Stuart Sullivan

Stuart Sullivan has worked with a diverse list of artists. Sublime, James McMurtry, Tejano greats Little Joe y La Familia, the Meat Puppets, the Dead Milkmen, James Cotton, and Willie Nelson have all tracked with Stuart at the faders. He's done a number of records with producer Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers (see his interview this issue) and in 2001 he opened his own studio, Wire Recording, in Austin, Texas. I visited him at Wire Recording to discuss his techniques, experiences, and the changing landscape of the recording industry.

What first excited you about the studio?

In junior high and high school I was playing in a band and a friend of ours had a little recording setup in his basement. I was the uncomfortable, grumpy guy. I said, "Look, man, we can't wear headphones. I don't even want to see the mics." He was really gracious and, surprisingly, the tracks came out really well. Then I got into Indiana University. I was looking for an alternative to business school. I saw a "Studio Resources and Techniques" class. It said to you had to talk to the professor. I met with the professor and he said, "You realize this is for graduate students in electronic music. You're entering your sophomore year as a business major." But he'd gone to school where I had grown up and he said, "Aw, what the hell. You're in." I believe he realized that in the next year or two the electronic music program was going away; they were going to start an audio program to record their operas, orchestras and recitals. He saw that as an opportunity and thought I might be handy a few years down the road. I was there when they started their audio program and was able to record five operas a year, with four performances of each, for three and a half years.

You did that to tape with stage mics?

We had a [Neumann] SM 69 in the catwalk and dropped it down. For a couple of years, all we could do was play with the angle and width of it, as well as how high or low we could get. Then we got the okay and dropped a few placement mics and a couple of hidden mics for support, if needed. We got a little bit more into that, particularly with the orchestra. The Musical Arts Center at Indiana University was just an incredible hall.

What did you learn back then that you're still using today?

Listen to things acoustically. If it's an amp, you can get it out of a little room and into a bigger one where it doesn't blow your ears out. Sometimes you want to hear the compression in the space. To sense these elements in the room is a great way to understand them, and to know whether you want that or whether you're scared of that. [laughter] There're a gazillion steps — and you can simplify them as much as you want — but if a recording starts off bad, every other step after that is struggling to make it up. I'm not going to say that if it starts bad there's no way anything can get better. That's ridiculous. But with anything you lose at the beginning, you can't get as much back and it gets harder and harder to add to it.

So you put in a lot of critical energy, even before you're mic'ing.

Right. I have many friends who are really talented that say, "Just get it in Pro Tools. Once it's in [the computer] you can deal with whatever you need to do. You can clean it up." I recognize and respect that, but I haven't gone that way yet. I still want to explore all the possibilities of getting real sounds. I'm a traditionalist, only in the sense of hearing and capturing music; not necessarily in how I treat it. Whether it's an ensemble or an individual overdub, performance-based music is one of my favorite things and that's why I maintain a large room. If it's a convincing and transcending performance, those are the things people recognize and feel. Not whether I put up this cool mic and did this and that. Hopefully that makes the recording sound even better and makes it go straight to your heart more. It's a performance you're trying to capture, and the environment you create to capture that performance is crucial.

What were you doing before moving to Austin?

I finished school and received a job offer from Universal Recording in Chicago. By job, I should say, "paid internship." It seemed like a pretty sweet deal, but I had been experiencing this phenomena called "poor and cold" for two solid years. I just couldn't take it.

What happened once you got to Austin in 1983?

I got a job at Texas French Bread [bakery/café] and went around asking all these studios if they needed an intern. Nobody was too interested. [I got into] Lone Star Studios, which is now gone. Willis Alan Ramsey had a record [his self-titled debut] that was popular, and the song "Muskrat Love" was a huge hit for Captain & Tennille [Tape Op #69]. Willis, flush with money, bought that studio and had John Storyk [Tape Op #59] build it up for him. It was tiny little place, but it was cool.

How did you work yourself into Lone Star Studios?

I knew how to clean and do a lot of stuff. At night I would go in, put up my tape and play with their [AKG] BX 10 spring reverb and their Lexicon Prime Time — a stereo echo that was badass. After about a year the people that were building Arlyn Studios, Freddy Fletcher and Michael Block, started working out of Lone Star. With them came their Lexicon 224 and, eventually, the Lexicon model 200. I started getting time made available to me because I'd cleaned the place so much. Michael Hall, who now writes for Texas Monthly, had a band called The Wild Seeds. We did a record [Life Is Grand (In Soul City)] and it got pressed on vinyl. Then I did one with Alejandro Escovedo. Some of the songs were "Ballad of the Sun and the Moon" and "Hard Road" and [that album] became the predecessor for the first True Believers record. Then came a crazy band called The Hickoids, who were insane country-punk guys. There were absolute stretches of insanity during the making of that record [We're In It For the Corn]. That record ended up being real popular with a number of guys I've worked with since. Krist Novoselic mentioned he liked that record. It's funny how some of these crazy things you do early on end up having popularity. Suddenly The Wild Seeds were hot. The Hickoids were kind of hot. True Believers were the breakout band; they got signed to EMI and I got to work on their first record.

How did you end up at Arlyn Recording?

The guys from Arlyn were about to open and asked me to be the assistant over there. I started helping wire the place up. The engineer at Arlyn, Dave McNair [Tape Op #23], was selective about what he worked on and that allowed me to have a lot of work. Not only was there a burgeoning punk or "new sincerity" scene that I got bands from, there were also more obscure and weird country things that Dave didn't want to do. Right about that time Clifford Antone decided to start a record company [Antone's Records and Tapes]. I think I just happened to be in the room when he decided. It was literally like, "You wanna make my records?" I'm was 25 and kind of scrambling. I said, "Yes sir, Mr. Antone." Then I was immediately plopped into the whole Antone's scene. At first I was very intimidated. There was this sense about the Antone's world that it was very insular and clubby, but most of the players were not really part of the club. You'd get in with the musicians and they'd say, "You like music; I like music. We're cool." I'd always ask the musicians — George Rains, Derek O'Brien and Sarah Brown — "Does it sound good to you?" The two things I got out of that were the knowledge that there are a gazillion ways to approach things and people hear everything with different ears. And I also learned that room mics are badass! If the sound of the room works, an ambient mic is going to be pretty good. Find the right spot, crank down on it, exaggerate it and a room mic can be stunning. One of the things that I don't like about close mics is that they have frequency spikes. A lot of those spikes are on the top end and poke at you. Room mics have this natural thing — air is a natural compressor. If you move it away and have some distance, that top end dissipates and you have presence in the low end, but you also get this mid to top end clarity. You can get incredible detail and clarity the farther away you go. Obviously, if your room is resonant, or has a tone, it starts to interfere with the sound.

Which room mics have you found to be the most effective?

I have a pair of Mojave MA-100s. If you use the omni capsules, they give you better phase control and a truer sound. They also have a really high output. One of the problems with room mics is you have to gain them up so much; especially if it's a ribbon and the noise floor begins to creep in. With the Mojave mics that's not going to be a problem. I have a Telefunken SM2; it's like a pair of [Neumann] KM 56s and you can leave it in cardioid. Right now it's up against the window, about six to eight inches off the glass. That's a standard drum ambient position for me; I have a small room, so I'll put it in cardioid and then reflect it off the glass. The reflection not only gives me a little more delay, it also takes away a little of the edge and smears it so the image isn't quite as clear. It varies, depending on what you're doing. One thing about room mics: they're very susceptible to tempos. The more the room is a thing, the more susceptible to tempos they are.

So for a faster song, what would you do?

Drums are there to emphasize the rhythm. I would generally move the mics closer to get less time delay. If it's moving out of sync with the rhythm of the drums it deemphasizes the rhythm. It's a similar concept, but a different effect, as the top and bottom mics on a snare. One's moving in one direction and one's moving in the other — together they're kind of funky. On a snare top and bottom mic, because of the proximity, a phase flip helps you. With room mics we're talking a number of milliseconds and a phase flip does nothing for you.

How many close mics are you using on a drum set?

For the jazz thing, it's a three mic set up. I'll do an X/Y overhead and I'll have a kick mic. For a rock band, it's 15.

When you're using 15 mics, how do you control the phase issues?

I rarely ever use them all at once in the mix. I'll put up my overhead mics first, and then I'll bring up my kick and snare. If it's a good drummer with good sounds, toms tend to be quick and easy. If the toms aren't tuned well, it's a bummer. You've got the drums and the player. That's the biggest variance. Weak drummers — I'm sorry, but there's just not that much you can do. You can sample and trigger. But if you get a great drummer, everything's different. There's no loss of grace, dynamics, or subtlety if you can keep the real tracks. The room mics all sound completely natural, clear and defined. For the new Sublime with Rome record we had 15 mics on one kit and three mics on another kit.

Are there two kits on the songs?

Sometimes, plus an electronic kit. After we were done with tracking, we set up a great big electronic kit on the side of the control room.

Did they have their songs ready when they came in?

Rome [Ramirez] had a lot of ideas and the guys spent a little bit of time developing their parts. Rome is a great writer, a fucking great singer, and a great guitar player. They took advantage of those skills and then let Eric [Wilson, bass] and Bud [Gaugh, drums] be who they are — Sublime. They did their thing, and that's when it really gelled. When we had just what Rome was doing, it was badass; but by the time the record was done, it was a Sublime record with Rome. I loved it.

How was this different than working with the original lineup with Bradley Nowell?

With the original lineup everybody knew all the songs; they'd played them a million times. There was no learning or figuring out process. That was a huge part of the process [this time]. They'd heard the songs, but they hadn't jammed them. They hadn't played them for a year as a band. The other obvious major difference was that heroin changes things — heroin's a hell of a drug. We didn't have that as a problem at this session. It wasn't exactly a 100% clean and sober session, but as far as hard drugs, there was none of that.

How did you get fresh takes out of Sublime [for the third, and final, album, Sublime] when they had played the songs thousands of times?

There was one song called "Wrong Way." The tempo on it would vary wildly. Paul [Leary, producer] and I were trying to get them to track that song and each time it would be like that — they'd be all drunk and it'd be a rollercoaster. We'd get them to come in a little earlier and they'd be drunk again. Finally we got them to come in at 9 a.m. It was a pain in the ass, considering that it took Paul and I an hour to drive in. They showed up with Bloody Marys, all drunk. So "Wrong Way" has got this up and down nature to it No matter what we think, no matter what we think the radio wants, they did what they did. On that particular song it was one of those things where you just can't change it; that's the way it's supposed to be. You gotta just realize that. For them — since we only did it once or twice each day and they were drunk out of their minds — it was fresh everyday. [laughter] Instead of being in Austin, we were way out in the country where it was difficult to get into town and therefore difficult to get in trouble. That was Paul's decision to do the tracking at Pedernales Studio, because that way we'd have them a little bit more controlled. These are the things you've gotta be thinking about. When you're trying to get performances from people, you have to think far beyond, "Are you thirsty?" It might take days of planting seeds to get something to go. Or, in those cases, a long term vision of as to what might happen if they're set loose in Austin. Paul had had experiences in his band, the Butthole Surfers, and I think he knew that when there's "access," there are problems.

You and Paul have been a great team. How did that develop?

In 1990 I had just returned from a year in England. Paul Leary showed up with a digital Akai 12-track [MG1212]. The Butthole Surfers had done a version of [Donovan's'] "The Hurdy Gurdy Man" that he wanted to mix. We put the tape in, fired it up, hit play and only saw one track play back. After an hour of experimenting I said, "I know a guy in town who has another one." We called him up, went over there, put the tape in and one track played, but it was another track — not the same track. [laughter] If you're at all familiar with the old rotating head multitrack systems of 20 years ago, this was not the most unusual thing in the world. So we went back to Arlyn Studios and he said, "Let's just do it again." King [Coffey] came in and did drums and Paul sang. We completely redid "The Hurdy Gurdy Man" and did a couple of other songs that went on The Hurdy Gurdy Man EP as well. Rough Trade gave Paul the option to do a solo record, so he came into the studio and we did The History of Dogs. We did a series of one-offs with the Butthole Surfers for compilations in late '91 or '92. Then Paul got behind this bluegrass band called the Bad Livers, with Danny Barnes, Ralph White, and Mark Rubin. He decided he wanted to produce a record for them and put up the money, which basically consisted of three or four days — a couple days of recording, and a couple days of mixing. That was the Delusions of Banjer record — a great record.

How did you and Paul end up working with the Meat Puppets?

Curt Kirkwood and his merry outfit had been signed to London Records and had done their big record [Forbidden Places] with Pete Anderson [Tape Op #57]. That was supposed to be their big one, but it flopped. This [Too High to Die] was going to be their last record before getting dropped, and they [had the budget to] pay a producer $30,000, or some ridiculous amount of money. Curt said, "I'm going to give the money to one of my friends." So he called up Paul. Paul went up to Memphis and the label said, "Do covers of your greatest hits." Okay, they hadn't had any. Paul was up there with Curt and the studio's house guy. They did some songs and the label said, "Yeah that's great. Record the whole record." Paul said he wanted his own engineer, so I went up to Memphis. We scrapped everything and made a rock record. I had no clue that we weren't doing what we were supposed to. After a month the A&R woman showed up. We kept trying to avoid it, but eventually she said, "Look, I gotta hear the record." We played the album for her and, at the end, she said, "What happened?" They said, "We got stoned and forgot." Some dumbass punk rock answer. [laughter] This was the first time I'd travelled, worked in another studio, and stayed in a fancy hotel. We drove my van back to Austin and the whole trip back I thought, "Let's see. I've still got my business degree. I wonder if I can get a job, because my career is shot." I got home and Paul called. He said, "They want us to mix it." I said, "Really?" Boom. We were only allotted two more weeks to mix it. The big hit, "Backwater" was remixed by Dave Jerden [Tape Op #86]. That kind of put Paul and I on track. We did Supersuckers records [The Sacrilicious Sounds of The Supersuckers], a Reverend Horton Heat record [Spend a Night in the Box], another Buttholes record [Weird Revolution], a Refreshments record [The Bottle & Fresh Horses] and then we recorded Sublime. That just put us over the top. Along the way I said, "Paul, we need Pro Tools." As soon as I explained it to him, he was all about it. We bought a Pro Tools system and started working with The Toadies, then the Butthole's Electriclarryland and, after that, we spent a couple years working on Weird Revolution. Paul and I continued to do bits and pieces. He has an overdub/mixing room back at his place.

You've worked with a wide variety of artists. What would be the difference between getting those performances out of somebody like Bradley Nowell [Sublime] versus somebody like Doug Sahm?

Those two I would put closer to each other than you'd expect. Part of my approach is to find the similarities. I've tried to learn the details and the differences, but most importantly I've tried to make sure that I understand what's the same about those things and those people. Whether it's Doug Sahm, Bradley Nowell, James McMurtry, or Willie Nelson; each of those people were telling stories. I try to help create an environment to capture it when they're really speaking that story. The style of music has so much less to do with the delivery. Whether it's small vignettes of a lifestyle, like Bradley Nowell and Sublime described, or whether they're sweeping looks, such as one of Willie Nelson's or James McMurtry's songs. With Doug Sahm, if you could get him going three ways, rather than five ways, you had him focused. He's like, "Let's get vocals for two songs simultaneously. C'mon play both, man. One in this ear, one in that ear!" [laughter]

You've engineered records that have gone Gold and Platinum as well as won Grammy, Americana, and American Blues awards. What defines a successful album for you?

A great record is great art. You want to see it by its intrinsic value, not because of what money or status it can bring you. You want to hear it because it's beautiful. What I consider a great record is when someone pulls that off, enough people hear it, and there's some recognition for what that person or group did. Some people say they could just make a great record and no one needs to ever hear it. You don't do this stuff in a vacuum. The reason you make music is to share it with other people, regardless of whether you can admit that or not. A great record is a great expression that is also well received. Sublime was a good one. It was a great record that got realized. But it's these other projects that can be so frustrating.

Tell me about your studio's API console.

I believe it's a 1977 API. As for mixing in the box or through a console, I'm not here to say anything's bad because I've done a lot both and it's turned out okay. What I can say is that if you come in here with your mix and run it through this console, it's dramatic. These consoles are legendary for a reason — it's not just a name. If you want to hear the legend, this is it: an original API in great shape.

When did you open Wire Recording?

Around 2000 friends of mine were trying to convince me to open a studio. Another friend of mine, Andy Taub, owned Brooklyn Bridge Recording in this physical space where we are now. He decided that he'd had it with Austin and was moving back to Brooklyn, so we struck a deal. June of 2001 was my first session. A lot of people came out of their way to do sessions here to help me get off the ground that first year. The second year was pretty much the same, and I got my feet under me. I'd borrowed so much money to get into this place; I ran up my credit cards all the way, and I hadn't paid the IRS. I was up to my neck. I had an intern that bailed on me; he hadn't answered the phone and left me hanging. At that point I had to take a small personal loan to get by. After that, work picked up. I had a five-year SBA [Small Business Administration] loan and I think I paid it off in four years. Fortunately, by the middle of the second year, things were going really good and they just kept rocking. I was a single man with very few expenses and had a studio that was booked 80% of the time.

What do you see happening now?

I do feel we're going through massive changes in the industry. The big studio world kind of got shaken out about ten years ago. A lot of the new studios you see now are non-commercial, in the sense that, one way or another, they're really not for profit. They might want to make a little bit of money, but the money that's been invested doesn't need to be paid back; or people want to do this and they have the funds. A lot of that has happened simultaneously with the descent of records. Music is still a commodity, but records are not a commodity and the budgets that used to pay for them is fading. I don't think it's ever going to totally die, but it's fading. With the studio, the best step forward is to present the business and keep the overhead down. Take a look at what pieces of equipment are prime and what pieces are unnecessary. I don't want to collect gear just to have it. I used to be a collector, but more and more I'm getting rid of stuff. The opportunities to work in certain ways that encourage ensemble playing — bigger rooms and more iso space — those opportunities are shrinking because it's becoming more difficult to maintain something like. One thing I do know is that this environment is becoming increasingly more challenging to maintain, in a commercial sense. In my mind, for the types of music I appreciate, large format recording still dominates and is the way to go artistically. I'll have to deal with the commerce and art part in the upcoming years, but at least things are good now.

A classic balance between commerce and art.

After 26 years of almost blindly being in the middle of art, I'm coming to grips [with the fact] that some aspect of what I do has to be controlled and driven downstream into a market that wants it. I still make records that a lot of people like — I just won a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album with Pinetop Perkins and Willie Smith's Joined at the Hip. It was wonderful, like old times and the Antone's days. I'm still having good fortune, but I worry about what's out there in the future. I'm trying to keep a sharp eye to stay abreast of it. Now is not the time to close your eyes and do what you've always done. I would love to find an opportunity where I could just do bands, make music and be able to have that drive things. That's my first choice; no matter what I do, I believe that will be the main thing I do. I've spent all these years working with this incredible variety of artists. But you have to recognize that we have a broader market now. It's important to survive. For me, it really is about creation and great music. But commerce is crucial; people have to make a living to be able to keep doing this. It's a weird point, but anytime there are transitions that upset the apple cart like this, there are also great opportunities. Being able to lock into those opportunities is what's going to make the difference in the future. I don't know where we're going, but I'm ready for it. The good news is I'm working.