JDK: Ok, I'm writing for Tape Op.
BPB: Excellent. I know someone from Tape Op came down to interview my brother.
JDK: This is to tie in with that.
BPB: Excellent. Perfect.
JDK: What's your recording experience?
BPB: I always think that it's better, no matter what you're capable of doing, to not take more than one job on at a given time.
JDK: Tell me about it.
BPB: But, just in terms of beginning, and recording the songs in the first place.
It had to do with the fact that we could. I had moved to Bloomington, IN, where my friend
Todd was going to school at IU's audio program, they have a relatively good audio program that I think grew out of the fact that they have an exceptional classical music program, so in the course of documenting it, I suppose, they developed this really great audio program because they record every single concert you know, and recital, in as high quality as they can, and in order to have the best engineers available, they decided to just nurture their own engineers. So they had a good audio program and my friend Todd went there, so over the summer we just used their facilities to make some multi-track facilities to make some recordings and that was a chance to take what little things we were working on and realize them and learn what some of the potential was because we didn't have a bill, it didn't cost money to record because it was just the school facilities, and then as well, one of his roommates, who was also in school there, had an 8 track cassette recording device and he was really good at using that so he at home we could also do really nice quality recordings and keep working on those. Out of having access to the equipment grew the excitement and desire to do more things with music, so we tried to do as much with music as we could.
And then we had the first full-length record, using the same 8-track audio cassette machine. I think it was a Mackie? No, it was a Mackie board, I don't know who made the machine.
JDK: Digital?
BPB: Cassette. It was audio cassette. Tape...but it was 8-track...And then, bought a Marantz audio cassette, stereo machine from a mutual friend of ours who was doing lots of journalism stuff at the time and that's why he had it, so I bought that, and made the second record on that. And in between that, we could afford to go into a studio for a day, so we'd go into a studio and make like a 7-inch. At the time, this was the early 90's, so digital wasn't good enough didn't sound good enough.
JDK: So what was your role in the technical aspects or did you pretty much stay out of that of it?
BPB: I tried to stay out of it by working with people that I trusted and felt that I could communicate with. Would never just say let's go into a studio and make a record, they'd say, you know this engineer seems good. Is he good? Yeah he's good. Let's go in and see if we can work with him. Then we made the "Hope" EP, it was recorded analog, and we made mixdown simultaneously to a 1/4" reel-to-reel and DAT, and then when we compiled the eventual record we would go through and listen to it sound quality was different, 3 of the songs are from the reel-to-reel, and 3 are from the DAT. I'm not sure if that's being involved or not being involved, but
JDK: Definitely, but I mean ...
BPB: I didn't place any microphones. The second record I recorded. I did it all myself.
But it was just to the Tascam. One microphone. In order to multi-track, there's one song with multi-track, what we did was recorded the song onto the thing, and then played it on the stereo, and then recorded again onto the Tascam, because it was just a 2-track machine, it wasn't multi-track.
JDK: Do you work like that to do demos, now?
BPB: The default machine used for notes or for demos would be just a hand-held tape recorder from Radio Shack, or a Sony hand-held tape recorder. I tried because it seemed so great to take the step to mini-disc, because I got to where.
JDK: See where that'll get you (as my MD battery has just died, He laughs.)
BPB: Because for the record Ease Down the Road, I had a different cassette for each song, for notes, and I'd fill a side with different versions, so I'd have you know, this is how that bridge should go now, but I don't want to lose that old bridge, on this tape. But it was sort of a mess, though. Then I thought "wow, the mini-disc" and you can actually edit and re-sequence, and I could take that bridge and put it back with this old bridge, at least for the note-taking aspect. But it was too much technology, it wasn't second nature enough, so it just got in the way of working. So for the Master and Everyone record, I used the mini-disc, but I just used it as if it was a hand-held tape recorder. I just used it linearly. One stereo microphone. I didn't have to use multiple discs, though, because you can skip forward...
JDK: How much prep work do you do in the demo stage before doing an album in the studio with a band?
BPB: Zero prep work.
JDK: So the demo's just to get the songs structured...
