Mike Mogis: Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley, The Faint, more...

BY JOHN BACCIGALUPPI

As I'm talking with Mike Mogis the afternoon before his sold-out gig with Bright Eyes at UC Davis' Freeborn Hall, it strikes me that, for him, balance means more than moving faders. In the past decade, Mike's successfully juggled the roles of in-demand engineer and producer, touring musician and owner of a solidly booked recording studio. More recently, he's added the titles of husband and father to the list. When I met up with him at UCD, his wife Jessica and daughter Stella Marie were both on the road with him. While I can't quite imagine how Mike balances all these commitments, he not only seems to take it in stride, but he seems to thrive on the balance between them. Mike, along with his brother AJ, started recording music together at the ages of 11 and 12 with a Radio Shack mixer and a Tascam PortaStudio at their parent's house in North Platte, Nebraska. They eventually moved up to an 8-track and started recording local bands. Later came a 16-track machine, then some Tascam DA-88's, then Pro Tools. While they were going to school in Lincoln, Nebraska, they convinced some of the bands in the area to drive back to their parents' house in Omaha to be recorded in the basement by the "brothers Mogis." AJ and Mike eventually rented a house in Lincoln with a basement, and their folks got their basement back. Dubbed "Dead Space", the Lincoln basement became home to many of the Mogis' recordings, including those of Midwest indie bands like Boy's Life and Christy Front Drive (on Crank Records) along with Songs: Ohia (who drove down from Chicago and were on Secretly Canadian Records). During this time Mike, who was a business major, and his friend Rob Nansel, started a record label of their own in a bedroom in the Dead Space house as a school project. The label was called Saddle Creek and is now one of the more successful indie labels in the country. When Saddle Creek released the last two Bright Eyes records, Digital Ash in A Digital Urn and I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning on the same day earlier this year, both records were the number one SoundScan that week — pretty impressive for an independent label. While Mike has left the business side of Saddle Creek, he recorded and played on both Bright Eyes albums. In fact, he's engineered and/or produced much of the Saddle Creek catalog, including discs by Cursive, The Faint, Azure Ray and Rilo Kiley, who's 2002 album The Execution of All Things first hipped me to Mike's production talents. Since then, Mike and AJ have moved out of the basement and opened the solidly booked Presto studios, but we'll let Mike take it from here.