David Boucher : Andrew Bird, The Ditty Bops, Randy Newman

Where did you grow up, how did you get started, and what got you into music?

I grew up in Atlanta. When I was about 12 or 13 my best friend got a guitar and told me I needed to buy a bass. He knew a drummer, so it was clearly, "You need to buy a bass so you can be in the band." We knew that we wanted to make a tape to sell at gigs, and I thought, "I'd really like to figure that out." I bought a little cassette 4-track. I didn't have enough mic cables, so I just jammed a [Shure SM]57 into the front of the 4-track — into the XLR connector. That was my mic cable and mic stand! I sat it next to the drums, and I had one mic cable that ran out front. My parents had an unfinished basement that they said I could have a portion of for music. What I didn't know was that my dad, despite working for IBM for 30 years, was actually really good with his hands. That became our father-son bonding project; we built a studio in the basement. There was no Internet or any way to figure out how to treat it, so we gleaned information from anywhere we could. We tried to figure out some way of making it — not necessarily soundproof — but just not super annoying to my older sister. We built the studio, I started making these recordings, and pretty quickly I decided that was what I wanted to do with music. I still wanted to play, but I really wanted to record.

Did you get another recorder at some point, when you were still in high school?

No, I always did the 4-track and then a 2-track [cassette] to make the masters on. I always was careful about how many tracks we were using -we were a three piece, so it was drums, guitar, bass and vocal on four tracks. It wasn't a mystery. It's something that I probably ought to get back to today. Do you need a track for the bass drum, snare, and toms? Do you need all that stuff? I got to meet Glyn Johns, who has been a hero of mine forever, and he's not doing any of that stuff. His "just in case" mic istheoneonthesnaredrum!SoItoldmydadI wanted to go to music school and he frowned. I asked, "What if I go for engineering?" And he said, "That sounds like it's got a future." [laughs]

How did you find out about the University of Miami?

My music teacher in high school was one of those people who really wanted his students to continue into music. He told me about a couple of different programs — [University of] Miami and Middle Tennessee State; he also told me about places like Full Sail and Berklee. I did some research and found a few other places as well. My parents and I went on a little college tour. I really loved Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan. I called my sister and she said, "David, I don't even go to class when it rains. How are you going to go to class in the snow?"

But you ended up in Miami where there's quite a bit of rain. ..

Yeah, there's quite a bit of rain but it only happens for about a half an hour and then you're okay.

Were you developing your electronics skills while you were still in high school?

I was taking gear apart, but it wasn't going back together. I wanted to know how things worked. I didn't have anybody guiding me with that, so I definitely ruined a few things. When I went down to Miami on the college trip, I was really taken by their whole deal. It seemed like, "Wow, look at this. They're really doing it." Ken Pohlmann [Professor Emeritus, Music Engineering Technology] said to me, "I'm not going to teach you what knobs to turn, I'm going to teach you how to decide which knob to turn and you are going to make your own decisions." I was really enamored with that idea, because I was a teenager and no teenager wants some old dude telling him what to do. For me, it was, "Just give me a chance to try something out."

And Miami afforded that.

Completely. What I didn't realize, but I see now in hindsight, is that the other thing Miami has is a world-class pool of musicians on every instrument, and you can have access to them nearly any time you want. "I need a contrabassoon player at 3 a.m." In Miami, that's possible. I'm sure it's possible other places, but the value of that kind of environment cannot be overestimated. I was out of school in four years, and I went straight to New York City where I had a job lined up at a big time studio... making fruit baskets and running errands, with no chance of ever assisting. I'm not quite sure how they figured out that I knew how to fix things, or that I knew how to align a tape machine.

But you picked up all that from Miami?

Yeah, I got all that from Clyde Hagler, John Monforte and Ken Pohlmann during their classes. Of course all the rules change at every studio, but assistants didn't align the tape machines at this particular facility in NYC — a tech does. So I said, "You guys need a night tech. How about I do that until you can get me an assisting position?" I took the job and they said, "We're going to pay you $6.00 an hour now instead of $4.85." A month goes by and my paychecks didn't change. When I asked about it, they told me there was a "trial period" before I would get the pay raise. I thought, "This is starting to suck." Then my friend Joe Raia, who went to school with me, said, "You know Bob Clearmountain is looking for a new assistant. His guy has been there for three years and it's time for him to move on." So I sent him my résumé and three weeks later Clearmountain happened to be in NY. We met at the Starbucks across the street from where I was working and he offered me a job.

You hadn't even assisted in New York?

No. In fact, most of my recording experience in NYC was as the lead engineer in other studios. So Bob and his wife Betty [Bennett, Apogee electronics] asked me some everyday life questions. Roger Charlesworth from SSL, who was also at the meeting, asked me the technical questions. When Bob offered me the job I sold everything I had, grabbed my guitars, got on a plane, and went to Los Angeles. The studio managers in New York called me an opportunist and all these nasty names for leaving them after they'd given me the "opportunity"... to get shafted. [laughs] There was a system where the generation prior to mine "paid their dues." Unfortunately, when a studio doesn't promote from within the ranks or offer runners chances to get into studios as third engineers on big setups (or as second engineers on spec gigs), that system breaks down.

What year was that?

I started with Clearmountain in '98. I was at Bob's for three and a half years, where I met Mitchell Froom, Tony Berg, and a bunch of other people that I work with now. It was a great job. I modded Bob's console a few times, all with ideas that he came up with. The guys at SSL were really nice to me, and they helped me figure these mods out. I modded all 72 channels and the stereo bus — it took a long time. [laughs] It was a pretty amazing environment. Bob likes to be on the forefront of technology. When I started there, we were going to master and safety DATs. By the end of it we were printing stereo at 88.2 kHz bit split onto a Tascam machine, and surround at 44.1 to another Tascam machine. Every mix he did had a surround mix, because he was trying to 'future proof' — he didn't want someone coming in asking for a surround mix after the fact. By the time my successor left all of the mixing was at 88.2 kHz — all these different versions — and the console controlled Pro Tools. On and on it evolves.

Was Bob hands-on with the implementation, or did he leave it to you to figure out how to get it done?

He's very interested in it, and it was a team effort to figure out how to do a surround mix simultaneously with a stereo mix on the SSL. Issues would come up, like using a series of busses and extra center channel summing so you can pan between Left and Center or Right and Center — because of the whole odd/even bus thing — and front to back. And then, how are you going to do the six channel bus compression, and how does that tie into the stereo bus? So, yeah, he was hands-on.

From an engineering point of view, what do you think you walked away with from working with Bob?

You know, I learned a lot of how not to do things, because of projects he would receive as a mixer. Things like, "Why would you waste a track on this, but submix these?" Or, "Why did you print this synth on two tracks when it is a mono sound?" I learned a lot of ways to rescue something that is seemingly doomed. You can make something cool out of it. It may not be hi-fi anymore, but it can be compelling as long as the performance is there. And no matter how good Bob made it sound, if the song sucked it still sucked at the end of the day. I also learned how to be a good listener to the artist and the producer, and to know when to stand up for myself and what I thought was right. I also learned when to acquiesce to their desires, no matter what. There's that expression you sometimes hear about "saving the artists from themselves." That's an ugly expression.

In the end, it's their record.

Their name is on it and you do your best to make it as good as it can be, within their vision. To get uppity with somebody over his or her artistic intent is just wrong. That's one thing I learned from Bob, because I saw a lot of the opposite in New York. A lot of people telling clients to, "Shut it." Or, "This is the mix that you brought." No refining it. To his credit, Bob is a warm and generous dude.

Were you doing some recording gigs on the side then?

I did a lot at his house — vocal overdubs, piano or [Hammond] B3. Sometimes we'd do a drum set in the lounge. I ended up doing that recording myself, because he didn't want to get distracted with that part of it. I was also doing outside gigs whenever time would allow. I started acquiring more gear, as well as a Pro Tools system. I went from place to place, recording when I could.

Do you like doing the mobile recording thing?

I like it more now. It's really cool to go to an acoustic space, record something in its entirety, and then never set foot in there again. You might have to deal with certain things — sound isolation issues, honky-ness, reverberation — but they become constraints that you can work within. In the end they limit you in a productive way. A recent example is this: Andrew Bird came out, rented a house, and said, "I want to work at the house." I said, "Okay." I put a studio in the house on day one. By day three it was a well-oiled machine. We were recording all the things he does, with guest artists too. It was on a busy street, and we'd lose the occasional take to a truck passing, but he's a consummate musician and there's little he can't replay. If he couldn't, then we'd just live with the truck noise. The basics were done with Andrew's live sound guy, Neal Jensen, at Andrew's barn in Western Illinois. Neal did a great job and those sonic imprints make the album [Break It Yourself] sound like it does. The downside to mobile recording is that you can't go get mics out of the closet because there's only the stuff you bring. When I went to Andrew's place, I brought an RCA 77, an RCA 44, a couple of [Neumann] U 67's, a U 48, a [AKG] D19, a [Shure] SM7, and a [Shure] SM 57. If there was something else that I wanted, I had to get over it — it just wasn't going to be there.

But, like you said, that limitation factor can be a great spark for creativity. Do find limitations part of the headache or part of the joy?

It's the joy, for sure. You spend one extra second at the patchbay, and the artist loses the plot. It's not about telling somebody, "Oh, I used this vintage mic, with this vintage mic pre, and this vintage compressor. And I used this vintage tape machine, at this fluxivity." It's not about that. It's closer to, "Do the words matter? And if they matter, can I hear them and relate to them?" It's easy. [laughs]

It all flows from that.

And basing it around the song. I like the constraints. The mobile recording thing does that for me.

After did your stint with Bob Clearmountain, how did you end up working with Mitchell Froom?

I'd met him a few times at Bob's, when Bob was mixing some things for him. One day I bumped into him at TrueTone Music. He started telling me about his home studio and asked if I felt like making a record. A couple of people had recommended me to him. Next thing I knew, we were sending his studio off on a grueling maiden voyage for an album. I thought I was going to get fired on the first day; but I'm still around, so I guess it all worked out. [laughs]

How has working with Mitchell affected your approach to recording?

I figured out a lot of things about the way music makes me feel personally. When he asks a question about changing some chords, and I'm like, "I'm a recording engineer. What the hell does he want to know from me?" But then he plays it and I think, "Wow, that one does make me feel differently than the other one." I slowly developed that. Maybe it was always in me, but I never approached it in quite the same way that he does, and that's really great. We have an opposite skill set. The recording stuff just works for me, and I don't think he would ever want to do that. He says he's tried [engineering] before, and he says it was awful.

He likes the terminology though.

Yeah. He'll commandeer a word to mean something, and it becomes part of the vernacular. It's not like he's using it incorrectly; although technically I guess you could argue he is, in some cases, but...

But it means a certain thing to him. ..

It means a certain thing and he has decided that, in the language we speak together, this word means this. That's fine. I wish everybody could do that! He's a really amazing producer to work with.

You've done quite a few records at Mitchell's studio, at this point.

We've done a bunch of stuff for Randy Newman, three Ditty Bops records, a couple of Indigo Girls albums, Missy Higgins, Lucy Schwartz, a band called Burlap To Cashmere, and a band called Oh Mercy. We do about four or five albums a year there. We really only venture out when the project has an ensemble that is too big for that kind of place — although we've had seven musicians tracking live in his room, on more than a few occasions. Our usual complement is bass, drums, keys, guitar, and whatever instrument the artist usually accompanies him or herself on. For some reason we are lucky to work with a lot of singers who accompany themselves well.

There is one sound in particular on the Missy Higgins record [On a Clear Night] that I wanted to ask you about. On the song " Forgive Me, " was that tracked in a bathroom or something?

That is a case of the room imprinting its signature on the recording. It was recorded in a pub, and I had a Mid/Side setup with a [Neumann] U 47 cardioid and a [Neumann] CMV-563 for figure 8. Wood and glass and plaster...

Where do you like to work when you're outside of Mitchell's place?

I like Sunset [Sound] 3, Sunset 2, Sound Factory B, and Conway Studio A. Conway A is my favorite place to do "older sounding" things, like the Dixieland stuff I recorded for The Princess and the Frog source music. It's also a really great room for piano. That's where we did Randy Newman's songbook series [The Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 1 and 2]. I love that studio and the people at Conway.

On top of what you've been doing at Mitchell's, you've been engineering for Randy a lot. You've been doing orchestral dates as well.

Yeah.

So how's that transition been? Getting on a stage, full orchestra. ..

It's fun, and it's hard. There's a different vibe that can feel foreign to me at times. The desire to get the best performance is sometimes hamstringed by the clock and work rules, and that's not how I learned about music.

Better performances yield better end results.

Yeah. I don't know what their working conditions were then — probably awful — but when you hear those old scores, they sound so effortless. If a mistake is made, I'm immediately asked, "Do we have that bar on another take?" We might not have enough time to do another take. When you're spending $150,000 a day on an orchestra, you deserve another take. There must be a way to get back to the days when orchestras played together all the time, and the engineers, composers, and music editors had enough time to work on things until they were right, while still compensating musicians fairly and preserving proper working conditions. And we didn't have to edit it using extreme Pro Tools acrobatics to make it all work. The paradigm needs to be rethought, from the ground up. But working at Sony, Fox, and Warners? Pretty awesome...

In listening to your work, and your orchestral recordings, the room sounds amazing. But also the definition and the depth you get on the sources is really great.

Thank you. I actually struggle with the opposite. I don't do big, blurry things well, although I like them. There are a lot of things that I really like that blur the lines between the reality of hearing an instrument in its place and how it interacts with other things. It's never been something that I've really excelled at. I think it's natural for me to record things where there's depth of field. It's just the way I think, I guess. I'm trying to break out of it to be honest with you, because I hear other stuff and I'm like,

"Wow, that's really cool how that works." The other thing is that I work with a lot of singer/songwriters, and blurry is not necessarily good for them. In some cases it is, but with the people I've worked with the blur makes them sound more disconnected. I guess the exception would be Andrew Bird, but he creates the blur with his lush orchestrations and approaches. Because he has that skill, he can make it work. With the orchestral recordings, Randy writes a part to mean something, whether a leitmotif for a character, a theme, or an instrumentation that is a "sound effect." And Mitchell arranges like that. So part of that also comes from the people I work with.

On the technical side, what are some of the more important things you like to have with you on a session?

I love Apogee converters. I'd been using them since before I met Bob and Betty. I was introduced to them as an intern, in a few different places. To me they sound better — they sound like the multitrack that I'm used to at this point. Their Symphony I/O; I can't believe how good it sounds. I think Lucas van der Mee [Tape Op #51] and his team over there did an incredible job. I recorded with the Symphony I/O and their previous converters (the AD-16X) simultaneously, all aligned to within a hundredth of a dB and I was shocked at the level of improvement on what was great to begin with. It's the biggest advance I've heard in the years of blind converter tests that I've been exposed to. As far as speakers, I'm still putting drivers in the [Yamaha] NS- 10s that I've had since I was 14. My desert island rack has a pair of Requisite Audio PAL mic pre/limiters. Danny McKinney really hit it out of the park with that one. Jonathan Little's (Little Labs) Lmnopre is another stunning mic pre that I love. I have a dream that Jonathan and Danny will drink too much one night and agree to make me a console.

How do you see yourself evolving?

I'd like to do a little more composition. I'd like to figure out a way for it to make sense to be a record maker in this climate. I know there's a way to do it, whether it means diversifying into the film thing, scoring for video games, jingles, or even industrial music. I've been exposed to all that stuff at various points in my career. Engineers and producers have been devalued, requiring most to wear both hats in order to put food on the table. Artists have been devalued, to the point where they might have to do all three jobs. The music I've found to be the most compelling required a group instead of an isolated individual. One of my best experiences has been with The Ditty Bops, who'd only recently formed when they ended up on Mitchell's doorstep. Though Abby [DeWald] and Amanda [Barrett] are strong-minded, smart, and creative artists, I felt like Mitchell and I played a big part in defining their sound. We succeeded in the places they allowed us to do that, and we succeeded where they held their ground. Part of convincing people that there is value in what I do is showing them that my contribution leads to a "greater than the sum of the parts" situation. I need to do that more. I think I also want to keep building gear. It's a great way to figure out what you need in the studio.

What have you made that's fulfilled that need?

The things that I've made are through lack of funds to buy the originals, like the Pultec EQ, SSL bus Compressor and mic pres, as well as racking up pieces of consoles that don't fit into a 500 series rack. The things I'd like to make are simpler formsofthosebuildingblocks.It'slike,"Thisroom has always got a resonance. All I really need is a midrange EQ with a couple of frequencies — or maybe something sweepable." I don't need it to be a Massenburg EQ. I'm also thinking about building a completely analog mix room with a 2-inch machine, console, with 1/2-inch and 1/4-inch mixdown decks. I have plenty of access to the digital domain and maybe the part of my identity that loves to rip a live mix needs an outlet. The question is, at the end of the day, is it worth building a console or just modifying something that is close to what I want?

Are you going back to a 4-track cassette recorder and having fun?

Yeah, I've got this 1/2-inch, 8-track that's calling my name — only 80 bucks a reel!