You were just getting started when we met in 2005 or 2006. What brought you to engineering?
It's the classic story. I've always been into music. Growing up, my parents put a huge emphasis on music. My mom played guitar and sang a little bit, so some of my early memories are of her playing some sweet songs on guitar. But they were always listening to cool music. At a young age, that sparked my interest in music in general. In high school, I found punk rock, and that set me on this path of learning how to play instruments and record. I was playing in bands and jamming with friends after I had gotten my first guitar and had put together a "Frankenstein" sort of drum kit. I had some stuff in my bedroom, and my dad eventually bought me a cassette 4-track. It was a Korg CR-4, with onboard monitors and onboard effects, and I would record anybody playing music from my high school at the house. I was working on all sorts of random little projects: From punk bands, to metalcore bands, to small combos with just drums, to a DJ and bass, doing little hip-hop beats. That set me down this path of eventually a whole career, which I didn't know at the time because it was just a hobby, and I was having fun. I went deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole.
It's interesting that that's how you started, because one thing I remember – because I come from punk rock background as well – is that you really embodied the DIY spirit. Any time we were hanging out, if a cool idea came up you were always the one who said, “Yeah, we can figure out a way to do that.”
Totally. I think that's where engineering found me more than I found it. Just that attitude and approach towards most things. It's like, “Yeah, let's figure it out. We can get this done somehow.” It's like that to this day. Even in a bigger studio, I'll always run into some weird issue, so I’ll say, “All right, let's figure out how to do it in a cool way.” I guess I never thought about that until you said it, but I've approached life in that way, and it directly correlates with engineering – I guess, my style of engineering.
Moving from those early days, what was the transition like going from that environment into a more structured studio environment? Was that something that happened gradually, or all at once?
It definitely happened gradually. During high school, I found a college that taught recording. I didn't even know that that was really a thing. Up until that point, I had never been in a real recording studio or seen professional gear, let alone had the knowledge of how a compressor or anything like that worked. But I found a college that I ended up attending. That's where I learned and scratched the surface of what professional recording was. And luckily, that college – it was Ex'pression [College] in Emeryville, [CA] – gave us a lot of hands-on time with some of the gear. We used to be able to book eight hours a month. I had a bunch of friends; we would pool our time together and get in the studios and figure it out. We were in there often. That experience allowed me to do a lot of trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn't. Obviously, the instructors were great too, but a lot of it I didn’t really learn until I got my hands on it and was problem solving on my own.
My good friend, Paul Gold, always says, "There's no way like the hard way.” Recording nonstop for years is definitely the hard way.
Oh, for sure. That was serious gear in there. The room that we were in was a Neve VR [mixing console]. In another room, there was an SSL 4000 E/G, a Frankenstein console. It was cool to be able to play with that before getting into real studios years later and reacquainting myself with that gear again.
Was it from that network-building in Emeryville and in the East Bay, as well as the connections that you made from recording all these different groups, that brought you to work with E-40 [Earl Tywone Stevens, Sr.]?
It was a snowball effect. I was working at Guitar Center early in my career, and I had met Kenya Baker, who was a guitar player and producer. He was playing with Joss Stone. Towards the end of my time at Ex'pression, he came around in my life again. He was recording a project, and I ended up being his engineer. That was my first engineering gig. We ended up at Fantasy [Studios] and Studio 880, which ended up being JingleTown [Recording], owned by Green Day. And then eventually he took me to what would become my home at Infinite Studios, owned by my mentor, Michael Denten. It was there that I met E-40. I was interning for a few weeks, maybe even a month, and then I met E-40 at the studio, and he asked me to roll a joint for him.
A great engineering skill!
Exactly. It's a great skill to have. [laughter] A few weeks later, I got a call from Michael Denten, and he said that E-40 needed an engineer. Michael said, “Just go up to his house. He needs to set up a little Pro Tools rig in an existing studio.” I went up there and struggled through the night, because I had never set up something like that before. I probably left around 6 or 7 a.m. He asked me if I could come back a few hours later to engineer; I guess the engineer had skipped out on him. I didn't know it in the moment, but that would begin ten years as E-40's personal recording engineer.
What album was that? It's good to flag it because E-40 releases 13 albums a year. [laughter]
For sure, our output was heavy through those ten-plus years. The first album was a double album called Revenue Retrievin’.
Yeah. The Day Shift and Night Shift versions. [The two albums were released at once. -Ed.]
Yes, that was my first credited work. What was interesting about my time with E-40, is that up until that point I hadn't done that style of engineering. Obviously, 40 is the biggest rapper from our region. It was intense going into it because it was high stakes. I had to figure out, on my own, how to record that style of music. We were in there with heavy hitters, producer-wise. One of the first producers I worked with up there was Willy Will [William Hodge II] from Atlanta, and he had pretty high standards. I had to pick it up quick. Directly after that, Rick Rock [Ricardo Thomas] came in. These are guys that I looked up to already, from their past work. There was a lot of pressure. I had to do it, and I had to do it quick, because: One: I wanted to keep the job. And two: these are heavy hitters. I did it, but it was definitely trial by fire!
Was it new engineering to you, in terms of what you were asked to do and the type of tools you were using? Or was it new in that the recording was more decentralized and some of it happened at his house and some of it happened on the road?
It's definitely a little bit of both. Up until that point, I was used to recording musicians in the studio.
Go in, set up mics for a band, let them play, mix those tracks, and done.
Exactly. With hip-hop, at least with what we were doing, it was very sample-based as far as the production goes. A lot of it was either played on [AKAI] MPCs or keyboards – MIDI, which I hadn't had a lot of experience with up until that point. A good deal of it was getting two-tracks of beats from producers, and eventually them sending stems over – or what we call stems now, which is essentially just tracked-out files. A lot of it is just one microphone and the artist. If there are other artists involved, they take turns on the microphone. And flying in files. But also, the recording style was so different. There's so much hands-on with the recording, as far as working Pro Tools like an instrument. Especially with the way 40 records; he would record just a few bars at a time. It's not like I could do one full take all the way through and call it. It's a lot of recording this, moving this file, moving that file, adding an effect, making a chop and screw, making a beat drop, and doing this quickly. It also involved imparting production of my own into it by making things interesting. It's one thing to just be recording over a beat, but you enter a new world when you can turn it into something cool. It forced me to be a lot more creative in my engineering style.
You were learning how to maximize the way this guy worked through adaptive processes and working quickly, while keeping the energy up. But you were still being asked to do a lot of on-the-fly editing, on-the-fly effect placement, and that type of thing?
Yeah, 100 percent. There's a whole flow that goes into it. Sitting in front of the computer, essentially controlling the vibe, a lot falls on my shoulders as an engineer. I’ve got to know when to stop the music. Even when no one's recording, I’ve got to know when to play the music or at what volume, and I have to anticipate this based on reading the energy in the room.
