Where did you go to school?
The education thing is a bit of an issue for me with kids going to these recording schools. I went to Tufts University, outside Boston, majoring in electrical engineering. I didn't get the recording bug until I started running the P.A. company at school. They gave me the keys to the equipment shed and I just ran with them! I'd do live to 2-track demos for Tufts-based bands with a DAT machine my father gave me. I borrowed an 8-track from a friend and started doing multitrack stuff in the middle of the night in the equipment shed. It was hilarious! Before going off to Tufts, my father said, "I really don't think you should get into this business. It's a really tough gig. It's hard on your relationships. It's hard on your future family. You're away all the time. Go and get an education in something stable." The music business was not really an option for me in my household. My mother's family is all Jewish with the stereotypical rants — "You're going to school! You're going to an Ivy League school!" They all wanted me to be an architect, but electrical engineering was closer to what I thought I wanted to do. I enjoyed it. I learned to design circuits, solve problems empirically, deal with signal flow — things that are underlying principles of the recording studio. I never actually got to build audio equipment in the end, which is what I really wanted to do then. I started playing in bands and recording and partying instead, and that was the end of that. I graduated with a fine GPA and now all I remember is V=IR! I remember sitting in front of the computer doing all these circuit simulations and saying to myself, "No fuckin' way am I going to sit in front of the computer all my life." This was before Pro Tools of course, and all my idols were working with 2 inch machines. Now here I am sitting in front of a computer all the time, but at least I'm having a lot more fun than many friends in my electrical engineering class!
What was the impetus to move out west when you could have stayed on the East Coast and worked there?
When I was on the East Coast I was working at Sony as an assistant for about three years, where I assisted Michael Brauer [Tape Op #37] for a long time. He was a fantastic teacher and mentor. Eventually I decided I was done with Sony because Michael no longer worked there, and the focus of the studio became hip-hop — I wanted to rock! Around this time I started getting some engineering work with Phil Ramone [#50]. I did a few sessions with him and he took me on as his home studio engineer and tech. I wanted to take the leap into full time freelance work, but it's incredibly hard to leave the comfort of the nest that is the studio — which is a fairly well paying, somewhat steady job — to go off and do something on your own that you're not quite sure of. What made the transition easier was a phone call from Don Wershba at SSL. He called me because I had built up a relationship with the company through Michael Brauer, and our work on the then new 9000. The SSL guys would come over all the time showing us new tricks. They asked me if I wanted to consult for them, introducing and supporting the Axiom-MT (their new digital console) in 1998. They sent me to England and trained me on all their products from top to bottom. That gig helped me to pick up a lot of work, and introduced me to a lot more studios and engineers in New York.
You must have been in Oxford then, right?
I was in Oxford for a week. I came back and at about that time I rekindled a lot of friendships with people from college who had moved out to L.A. My mother had also moved out to Monterey, California around that time and so I had been visiting the West Coast a lot. I remember a very specific trip where I got back to New York, got off the plane and into the car to go back to the city and it was raining and — this is like a movie pitch — and I could see the skyline as I was coming down the ramp to go through the Lincoln tunnel and I was like, "You know what? I'm done with New York. If someone called me tomorrow and said, 'Move to L.A.,' I'm going to go." A week later SSL called me and said, "Our guy left in L.A. We need you to go out there and fill in for a while, see if you like it. If you like it, you can have the job." I went out for a little while — and it was my first office job, my first nine to five. It was the first time I ever had health insurance and all these perks of a regular job. So I took the gig. I went back to New York, packed up all my gear, had a party and moved to L.A. I was at SSL for ten months. It was the best job I could have asked for at the time because of the great reputation of the company. SSL has consoles in practically every single studio in L.A., except the one we're sitting in! As a result, I got to meet nearly every single studio manager in town, a whole bunch of great producers, great engineers and rekindle friendships with people I'd met years before — maybe through my father or people I'd assisted in New York when I was a kid. It was one of greatest years of my life. I could work nine to five and still do studio sessions with my friends at night. That's what led me to work at Cello. We sold a console to Candace [Stewart] and Gary [Myerberg] at Cello. I got to be friends with them and I was hanging out there a lot. It was right down the street from the SSL office, so whenever I wasn't doing anything at the office I'd go down there and see what was going on and who was working. Bill Bottrell [Tape Op #59] was in there, Rich Costey and all these amazing cats. I would just go over and say, "Hey, is everything okay? No problems? Good. All right, cool, I'm just going to hang out with you." Then I ran into Jim Scott [#75] at Cello. I had recorded a Natalie Merchant show on the truck in New York with my father, and Jim wound up mixing it. There was Jim working in this room with all these tapestries and incense and tape and great microphones and great bands. He says to me, "Hey, what are you doing? You should be working here. You should be working at Cello, not doing some desk job." The next day his assistant left! I ran into Jim again that day and he said, "My guy just left, do you want to come work with me? I'm doing the Chili Peppers record next month." It was just this series of fortunate events that continues to lead me to where I am today. That record was By the Way. I gave my resignation to SSL on September 10, 2001. The next day the shit hit the fan and every single session in town was cancelled because everyone was freaking out. I left this cushy job at SSL and then the country was in turmoil and I had a month of no work.
Tell me about some of the artists you've worked with. You just did the Heavens record with Joe Steinbrick and Matt Skiba from the Alkaline Trio.
Yes, they're awesome, really fun guys. I had talked about this record with Matt during the Alkaline Trio's Crimson record that I recorded. There was one song where he doubled his vocal an octave down and it was just the two of us in the room and I said, "That's a really great vocal range for you. You should maybe think of doing songs specifically like that." He said, "I've got a whole other record like that." So I told him, "If you ever need help with that record call me." Right after that he introduced me to his friend Ben Lovett, whose record I went on to mix right after recording the Alkaline Trio. Ben is quite a character, and he wound up producing and chopping and engineering and creating a lot of atmosphere, and in different parts he sang. He's one of those "I- hate-you-because-you-play-everything" kinds of guys. Ben and I got along really well mixing his record, and then they started Tthe Heavens record in his house in Mount Washington. He's got a great little home studio in his basement. When it came time to mix they called me up, and it was really fun because I'd never mixed anything like that before with beats where they wanted it to be played in a club with really loud drums. I'd mix it to where I liked it, which is with drums fairly loud to begin with, and Ben would come in, "No, no man. Drums loud!" So, we're sitting there together finishing the mix and I'm pushing and pushing and I think I turned the drums up four dB and he's like, "That's it! That's bangin'! Put it on the big speakers!" There were a lot of creative sounds going on in there, just completely unorthodox recordings of all kinds of things. So it was really e-rethinking the traditional guitar/bass/drums scenario and rethinking what role those instruments played in the music and how they were to sound and how I was to balance between them. Joe Steinbrick specifically said, "I don't want this to sound like a punk rock record. Don't make these guitars sound like Alkaline Trio. I want them to sound a little softer or maybe a little quieter in spots, not as clear and defined. It can be a little dirtier, a little more dark sounding." It was fun to put a lot of reverb on them because I had just come off the Chili Peppers record, where not many effects went on that record as a whole. The Heavens said they wanted to have things like the Depeche Mode, New Order and Cure vocal sounds — lots of reverb, lots of delays, lots of effects. It was really fun to have a lot of creative license with that.
Cool. And then Tom Petty's The Last DJ — that must've been a fun record.
That was really a fun record. That was the second record I did with Jim Scott as his assistant. George Drakoulias was producing that and since then we have become really good friends. That guy is amazing. He's another guy who plays all rock instruments and he knows a lot and he just brushes it off as if it's nothing. He's reserved about his opinions, but then he'll really get in there and give you one when it's necessary. I think the guy is supremely talented and incredibly smart. He's a bit of a goofball. He loves to have fun and he's very sarcastic with a really dry, biting sense of humor. The band was obviously sick — ridiculous musicians — and they cut everything live all together in the room. There was one song that they were having trouble with and George hired a Pro Tools guy to come in and chop up Steve Ferrone's drums, but he was a hip-hop guy. All he did was put it on the grid. Tom came in and said, "No that sounds terrible. What did you do to it?" George hired another guy and he did the same thing. I was in the back of the room — the assistant — and I said, "Well, let me have a shot at it." I had no idea how to use Pro Tools. I knew how to turn it on and open a session and that was about it. I had done maybe one or two sessions on Pro Tools for a friend, but made him do all the mouse work. So I stayed all night for several nights in a row just trying to figure out what I was doing. If you go about it with a musical ear and not your analytical eyes, it's not that hard. I figured out a few things to where I could get around, and I did some edits and I played the song for them. I don't even know if I actually really did anything significant to the tracks. There were a couple of things here and there where it seemed the band wasn't locked together, so I tweaked them a little bit. That song just didn't gel, so it didn't make the record. Later, Tom did a vocal on a song and he said, "You know I'm a little sharp on that, but I like that performance. Hey Ryan, can you fix that?" So if it was a little sharp, I'd tune it down a little bit. Tom said, "That's fantastic! I didn't know you could do that!" He had never really experienced Pro Tools before because he was always very tape-oriented, and if it wasn't right they'd just play or sing it again. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he's right on because he's a phenomenal singer. George then turned to me and said, "All right, go tune all the songs." So I stayed all night for several nights in a row figuring out how to tune vocals. George had me go at it with the idea that we'd tune it, make it perfect and then play it for Tom. Whatever he didn't like we'd throw away. He wound up not liking most of it because it was unnaturally perfect to him, but we did use a few fixes here and there. So, that's how I figured out how to use Pro Tools.
Were you using Auto-Tune or something like that, or were you just using the pitch change plug-in?
Yeah, I was using Auto-Tune. It was an immense education and just a fantastic way to fall into things.
How about Blink-182?
Oh, that was a really fun record. Jerry Finn happened to be working at Cello doing an Alkaline Trio record. We had met in passing in the halls when I was in the back room working on a John Frusciante record [Shadows Collide with People] with Jim Scott. Jerry kept walking by the door and he'd stop in and shoot the shit, talking about cars, gear and whatever, and we got to be friends. One day I passed him in the hall and I said, "Will you listen to this record I did and tell me if it sounds good, if I did anything good on it because I just don't know." He was like, "Yeah, I'll check it out in a couple of days." It was the first thing that I did completely myself — recorded, mixed, produced. I did it for free for this random band that was referred to me by some friends. A couple of days went by and we kept seeing each other in the hall and he didn't mention it so I'm thinking, "Oh, it just sucked." He came in the next day and he said, "That thing sounded great! Where did you do it? What did you use?" We had an interesting conversation about that and then a month later he called me and he said, "Hey, do you want to do a record together?" Before I even asked what it was I said, "Yes!" "Okay, we're going to start in February. We're going to do it in San Diego in a house. It's going to be five days a week. So let's talk next month and we'll sort it out." "Hey, by the way what band is it?" I asked him. "Blink-182," he replied. I was like, "Holy shit, you've got to be joking!" I was freaking out. We went down to do that record in this big mansion that they had soundproofed and it was one of the best times I've had making a record. Those guys are so much fun and despite what they say or what people think about them, they're very talented musicians. They played every note of that record on tape. That's one thing that Jerry's really particular about — everything goes to tape, [though] vocals and keyboards and such went to Pro Tools simply because it was easier. Setting up in a house like that, where it's not supposed to be a studio, was the most incredible thing ever. Everything about the control room was wrong. Everything about the tracking room was wrong. There were parallel walls. There were all kinds of weird reflections going on. But we just used it to our advantage or tamed problems and made everything work. I'm really proud of the sounds that are on that record because it was a lot of work to get them. We had to move amps from room to room to find the right sound and try different mics and put gobos in different places. It was really, really fun.
You end up with really unique sounding records when you're in weird spaces like that.
Absolutely. Not to knock studios, because I love working in studios. Obviously a studio is a controlled environment and everything works all the time and you have everything you need in one place, but I've done three or four records at this point in houses and those records are the ones that stand out in my mind as being the best sounding and the most fun to make — because it's such a casual atmosphere. You're not thinking about the hourly rate of the studio when it gets late and you want to do another take. You're just chilling out in a house and if you want to go swimming, there's a pool in the backyard. If you want to eat, there's a fridge over there. If you want to chill out you can go outside in the yard and relax. You can get away from things. You can go to your bedroom. You can do anything you want. That drum sound is unique to you and that record and that room. A house lends itself to sonic experimentation. You have different rooms to try for different vibes on different songs. From that standpoint it was rad.
Studios are great for mixing. My studio is in an old warehouse with lots of windows and natural light. When I'm in regular studios like this I feel kind of odd. They're great, but...
When you're in a house there's a little bit more personality. It's not thought out, it's not trying to be a studio. It's your living room, your dining room or the guest house.
You know what time of day it is.
Yeah, there are windows. You can open the windows and air it out. It doesn't smell like a studio where dudes have been living for 18 hours a day for the last 30 years.
When you do things on tape and then do the vocals in Pro Tools, do you just transfer the tape into Pro Tools and forget about the tape?
In situations like that I'll transfer the tape into Pro Tools as a safety, making sure everything is locked and referenced properly. Then, when it comes time to mix we go back to the master tape.
You fly the vocals back to the tape?
Yeah. We'll fly the vocals onto a slave tape if we have the budget to have a second tape machine or if we have tracks available on the first machine. On the Blink record we did that. We had forty-eight tracks of tape and everything that was in Pro Tools went to tape.
You're not editing the whole song then. If you do, you're doing it...
All on tape.
Do you do much editing of the 2 inch and then lay down the code and then go to Pro Tools?
All the time — actually, another engineer friend had a really great idea that I totally copied, where he makes the assistant stripe all the blank tapes so that you have a consistent time base and you know where all your edits are going to be. You'll know specifically where everything is so you don't have to rely on counter times that might move around to remember where a take was. My take sheets will have the SMPTE number rather than the counter number, and I'll even write out the song form, so that I know exactly where every part is when it comes time to edit. When I'm editing tape, I'll dump the song into Pro Tools first to do test edits so we can make sure everything is going to work. I'll also record the time code into Pro Tools on a track and then feed that out to a code reader. This way I can just play the edit and the Lynx tells me what piece of tape that piece of the song was on.
If you cut that, then isn't the time code useless?
Yes, but then you re-stripe it later. The initial striping is just for editing purposes so I know where everything is, because then it's quick and I can look at the Lynx and know exactly where I need to go. It winds up making my job way easier. Especially when I'm editing between three or four reels.
So that was pretty much the same process you used for the Chili Peppers record too?
It's different in that with Jerry, we'll record drums first to a click and then we'll edit the drums together on the tape and then we'll overdub guitars and then bass and then everything else. With the Chili Peppers, the whole band was playing together and so the whole band would be edited across the tape. If the band played it well then we'd use that piece and then another piece and another piece and cut those all together. It was a bit different because you had to really think about your edit points to make sure that everyone was together and you didn't clip anyone's note. The tempo changes since the Chili Peppers don't play to a click, so we always had to do test edits to make sure that everything worked together and that nothing was going to speed up or slow down all of a sudden.
Did you use Pro Tools at all on that record or was it totally analog?
Just for Anthony's vocals, which were recorded by Andrew Scheps. There were also some assorted overdubs that happened at the end when I had the tapes doing overdubs with John. But Andrew had to do a quick piano or percussion thing at Rick's. Everything went back to tape for the mix whenever possible.
