I want to talk about Alex Cuba's Healer album. It's an amazing sound. How much of that is you?
The Alex Cuba record was, in many ways, the perfect culmination of all that I have been doing all these years. The Spanish aspect of it, the jazz and soul influences; he's a singer/songwriter, and it's a largely acoustic album. He reminds me of a classic kind of artist from the 1970s, and a perfect fit for me to work with. The record started when he sent me demos of himself playing guitar and singing, and asked, "What would you do?" I did that thing where I'm alone in a room and I play all the instruments. I stacked the track up, and I sent it back to him.
I love the tune, "Realidad Que No Escogimos." Is that what I'm hearing there?
Well, not the song that you're asking about. Alex eventually came to New York and we did another part of the record with a rhythm section tracked live in the studio, and I wasn't playing on those tracking sessions. I brought those rhythm tracks back to my place and filled them up with additional elements. My main concern was, "Will this be coherent? Will this all sound like the same production, if some songs are made by one or two people playing everything? Will the other songs with a more traditional rhythm section tracked live in a room feel like more of an old school recording?" I had a lot of conversations with Alex about it. The track that you're asking about, "Realidad;" that's one that was cut live with Alex playing guitar, a bass player [Rob Jost], and a drummer [Rob DiPietro] in another studio. I was recording it, and basically just dancing.
That's awesome.
Alex talks about the effect of my dancing on that record, about how he would look through the glass and I'd be dancing around the studio. He said, "Your dancing was a real influential element in the tracking of those songs." I brought it home and played guitar, vibes, and Rhodes [electric piano] on that song, and I was really pleased to discover that it all does still feel like my production. There's a way that each of us produces and records that has its own personality. I've been playing with that idea more over time: How far can I go, and still maintain my identity? If I'm not playing, but I am recording, does it still have my sound? If I'm not playing or recording, and I'm just dancing, am I still transmitting something?
Can you trace how, as a young kid, your producing identity developed?
I don't remember the first time I walked into a recording studio, but it must have had an impact on me. By the time I was three or four years old I was taking piano lessons, but I didn't want to take piano lessons anymore. I told my parents that the room I wanted to be in was the room with the musicians and the microphones, not the room with the piano teacher. I definitely had some concept of what recording was, where it happened, and who the people were that made records. I started playing drums when I was 5 or 6, jamming with my dad and local teachers in Madison, [Wisconsin]. The first was Clyde Stubblefield, who came over to the house because he was a friend of my father's. He didn't really teach exactly. He guided, you could say, and encouraged me.
You put out a tune about Clyde ["Handed Down"]. It was so touching. That's the demo, right? But you released it to the world.
There's been a real evolution in my thinking. I used to believe that there was some fundamental difference between a demo and a record, and I feel that much less now.
When you work so quickly, is that because you don't know where it's going, or because you do know where it's going?
I don't really know! Sometimes I have a vision and I'm trying to catch it before I lose it, but a lot of times I really don't know what it's going to be. With that Clyde song, I really didn't know what it was going to sound like. I had a little bit of an idea that I wanted to write a sweet, story-song, almost from the point of view of a child, and underneath it I wanted a Clyde-styled breakbeat.
Did you know what you wanted to say, or did that evolve?
That came out of a song club that I'm in. Every two weeks I'm emailed another song title, or a lyric; something that can get your juices flowing. That week the title was "Hand Me Down," so I started thinking about hand-me-downs, or things that are handed down. Clyde handed something down to me, and that's how I approached that song.
How complete was the song before you started recording?
The songwriting happens in tandem with production. I might walk into the studio with a lyric sketch and some chords, and the song will take shape as I'm recording it. I try to write songs that you can play on the guitar or at the piano, or you could sing a cappella, but I know that the songs are also shaped by production. I think that's goes back to the time when I was 12 or 13, and I learned to record, to play guitar, piano, to program, to sing – I learned all of what I do now by doing them all at the same time.
Your album Mucho Leo sounds as much like production as songs.
That's cool; thank you for saying that. I know it has a different life to it, because I'm not precious. When I play all the instruments, I try to keep it feeling pretty performed. I don't overly fix a lot, and I leave it rounded on the edges. I leave it a little sloppy, a little loose, because there's something, particularly in the rhythm, that happens when I'm locking with myself. I know it can happen when I'm not playing too. The Alex Cuba track we were talking about; we got a great feeling, and I wasn't playing bass or drums on that.
You were dancing!
I was dancing, and who knows, maybe the dancing did something. [laughs] But in terms of what happens on those tracks where I play everything, and I also record it, even the introduction of an engineer can change it, because I'm so fast at grabbing a punch-in, or rolling back to exactly where I need to be. That communication, of having to talk to someone else, can trip me up. My house is generally set up so that there's a general version of "set up" that's ready to go at all times. Right now, there are two ribbon mics that are ready to be the room mics at any point, and there's this Bock 251 that is my go-to workhorse mic. The drums are mic'd up and those mics can move around the room to grab guitar amps, vibraphone, or percussion. Everything is ready to record. There is almost never set up time; maybe a half hour.
Our studio needs are usually zeroed, so if I want to do something of my own I have to really be committed because of set up time.
Yeah, I did a lot of work for three or four years at Let 'Em In [Studios, NY]. What I loved about it, initially, was that it was a 15-minute walk from my house, it was cheap, and I could run it by myself. But I used to say to the owner, "I don't know why you don't keep everything mic'd up in here." My mentality was not that of a studio owner, it was that of a guy like me, "Why do I have to waste time every time I come here to set up the whole room?" I did the same thing in that room that I've done in my own room, now that I have the space. I'd go in and set up the kit, mic the piano, set up the Rhodes, set up a guitar rig, set up the bass rig, and basically prepare the room as if a band were about to record. Then I would move from station to station. I made a lot of Mucho Leo that way. We also made Alex Cuba's record there, and we made Joy Dragland's last EP [Tumble Town] there.
How long does it take you to make a track this way?
Almost all of the tracks on Mucho Leo are made in a day, and that might include set up. "Tonight Someone is Me" was a day. On most of Mucho Leo, that whole record went through two iterations of mixes, and, in most cases, it's a tweaked version of the rough mix that's on the record. I couldn't get it back. "Speak to Me in Spanish" is the demo. When I was making it, I told myself, "Well, when I go back and fix, it I'll do this and that." When I tried to get back into it – even though it's the same guy in the same room, you're never in that moment again. That's part of the reason I work so quickly.
That is the "moment."
Yes. The "moment," meaning the closed circuit of creativity when you are working on a song.
And a moment can be a moment [snaps fingers], or it can stretch. It's an elastic thing.
Sure. There's an argument to be made that a moment could last the length of a record. If you were working every day on a record for three weeks or a month, that could be a creative moment. But because I tend to work piecemeal, where I'll do a song then a week later I'll do another song, or month later another song for the same project, I have to try and stay as committed as I can, and get as much down as I can. I recorded a track yesterday. It sounds so ridiculous, but I was trying to make it to see my daughter's gymnastics recital. I found myself playing this shaker part, because I was thinking that I really heard shaker on the track. I wasn't going to leave the room until the shaker was finished. It was 4:45, and I'm supposed to be in the gymnastics place at 5:15, and here I was doing this shaker overdub. It's because I knew if I didn't do it then, even the shaker probably wasn't gonna feel right if I came back at a different time.
Have you figured this out over time, or was there a "eureka" moment?
The closest thing to eureka for me has been, over time, coming to terms with the fact that that is the work. It's not a rehearsal for the work, or a demo for the record. Those become the records. Yesterday, for example, I cut drums first, then started to put electric piano on it, then put the whole thing through [Pro Tools'] Elastic Audio and slowed it down 15 bpm. Then I realized it was too fast, so I recut drums, recut piano.
When you work with a client, I imagine it's still a similar process.
Yes, and it's taken me a long time to understand that this is what I'm offering clients a lot of times.
What do you mean?
