again. The next thing you know you're squinting your eyes and you're trying to find some relief. It hurts. It's louder, but it's not as good. There's got to be a way to make something louder and pull people in without making it louder and pushing people away. Music's not about pushing people away. That's one of our problems that we're all talking about all of the time — compression and level — and it's just so unimportant. Just make it sound good and turn it up someplace else. Why is that so complicated? Are we so insecure about volume? Just get a better amplifier and better speakers. It's so easy.
LC: Maybe part of it is people trying to push the sound past computer speakers or crappy ear buds.
Yeah, I don't know. I've watched my own kids grow up during my career and they love music. When they were younger they would sit in the backseat of the car and share a set of ear buds listening to the same compact disc or cassette player. I am thinking to myself, "They don't care what it sounds like. They just like music." That's really an important thing, but I don't think that gives you the license to make the music sound terrible just because you can, or that you don't know any better. You should make it sound beautiful. The Ramones and The Clash sound beautiful and great. It's edgy, it's exciting, it's controversial and it's all those things. There is some really popular music out there that does not have a beautiful sound. It's kind of like a scratchy, itchy, processed, compressed, over-EQ'd, over-tuned, not-good sound. [laughter]
LC: It's sort of the antithesis of what draws a lot of us into recording, and then that is the product at that level.
Yeah, I don't have an answer for it. I'm just lucky that the people that come in here like what they hear. They're thrilled when they hear their own band sounding dressed up and sounding good — good guitar sounds and good drum sounds. They leave happy and they tell their friends and their friends come back. I just finished a couple of projects with Tom Morello. I did my first rap record with him. I had never been asked to do a rap record — that's not my world. Tom came in with Street Sweeper Social Club, with Boots Riley from The Coup. We did a mix yesterday. It's Morello being Morello — heavy riffs — and Boots rapping over it. It's political, it's profane, it's worldly and it's streetwise. It's not my usual thing, but they love it and they came back for more. That makes me really, really happy and it makes me proud. It's just a vocal and it's still got to be good and it's still got to sound great. It can't be distorted, it can't be over-compressed, it can't be too bright and it can't be too dull. It's got to just be right, got to sit in the mix really loud and clear and exciting and draw me in and make me want to listen. He's rapping and it's got to be clear and clean. These are challenges and I've drawn on my experiences to get that right. A lot of things can go wrong in that chain. In that moment a lot of things can go wrong.
LC: That's true. We can ruin a record.
Yeah, you can.
LC: You have won six Grammy awards. Does a Grammy help your career?
The first record that I ever engineered was Sting's album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles. I was an unemployed second engineer and I got a call from Pete Smith, who produced that album and with whom I had done a project — a different project for The Police. It was one of those cases where I had done a really great job for him and he had appreciated it and remembered me. He was given the opportunity to produce Sting and he thought, "I need a guy to cover my back and help me do this." I went down to Barbados, we made Sting's record, it went to number one, we were nominated for four Grammys [one for Best Engineered Recording], and I thought, "Well, yeah. I'm just going to get a Grammy every time I make a record because I'm super bad! That's just how it's going to go."
[laughter]
Of course we didn't win, but we were nominated and that's pretty shocking — my very first album I had ever been paid to be a recording engineer and a mixing engineer on.
LC: It's been downhill ever since?
Well, ten years went by before I got another nomination, and that was Wildflowers and we won. It made me very proud. I have to say that my first phone call the next morning was from Tom Petty himself. Tom is a super cool guy, but he's also a private guy. But he called me that next morning to congratulate me on the Best Engineered Recording Grammy and I'll never forget it. It was really, really sweet. Yeah, you get them along the way and I've been very lucky and I don't think that they hurt.
LC: Recognition.
Well, recognition and the opportunity. A couple of years ago the Dixie Chicks won a lot of Grammys [five, for Taking the Long Way]. When you win in those categories, Record of the Year and Album of the Year, the producer [Rick Rubin], the artist and the engineer all get Grammys. If you're nominated in that category and you win, you get to go up on stage. I was able to go up on stage at the Grammys with the Dixie Chicks a couple of times that night — it was very surreal and very exciting and a lot of fun. On the last award of the night, the Dixie Chicks had already been up there several times. Natalie [Maines] said something and Emily [Robison] said something and everybody kind of looked at Martie [Maguire] as if it was her turn, and instead she pushed me up into the mic. There I am standing on national television for the last award of the Grammys — it was pretty crazy. But my advice is, if you are ever in that situation just tell your wife that you love her and thank her for all the years of marriage.
LC: Did you do that?
I did. I thanked my beautiful wife Carol for sticking with me for the last 25 years and that I loved her. That's a good moment to have in your world. [laughter] That's my advice next time you go up on national television.
LC: [laughter] Next time? If ever for me. You worked on Revival, the recent John Fogerty record.
Yes I did, but previous to that I had mixed a live album for him — a DVD called The Long Road Home. John's unbelievable. He writes great songs and he's picky, but he just wants it right. I had a good time mixing the live album with him — we had a great relationship and we mixed quickly. It was a good experience. A few months went by and they called and wanted me to record Revival, so I was in from day one as engineer and mixer. John produced. He's got a terrific band and great songs. I really love that record and we did it really quickly.
LC: But he's notorious for taking quite a long time...
Yeah, in the past he's taken a few years to make a record, but this one wasn't like that. We rocked it, they were prepared, the songs were great, there was a short but intense pre-production period and then the recordings were done really quickly. It was all done in a month.
LC: Really? I've heard rumors of hundreds of guitar solos and vocal takes and a lot of comping.
Yeah, that's true, but not on Revival. I would work again with him in a second.
LC: What kind of mic do you put up for that voice?
He's got his own mic — a very expensive Brauner VM1KHE microphone that he takes wherever he goes. His vocal chain is a Neve 1073 and an 1176 compressor. He knows the sound of his own voice and the vocal is loud on that record — I mean it is really loud.
LC: It seems like John takes responsibility for his own sound.
That's true. He was taking responsibility for his own sound, which I adore. Don't show up and expect some young recording engineer to create your sound. It's totally unfair to you and to them.
LC: You've talked about learning and building up these skills for yourself. Learning what different things sound like — different drums, amps and speakers.
That's just a lot of sessions. I've been very lucky, but I think I routinely work about 250 to 275 days a year. I've done that consistently for the last 30 years — in a session, in front of a pair of speakers, putting up a microphone, coaching a singer, coaching a bass player, doing an edit, doing a mix — I'm working at this. I'm trying to get better at this and I'm trying to give the people what they want. It's difficult to talk about music, but I've been in a lot of sessions and now somehow by magic, I'm an older guy with experience. I still think of myself as a young guy trying to prove myself. "I hope my session goes well today." I am nervous on tracking day. I hope the band sounds good. But I've done a lot of sessions, I have a lot of experiences, I've seen a lot of meltdowns, I've seen a lot of happy accidents and you learn along the way what might work or at least another option when somebody runs out of ideas. Maybe I've got one more idea. "Maybe we should just go watch the sunset, have a cocktail and come back down and everything will be alright." Sometimes that's all you need to do.
JH: A great mic to a great source through a great chain doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get a great sound.
That's so true. I'll never forget Michael Been. I made a record with his band, The Call, and I loved it so much. It was a record called Red Moon that was totally unsuccessful, but I think one of the most beautiful sounding records I've ever made. I'm really proud of it. It was one of those big-budget records where the guitar player rented a bunch of amps — old ones, new ones, big ones, small ones. He was going through them and we're trying to get a guitar sound and for hours it was, "No. That's not the sound. No. That sounds like s&#t." I'm sweating trying to get a guitar sound and finally Michael Been pipes up and he says, "I don't want anyone to say anything about the guitar sound until you play something good." It was suddenly, "Wow, that changes everything." Then you can just pick a good amp and put [up] a good mic and take a deep breath and play a note, play something good. As soon as you play something good, the sound automatically sounds great. [laughter] It's true.
LC: You also did the Platinum Samples drum thing [Jim Scott Rock Drums]. Is that a tedious process building one of those libraries?
It is very tedious, only because of the technology involved and what people need when they buy that drum sample. It's not just, "Bang! Snare sample. Thank you. Boom! Kick sample. That sounds great." It's all the velocities. It's not just always AC/DC — the hardest kick drum and the hardest snare drum. Drummers play with feeling and touch and velocity and sensitivity, and if they are going to play on a digital kit and fire analog samples from a computer, they want a velocity that matches their intensity. You are hitting that drum a couple hundred times to get good sounds. The poor drummers that I used on this — in fact I platooned. I had two drummers. You tune up the drums and you get them to sound big and fat and you think, "Okay, that's fantastic." Then you just start and he hits it and he hits it and it's a big cycle, from the quietest hit you could ever play musically to the loudest hit you would ever play and everywhere in between. I engineered it, but Rail Jon Rogut produced it. He does the Pro Tool-ing. Until he feels that he's got the right amount of separate, interesting velocities that sound good, you're hitting that drum. Cymbals last forever and you wait until the last decay of the cymbal goes and you're up all night long. It takes forever. We did a lot of kits and it was really, really fun.
LC: Did you have to just stop and take a break sometimes?
You do. I can't imagine how many hours Rail put in on it. He's got to go in and separate and listen and look at all the waveforms and make sure that velocity 109 is a little quieter than velocity 110, and a little quieter than 111. It's unbelievable.
LC: Does he like his job? [laughter]
Well I think that they are excited about their company. I am the third guy to make a sample pack for them. There was Andy Johns and Joe Barresi. Joe is awesome. I was lucky enough to work with Joe while he was coming up at Sound City. He's become a terrific recording engineer and producer and has had a lot of success. My samples are a little different because I used all of my own drums. Joe and Andy both used rented drums. I used my own collection of drums and Steve Ferrone and Chad Smith used their kits. These are drums that I have collected and used in sessions — things that I know have saved my rear end many times and gotten me home many hours earlier.
LC:One of the things that I see in a lot of studios that are staying busy is having a lot of instruments present to make music with.
I have a lot of great gear that is always available to my clients. It's another thing that keeps the budget down. Nowadays you just can't call somebody and rent a special keyboard for a week. There's just no budget for it. My studio is full of a lot of great old gear and you're welcome to use it.
LC: Did you ever used to tell yourself that you would never do this? Own a studio?
Many times. Early on I was working at really cheap studios, usually out of town, doing low budget records. Later there were bigger budgets and nicer studios and every time along the way I was thinking to myself, "Maybe I should start my studio." Then you get out a piece of paper and you start writing it down, "I've got to buy this and that. I've got to rent a building. I've got to buy a coffee machine. I've got to buy insurance and then I need 30 really good microphones and a Neve console." You get to that list and you say, "Oh, to heck with it." I did a business plan probably three times in the '80s and '90s and I thought, "As much as I work, there's got to be a way for me to provide a better service to my clients." I loved going to Cello or the Village, those great recording studios. Who doesn't? But not everybody's got that kind of bread, and now they certainly don't. So this was the time. I was done commuting — I was especially done with the cartage — I was done with all of it. For me, the timing was perfect four years ago and the music business was healthier than it is now. But in the last four years I've stayed just as busy and I've worked on a lot of projects. I've made a lot of records with some really interesting people that I know are going to come back (and have come back). It's kind of the new business model. Plus I don't have to pin up the tapestries and Christmas lights every day. It's nice.
LC: This environment makes me feel comfortable.
I'm glad. It's fun. People get a kick out of it. It relaxes them. Everyone decorates in their own style. You have to. You're going to be there all day long. But the one piece of equipment that gets the most use is the Bar.
LC: What projects are coming out soon?
I just finished a Crowded House album that will be out in the spring. It was an honor to work on that. I'm currently working on a project with Martie Maguire and Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks, which is unbelievable.
