You did a lot of punk rock stuff early on.
I did a lot of punk rock stuff and a bit of folky, alt- country kind of stuff — The Silos, The Plimsouls, The Geraldine Fibbers. But I don't know — I felt kind of done. I wanted to branch out a bit.
Do you feel like you were being pigeonholed?
I was doing it to myself. I made great sounding punk records. Some I produced, some I just engineered. But I never wanted to be an engineer. I engineered because I wanted to produce and I didn't want to hire an engineer. I hear it all in my head and I know I can figure out how to make it sound.
So you really wanted to produce?
Yeah. [Initially] I got a job at a studio and they put me to work soldering. I was doing the bookkeeping there too. I left the east coast to get away from all of that. I thought, "Oh, recording is good. That's something different." I had studied music arranging and really enjoyed it, so I decided I wanted to work in the room. Assistant engineer is the worst job. I've had some crap jobs, but that was the worst job I've ever had in my entire life.
In what way?
Everything! The hours, the conditions — you never get breaks. I didn't eat most of the time — I weighed like ninety-five pounds when I quit after two and a half years. It was the happiest day. That was in '91.
Did you learn stuff in that time?
I learned a lot in that time because I didn't know anything. I went from knowing absolutely nothing — not knowing what a direct box was — and during those two and a half years of assisting I got four or five engineering credits. It was all such a mystery. I have really good ears. I have perfect relative pitch. I have a great ability for arranging. But I had no technical aptitude at all. I love sound and I hear all the tiny little nuances, but getting there — it was excruciating. Two years of fifteen, eighteen hours a day. I'd work thirty, forty days straight. I was the only person that worked there.
What studio was it?
It was a home studio called O'Henry [Sound Studio]. Amazing room, amazing gear — they had two 24- tracks and this monster, customized API which I helped build. My first assistant credit was with a band called Southern Pacific. It was Keith Knudsen and John McFee from The Doobie Brothers and Stu Cook from Creedence. Keith turned out to be a really good friend over the years. He was one of my first freelance clients when I left. I set up a little home studio for him in his garage and I did a lot of demos. But you know, when I went freelance I had not seen other studios, and it was a rude shock to find they were not all as plush as where I had trained! When I went independent somebody referred me to Doug Messenger's studio. I was looking for a low budget room and I went in and I looked at it — "No." Then I tried it and said, "This sounds amazing." I worked at Doug's quite a bit. One day I when I was working Doug got a call and he was trying to blow off a client and I said, "I'll do it. I'll cover for you for a few hours." It was a blues piano player making a solo record. The artist turned out to be Andy Kaulkin from Epitaph and we hit it off really well — he said, "Oh, you should meet my boss." I said, "I'm not ever working for anybody ever again. I work for the artist. That's it." But then I gave him a tape and they called me to produce a record, and after that I was a record producer.
Do you think your career path is a little bit unusual?
Yes, it is. Ironically it's exactly what I set out to do — produce independent, edgy records, but with no plan and no method to it. My entire life I've always been extraordinarily lucky — undeserved luck that I don't expect or have any idea about or even truly appreciate a lot of the time when it happens. It's just always been like that for me. I love edgy, guitar-based music. I always get to make that kind of record. When I said, "Gosh, I'd really like to get out of the punk rock thing and more towards an edgy kind of country thing — like a Dwight Yoakam-y kind of sound — I wasn't even that familiar with the style. The Bottom Feeders gave me a copy of Guitars and Cadillacs and I really liked that record. I said, "Yeah, something like that!" A couple of months later I meet Pete [Anderson].
But not because you were even trying to meet Pete.
No, I was at dinner with a bunch of producers and engineers, because we all had the same manager, and they were all talking about Pro Tools. Someone asked me what I thought and I said, "I can't comment on it because I haven't used it. I'm really pretty entrenched in the analog world." Pete started talking very favorably about [Line 6's plug-in] Amp Farm and I was stunned. I said, "Aren't you a guitar player? That's really weird."
Well, I was pretty surprised with the interview with Pete, about his meth- odology with Amp Farm and Pro Tools.
You know, it's so much easier. When I think about all the struggles and years of trying to make amps sound good — it's great. No more mics getting bumped or falling. No more extra buzz and hum or speaker fatigue. No more unbearably bad sounding amps. When my indie records get reviewed they still comment on, "Wow, there are analog guitars." But hey, they're actually Amp Farm. I won't even mic an amp these days.
Even if you're producing somebody else?
For anyone. Just plug in. I never liked setting up mics in the first place. I really don't like it now, when I know I don't have to. Sound is in my brain, not in the tools.
So you worked two years as an assistant, hating it but learning stuff, and then found yourself mixing major label records right after that?
Mixing I love! I left [O'Henry] at the end of '91. '92 and '93 were scrounging. I lived on credit cards because I wouldn't take anything that wasn't rock. It had to be rock, or like The Silos — kind of edgy, country stuff. It wasn't like anybody knew who I was, so any referrals I got were from engineers that I worked with. I never had a lot of patience. I loved the artist. I could sit and do vocals for ten hours. When I was first assisting the producer said, "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" I said, "I'm going to be a record producer. I'm going to produce independent rock records." He burst out laughing and walked out of the room. When I quit my job after two and a half years everybody that I had met in town was laughing at me and saying, "You are high if you think anybody is going to hire you as an assistant anywhere else." I said, "No. I don't want to! I'm not ever going to do this job again." They were like, "Well, you're never going to get any work."
Don't you think people are going to read this and go, "God, I hate that Sally!"
Probably. Or they're going to think, "I'll never call her!" I guess by now it doesn't matter how it all happened.
Have you done work in larger studios?
I've worked in many of the larger rooms in town. They used to be better than they are now. I don't know if you've worked in many here, but some consider themselves the top echelon, so even the assistants are really snobby about the clients and frankly, many are snobby about the work that I do beyond the Dwight Yoakam records.
They don't want to hear about The Humpers.
And all my weird little artsy fartsy projects. I was engineering a moderately large budget record at one of the bigger studios and asked for an old RCA mic for the accordion — I thought it would sound great. The assistant said, "Well, that's not what we customarily use. May I recommend?" "Well actually, no. You may not recommend — no." A couple of days later it was just really burning me that they were being like this. They were just challenging me on everything. I had them tear down the entire set up of the entire room and I said, "I want 57s on everything — overheads, high hats, guitar cabs, Leslie — I want it on every instrument in this room." "Ha, ha, you're joking." I said, "No. I'm serious. I'll be back in an hour and I want everything set up please." "Well, we don't have that many 57s." I said, "Well, rent them then. Get them in here somehow."
Jesus!
The other thing was the machine wasn't aligned properly. In a place like that — twenty-two hundred bucks a day — I walk in, I'm listening to playbacks and this isn't what I put on tape. "The tech aligned the machines. It's not the machine. Maybe you're not used to the speakers." I was like, "I think you need to check it." I mean, the high end alignment was down like a dB and a half or something. Not to pick on any particular studio, but it's an overall comment on the huge decline in the quality of the bigger studios. as they have been hurt by the budget crunches and can't train or keep assistants and techs as they once could, and as some of the B rooms have become more organized and engineers are bringing more of their own gear or using Pro Tools at home.
Do you ever feel like when you get something like that, that it's partly gender-biased too?
There may be some of that. Maybe not. It's a natural question and people always ask it. But it's just such a competitive business, assistants everywhere are looking at engineers and producers and saying, "I could be that person! That person doesn't deserve to be sitting in that chair." I did it too. In the rock world, when I was an assistant, bands would come in and say, "Oh you know, you seem like a nice person, but we can't have you assist on our record. It's just not the right vibe." People are nervous about the unknown. This record is their whole life on the line. Then they'd grudgingly give in and after a week it was different, it was okay once they saw I knew what I was doing and I really cared about their record. I think it's much more of an advantage than a disadvantage. I mean nobody forgets you because you stick out like a sore thumb. I believe people just won't call me if they have a problem working with a woman. Even if they haven't met me and seen, "Oh, she doesn't look right for the part. There are no tattoos", in the punk rock world, in the alt country world, nobody cared. They want it to sound a certain way, so whoever is going to get them that sound, they're gonna go with. Many times that was me.
They listen to other projects you've done, and that's how you get all the work.
Almost always it's the band or artist that approaches me to do their record. Some producers get work partially based on their personal relationship with the band. I love what I do, but it's a job. I pour a lot of myself into it and I want to go home and check out at the end of the day, night, whatever. I don't think it's always a gift to the artist to know them better outside the studio. Within the studio confines you can develop a real respect and empathy for somebody based on the record making experience that really can get blown out of the water if you see them at a party. And it cuts both ways.
