I'd heard that your first solo LP, Break Mirrors, was intended as a calling card for session work. I guess that worked out?
Yeah, it was an experiment. I had left the band Simon Dawes, and I was continuing to write without a goal of what to do with those songs. The obvious conclusion was to make a record, but I had no intention of performing that material. Being in a band at such a young age, I was always struggling to represent my artistic ideas over those of my bandmates. I was in the studio constantly with the engineer, Shawn Everett, during the making of the Simon Dawes record, Carnivore, stressing over all these little parts that everyone played. I'm sure that I was such a pain in the ass for everybody. So when I made a solo record I had carte blanche to do all of those kinds of things, without the stress. I went into a friend's house in Malibu with an engineer named Andy Brohard. We did some live tracking and then brought the record back here, to Tony Berg's studio in Brentwood, California, to finish it with Shawn. My hope, at the time, was that people would hear it and go, "Oh wow, what an interesting sounding record. We should get these guys to work with us. We should make all our records with them!"
You're also well-known as a guitarist. Was this an attempt to get more session work as a player, or was the goal to get into production?
It was to get into production. It was me coming out of a period of time where everything I did was collaborative – being a guitarist in a band [Simon Dawes], and co-writing the songs with Taylor [Goldsmith] – so it was really a way to try to create some record that felt inherently like me and my sensibilities. It was a process for the songwriting, as well as the sonics in the engineering, to sound the way I had wanted my music to sound at that time. My hopes were that someone would hear it and be aware that this was a part of what I was interested in doing. There wasn't that much focus on the guitar playing on that record – it's serving the writing and production.
And you met Shawn around this time?
I met Shawn working on the Simon Dawes record, Carnivore. I think that was around 2007 to 2008. A couple of years after that we started working on Break Mirrors together.
We interviewed Shawn for this issue as well. How do you divvy up your workload and responsibilities when you're working on a record with him, and you're either producing or co- producing? Do you do some engineering yourself?
I care a lot about how every sound is created and captured. I'm definitely more hands-on in that way than many modern producers, but I'm certainly not as schooled in engineering techniques as most of the traditional record producers were. I'm catching up on the jargon, and trying to remember the model name of the microphone that I liked so much on the guitarrón. When I'm working with Shawn, he can largely inform the process for the artist or the band we're working with. He is an engineer who, in a very unique way, captures the essence and transforms it without pretension. Traditionally it seems that great- sounding records were tracked in such a way that the engineers were trying not to record anything improperly. Maybe they would get clear sounds and counteract some deficiencies in the equipment, but the major sonic shaping was done during the mix. But with Shawn, he alters some sounds in real time. He reshapes the character of the sound, and it informs the way someone will sing or play. It can inform me too; like I'll build a record around how great the snare drum or that guitar tone suddenly is. It's influential to work with Shawn; it's like he's a band member. He's certainly an artist in that way. I would say my approach isn't something that I've figured out, beyond reacting to what I want out of the music – [which is] for the intent of the song to be clear, and the performance to be inviting. It feels like that's the only thing I can rely on being a constant in record making, and to inspire that I'm forced to react spontaneously – like a musician.
So is your role a little more musical, and Shawn's more technical? Is that a fair statement?
Well, it really depends. Sometimes Shawn's role is more musical. Sometimes Shawn's role is that he creates something, or that he has an idea on how to record something, and it becomes a part of the music. Sometimes he goes for a unique sound on something basic; he makes it surreal and interesting on its own, but perhaps there's no longer any high-end on it and the track is just piano and vocal. I might need to get technical with him in that sort of situation, to make sure that our song doesn't sound like all of the air has been sucked out. So it becomes a balancing act – we're chasing our tails, in a fun way, and hopefully arriving at something that feels like an interesting and exciting new way to present a sound that we've heard before. I'm, perhaps, more critical that the spectrum of sound isn't overtly low-fi, small, or anything like that. He and I both like exciting-sounding records, but I'm never after zaniness. Making a record with Shawn is unlike making a record with anybody else. He's truly one of a kind.
You mentioned earlier that your method is to react to what is happening in the studio. Is it purely reactionary, or when you're driving to the studio are you plotting out the day in your head?
Yeah, I am. I can't help but plot it out. But it's like when I'm in my bedroom practicing guitar and I stumble upon something so beautiful and think to myself, "I've gotta remember this!" But I never do when I'm responding to other musicians onstage. I almost never remember to go back to what I was thinking I could rely on. If I show up and have this preconceived idea of what I'm gonna do that day in the studio, I'm afraid of putting too much faith in that idea and then having it disappear. I know that if everybody is responding in the moment, and everybody's listening with an open mind – especially myself – that we'll have found something really special and honest by the end of the day. I could be listening to a Slim Harpo record on the drive in that day and think, "Oh my god, this arrangement is so brave, and ballsy, and simple. That's what this song we're doing needs to feel like – that simplicity. I'm gonna try to apply that to this record." I have applied that approach to working with everyone, from an artist like John Legend to a band like Dawes, because it's about refinement. But trying to control too much before you get a sense of the big picture is dangerous.
So there's a little bit of a plan, and a bit of a framework, but then you improvise from there?
Yeah, it's a conversation – that's what I always say. It's like you have your vocabulary, and you have your point of view; but when you go in to have a conversation with somebody, it's really hard to plan it past the opening statement. You're at the whim of the flow.
How do you pick a studio to work in?
The tracking room is the main thing. If it feels like a record where there's going to be a lot of live tracking, the room has to be able to handle it. The control room is important as well, knowing that what we're hearing is accurate. In the case of the Alabama Shakes, I was looking for the closest major city to where everybody lived in Alabama – and Nashville, Tennessee, is about two hours away. I called a friend in Nashville and asked, "What are some rooms that we can go into, really get some work done, and that sound good?" Blackbird Studios obviously came up, but because the Shakes record was such an experimental process, and we didn't know if we'd be booking out a room for two months or two weeks, there was a little less risk at Sound Emporium. It also felt a little more like our home. Once we got in there [Studio A] and shut the door, it really felt like that was our territory. We kept coming back to that room for consistency, and then we mixed at Ocean Way [now known by the original United Recording name] because I had made my second solo record, Heigh Ho, there with Greg Koller. He suggested that room because of its appropriateness for the music and the players on it: Jim Keltner, Don Was [Tape Op # 113], and Mike Elizondo – guys who've all worked in that room for years. Jim Keltner really knows how to use the sound of that room as part of his playing – how to get the walls to speak. There are a few drummers who, if you can capture the size of the sound that they are actually making in there, it's like one of the biggest things you could ever hear on a record. Jim's one of those guys, Ocean Way Studio B is one those rooms, and Greg is one of those engineers. By the time we mixed the Shakes' record, I knew what I would be hearing in that control room. I've spent the last six or eight months, off and on, at EastWest Studio 2, and that's another drum room I really like. You hear those cliché stories about how people spent four days on a kick drum sound in the 1990s, when they had those kind of budgets. But it probably wasn't always arbitrary. If you tap into a drum tone that defines the size and clarity of the record, a lot of the other sounds fall into place. The guitars can sound small, big, a little mid-rangy, or a little dark, if you have a base of comparison of reality in the drums. Whatever you're going after, if you get it with the drums and the vocals, it defines the rest of the track. I think having a sense of what the drummer will sound like in a room will be the defining factor for where I choose to work for now.
You also work at Shawn's place too, right?
A little bit, yeah. He has this great building, but he's been so busy that I don't know if he's been working out of there much.
It's an unusual room.
Shawn's an unusual guy, so it makes sense for him, and that's all that matters. Sometimes I try to pull him out of that territory to get something specific. It was interesting to witness his eccentric personality in an environment like Nashville. It's more exciting to me than doing it all in a place where he feels comfortable, or I feel comfortable. If I were by myself in these rooms that we're talking about, I would not know how to get the results that I'm after. I really do rely on the engineers I work with. I like them to be on their toes as well, so I don't always feel like the dummy.
You mentioned that Sound & Color was going to be an experimental process. From the minute you hear the opening track with the vibraphone, you realize, "This is different."
