So God Willin'... came out in 2011?
Yeah, we recorded it in March of 2010.
Where was it recorded?
It's all one room. Ray bought the former ambassador to Russia's [William C. Bullitt] old farmhouse in Ashfield, Massachusetts. There's a 'great room' the size of a barn, and that's where we did it [The Big Room at Apple Hill]. It was all plaster walls and wood flooring. Ray wanted to be in the middle of the room, where he could look at everybody. I put the drums [Jay Bellerose] right in front of him, Greg Leisz [steel, guitars, etc.] to his right, Eric Heywood [steel, guitars] to his left, and Jennifer Condos, the bass player, sat on the floor. That last track, "Devil's in the Jukebox" was the first track we cut. That's a big track. I was shitting my pants because I'd brought all my gear out, and getting it set up was hard. I was like, "Okay, let's start slow. Maybe we should tent the drums a little bit." They pull out "Devil's in the Jukebox" and it was sink or swim! I thought, "Either this room is going to make a recording that's great, or I've made a really bad decision to agree to do this."
Is that completely live?
There are a lot of edits, but they're all edits between live takes. No click.
No grid?
[laughter] Yeah right. Pro Tools is the most fabulous random access editing system ever devised. The idea that you'd need a grid, or need somebody to be like, "There's the beat," is ludicrous. You can see it! It's all there, and you can move it wherever you want. Wherever the beat drops and feels right is where the groove is.
What gear did you bring out there?
I had to bring my whole studio, including mic stands and headphones.
You live in Los Angeles?
Yeah. Now it's even more mobile. I've got six big racks: two compressor racks, a pre rack. A Pro Tools rig with all Apogee I/O. It's like a 32-channel console, done in a mobile system. But back then, because I was moving it myself, I had it all on eight-space racks because that was as much as I could carry and load in my car. The records I was doing couldn't afford cartage at that time. I had it all in these racks I was moving around. I'd go to Joe Henry's house, or I'd go to somebody's closet. Wherever somebody needed a studio. Ray called and said he wanted to do it at his house. So the truck showed up, and I watched my life's investments get loaded in. Just the mics alone...
Audience: Do you do a lot of recordings this way, where you go somewhere else to make a record?
I do it, but not as much. This was the biggest, because it was all the way across the country. But I do take it to Joe Henry's house a lot, which is half an hour away. It seems silly. Every time I do it, I ask myself why I'm ripping apart a perfectly good studio to move it 30 minutes down the street and spend a whole day setting it back up again. But I love Joe, and that's what he wants to do. It gets me out of the house. I didn't have nearly all the mics I have now, but I had some pretty good ones, even back then. I invested in mics. I feel microphones are the hardest modern gear to replace. The boutique pres and compressors have a great vibe, but when it comes to reissues of old microphones, the old ones sound better to me, so I've bought a lot of vintage microphones. I've had a few too many really obscure and cool pres and compressors die on me in the middle of a take. If a microphone dies, it dies in a different way than a compressor will. If a compressor craps out in the middle of the take, it's really ruined.
What mics did you bring out for Ray's record, at that point?
I had my [Neumann] M 49. I used that and a [Shure] SM7 on Ray at the same time. It's mostly the M49 in the mix, but I messed with it. I knew that Ethan Johns [Tape Op #49] had used the Shure SM7 [on vocals], and I wanted to make sure that was the way to go. It was a different time for me. I was still thinking, "Oh, I've got to honor this." Ray has a big tradition of working with Ethan. I had a [Neumann] U 67 on the acoustic, and I had a lot of Royer ribbon mics. The main drum sound is Royer overheads. I stopped using them a few years ago. I kept having to compensate for the darkness; so I figured why not put up a slightly brighter microphone? But I still use the Royers on every session.
They capture sounds in a great way.
Yeah. So there were those, and then I had a pair of RCA 77s. Now I have pairs of mics; a pair of U 48s, a pair ofM49s,andapairofU67s.Itwasalotof prioritizing on this album. My whole career felt like I was stuck where I had 16 channels of Apogee, and then 8 channels of crappy conversion. I always was trying to figure out who gets the good channels, and who gets the not-so-good. I always had to do that. It was the same with microphones. Now I'm at the point where it's 32 inputs, and I'm not sitting there saying, "Oh, it's a keyboard DI. Fuck it." On this record I was still managing that.
How long did you have to put all your gear in place?
I think we did a full day. I was really sweating. I could tell it was too live, even though we hadn't recorded yet that first day. We were sending people out to Home Depot to buy tents — like for picnics. We'd put them up, and then I'd get packing blankets and put those over it so that I could at least control the drums a little. Then I tried to baffle off Ray as much as I could. Everyone was in the same room on headphones. What I really learned was that Jay's hearing his drums back through Ray's vocal mic. So he knows what's going into the vocal mic and back into his headphones; he's playing to the room, and what I'm recording. I was really aware of how symbiotic it was.
Did you co-produce?
No, Ray produced it.
You must have felt like, "I want to do a good job, but I don't want to interfere."
Well, everything I do is that. I'm not trying to manipulate anything. People who've played a lot hear themselves in a certain way. Drummers and guitar players have been hitting, or tweaking knobs, for years to get these sounds. If you can be the guy who can make that sound get into speakers or earbuds, and get the musician to say that it sounds like they think it should, that's the whole gig. You're trying to make them sound like the best version of what they think they sound like. I hear it too, so I'm not trying to say, "Hey, have you considered tuning your snare drum down?" I don't do that. If someone has a question about it, we'll talk about it. I'll maybe offer suggestions about something that's interfering.
With a less-experienced player, you might have to take that role.
It happens with drummers a lot where you tell them, "If you bash that hard, there's no way that it's going to sound good." It doesn't happen with me that often, but you do have to take that role sometimes. That "capture it" recording technique doesn't work with guys who don't know how to balance their own playing. You can compensate, but you need a guy who really has that experience and knows what he's doing.
Was it trial and error, where you'd play songs back to them to see what they thought?
No, there wasn't any of that. It was me running around frantically on take one and making small adjustments. I went with my gut. I thought it was going to work. Luckily that first song was probably take four or five, so I had a good two or three takes to tweak the setup, an inch here or there, or throw up some more blankets. I had a good 15 minutes worth of that.
Where were you located? Were you in the same room?
Yeah, I was directly behind Ray.
On headphones?
Yeah. I was using Sennheiser HD 650s.
It's hard to get the exact reference when you're in the space where the music's happening.
Yeah. If you do it for enough years, you get used to it. I've been using those Bose noise-canceling ones recently. Those are crazy weird; but when you get used to them, you can figure it out. Plus, when you get enough experience you know that some mics will be fine when you switch to speakers, and that it will translate the way you're expecting it to.
Audience: What headphones were used for the musicians.
They were using Sony MDR-7506s. They're bright. When people spend a few takes with them and take them off to listen, I always wonder whether I should get them something else to listen with. I don't want my playback reference to sound less exciting when they're used to hyped-up and bright on the Sony headphones.
What monitors did you bring?
Just my ProAc Studio 100s. I brought a subwoofer too, because Jen always wanted more bass. I'd turn the sub up until she was happy, instead of messing with my rough mix.
Where did you do the mixing at?
At my old studio [Stampede Origin Studio]. I've got a new studio space now, both in Los Angeles.
