A few years ago, you took a year off to make furniture, right?
I did, yeah. When your job is something that initially started as the thing you love most – and it was very lucky that it became my job – it becomes a bit of a racket when there are these cyclical patterns of writing and touring, and writing and recording, and then touring again. I wanted to make sure that my relationship with music was in a good place and that it was not habit over heart. I wanted to give myself a little break from music, and the only way I could do that was by immersing myself in something else. Otherwise, I’d end up saying yes to everything again. I took myself off to a tiny little village in the Lake District [of North West England] and I was in the workshop – eight until six every day – and I loved it. But it also made me realize how much I love music too.
Was that woodworking by hand?
Yeah, it was all hand tools. Master craftsmanship. Once you've mastered the hand tools, you're allowed to use the machines, so things get a little quicker.
In an interview I read, you were talking about working on Wilco's Cousin and mentioned a "beginner's mind."
Glenn [Kotche], Jeff [Tweedy, Tape Op #132], and Nels [Cline] especially, they are so in the moment when they're making something. They're unencumbered by expectations, I suppose, or the gravity of an immense talent, that could put them in a different frame of mind. But they were so malleable, responsive, and curious. To work with curiosity; I find that inspiring. The possibilities are all uninhibited, with a forward-motion that I love.
How do you keep your beginner's mindset? Was the furniture making detour a little bit of that?
I guess so. I think it's curiosity, but being porous. I suppose only working with people who instill that sense of curiosity and who don't make me feel inhibited. I don't really have a repeatable process, whether it's my own records or when I'm working with other people, so we can be open to allowing things to happen as they happen rather than trying to impose some process. Your peripheral vision might get a little bit lost.
When I first met you, you were working more as an artist, but around that time you started doing more production work. Was that a conscious decision to do more production?
No. To be honest, I have no desire to be a producer. [laughter] I love producing, but I don't have a desire to spend most of my time producing records. But when people who I love musically – or there's some creative chemistry between us – ask me to work with them, then I'm activated and I want to work with them. I've been lucky that that's happened quite consistently. Huw [Evans], the artist H. Hawkline, was the first person who asked me to produce something. When Bradford Cox asked me to do the Deerhunter record [Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?], that's when it went up a gear. On that session I got 20 years’ worth of experience in a couple of weeks with Bradford. [laughter] I do love doing it, but I would never call myself a producer. But it seems like there's some kind of arrival point, and I like things to be in motion.
It seems like almost half of what you do lately, though, isn't it?
I guess so, yeah. I'll produce your record, but I don't like calling myself a producer. The key for me is to not get carried away and impose what I think something should be on other people. To spend time being open and listening to them if they've sent demos or having conversations with them. Doing some pre-production so that I really understand where, if it's a band, where it all crosses over and where it all meets. It's such a nebulous role. Every artist and every band I've worked with demands something different from me. It's nice to be flexible so that if it does change, I change with it. I can react and respond accordingly to the different needs of the session.
You seem to gravitate towards more experimental or art rock bands. Is that by choice?
I don't really think about it. I'm thinking about my own output, mostly, and then someone will get in touch, and it will happen or not. I say no to a lot of things – not because I don't like it, but because I can't find the right sort of friction or I can't think of where I would fit in. Or because I think they're genuinely better off without me, you know? [laughs] If I work with someone, it's after a lot of thought.
I really like the Devendra Banhart record, Flying Wig, that you did. It feels very much like Devendra when you listen to it, but it also feels different. What was the process between the two of you?
Well, I've been friends with Devendra for a long time. When he asked me, I said to him, "There's going to have to be a transition here from us messing around as friends, going for drinks and having a laugh. There's going to be a change and it's going to shock you. We need to spend a bit of time together talking about music and getting used to our roles professionally, rather than just being buddies." We spent a bit of time listening to music together and then we went to Stella's [Mozgawa] studio in the desert and did some work together, getting used to that kind of working relationship. Then we hired this house in Topanga and Samur [Khouja] kitted it out, so it was a lovely studio. It used to be Neil Young’s house, and we lived and worked there together. It was a beautiful time of becoming closer as friends, but also that trust and that bubble that we didn't burst. We stayed in this little world of the album. You get this lovely little echo chamber where that's all we're all thinking about all the time, and this little sonic world comes from all of that. It all informs the record. A lot of it was one-on-one, sitting with synths and trying to work out arrangements and the character of each song. The band came in for a little bit, but it was very low-key sessions in this front room that Samur took and turned into the studio. It was creating a place for Devendra to feel comfortable and like he wanted to be there, which isn't a studio for him. It was tailored to Devendra to feel comfortable and to feel like he could wake up, we'd have breakfast, we'd go and see the ocean, and then we'd get to work.
He's always gravitated towards that. He and Noah [Georgeson] were doing work in a house in Big Sur for a while, and I helped set some gear up there.
Yeah, he's very sensitive to environment and rightly so. All these things affect the thing that you're making. I think we got it right. He didn't go home, which his manager couldn't believe. All in all, it was about six weeks. He went home twice to water his fern! [laughter]
Is there a different approach when you're working with a solo artist like John Grant or Devendra, as opposed to working with a band like Wilco or Dry Cleaning?
