Josh Hager/Garvy J

Hailing from the Boston area, Josh Hager, aka Garvy J, has been spinning knobs and turning ears for almost two decades now. In the '90s, as a member and producer of The Elevator Drops, he helped usher in a much- needed, post-grunge performance art/rock that attracted a legion of fans, while keeping many of them guessing. A guitarist by trade, his production work includes projects with Tracy Bonham, Del Marquis (of Scissor Sisters), Matt Sharp of Weezer and The Rentals (while also playing with them) and Joan As Police Woman, among others. He's recently launched a solo career as Garvy J, playing and recording immaculately crafted yet edgy pop. A plugged- in and friendly guy who is always engaged and ready to talk about anything from auto-wah parameters to the merits of machined metal, Josh met up with me in L.A, where he and his brother, Paul David Hager, were getting ready to start work on the first new Devo album in nearly 20 years, with the two of them working as a tandem production team.

peteWhat made you want to be a rock star?

Some people have The Beatles on Ed Sullivan as their launch point, but for me the launch point was seeing Devo on a TV show called Fridays. Seeing them on the treadmills — they did the song "Jerkin' Back 'n' Forth." I was 11 or 12 at the time. Even now looking at it, it's amazing, but back then my mind was blown. "What is that? They have plastic hair." It was astonishing. I remember seeing that and [David] Bowie with Klaus Nomi on Saturday Night Live, being like, "What the...? Wow." That's when I decided, "I want to do that."

Hanging out with you and your brother Paul yesterday, it was cool to see that you clearly have a yin-and-yang working relationship with no competitive tension.

I don't think we've ever been competitive with each other, although he let me swim in the water by myself for a while before throwing in the life vest! With engineering, he never taught me much until recently. He was always saying, "You'll figure it out."

How much older is he?

Three years. He started as a live engineer, and he's worked his way up to being a super-duper, top L.A. mix engineer guy. He's done stuff with Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers and artists like that. But Paul and I came up together. He'd be rehearsing with his band and they would go take a lunch break. I'd run into the space, start playing his guitar and he'd come in and say, "Put my guitar down!"

Kid brother stuff.

Totally. But he's been very supportive. He was a big inspiration as far as being professional about things — how your guitar rig should be wired to be professional and sturdy. At the time I was working a straight job in marketing and worked my way up in this computer company — wheeling and dealing until I made a decent salary. I lived in a really nice apartment near Fenway Park. One day I was in the company gym looking around at all these guys, and something snapped in my brain and I was like, "Oh my God. I'm going to end up like this!" I had this big freak out. I went home and called up all of my friends and had them bring garbage bags over. I gave everything away. Around the same time I had met Alvan Long and Andrew "Mudrock" Murdock, who ran New Alliance Studio. I think he cut me a deal for doing any late-night sessions I wanted, if I gave him $1500 a month.

Did you quit the straight job?

Yeah. Eventually I had no money and no home. At this point Alvan cut me a deal. The studio had a broom closet. He goes, "You can live here if you clean the toilets and sweep the floors in the building." It was a big rehearsal complex. "In exchange I'll give you studio time after-hours." I did that for about two and a half years. During that time we had talked about starting a label, and he wound up getting investors like Jason Priestly to start Curve of the Earth Records, which put out The Elevator Drops' record. One day a drummer came in who was subbing with us and he said, "You know my girlfriend just started playing and you should come check her out. She's got these really cool songs and maybe we can get her in here." I said, "Maybe we'll work something out, and I will sneak her in late at night." That turned out to be Tracy Bonham. We went in there, and she had already done some demos with Scott Riebling. Coincidentally, Curve of the Earth was assembling an all-female compilation. It was perfect timing. He wound up putting those songs on there, and she had a lawyer that was building a buzz and wound up in this big bidding war. My brother and I produced her first EP [The Liverpool Sessions]. I learned studio technique by going into New Alliance every night and literally blowing gear up by accident. The studio owner wasn't too happy with me, but that's how I learned.

Eventually stuff stopped blowing up.

Yeah, I didn't know anything about the science of it, EQ or anything. I would turn knobs until it sounded good, and eventually started figuring out what a compressor does and what a tape delay can do. My brother Paul is a really amazing mixer, like Bob Clearmountain, Jack Joseph Puig and those guys. I've always been influenced by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and a more organic, ambient sound. I think at the time it was an interesting point in music. It was 1992-My Bloody Valentine, The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and The Orb — there was still this rave scene going and all the British influences — shoegazer stuff. That was a lot of fun because I was making use of a lot of the technology at the time, like the horrible, low-bit reverbs. I still have them and think they sound great. After The Elevator Drops imploded around '99, I went off and helped Matt Sharp (from Weezer) produce his records in Nashville and played in his band The Rentals. After that I started the Garvy J thing, plus playing and touring with Adam Green (The Moldy Peaches) a little bit. Then I moved to New York and started working with a lot of Brooklyn bands, like Joan As Police Woman. In between I'd lived in L.A. and got into building props and set dressing as a side job. It was interesting.

Who were The Elevator Drops?

The Elevator Drops were the most cursed band. The whole concept was originally, "What would it be like if you had a band like Kiss that had good songs?" We came up in the '80s as kids with the philosophy of "putting on a big show." Lights, fog, costumes and playing in front of 100 people — you just DO it. It was, "What would it be like if we crossed Devo with Led Zeppelin and maybe take a little Flaming Lips and My Bloody Valentine?" The Elevator Drops had an element of danger, where the audience didn't know if they were going to get hit in the head with a guitar or spat on or bled on.

The band's reputation was controversial in Boston, and then you guys got very big on a national level.

For a minute. [laughter] You'd come to the show and we'd give you a white paper jumpsuit. Everybody had to wear these white paper jumpsuits. It erased the individuality of, "I'm a punk rocker" or "I'm a jock." The lights were on the people in the audience. We got signed to Arista/Time Bomb and they put us on tour with all of these bands like Blur, Pulp, Garbage and Echo & The Bunnymen. It was like taking actors out of a play and sticking them on an empty stage. It didn't work. We ditched the makeup after a while and became a much better band, but it was not as much fun. This is when I started producing other bands on the side.

The possibly final Elevator Drops album, OK Commuter, was 10 years in the making. Did you mix it?

I mixed some of it, Paul Kolderie mixed some and my brother mixed some with Anthony Resta.

I liked that some of the songs had [singer/bassist] Dave Goolkasian's vocals buried in a really cool, creepy way.

Probably the ones I mixed. Kolderie did more of the rock 'n' roll, Who-ish stuff.

Those are great too. The drum sound is huge on the whole thing.

That is the old Q Division Studios room. That place had a great sound. We did the drums there to analog tape and laid a scratch sync track on ADATs. The band broke up about 60 percent of the way through working on this album. I was living in a van down by the river, and then wound up moving into a rehearsal space and sleeping on the floor. [Scott] Fitts, our drummer, had just moved to L.A. I remember one day he came in and I'm sitting there with boxes of DATs and ADATs and I'm cataloging all of the tracks. He says, "You're pathetic. The band is over man. What are you doing cataloging this stuff?" I was like, "If I don't catalog this stuff, this is gonna be lost. This is a great record." That record went through a big process to get it all done. Years went by and finally I said, "I've got to finish it." This was a decade — not a continuous 10 years, but it took a long time. That record was interesting, recording in so many different places — everywhere from rehearsal spaces to my parent's basement.

Who is Garvy J?

Garvy J is my character from The Elevator Drops. It was a name that came from a belt buckle that I found. It said, "Garvy J," and it had a little picture of Michael Jackson on it. The solo Garvy J stuff is weird because it started out really basic when I lived in the loft. It would be one [Shure] SM57 on the drums in a big, cement room. But I didn't have Pro Tools or anything — I had a CD burner and a little Mackie board (later I had an Altec 1567A mixer and a dbx compressor). I tracked through that to the left side of the CD player. I put the music on the right side. I would take that disc out, rip that into the computer, make another submix and put that other CD on the right side. That's how I was multitracking, because I didn't have an interface. That album started there, and eventually I hooked up with my friend Tom Flowers — he is an amazing engineer who lives in Austin now. We would go up to Santa Barbara and work at this place called Orange Whip Recording. Eventually I got my own rig and started adding to it.

Do you have any particular gear that you use in the studio?

My favorite piece of gear is actually the board. Starting in analog and moving into digital and spending all of that time in the box for so many years, and then getting back to being able to perform on the board — panning, effects and feedback on the effects, sort of a tactile experience where the board becomes an instrument.

You don't do a lot of mixing in the box?

I try not to — well, I do now. I learned my lesson from doing some real hardcore, pain-in-the-ass bands, where I'm just like, "It's going to be in the box."

For recall ability?

Yeah. It's always the bands that you're cutting a serious deal for or doing a favor for. They always want something that is ridiculous, or they nitpick until you're like, "Dude, it's been three weeks. I was only supposed to do this for a day." With some of those bands, I'll start out in the box and leave it there.

Tell me more about what gear you rely on.

I really love old modulation delays, like Korg SDD-series effects, tape delays and spring reverbs. I stay away from the modern, digital pieces.

Why is that?

Just the tone. A lot of times it's too glassy. I try to find stuff that has a little bit of an analog front end to it.

On many of the recordings you worked on, such as The Elevator Drops, Del Marquis and your solo stuff, you approach the glassiness and suggest it.

A lot of people get too "purist" either way — they're really into digital and plug-ins or they like super analog. I like things to be a little sharp, but round at the same time. A lot of stuff is tracked old school with a combination of analog gear and plug-ins. The Del Marquis thing was the end of an era. We tracked a lot of it at Paul Kolderie's place [Camp Street Studios] and we mixed it at Encore [Recording Studios] in Burbank on the SSL G-Series console with AMS reverbs. Del Marquis wanted a very 1986 sound, not necessarily even in a good way. We got that for him, and I think it turned out well. When Kolderie first heard the final mixes he said, "You ruined the record. It's too bright and big." I was a little bothered because I respect him. It made me go home and think, "Oh, I fucked up this record." Then a few weeks later he got the concept and was like, "You know, it's actually really good."

It definitely sounds "of a time." You worked on that for a long time, right?

It was six months or something like that.

What is your board?

A modified Yamaha PM-1000. I think it's a known quantity at this point, but the story that I heard is that Yamaha decided to make this ridiculously overbuilt console based on whatever the Neve model was that year. Supposedly the [Yamaha] guy at the NAMM was copying this Neve and was looking at the board from the top, from the back. Everything on the board is backwards. The mic pres are at the bottom. All of the EQ knobs are upside down, which is great because you see the zero point right in front of you.

Right — you don't have to stand up and look over.

It is cool, but it takes a little while to get used to. I can't say enough about this board. My friend Scott Dakota turned me onto it.

You've referred to Scott Dakota many times as a mentor of sorts.

Scott's literally one of the few actual geniuses. I mean the guy is ridiculously intelligent. You can talk to him about any topic, any subject in depth — history, plants, music — it's all the same to him. He's a real innovator, and I am very fortunate to have met him. The guy has taught me so much about anything from setting your guitar neck up to brainwaves and how the brain reacts to certain frequencies. Between Dakota and my brother, it's like I have these two geniuses — two different ends of the spectrum.

How did Devo decide to work with you and Paul?

Paul had worked on the Jihad Jerry & The Evildoers record — basically Jerry's [Gerald Casale] solo project that featured the other Devo guys except [drummer] Josh Freese. They had a good, easy working relationship. I had done some work on another project Jerry was producing, so there was a connection there, and I was brought into the Devo project as an extra set of ears.

Where was the new album recorded?

In L.A. mostly at Mutato Muzika, Devo's lab/studio/headquarters, as well as Sunset Sound. Your brother has been very successful.

Working with him on this Devo album should be a great experience.

Other than the Del Marquis thing, he and I haven't worked together since the early days of The Elevator Drops and Tracy Bonham. He went off and did his thing and I went off and did mine. We have two really different approaches to doing production. It's great to actually get together and fill in on each other's gaps. r

www. garvyj. com www. weissy. com

How an Album Release Can Go Wrong

We put The Elevator Drops' OK Commuter out on this label called On/Off Records in San Francisco. When it first appeared on iTunes we were all excited — we go to download it, and it's the demos and all the songs mis-listed and mis-tracked. The label accidentally gave iTunes the wrong CD. They recall it, which takes weeks and weeks. I gave the label the master to put out and the woman at the label wound up taking the master and copying it on her computer, even though she's never really done that before, and giving them a copy because she wanted to keep the master for herself. Months go by and the record is released yet again. My brother calls me up, "What's up with the record? It's clicking and popping all over the place." I'm getting these emails from fans saying, "Is the record broken?" They're got to yank it and put it out again! I'm a little scared — who knows what the next release will be.