Everyone needs an audio guru. Magazines and the Internet are great, but nothing compares to a veteran who knows you and your work. My guru is Greg Thompson. Greg is an accomplished pro engineer in New York City, and we've been friends since we were kids. When I'm planning a tricky session, wrestling a mix to the ground, or mic shopping, I call Greg for advice and insight. I learn more in ten minutes than I'd learn in ten weeks on a recording forum. When my friend Pierce Backes, of The Yarrows, told me about his audio mentor he told me, "Garris is a wizard with consoles, wiring, mics — you name it. But he doesn't do audio anymore. He worked at big studios in the '90s. He did a few metal records." Which records were those? The answer made my jaw drop. Garris Shipon mixed Corrosion of Conformity's Blind and engineered Brutal Truth's Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses. Whoa. Blind is easily my favorite COC record and Extreme Conditions is my favorite grindcore record of all time. So, okay, those are impressive credits. And then he quit? Garris recently moved to the Bay Area, and we've become friends. I've mostly resisted the urge to badger him with questions about those sessions — or to ask the obvious follow-up question, which is, "Why get out at that point?" Well, I resisted the urge... until now.
What were you doing before you ended up working in studios?
When I was 18, all I wanted to do was get the fuck out of the suburbs, move to New York and make records. I did not go to college. I just moved to New York City. My dad helped me with rent for a couple of months; I got some shitty jobs and shared a tiny apartment. I was a shipping clerk. I shipped fake jewelry. Then I started meeting people. I guess I looked in the back of the Village Voice for people who wanted to start bands. I was fucking insane, and I just wanted to make records. I met the Love Camp 7 guys — who ended up starting Excello [Recording] — in that early time when I didn't know anybody. They recorded a record at Baby Monster, and I went to go hang out with them. That's when I met the guys at Baby Monster. I said, "Can I just hang out here all the time and do whatever you tell me to do?" And they said, "Wait, you can operate a computer, fix amplifiers and you want to do that for free? Yeah, okay!" Baby Monster had two rooms, a Studer room and an MCI room. One day Bryce [Goggin, Tape Op #40] was in a session and smoke started coming out of the MCI. Bryce was like, "Uh, I think this session is over." I ran in, popped the front off, started futzing around and reading the schematics. I found the chip that was burning — it was a regular 741 op amp for the servo. I had one, so I popped it in and the machine started working again. That's the point at which Steve Burgh [Baby Monster owner] started paying me. That was my first real job in recording. I started engineering their night jobs soon after that — TV commercials, jazz trios and little orchestras.
Corrosion of Conformity's Blind came out in 1990. What do you remember about that session?
I had worked at Baby Monster for a couple of years at that point. I studied under a couple of engineers there. One of the guys was Steve McAllister, who was a brilliant engineer. He did a lot of New York Lower East Side bands, these Knitting Factory jazz/art/metal people. He knew a lot of people and he was a really cool guy — really creative and nice. He did all the basics for Blind. COC, those guys are so fucking good. That drummer, Reed [Mullin] — I had never seen a guy like that before. I was a house engineer and I was around when they were recording — he's so precise and so powerful. His drums sounded so good. And the guitar players in that band, their sounds were so good. They sounded amazing without the mics. That's one of the things about that and any other great record that I'd seen made; almost all of them had something to do with incredible musicians. And Steve was incredible at capturing that to tape. I think they'd just gotten the Studer A827, which was a really nice tape machine.
If Steve was the tracking engineer, how did you get involved?
Steve did the basics. And the basics are beautiful sounding. But Steve got pneumonia halfway through the record. Everyone's like, "What are we gonna do?" Steve said, "Uh... Garris can do it!" [laughs]
How old were you?
I was 22. But the thing was, I was always at the studio. And I was good! [laughs] I would do whatever they wanted me to do. They weren't that worried about it. They had incredible confidence. John Custer, the producer, knew it was gonna be fine.
This was his first big record too, right?
I think so. But he was a genius. Everybody on that record was a genius, except for me. [laughs] I just didn't get in the way. That was my goal the whole time.
If you listen to other'90s metal records, but Blind sounds very different. Most records around then sounded more like they were still evolving from the '80s.
Yeah! They're all very hype-y, in comparison. This was totally different — that was the point. I didn't come up with the sound — Custer and the band did. Custer showed me a lot about the bottom-end. We were getting the guitar sound and I started to scoop the mids, as well as pushing the bottom and top. Custer said, "No, no." We nulled it out and he said, "Just put [the EQ] on 900 [Hz] and make it a little hotter." And it was kind of magical. On that Neve EQ, 900 is so fucking sweet on guitar. We got into this low midrange for the whole record. We did that, and then we didn't hype anything; not even the cymbals. That's something unique. I'd never seen anybody really go for the midrange.
Yeah, it's not produced like a metal record. The guitar tones are gain-y, but the bass is clearly a P-bass. The drums sound, especially for 1990, like real drums in a real room.
Which they are! There were no triggers. Something that made that record really nice was the room — it was a beautiful wood room. They made liberal use of the room mics. A lot of [AKG] 414s were all over the place.
I didn't think many people did that in the late'80s.
In that room it was really common. There were a lot of places in NYC that were really dead and it was sort of like, "What's the point of putting a mic out?"
Did they track guitars in the big room too?
Yeah. We had lots of gobos that we'd put around. There was one vocal booth that was dead, and sometimes we'd put an amp in there too. They were real perfectionists about all the guitar parts. They would redo them until they were perfect. That stuck with me — if it's not perfect, redo it. I mean, if you've got the balls to say, "I'm just going to throw [the last take] away..."
How long did tracking take?
I don't remember. You might want to talk to Steve. He is an incredibly cool guy. He got out too. He does all computer stuff now. He's a Linux guy.
Oh, really? Wow.
Well, it's a rough life. I don't think he was that happy. You know what he does now — he goes canoeing every day. He went all nature.
So how was mixing Blind?
It was fabulous. I mean, imagine you get to work with these beautiful tracks in this great studio that you know so well. Up to that point, a lot of that was just assisting. So I got really good in the studio. I could patch while I was high. [laughs] I knew all these high-end reverbs and we had this beautiful console that I maintained. I was like Geppetto of the recording studio. And then, all of a sudden, I'm in this situation and it's like some miracle is happening! [laughs] So yeah, it was amazing. Custer was really good and the tracks were perfect. And that singer...
...Karl Agell. It was his only record with COC.
Yeah, they didn't really get along. I was finding the point where the high end of his voice came through the [Neumann] U47. Then I pushed that high end into the [Lexicon] 480L on the flange mode — it created this stereo flange, but it was very pristine. And that, sitting on top of these 900 Hz-bumped guitars — learning to mix that was this whole new paradigm. I hadn't really mixed like that before.
Mixed like what?
Everything about it; these '70s-style [tracks], with this '80s and '90s sensibility. The fuzz on the guitars; they didn't do that in the '70s. It was much cleaner and drier.
Now that you mention it, there is kind of a weird thing on the vocal.
Yeah, that's the one glam thing that everybody asked, "Is this okay? Is this alright?" [laughs] But it was like, "It sounds awesome! I guess so." The guys in the band were very intense. It's amazing the record got done.
There is that one song with Pepper [Keenan] singing "Vote With a Bullet" where it sounds like 1996. Nothing glam about it; it's super aggressive.
Yeah, those vocals went through an amp. Man, the guitars on that one sound so good.
They sound so badass. [respectful group pause]
Another thing was just how much room mic we ended up using — quite a lot. Up to that point, I would really go for a super clicky kick and a super smashy snare.
Yeah, a lot of early '90s kick drums sounded like an SSL EQ, not a kick. They sounded like 4 or 5 kHz.
That's right. But even without talking about all the buttons and the gear, doing something in such an unusual way for the time was the meaningful part. So I feel lucky to have had that experience.
What were you mixing on?
It was a [Neve] 80-series. Half of it was 1081s, and the other half was 1073s. I loved that console.
No automation?
No automation. We were totally mixing hands-on. The whole band was there mixing, and we were all pushing faders.
After the COC record was done, did things change for you?
I started getting calls from bands. I started engineering. I also started a studio with some people called Excello Recording. (Tape Op #52)
I didn't know you were an Excello graduate.
Yeah, I was a partner at the beginning. In fact, I got their Studer from Baby Monster. The Excello room wasn't nearly as good as Baby Monster's, and the gear wasn't nearly as good. Eventually they ended up getting great gear. I have a lot of respect for those guys. I was young and I was just an asshole. It's funny; when I worked for somebody, I had this total dedication to the art. But when I wasn't mixing or engineering, I was a cocky asshole.
Has that carried through since then?
No. I had an awakening when I turned 30 — I realized that being an asshole was just putting hate into the world. Why do I have to be such an asshole all the time?
So is it fair to say that the COC record...
...Put me on the map? Yeah; which was great. That was an amazing time. To be so scrappy and finally hit something — that feeling of actual success was amazing.
How did you get hired for the Brutal Truth record?
Because I had done COC and I knew Jim [Welch], the A&R guy. Brutal Truth had randomly picked [Baby Monster] months before to demo one of the songs they ended up recording for that record. I got that by chance. So they knew me; and they knew I got their thing and that I was going to deliver.
Grindcore was pretty new at the time.
Well, I think I got their thing. I shot for high production value. I wouldn't have been as interested in scrappy punk records — you know, really trashy sounding and then you're done. I was never interested in that. I was interested in advancing the art.
You were an engineer's engineer.
That's what I wanted to be. I wanted to build the gear, know how it worked and build the studio. I wanted to be like [George] Massenburg. That was my model. Brutal Truth was this insane thing. I also had my own insane thing, "It's gotta be beautiful." [laughs]
Tell me about the Brutal Truth sessions.
Most of the stuff I did was more mixing. Colin [Richardson, who produced] was all over basics. I did a lot of the basics, but Colin — he was all about tuning the drums forever. He got the drums perfect. And he did that with everything. With the guitar, he'd sit there at the amp and futz with it. Again, he had a vision. And he made sure he was with the band on it, that everybody was on the same page. He also worked his ass off — it wasn't done until it was perfect. That's how Colin was on the sounds.
Did they track this stuff live? It's hard to see how they couldn't have.
No, it's tons of overdubs and punch-ins. I was awfully good at punching in. When you're 23, you can punch in so good. And that Studer was beautiful for that job. It was built for punching in. Can you imagine a punch-in with a band like that? I think we even did [punches] during drums sometimes. You know, just because of stamina. He would just run out of steam.
You can hear that on some of the blast beat parts, but that's one of the great things about that record. If you took that record and gridded it up and handed those basics to a Pro Tools guy to fix, it would take all the "Holy shit!" out of it.
I agree. There's something human about it.
Are there triggers on that record?
No. No triggers.
Doing triggers in 1991 was pretty shitty anyway.
Oh, yeah. Occasionally [during other sessions] I would trigger a snare or a kick. I would do it with a [Yamaha] SPX-900. I'd find a CD, find a good kick, load it in, then use the "trigger" input. I'd plug in a 1/4" cable and connect it to the patchbay. Forty-five minutes later I'm saying, [yells across the room] "Okay! I've got the trigger! It's set up! It's on the kick!" [laughs]
How long did you work on that record? Weeks?
Maybe it was six or eight weeks? Who knows? It seemed like a very long time.
So four or five years of total ass-busting and just as things started to come together, you got out. What happened?
I was young and I had gotten into that world and I was not great at navigating it. I could do the job, but the other stuff - having a life, staying healthy, exercising, being a happy person, or happy enough so you don't kill yourself -allthisstuffyouneedtodotostayalive-Iwasnot doing well at that stuff. And the bottom was sort of falling out. I wasn't able to get past this point, because I was either self-defeating or self-destructing. I wasn't able to move forward, to take little successes and network some more to go to the next place.
Partially because you were unable to function as an adult?
Yeah. That can work for some people — I know people who can stay in that mode forever, but I wasn't able to.I had this feeling that I needed more from life. I needed to grow up and I couldn't see it happening there.
Was there a specific tipping point?
The tipping was an opportunity. I knew somebody who asked, "Do you know what a website is?" I did know what a website was. I learned HTML very quickly. I got a copy of Macromedia Director and I started doing that stuff. This was 1994. I knew someone at Viacom who was in Nickelodeon's online development group; they were going to be on America Online. It was the very first tip of that iceberg. I thought, "Fuck this. I'm gonna get $75 an hour!" Soon I was at $125 an hour working with [Adobe] After Effects for CD-ROMs. Then I'd approach companies to explain, "This is how you use email." I bought business clothes. The transition was pretty fast.
It doesn't sound like you had some profound moment of reflection. It sounds like there was no drama.
There wasn't. I just left. How anticlimactic! That lifestyle was unsustainable, and this other thing was so fucking exciting.
Did you know it was unsustainable?
Not like I do now. During my last year I started to feel frustrated. Like, "Bryce is working with Pavement. How come I'm not working with Pavement?" I was going about business the wrong way. I would get defensive when I should have been chill. I was being an asshole when I should have been gracious. And these things made it difficult for me to get consistent work. [laughs] It's because I hadn't grown up. I knew how to run a session, but it's completely different from not being in a session.
Did you continue working as a hobbyist?
I would occasionally still get gigs, and I'd go into Excello. These were real, paying gigs. But there was this point where this guy said, "I have this great gig. Let's do this record." This is a great guy — I loved this guy. But I had just booked a CD-ROM project and I said, "No, I can't do it." He was really bummed out. I realized, "Oh my god, he's never going to call me again." But I felt like I was doing the right thing. I left music behind, but it was gradual. And the Internet thing was so strong. I felt like I was a rock 'n roll guy, only I was stepping it up. I felt like I was getting out of the ghetto. It was more about forward, not about looking back. It was like, "I put the energy into this take but it sucks, so we're just gonna burn it." I'm like that. I can do that in Photoshop too. I can say, "Eh, I worked on this for two days and it sucks — delete." That's probably about how I was raised. I kind of did that with my career. Delete.
I think of you as the guy who made these records, but for you it's just something you did. You never talk about the glory days.
There really was no glory though. It wasn't glorious.
Looking back, how do you reflect on your decision to get out?
The decision to get out was right on. That wasn't the place for me. The only thing I regret about my past is not earnestly going to college and learning something useful. That's the only thing I regret.
