With Reverend Horton Heat, you're not trying to totally imitate the past with your recordings, but you're trying to maintain the energy of that kind of era. How do you see it?
Right. Well, you know, this is kind of a funny thing. When I was younger, everybody in Texas wanted to be Jimmie Vaughan, but a lot of us were slicking our hair back and playing that old '50s style; trying to cop some of that instead. Stevie Ray Vaughan, his brother, kind of flipped it. He took the blues and made it more aggressive and turned up. That was kind of my thing about rockabilly. Let's use it as a platform.
Your first record was done live to 2-track after previously tracking it multitrack in the studio?
Well, the thing is the liner notes on that album were actually done before they figured all of that out. A couple of songs that weren't recorded straight to 2-track got on the album. We had done most of the songs so many times that finally we just went straight to DAT. But it was a really good studio called Crystal Clear Sound in Dallas. They're kind of an unsung studio, but man, for some reason that studio always got the best sounds. It was crystal clear, just like the name! We worked a lot with Ed Stasium [Tape Op #98]. I learned a lot about recording from him. He's very helpful.
What kinds of things did he bring to the table that you learned from?
One of his tricks is that he listens very close to the toms and the snare drum tuning before every song. I'd never seen anybody do it. He'd tune the toms and the drums to the pitch of the song. If you're paying that much attention to all of the things, it adds up to being something really great. We did one session with him in three takes. It was 24-track 2-inch tape. It was one of those drum things. Scott [Churilla (drums)] and him got together – they wanted the drums to be perfect. Ed's splicing the tape, and he has the studio engineer running 50 yards down the hall with this tape. Ed's slicing it, and then he's putting it in. The next thing you know, 15 minutes later the first part of the third take is the first part of the song. The middle part of the song is the second take middle, and the last part is the first. It took him 15 minutes. Quicker than you can do it on Pro Tools.
And examining all the options.
Yeah, that's right. That's probably one of the big problems with Pro Tools; you've got too many options. The way I approach my Pro Tools is that I only have so many options. I leave in guitar flubs. Some of them I'm getting good at fixing, but I do it more like the old-style tape splice thing. Sometimes I'll do the take of the whole band, and I'll do a "tape" splice. I'm actually starting to like that sound.
You can hear something change? Ambient cymbals cut off?
Yeah. That's kind of one thing about the '50s – they did a lot. People have this misconception about the '50s, like, "Oh, they just went in and did one take all together in the room." Well, kind of; but they would bounce and redo the vocals to make sure the vocal was good. I love my Pro Tools rig, and what I really love is my Universal Audio interfaces. I hate to sell you something here, but the plug-ins are great. They're getting better and better. The thing the average public doesn't realize is that when you talk about tape versus digital, tape is a million different things. Those Studer decks sound so good! My thing for going for tape is that I have Pro Tools. I don't need a Studer tape deck. What I need is an old Ampex. So I have two old Ampex machines. I'm trying to work with them now, but that's hard.
Parts, repair, maintenance, and calibration.
I'm slowly learning how to get the calibration up to speed on that. My MRL test tapes and my tones. Ed told me that they do that every day at those major studios. So that's what I'm up against if I'm going to keep the tape thing alive. In some ways what I want out of a tape sound is for it to sound kind of screwed up. I'm looking for that little warble that those old motors had, and I'm looking for that distortion. A little bit of that sound, whatever it is.
The last few Reverend Horton Heat records have been self-produced and self-recorded?
Yeah, the last couple. More or less. We used a studio called Modern Electric Sound Recorders in Dallas. He's [owner Jeffrey Saenz] got a lot of nice vintage gear in there. The new record was going to be completely done by me, with the drums and everything. A bunch of the record before that was that way, but our drummer quit right when we were about to take the time to work up a new album. We just cannot take three months off all the time. We've gotta plan three years ahead of that slot. Instead of spending three months to record, we were getting a new drummer. We got RJ [Arjuna "RJ" Contreras], and RJ is a North Texas State guy. He charted the demos. I didn't want to ask RJ to come into my ratty little place and record the drums. We had to work quick, too. He charted out the songs, and we went and recorded basic tracks at Modern Electric. Jimbo did great. We only re-did one or two of his bass parts from that session. We did ten songs in two days with RJ, and there's the record. I went to my little studio and started doing the guitars, and the voice, and whatever.
Were you tracking with live keyboards on those songs?
No, the keyboards Matt [Jordan] did his parts at his house. He sent the file to me, and I just put it in. Isn't that funny?
You've been in the band with an upright bassist for decades. I'll tell you, as a recording guy, it's a difficult instrument to capture.
It's so difficult.
Especially with slap bass. You've got boom downstairs and clicks up top. You're trying to capture midrange articulation; but also, when that slap comes in, it's going to be a different level. What have you learned to help you capture and present it the right way?
Well, I have to work with Jimbo with what he wants to do. Sometimes he wants to have a little amp with him in the room. The direct signal sounds kind of farty or something. Then they put a good Neumann microphone right there by the bridge. It's beautiful. It's crazy how much low-end comes off it.
I put my ear up against it just trying to see where, listening around the F-hole and the bridge to see what's going on. You hear that. It's a monster.
Yeah, it's amazing. In a lot of the old pictures from the '60s, you see an Altec "birdcage," the 639, right there where the bridge does that. A lot of times that was live in the room. That's one of the things about this new record. They didn't have iso booths there, so they had these big gobos around Jimbo, but the mic on the bass is still picking up a lot of the drums. The room with the drums is pretty dang beautiful.
Does it work well in that space?
It worked real well. It can be really okay. On a lot of old records, that's how they did bass. A friend of mine, Danny Baker – [known as] Unknown Hinson – his dad was a studio guy back in the '50s. He played guitar and bass. He did a session in New York City where it was a full orchestra pit with a real orchestra, a really high ceiling. They had a scaffolding built up like 20-feet with the microphone up there. He climbed up there; they used a pulley and got his upright bass up on this scaffolding, way up high. That's genius! That's the way they isolated that mic to get enough low end on the recording.
Well, don't tell Jimbo. He's going to want to be the highest guy in the room now!
We'll have to tour with Jim way up there.
On a pedestal! You also deal with the issue of the bass moving. In the studio it's like, "Can you hold it still?"
Yeah. The closer the mic is, the more any little movement is going to matter. If you can back it up a few, it doesn't matter as much. So you have that leeway. In a real-world good recording, you really should have the bass in an iso booth. We did that for a long time. But it always amazed me. I'll tell the guys, "Get a direct signal; mic his amp. But put a Neumann, or some nice mic, on the bridge." I think it's a little bit simpler than what people think. But now, with Pro Tools, I'll do the options. I'll record three tracks. One direct, one amp, one mic; but the main sound is the mic. I just started going to the "birdcage" on his bass recently. It's pretty neat. It's got more low-end than you ever imagined. But I've got some pretty good people helping me. John Peluso [Peluso Microphone Lab, Tape Op #96] – those mics are beautiful. I use the Peluso P-67 on Jimbo's bass quite a bit. Most of those sessions on this album and the last, that's what was on the bass.
What kind of process do you follow through with, as far as mixing on the last couple of records?
Well, it's probably pretty easy. I usually try to make it so that I don't have that many tracks. Like I said, I'll leave guitar flubs in there. But my mixing process, since I don't have that many tracks, pretty much starts as soon as we finish the take. As the band is in there listening back, I'll create a master fader and throw on the Universal Audio Ampex [tape] modeler plug-in – and maybe a light compressor on it. So it's already starting as we're going through there. That's what's great about Pro Tools is the recall. I really like the sound of the '50s. The goofiness of it, in a way. They only had one take, so a lot of times you could hear the engineer turning that knob to make it louder. "Oh, here's the solo!" All of a sudden, it just fades in quick. I like to do goofy fades with Pro Tools. I'll program it in there.
Like a guy pushing the fader up?
Yeah. Sometimes I'll make it kind of screwed up to sound like that! It's a lot of fun, really. I like on Pro Tools how you can do a fade by drawing it in there at the end of the track. I like to do the quick fades like they did in the '50s. End of song. They're fading down before the guy's done singing.
Oh, yeah. It's crazy sometimes how fast some of those are on the masters.
They were trying to save space on the 45 and trying to save time to get it on the air for more chance of airplay. If it was too long, they wouldn't play it.
That's true. One of the things I found interesting on the recent records is your use of stereo. The drums are very stereo, the ride cymbals are over on the right, and there's kind of a spread. But sometimes the ride cymbal feels close, and there's a room sound on the drums, so you get front to back, as well as a little width.
Well, I'll usually mic all the drums, and then I have a big boom stand with an overhead that I put up. I built my own [AKG] C12 clones. I don't even really know what you call it, like an X-Y maybe? I don't know if that's what it's called, where there're two stereo.
If they're kind of pointing towards each other?
They're kind of pointed towards each other, but away.
There're a lot of different variations; but yeah, X-Y typically.
That gives me a really good spread. But sometimes I can't remember what I did on all that. That's kind of my go-to thing. My room where we record at is not really that little. I have a control room separate from the live room. But it's very dry. I know the best studios are the ones that have the best-sounding rooms. At the same time, I like working with a bunch of vintage-sounding spring reverbs. A lot of times when I cut the vocal, I'll cut tracks. There will be the vocal, and then there's a spring reverb I have rigged up. I'm getting that effect right when I cut it. That's not ever going to be a plug-in.
Is it going into your headphones too so you can hear it?
I can do it if I wanted to, or I can adjust that however I want it. I usually like to sing a little bit dry. I pull one side off so I can hear my voice more in the room.
