Tape Op Magazine - Issue #138

Interviews

King Britt

By Garrett Haines and Olinda Mar

It's 1970, and a man runs a respected barbershop in inner-city Philadelphia. One day his five-year-old son asks him for a timeslot to DJ for the patrons. (He also wants to borrow some records). Most might've laughed at the request, but not this father. He and his wife value art...

Interviews

Ian MacKaye: Recording as an Artificial Exercise

By Ian Brennan

Ian MacKaye and I have been friends for over 20 years, ever since I convinced him and the band he was in, Fugazi, to come and play at the "Food Not Bombs" 20th anniversary free show in San Francisco (with Sleater-Kinney and the late Vic Chesnutt). The band's only concern with...

Interviews

Regan Sommer McCoy: The Mixtape Museum

By Diane Bondareff, Larry Crane

A frequently overlooked part of hip-hop history and culture, the story of the mixtape deserves to be archived, preserved, and celebrated. Beginning with cassette-recorded board tapes of early hip-hop club performances – featuring innovative beat matching, scratching, and early rapping – and on to...

Interviews

David Gilmour: The Artist as Producer: Unicorn and Kate Bush

By Scott Anthony, Rebecca Turner, Dave Williamson

The second half of the 1960s saw a dramatic shift in the way albums were recorded, not...

Interviews

Randy Kohrs: The Old and The New

By Larry Crane

I first met Randy Kohrs years ago at the Summer NAMM tradeshow in Tennessee. Randy is...

MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

FEBRUARY 26, 2026 INTERVIEWS

Butch Walker: The Best Job in the World

BY PHIL BYRNE, GEOFF STANFIELD

For the better part of three decades, Butch Walker has simultaneously been a rising and continuous presence in music-making. From his early days in the late '80s glam metal band SouthGang, to Marvelous 3 in the '90s, as well as numerous releases under his own name and penning hit songs for artists like Taylor Swift and Frank Turner, plus producing albums for a massive list of artists including Pink, Weezer, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Saosin, Katy Perry, Avril Lavigne, Sevendust, Midtown, The Donnas, and Panic! at the Disco, his career has known many iterations . Earlier this year he released the album American Love Story, a rock opera that tells the loosely autobiographical story of a young man named "Bo" who deals with themes of racial and sexual bigotry, reckoning, and redemption, paired with a walk down a musical memory lane of the '70s and '80s. Butch still prefers to record in one room, handling the engineering, mixing, and musical duties himself, just as he did on his first 4-track in the shack behind his family's home in rural Georgia.

FEBRUARY 26, 2026 INTERVIEWS

D. James Goodwin: Into the Hardship

BY MONIK GEISEL, ELIJAH TORN

Upstate New York is an odd place, with its mix of old Dutch Farmers, economically depressed towns, and a slew of aging hippies. This is especially true in the town of Woodstock, nestled in the Catskill Mountains; a quaint country town two hours north of New York City, with under six thousand residents and no traffic lights. I spent my pivotal years in Woodstock, and I've always had a love/hate relationship with the struggle and balance between the touristy rural Americana and '60s nostalgia. The multidimensional blend of creativity and salt of the earth people has always been in flux since the town's early history. A ton of musicians and studios have tucked themselves away as a refuge from the overcrowded rat race of New York City. It's also where Daniel James Goodwin decided to create his own music-making retreat. I sat down with Daniel in his studio, The Isokon, to talk about the environmental impact of working to tape, working with artists such as Bob Weir, Kaki King, Heather Woods Broderick, and working with ECM Records, as well as his life and what he says, "F*ck you" to.

FEBRUARY 26, 2026 INTERVIEWS

Jeff Larson: America: Archiving the Group

BY LARRY CRANE

Founding members of the band America, Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley, have kept the group America going 50 years, and this year sees the release of Half Century, a seven CD/one DVD box set of rare archival studio recordings of alternate mixes, demos and rehearsals. I dropped a line to Jeff Larson, a musician and America archivist, to talk about the projects he's been involved in for America Archives/America Records, including Half Century on Gonzo Multimedia, the Heritage series on Omnivore Recordings, Rhino's recent collections, and more.Feature photo: Dewey & Jeff

MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

COLUMNS

by Larry Crane

by Andy Hong

GEAR REVIEWS