First things first: Your record is great. I know everybody has told you that but it's really true. Anyway, you recorded this record at three different places, right?
Mostly at our studio in the Catskills, and Dave's — a lot of the mixing was done at Dave's. A lot of it was just done at our house — the bass and overdubbing.
Dave's place is Tarbox, right?
Yeah.
Is Tarbox sort of a big place — dimension wise? Is it his house or...?
It's a converted house. A really large place — sort of like a barn. Not an old house, a new one. A big vaulted ceiling where the living room used to be. Dave's partner, Greg, sort of re-vamped the house and moved some walls and stuff.
The record has a really big sound to it, like on the drums and I figured you were laying those down in a pretty decent sized space.
Well, the space is large and there's a slate floor. Most of the drums on our record and I know Wayne's [Coyne, of the Flaming Lips, who also did their record at Tarbox with Dave Fridmann] too, we only used two mics.
There are a lot less guitars on this record than on the previous ones and that seems to be happening, lately with you, the [Flaming] Lips, and to a lesser extent, us [the Witch Hazel sound]...
Well, I think most people tend to change a little bit. I don't think anybody would want to be stuck with just orchestral sounds...
Yeah, it just seems to me to be a real zeitgeist. Obviously we aren't calling each other up to find out what the next thing is. It just seems to be happening naturally...
I think it's just laziness, [laughter] you know? I think it's pure laziness on the part of not really wanting to spend 20 hours fiddling with guitar pedals — finding an amp that works...
Yeah, plus it's just plain fun to record strings...
Yeah...
Lets talk about gear.
You know, Dave's studio is relatively basic. He doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles — he just has a great ear. I think that he has gear which he feels comfortable with and not a lot of sirens and foghorns and things like that. Anything of that nature, the band probably brings themselves.
It's more of the environment...
I think so. He has a wonderful big, black mixing desk — Otari I think it is — a big old thing. A lot of it, I think, is from him doing so many records he sort of pares down to what it is he feels comfortable using...
He knows what works.
Yeah, and a lot of the other stuff, he just doesn't feel any charm towards.
Is there anything significantly different about the recording of this record than from the previous ones?
I think on the past records it was actually more helter-skelter. We would just sort of go in at night, when we could get cheap studio time. I think the first two records were probably mixed on an old Peavey board. [laughter] A lot of that, (with ourselves, Dave, Wayne and Michael) we were all cutting our teeth and actually learning how to work within the studio because we never really had the money to have a great studio — where it just came through a great preamp and it sounded good. It was always sort of fudging around. It half worked and half didn't — there were things you didn't know anything about. We've all sort of grown up as our bands have all gotten bigger, but the mindset is still there — that you never really trust equipment. It helps that Dave owns his own studio now, in that he can do whatever he wants. It's all his equipment. He knows what he has and that makes it all the more easier, and quicker, than going to a bigger studio.
You've pretty much worked with Dave exclusively. He's good at what he does, but I assume the comfort level you have with him is appealing too, right?
It just began as him playing bass with us in the band and he was the only one who knew what the different knobs meant. [laughter] He was a student at Fredonia University [near Buffalo] doing engineering classes and he would have some of that free midnight to 8 a.m. studio time — our first record was his senior project. Yourself Is Steam was handed in as his senior project.
That's a pretty good senior project. [laughter]
So, the same with the stuff we were doing with the Lips and things at that point. It was basically, "I have some cheap time at a university studio. Not much gear but you can mess around with it. Come on, let's go." That also helps that at Fredonia there are kids who go to music school. If you want horns or strings, they're eager to come and play and that's kind of a plus.
Were there any records or anything that you had been listening to that made you come to Dave and say, "Oh, I really dig this sound." Do you ever come in like that?
We're all pretty close. He [Dave], and I and Sean [Grasshopper] are all pretty much on the same wavelength. We really don't know what it is we want. We generally know what it is we don't want. Those are the things that when they rear their ugly head all three of us will reach for the panic button [laughter] and press "erase" quite quickly. Sometimes there is a battle there, but for the most part you just sort of listen to the music and try and not repeat yourself too often. If some of our earlier records were a bit more aggressive and even abrasive in terms of their tone, then this one was probably a subconscious effort to make it sound like a really worn-out cassette. Something that had a comfort level immediately by putting it in.
Probably my favorite part of the record is the little instrumental things, like segues between songs. Did you ever feel like you're sitting there surrounded by glockenspiels [laughter] and wondering, "Does this belong on a rock/pop record?" Does that ever come up?
It does, but only in the way of how you present it. We don't really think of them so much as instrumentals, sometimes they just act as nice segues to give the listener sort of a breather from something that is either 2/4 or 4/4 or heavy orchestral, something so that you can step out of it. We really haven't done many instrumentals in the past and I think that probably some of these would have had words but it was laziness. [laughter] You're forced to really express yourself without words. It sort of ups the challenge to say, "Well, is this instrumental really kicking our ass or is this just muzak for the sake of it?" Generally, people can tell the difference quite quickly on the first listen, "Does this sound like filler or does this have a purpose? Is it setting up another song quite well?" I think, for those reasons, it's something we're all quite conscious of. We could do instrumentals out the ass for the next 30 years but is it really doing something? Is it saying something? I think the same thing that runs through anyone's mind certainly runs through ours if not more, because we're in a sort of high public eye. Every little thing tends to be over-analyzed when all you can say is, "Hey, we were just having fun." It was not meant to change music, it's really to just have a little fun for two minutes.
I see that Deserter Songs was mastered by Greg Calbi [of Masterdisc]. The reason I bring that up is that when we did the interview with Don Dixon he mentioned how Calbi is the only guy he uses for mastering. Is that the same with you guys? Or did Dave or the label point him out?
No, Grasshopper had just seen his name around. There's another guy there who is equally as good as Calbi, but for whatever reason, we worked with Greg and it seemed to work out. He had a few ideas that certainly helped the record out — in that process.
So many musicians don't seem to understand mastering. Could you talk about what you think the mastering did for this record or what you think of mastering in general and why you think people should do it?
Well, there are a couple of different schools and we talk about it quite often. There are a lot of groups that record a bunch of crap and believe if you send it to Bob Ludwig [#105], he's going to turn it around and make it sound like Sgt. Pepper... or Pet Sounds. That's really not the case. There's other bands that sort of do their record and send it to someone else and say, "Well, put your stamp of approval on it or give us your sound."
Give us your sonic imprint!
Yeah, so that nineteen different Howie Weinberg [#30] records all sound somewhat the same. I'm just using names for whatever reason, but for us, we go in there and we're very meticulous. We spent a year recording, why would you go in for the last 2 crucial days just get fucked up and do nothing or send it in the mail and hope it comes back? We're there and we always tend to look at the masterer as somebody who can articulate your ideas in that final step. Maybe someone who will give an alternative or something you hadn't thought of. Greg would do that, we'd say, "Well, it's not warm enough." He'd say "Well, I can do this or I can do this," instead of just saying, "I'm gonna do this the way I do it and fuck you." You have to listen to other records, basically. You'll find a continuity there amongst maybe even one guy's records, either Neil Young's or John Lennon's records. You can say, "Well, that's really good, and probably Greg Calbi had a lot to do with those Lennon records." So, why not? If you want a "modern rock" sound, there are guys who just do that sort of sound.
