We seem to have a very, very similar path into recording.
Very similar. In your Tape Op End Rants, it's hilarious, because they're almost always parallel to the way I look at things. I guess a lot of that comes from both of us going through the process and being in this business at similar times.
We both started off in bands in the punk, post-punk, whatever era. Did you go into studios to record and get fascinated by it from there?
Totally. We were seniors in high school when we started our first band. We all liked a bunch of those British ska bands, like The Specials and The English Beat, and we started playing their covers. Two or three months into being a band, our guitar player wrote a song, and we're like, "You can write a song?" So, me and the drummer were like, "Heck, let's try to write songs too." That band picked up and got popular quickly because we were high school kids; we were the hip thing to go do, to go see.
That was Pressure Boys?
Yeah. The guy who booked Cat's Cradle at that point said, "Hey, I could get you gigs out of town if you had a demo tape." He set us up one early Sunday morning at the Cat's Cradle and recorded us. At the end of the day, he was like, "Well, I'll tell you what. This is not going to come out that good. You guys should go to this guy everybody talks about in Winston-Salem named Mitch Easter [Tape Op #21], because everybody says he knows what he's doing." We agreed. Walking into the studio with Mitch was probably the same way it was for you at that point. We walked in there and it was all these things we didn't recognize. Big 2-inch tape machines and mixing consoles. Mitch is, of course, known for all kinds of cool, funky gear. We thought it was magical.
That's really lucky too, to work with someone who's not only a top-notch musician but sympathetic to the music you were doing.
When we let him do his thing, it was great. But, at one point, he made the mistake of saying, "Hey, I need a couple of extra hands during mixing. How about when we get to the chorus you turn the trombone up a little bit, right here to this mark on the board." Once he taught us how to do that, we were all over the board. Everybody's inching their own instruments up a little bit when no one's looking. By the end of an hour of mixing, I'd look over and everybody's faders were at the top, and all the needles are in the red. We printed a pretty hot mix. [laughter]
Oh, my god.
But you're right. We were really lucky. We did come out of there with a much better-sounding demo than your average band might have gotten. That helped the band. It also exposed all of us, and maybe me in particular since I went down that path, to more of what a real session could be like. And the magic in the studio! Especially at that time, when the magic was more physical and in front of you than it is with a mouse.
Right. Hands on faders.
If somebody had a harebrained idea, we really had to think for a minute on how we could pull it off. Maybe we've got to turn the tape over and run it backwards or really carefully spot erase a section to make room for this nutty idea between the really important backing vocals we spent three days cutting. We had to plan it, and it took several people together to learn what to do, then rehearse it, and do it with the red light on at the right time. Also, the budget kept us from going too far down that pathway. After the first record we did with Mitch [Jump! Jump! Jump!], we scheduled time to do a second record [Rangledoon] within a year. Both of these were soon after we started the band. At the last minute he couldn't do the second record, because his band, Let's Active, got a record deal. They were going on the road with R.E.M. So, Don Dixon [Tape Op #8] came and did our second record. At first, we were terrified of that. We were pretty irreverent. Once we knew one guy was in, that was the only guy we believed in. We didn't trust anybody else. Dixon came in very different, but also very great in a different way. He was more of a father figure. He'd tell us, "Shut up. Get your hands off the board. Let me try and finish what I'm trying to do." [laughter] I'm sure we were hard to work with because we were loud.
Because you were young.
We were really young. Mitch and Don were ten years older than us. We were 17 and they were 27 or 28. To us, they were old as hell! The first time we met Don he was in the middle of finishing R.E.M.'s debut record, Murmur, with Mitch. We were at the end of the day with Mitch, working on our first record. Don showed up with this 1/4-inch reel and says, "I've got the first mix. Let's play it!" We stuck around and listened. They put on the mix that Dixon had just done of that song "Pilgrimage." Compared to what we were doing, I remember our minds being blown. It sounded amazing. We were lucky to work with people like that right off the bat. It definitely did inspire me to like that side of the business as much as playing.
What was your path towards the studio, at that point?
I guess my first attempts at recording were in my house with The Pressure Boys and all of our equipment. I'd bought a Fostex X-15 in 1984.
A cassette 4-track?
Yes. I still have the receipt for it. I was psyched to get the damn thing. I would record a couple of bands, like Dex Romweber came over with his sister [Sara Romweber]. We would just use the beat-up [Shure SM]57s and [Shure SM]58s our band was practicing through. I had no concept, at that point, that I had to put the sound I wanted in front of the microphone. I thought a snare drum was a snare drum and a mic was a mic, and I just had to record the thing. Then later I'd make it sound like Rush, Aerosmith, The Cars, or whomever. I figured that out later! So, The Pressure Boys did a couple records with Don and with Mitch. Then, the last record we did, our bass player was like, "This guy in town has a small studio. Let's go in there and do it ourselves." It got it off to a good start, but we didn't really know how to make a record. We ended up taking it over to this other guy, the only guy in Chapel Hill who had a 2-inch machine. He was a very good engineer, but sort of a stubborn individual. However, he did finish the record with us. A little bit after that, me and another guy started the second band I was in. We went back to that same studio. I had a good relationship with this cranky engineer. Other bands wanted to make records, and he was the go-to guy in Chapel Hill that had a 2-inch machine. People started calling me, because they knew I had been in there and knew the guy. They said, "Come help us make this record. You know this guy." I had absolutely no idea how to produce a record, and certainly no idea how to engineer a record. But I went in there and I produced a few records by default. I got lucky, because I got to be the guy sitting on the sofa making comments. After a handful of records like that, I got frustrated in not being able to get this engineer to do what I wanted. He was good, but he was also rigid. I was thinking, "I've got to learn how to engineer." I had learned how to run the equipment, from a simplistic standpoint, turning things on, punching in, and running the tape machine. But I didn't understand the actual engineering very well. At some point, he just started walking out of the room and I had to figure it out. About that time, Wes Lachot [Tape Op #21] was moving his studio [Overdub Lane] out of where he had been forever. It actually used to be in part of the current Cat's Cradle location in Chapel Hill; Wes's old control room glass is still a window in there. Wes was moving into studio design and getting out of engineering. He said, "Hey, man, you can come into my room all you want." I had the key and learned how to do it. I got lucky in the first couple of months doing sessions at Wes's studio, Overdub Lane. I got to mix a song that Don Gehman had produced.
Oh, wow.
This 2-inch tape showed up; it had all the mix notes and had all the tracking notes. I could see how it was put together. It blew my mind. I put the reel on, aligned the tape machine, and every single fader I pulled up sounded fantastic. The kick drum was "done," and the snare drum was "done." The bass and the guitar tones were right on, and the vocal was right on. It was not hard to mix, because it was there already. I looked at the track sheets and it wasn't magic what he was doing. He was using good gear, but it made me immediately aware that, "Oh, if I want this snare sound, put it on tape that way." It's supposed to sound that way from the beginning. It's not a "fix it in the mix" situation. Up until that point I don't think I knew that. From 1995 on, I knew that and it changed the way I tracked. It took me a while, but I'd heard what a fat snare drum can sound like recorded. I would listen to the one I'm recording, and I was like, "I'm not there yet." I figured it all out, eventually.
Did you have any local mentors, or anyone else at that point?
In the beginning, I definitely picked up a lot from Steve Gronback, the guy who owned that 2-inch studio [TGS Studios] where I was taking all these bands to. And Wes would say things like, "Just because it's a bass guitar and you think there's too much bass, you might think you need to turn down the bass knob. That's not necessarily the right answer. What part of the bass is the problem?"
"Get more specific."
At the time, he had an Amek Angela console in there which did have nice EQs on it. Then pretty quickly he got lots of nice Neve and API preamps. Those made a big difference. Eventually he had these nice API consoles in there. I knew what I was doing by that point too, so I guess that's some of it. But I got to a place where I didn't struggle getting the sounds anymore.
It's one thing to be able to record, put a mic up, and get a sound. But for the next step, I need to make it sound like I want it to sound. That Don Gehman reel set the bar.
Oh, yeah. It can go different ways. There are some bands that don't want to sound like that. They don't want to sound big and fat and full. Working with Mac McCaughan from Superchunk [Tape Op #76] over the years was always interesting. I've done records with him since '95. He was the guy who helped me talk Wes into getting a 2-inch tape machine at Overdub. Back in the day, it was hard to get Mac to let me mix with much of a stereo spread. He didn't want it to be big, loud, powerful, and wide. That changed a lot over the years. Gradually, as I worked with him, the records got wider and bigger-sounding. Then there are some bands who want to make the next U2 record. My own bands were always trying to go against the grain. By the time I started producing records though, a lot of the bands I was working with were trying hard to make commercial records and making big league sounding records. That was a problem, if you had a drummer in the band who was not very good.
Right.
I knew what I was trying to make, and what they were capable of, and it was tough. Especially when we were tracking on tape. I remember, with a lot of bands, where I'd just be happy they made it through the song without dropping their sticks.
"A full take! Awesome." You're still at Overdub Lane, right?
Yes and no. What you don't know about me is when COVID hit, Wes closed the studio temporarily. It's open again now, but at that point he closed it down. He said, "Nobody in there." So, COVID hit. The studio closed. And I was in debt. I had gotten into aviation in my twenties and gotten my pilot's license. I love aviation, and I always wanted to get back into it in some way. I had started a side drone business in 2016, doing aerial imaging and mapping and civil engineer-type aerial work. That led me to a bunch of freelance work with a drone startup company based in Virginia Beach, VA. In the middle of COVID they offered me a pretty killer job as the director of their testing department. It was a pretty fantastic opportunity, and I was lucky to be offered the job. I've been doing that for a living lately. Overdub Lane is a fantastic place, and Wes and I are still on great terms. But I had to make some income and move forward with my life. I've been traveling a lot helping to set up residential drone delivery hubs where we're delivering from Walmarts to peoples' homes with drones.
