What would have been the first session that you guys worked on together?
David: I seem to remember that I had known Pat for a while through other artists that he worked with and other stuff that he had done.
Pat: The Red Hot [benefit albums] — we did stuff together where I either mixed it or such.
D: Yeah — odds and ends, this and that. So when we did start working together in earnest on a whole record it wasn't brand new, where we had to figure out, "What is our working relationship?" We already had some of that worked out, which was great.
P: I guess Grown Backwards [released in 2004] was the first record of yours that we had done together. Probably through Arto [Lindsay] and people like that were relationships of Brazilian things, since Luaka Bop [Records] was so instrumental in that.
Pat, you did quite a bit of Brazilian stuff for a while. Was that in conjunction with Luaka Bop?
P: No, not really. I think I mixed that Tom Zé thing [Brazil Classics 5: The Hips Of Tradition]. It was great. D: Yes, that was one of ours. But the other stuff was more mainstream than Tom Zé.
So both of you have done records and sessions in studios all over the world. What kinds of things have you come across in studios?
D: I did a couple days of sessions in a studio in India, in Chennai (which used to be called Madras) with a soundtrack composer. I had written a song, and I asked him to arrange it as if it was an Indian soundtrack.
Like Bollywood, exciting kind of stuff?
D: Exactly — make it go from one kind of genre to another and then imagine all these things happening. We found out mid-session that after they would do all the recording — maybe one or two days, it was a 10- minute long track — they would mix it and then erase all the multitracks. "It's done. You've got the stereo mix. Okay, you're good. We need this multitrack for the next session that's coming in for tomorrow." You can imagine how many songs, how many pieces of music had been recorded on that. So we said, "Wait a minute. See if we can buy them a couple of reels of tape and we can bring it in. That way we can leave with the tape." That was another thing — bringing in tape. India was very self-protective about that type of technology. They wanted to encourage homegrown tech stuff, which has really worked for them. So bringing in a reel of tape turned out to be a really big deal. The other part was [that] the session and the actual studio costs were not that high, but there were all of these extra costs that kept piling in — like the guy who would bring tea. The "tea wallah" would bring in big trays of tea. Every hour he would appear with trays of tea for all of the engineers and all of the musicians. At the end there was this bill for tea and it was like, "Woah! Look at that — he's charging us for all that tea!"
That's pretty crazy. Did you lose some of the multitracks too?
D: No, we got them and then remixed them here in New York, although the alignment was totally wacky. It was like, "Holy shit. This can't be." It was so wacky that the studio said, "No, this can't be right." I said, "No, you have to do it because it doesn't sound right."
P: In Brazil we went to one of those places in Bahia years and years ago where we said, "Okay, we need to align the machine." They said, "We aligned it when we got it."
D: If you only work on that machine, then you're fine. It would play back as you had recorded it as long as you stayed on that machine.
P: We aligned it and fucked up their whole thing. Everybody who ever worked there for the next five years... that's one of the beautiful things about digital. You can screw it up, but it's harder to screw it up that bad.
D: And people everywhere like recording at home, mixing home stuff and studio stuff.
On the record you did with Brian Eno a few years ago [Everything That Happens Will Happen Today] — that was done by passing things back and forth and then coming to studios and adding things and mixing.
D: A lot of passing back and forth — at first not even session files. He'd send me MP3s of these tracks. I would slice and dice them and make a structure, improvise a vocal over it — that kind of stuff. We really didn't start to see multitracks until we were mixing. It was a real thing because some of the tracks I got from Brian were relatively recent, but some of them went back a number of years. They were instrumental things that he had done, and he would go, "I can't figure out how to turn this into a song." So it would end up on the shelf. But the track would have used these plug- ins, virtual instruments or stuff that he had that only worked on OS9 or on this particular Mac and wouldn't work on a newer Mac. Luckily, he saved all of his own computers. So he went through a month of what he called "forensic audio." I think it was Leo [Abrahams], the guitar player, who basically had to come in and regenerate sessions based on pulling out these old computers, trying to get the session for that particular piece of music to play again the way it sounded, and then make that into a multitrack session. He succeeded in getting pretty much everything.
P: Was it "The River," where right up until the very end there were pieces that we couldn't recreate?
D: Oh yeah.
So were you having to take multitracks and line them up with chopped up MP3s?
P: Sometimes. It wasn't so bad that way. By the time they reached the point where we were finishing them — the things he would send were full songs, or you were working on a full song that you would send back to him. The things that David would make out of the original pieces — like he said, he would make a full song out of something that was just parts, and then added his own parts to it. By the time he was sending that back to Brian, we were already at a song structure that he would then recreate if he had the sounds.
D: Leo was helping to do all of this forensic stuff. He had to conform some of those multitrack sessions to the structures that I was sending back. There were a couple of places where you could tell where I did a certain kind of edit, and we would futz with it and make it work. But for the most part, when we got the multitracks from him they were pretty much conformed to the song structure that I worked with. It's a pretty crazy process. Usually when people are doing stuff, all of the recording is within the last year, and some of this went back ...
P: It's still a conversation, though. It sounds like it's all technical, and it is, but it is also a musical conversation when David edits the things and sends them back. Sometimes they had to interpret what they had made before because they couldn't actually get it back. Sometimes they were actually recreating things and changing them a little. It was surprisingly exciting to see.
D: I like the process of passing tracks back and forth. I had done it before that record. The most successful song was this song "Lazy" that deejays [X-Press 2] in England had done. They sent me a track and said, "Will you write something over our track?" It worked out great, but the track they sent me — again, just a 2-track — sounded a little bit reminiscent of a Talking Heads song, like "Life During Wartime" or something. I thought, "Oh, that's why they sent it to me. Okay." So I wrote over it. But when they were done, they ditched all that stuff and made it more of a house/club track, which worked great. It was really successful. My vocals and harmonies and some other little things I added I think were all done on a [Mac] G3 laptop — one of those clunky, black plastic ones with one of those little things you stick in the side. It worked, and I thought, "Wow."
P: And you took that back, and we cut that for your other record with a band doing it, and then did some machine stuff on that.
D: Yeah, so my part/contribution was done on a laptop and I thought, "Wow. This is really changing things that you can do this." Of course they were doing all of the work — the mixing part. But I had done that and a few other things like that — not all so successful musically or as popular.
P: It's interesting to see how other people work.
D: Exactly. It's fun to see what they come up with, as far as tracks and how they react to stuff and how different people work. So the Brian thing was a whole record's worth of stuff, though it started off with two songs. If I wasn't able to write anything, or I wrote something and Brian said, "Oh no, this is all wrong. I hate it," then we would quietly pretend that it had never happened.
You'd had a history of working with Brian from way back. Did the Everything... record come out of revisiting My Life in the Bush of Ghosts for the remastered reissue?
D: Yeah, that got us communicating a lot more and visiting one another either here or in London. It was one of those trips to London where Brian was playing me tracks, and at some point I remember saying, "If you want me to have a go to writing a melody or words for this I can give it a try, and if you don't like it that's the end of it."
This takes us back to the Talking Heads being more "rehearse, write songs, perform them, go into a studio, capture them." But by Remain in Light you start seeing a very different studio process.
D: Then you run out of songs — your catalog is depleted. You start writing in the studio, writing in rehearsal or some bands take a long break, where the writers in the group have to woodshed and come up with some songs and rehearse them. But I think with Brian's encouragement we discovered that we could improvise stuff in the studio, make a structure out of that. You can only do it for certain kinds of music. You aren't going to come up with that kind of stuff that has really complicated, convoluted chord changes. You're not going to jam on stuff like that. Jazz people might, but we're not going to do that. This worked for us.
I think of that period of music as being more "steady state" kind of songs that hold a mood or a groove.
D: I figured out how to write a verse and chorus that sounded like a chorus and a verse that still had tunes and hooks in them, even though the music was kind of steady state. That's what we did for a while. It worked fine.
It was my understanding that on that album you recorded the tracks, then took a break and finished up lyrics and other ideas.
D: After all the improvised stuff was recorded, and also by switching the tracks on and off, you could say, "Okay. When this group of tracks is playing it's a chorus. When this group of tracks is playing it's a verse. This may be a middle eight or a bridge or whatever you want to call it." So we'd make a 2-track rough mix of an instrumental thing and I would maybe write some melodies over that, and then I would go away for a month and come back with words for all the stuff, which didn't always work. Sometimes there would be tracks where I would go, "I can't get anything for this." Then there's somewhere I would try something and it wouldn't work, and I would come back a couple weeks later with a new idea.
P: Did you come up with things where other people said they didn't like them and you had to go back to square one, or is it always your realization that you weren't happy with them?
D: It wasn't always me. "Once in a Lifetime" — a couple of times that track was way down on the list of priorities and I was sure that I could get something for it. So I persevered on that one. I kept going, "No, no, no. I like this track. Something's going to happen with it."
P: Was that the one that ended up having two different mixes right up until mastering?
D: Yes it did.
What were the different mixes involving?
D: For some reason, it seems really odd to me now. To a lot of artists it will seem very common. We had an absolute deadline when we had to get the record finished. I think there was a tour booked. Maybe it was the record company saying, "This is when we want to release it." They had real schedules. So in order to get it done on time, Brian was mixing tracks here in New York and Dave Jerden, who went on to produce and engineer a lot of metal acts, took some of the multitracks to California, and he was mixing some out there. So that particular song got mixed twice, and it ended up being [mastering engineer] Greg Calbi that made the call.
P: David literally took both of the mixes to mastering and said, "Whatever he decides, that's the one."
D: Yeah, I said, "Greg can figure this out, and then it won't be anyone playing personal favorites."
That was a very democratic band from the get-go. I can see how things would drive you crazy within that context at times, but also it does bring a special energy to the project.
D: Yeah, when it worked it worked really well. When it didn't work it was a total nightmare.
I know that Tina Weymouth [bass] and Chris Frantz [drums], with the last couple of records that the Talking Heads did, talked about feeling like they were treated as session musicians. They said you would bring in songs to the studio and say, "Here's what we're doing." Is that accurate?
D: Yes and no. Yes — at the very end I brought in a whole batch of songs and played it for them. They were demos, some kind of bare-bones loop and one instrument, or something and me singing on top of it. It wasn't like, "You play this." But it was like, "Okay, there's a song there." They rejected them all. They wanted to go back to the improvising thing where they all were involved in the creation of the music. That was more than I could deal with, because I thought well, "Here are some songs. I am not telling you what to play, but these songs have worked for the band in the past." It was like, "Well, I don't see anybody else bringing anything to the table."
P: It seemed like as the band progressed they got better at doing the groove thing, and you got better at writing songs. It was like you don't necessarily need to jam with the band to write songs, and they need to jam to write songs.
D: Yeah, I can understand that in a way, but that was not going to work out as far as I am concerned.
Since the end of Talking Heads you have done many different records — a lot of your solo records have worked in different directions. On Rei Momo it seems you had the idea that this was definitely going to be a Latin feel and style. But on the other records, have you had a distinct idea of a style going into it or has it been, "Let's see what starts gelling," when you start a record?
D: I have not exactly too much of a style, but an idea of instrumentation in a broad sense. On Grown Backwards I knew I wanted to use all these string charts. I had toured with some strings before that a little bit — not playing on every song — a few things. I liked it and I heard what other people were doing in that way. I thought, "I think I can do this and make it so it doesn't turn into sappy, sentimental stuff," or pretentious like, "Now I am being serious." It brings an interesting thing that is pleasant to the ear as strings sometimes are, but still isn't all mushy and syrupy.
I saw you on tour with the Tosca String Quartet.
D: Having worked with those guys I decided, "I will do a record with that kind of sound." Although that didn't dictate the melodies or how the songs were structured, I think that was maybe a couple of more groove tracks in there. But a lot of the tracks had chord changes that wouldn't have come up if you were sitting there jamming. They were more like where you sit at home and figure out a melody. Sometimes I would sing a melody into a little tape recorder — not with words — and then figure out the chords, build the harmony around the melody. I thought, "Wow I have never done that before!" Usually you come up with the cycle of chords and then you start humming over it. I had to push myself to learn how to do that kind of stuff.
One thing I noticed about that record is a very nice sense of space. It doesn't feel like a cluttered album.
D: There's a lot of percussion and groove stuff, but there aren't a million keyboards and a million guitars.
P: It's almost like cheating with that setup, though. Stephen Barber did most if not all of the string arranging stuff, and Mauro [Refosco] is an incredibly tasteful percussion player. You'd think with strings and percussion it would be crowded, but given the people involved — they are all respectful of what's important in a song — not, "What can I play?" but, "Where does this work and how can I fit in?" None of them are show-offs. Even Stephen can do some pretty unusual stuff, but it's always in service of the song.
I feel like a lot of music these days gets very full and cluttered and attention grabbing, and everything is pushed to the fore.
P: It took a long time for me to appreciate anything beyond mono. It's really hard. I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing that the record is a good example of it, but it's the hardest thing. The easiest thing in the world is to balance things in mono, and I like to do it. I like to check for where it is, in an energy sort of way, in mono. It's a real eye opener to move things around and see how much the whole thing changes. I am still learning how to do that.
David, what was the first home recording setup you had?
D: Let's see — at one point I had that little 4-track cassette thing. Some Talking Heads stuff, like "Road to Nowhere," were written on one of those. Sometimes I would record the guitar part — the chords — on a cassette on a boom box. Then I had a second boom box — I'd play that and then sing along with it and record it on the next one. [laughter] Then I got one of those Fostex 8-track reel-to-reels. I think around Rei Momo I used that to demo up a lot of the stuff. It was kind of unwieldy. Shortly after that there were all these formats proliferating really quickly. Then ADAT came out, where you would use a videocassette. Shortly after that people started using ADATs and DA88s. I used that for a while for some stuff. Oh my God — those formats.
Along the way you were navigating how to hook up a multitrack and a mixer?
D: Yeah, which is a lot more than you want. If you are writing and not really wanting to do a great recording or spend a lot of time doing that, it's a lot to crank up and a lot to figure out. "Why can't I hear that instrument?" You are spending a lot of time behind the thing checking your plugs, which really wasn't working.
What kind of system do you have now?
D: Before I went to laptop computers, there was this other thing. It used a hard drive. It had eight tracks, a hard drive and a little, tiny screen. It might have been a Roland. You had to go through all these menus and you could sync it to stuff. You could have MIDI stuff coming into it. But it was little tiny menus and a little tiny screen. [laughter]
I found it really frustrating to navigate or figure out those.
D: The laptop stuff — when that started to get easier, then I completely went for that. Now it's not a laptop anymore — now it's the tower and one nice mic and a nice preamp and compressor.
How did you decide what kind of stuff to purchase?
D: I didn't want to go for anything incredibly expensive, but let me get something — I'd be reading Tape Op or some other magazine that's sitting around in a studio and I would go, "Oh, that looks like it will work for me. It's kind of affordable." The mixing board doesn't have to be great, because I know that I am not going to be the one mixing. It's really just for monitoring.
Where is it set up in your house?
D: It's in a special room, a corner room. I put absorbent sheetrock stuff on one wall so that it wasn't all hard wall, because the other walls are windowed. There are no other sound issues, because it is carpeted — there is one wall that is squishy stuff, but the other walls are glass and they look out on the street. There have been occasions where when the compressor kicks in you can hear all the traffic noise coming in, the police station — you can hear trucks backfiring and stuff like that.
In the case of the Everything... album you used takes from there?
D: Often, yeah. I would use the vocal takes. I would do a bunch of them and if I felt like I wasn't getting it I could come back later in the afternoon or the next day. It was great because sometimes changing a note here or changing the phrasing of a line would really help. That's not something you would always do if you felt the pressure to get the vocal.
It seems like technology and recording have become part of your songwriting process over the years. Obviously you can sit down with a guitar and write a song, but being able to play with it and record it and listen to it and think about it and change ...
P: David seems to still write in a pretty traditional way. He's using the technology to open up more possibilities.
D: Yeah, to structure a song really quickly — but it's still really bare bones. It's usually a rhythm loop that I create or grab somewhere and a guitar — I'm playing chords sometimes on the downbeat. I will have improvised some little melody that goes against it. If that works, "Boom!" That's a song. I will sometimes try and chart it up.
P: You can do a fair amount of programming in Logic and stuff.
D: I can do some programming, but I don't try to figure out all the different parts. I feel like that's part of the fun — bringing it in to Pat and figuring out what it needs and, "Who do we call for this and what players to we want for this?" I feel like if the song has strength in that bare-bones form, then all we can do is ruin it. [laughter]
The previous collaboration with Brian Eno, ...Bush of Ghosts, was a real different beast obviously. A lot of that must have been created in a studio — building things up?
D: Yeah. We kind of learned how to do the steady state thing on that record, applied it to Remain in Light after that and said, "Hey, we figured out a way to improvise stuff and make it work in the studio." But that was the thing — lay down the track from beginning to end of playing the bass line — not a loop. There was no way to make loops unless you wanted to splice tape together. You had to play the same bass line for three minutes and then play the same rhythm guitar part for three minutes straight and then again switch things in and out and make sections.
At that point with ...Bush of Ghosts, were you using automation to turn things on and off? Say you've got a bunch of tracks that all have information, and you are trying to create changes and shifts ...
D: I think eventually there was automation.
P: There were probably groups of faders at that point. This was like 1980 or 1979 or so.
D: Yeah, I think it was groups. For most things you could assign that to one group and basically go from one group to another.
I find that's the neat thing about working in a computer — you can start arranging visually by muting blocks of things and turning things off and on, like a music score.
