Tell me about your first recording setup.
A Panasonic handheld cassette recorder that my parents gave me. I recorded everything from farts to bird sounds on that. Also, my Aerosmith record collection — using headphones pressed against the built-in condenser mic. Later I became one of those "stereo guys." Everybody's brother was in the Navy, so we could get good deals from the PX. If you didn't have huge speakers and 100 watts you weren't a man. [laughs] I started plugging my guitar right into the cassette deck of that, bouncing tracks back and forth. I was stuck in that world until I was 19. Then I bought a terrible Dokorder 4-track with Pete Conway [Flour, Rifle Sport]. That and a cheap line mixer was our setup. We never knew if it the Dokorder was going to work. It was always like, "It might overdub — it might not." That was the beginning of the madness.
What made you want to record?
Around 1976 or 1977 I was buying records that were recommended by Creem Magazine. "Christgau gave it an A+! It must be amazing!" Every bit of my lunch money would go to buying music. Midnight Special and Saturday Night Live fueled some of my purchases too. There was a commonality of names between the records I enjoyed, and Jack Douglas [Miles Davis, Cheap Trick, John Lennon] was one of them. "Who is he? He doesn't play on these records, but there's this similar tonality between them that really pleases me." Now I know that as the "low mid depth," but at the time it was more of a "sound" that I liked, even though it blew out my shitty Omega 3 woofers. So I looked for other albums he had worked on. The performances were really alive on the stuff that he did. "There's that guy again! Who is this guy?" So I became aware of what a producer did that way.
And so you got to work learning about it?
Everything I've done has been accomplished by learning as I go while failing miserably. I wasn't bookish. I'm a slow learner. I didn't know anything about the actual process until I moved from Bemidji [MN] to Minneapolis and started hanging out with bands I met during my time at MCAD [Minneapolis College of Art and Design]. I became good friends with Terry Katzman at the record store, Oar Folk Records, and he knew Bob Mould. Those two and the guys from Rifle Sport were key in launching me into what I do today.
For better or for worse?
Yeah, thanks guys. [laughs] Terry documented everything that was happening on the live music scene. He knew Steve Fjelstad, who was the engineer on some of the Replacements and Hüsker Dü stuff, and he knew the people at the Twin Tone label. The next thing you know it was like, "Come hang out at the studio!" So there I was, seeing Rifle Sport record and hearing them in high quality, three-dimensional sound for the first time. I was used to hearing them sounding ratty in a basement, and then all of a sudden it's like I can hear everything clearly. It's magic! That was it. "This is what I fucking wanna do. I don't want to design album covers — I want to make the albums that go in the album covers." I had originally wanted to be the Hipgnosis of the Midwest, doing freaky photo montages and logos, but that all changed within the first nine months I was at art school after meeting these people. So in 1981 Bob Mould helped me decide that taking a year off was a good idea, and I never went back. Then Bob asked me to run sound for Hüsker Dü because he knew I understood where they were coming from. We'd be in Iowa City, and the guy with the dB meter would say, "You can't put a mic on that because it's already too loud!" We did it anyway. That was part of the experience. There was a lot of fighting with the clubs, and we had to work things out.
Maybe you should have considered a career in diplomacy!
I decided that I didn't like doing sound because I'd show up in some club in New York with Big Black, and the guy would instantly be like, "Fuck you. This is how we do it here." The band brought me along because I understood their aesthetic, so I could keep things consistent and comfortable, but that never seemed to matter to the clubs. Of course I was young and defensive as well, which didn't help. Recently I did some dates with Polvo and Seven Mary Three and it was totally different. I just walked in and said, "I don't know what I'm doing. Any suggestions?" [laughs] Of course with that approach they were like, "Can we get you some coffee? A steak? We love you!" The early experiences are why I gravitated away from live sound and towards studios though. There's only one fight every six months, not 600.
Studios are used to "outsiders" coming in to work. That's part of the deal.
Sure. There's already that understanding. There were other communication obstacles though. Music was transitioning hard and fast in the late '70s and early '80s. Engineers still wanted to make Dark Side of the Moon, but the bands wanted screaming distortion. There was no middle ground where both sides could communicate with each other. I was just lucky enough to understand where the bands were coming from, so that helped. Of course it's 30 years later now and I want to make Dark Side of the Moon. [laughs]
You started as an artist, so you have that in you.
In ninth grade I wanted to be an architect, but I was terrible at math, so I went with design. Originally, due to my strict Midwestern upbringing, I thought traveling around with a rock band wasn't responsible, or I needed a "real job" to please my father. The studio thing was the safer route in that regard. No hopping in a van and going out into the No Man's Land that was the club scene in the '80s. There was no network in place back then. It was dangerous! So I stayed home and took cooking jobs. My setup eventually became more elaborate, and people seemed to like the recordings I was doing.
An architect or designer sits at a desk, and so does a recording engineer.
Good point. I never thought of it like that, but it was a logical progression. You're drawing things out either way. For awhile I wanted to get formal training by going to the Institute of Audio Research in New York City, but I didn't have the time because I was actually recording.
You were too busy engineering to learn how to be an engineer?
Exactly. There's no reason to go to Full Sail unless you really want to. Buy some gear, make friends with bands, fuck up and learn from your mistakes. So I was slowly conquering the studio one bit at a time and stealing the wheel from Steve Fjelstad, God bless him. I was always shouldering up to the console to ask him what he was doing, which drives me nuts when people do that to me.
How did you convince Steve to let you sit in?
I'm sure there were many times he just put his head in his hands and regretted it. I just showed up with Rifle Sport and their buddy band, Man Sized Action, which I later joined. I would grab a six-pack and go watch Man Sized Action rehearse, and the next thing you know I was playing in that band. That gave me the opportunity to record us and incorporate all of the ideas I had about making Bowie's Let's Dance. [laughs] Bad idea number one: "What happens if we gate the reverb on the snare? You don't have one? How about if we use the gates on the plate reverb?" Bad idea number two: "How about if we put insane amounts of high end on the guitars? Turn up the harmonizer!" I do remember walking into studios, looking at patchbays and compressors and being mortified though. It takes years to figure out how to use a compressor effectively. "Is this bad? It sounds kind of cool, but it doesn't sound anything like it used to! I guess that's exciting! Let's run with it!"
A lot of great records were made by people who didn't know the rules. Information is easy to get these days, so things aren't done "wrong" as often anymore.
I'm happy to have acquired what I know. However, there's a certain innocence I had when I didn't know what the hell I was doing that I really miss. You just live with mistakes that came from a good place. The energy is there, so who gives a shit? I'm curious how access to information would have changed the way people did things back then. There was an immediacy issue, so we just had to press forward and figure it out as we went. I had this impression that the British bands had the luxury of just sitting at the estate, honing their craft, whereas the bands from Middle America had no money because there was no interest in what they were doing. A "show" was your friends making the effort to drive over from another city. Hüsker Dü recorded an album live and mixed it at a freakin' gospel studio in Chicago with one day to do it.
What was your first unassisted project?
I think the first thing I did completely on my own were Cows records. I did a 7-inch on my 4-track in their rehearsal space. I also did an album for them with a Tascam 16-track and a handful of decent mics. Around the same time I recorded a band called TVBC. I still had no idea what a patchbay was then. "That compressor? Yeah, um, we probably don't need that. The reels are moving; that looks good!" Man Sized Action and Big Black had become friends, so I spent time in the Steve Albini [issue #10] camp. Through him I met David Grubbs, of Squirrel Bait and Bastro. The Bastro stuff I did was the next step. Steve did most of the work at CRC [Chicago Recording Co.], but I was there for moral support. I did the second Bastro record at Smart Studios in Madison, WI. That was Butch Vig's place, and he had a different philosophy from Steve and me. He and I wanted to keep things raw, whereas Butch liked to take the nasty bands and make them sound more like Def Leppard. [laughs] That was good exposure for me though. I didn't know getting sounds like that took actual work - I just thought you set up mics and it ended up sounding shiny!
In some ways you ended up somewhere between those guys, philosophically.
It's not black and white to me. My tastes are all over the map, and I have to appease the desire to make glossy records as well as something as raw as a Studio One record. Also, you can contour your decisions to how you think the artist should sound, or the artist can pick you because he or she wants "your sound." My ideas have changed over the years after I moved away from the Midwest. It's all Scandinavians and Germans out there, and they make a damn fine studio! I got spoiled at Pachyderm, CRC and Smart. I got used to working with SSL, Neve and Neumann gear. "Point it towards the ceiling! It doesn't matter; it still sounds amazing!" Then I moved down here [to North Carolina] and it's like, "This guy's got some SM57s and a broken 16-track. I guess we can do it in that carpeted room over there." It kinda hurt. The playing field was leveled, and I made some awful sounding records. It was more work too. In hindsight, it was a great experience. I learned how to make things that were poorly recorded do something.
When was that?
Between 1995 and 2002. At the same time, it made me less tied down to a particular place. I could go off and make a record anywhere. I like records that are weird and buzzy. It can be a more creative statement when you make a record in a less than perfect environment. Mixing is much easier in perfect spaces though. I miss that when it's not available.
So, backing up a little, your work with Bastro eventually led you to one of your most well known projects...
Brian McMahan, a former Squirrel Bait guy, was at the Bastro Sing the Troubled Beast sessions. His band, Slint, had recorded Tweez with Albini, but I knew nothing about them at the time. Steve played them for me when we were driving around Chicago in his Subaru. Steve mentioned that he thought it sounded a little like King Crimson, but I was really into it. So when I got the call from Brian McMahan to do the Spiderland sessions I was like "But of course!" I was still working in restaurants at the time, so I took the job because I wanted to not to put toast on the table. I left work early on a Friday, drove down to Chicago and we stayed up for 48 hours straight and tracked everything. I drove back the next weekend to mix it in the same amount of time. I went back the following weekend to remix a few things and it was done.
What did the band request? Were they prepared?
That band had been working on a performance. That's what that record is. They had been working every day in a basement in Louisville for six months, and they wanted to document it. It's like a jazz recording with some vocal overdubs. Brian McMahan was interning at a studio called River North in Chicago. Jesus Lizard was recording Goat that very weekend at CRC, by the way. We set up the mics and went for it.
How was the session mic'ed up?
The tracking space was a fairly live room, about 30 [feet] by 30 [feet]. The drums and bass were set up in the same room. David Pajo's amp was in an isolated room, behind a sliding door. I think we had a single Beyer M130 ribbon mic on his amp. I was obsessed with spaced omni pairs at that time, so on Britt Walford's drums I had two [AKG] 414s overhead. The bulk of the drum sound was that. Plus the usual bonehead mic'ing from there: [AKG] D12 on the kick, [Shure] SM57 on the snare and whatever on the toms. Another D12 took care of the bass. Brian's guitar was in another room with an SM57 and a [Coles] 4038 on his amp. It was really raw — no EQ, no compression and straight to tape. There was a little delay on the vocals, but we felt like the best thing to do was to keep it direct.
The results were incredible.
At the time they didn't think so! They weren't happy with the performances. Corey [Rusk], from Touch and Go had to call them and say, "You have to put it out. It's great!" I didn't try to push them down a path they didn't want to travel. They made their choices. Their innocence, my innocence — it all added up to something that sounded fantastic. ...then I spent the next 10 years trying to make that happen again. [laughs]
People took notice.
That record was the one that got my phone ringing about six months after it came out. I do remember being at my day job and getting a phone call about doing the next Wedding Present Hit Parade record. I assumed David Gedge was calling me because he liked Spiderland, but it was actually because he really liked a Cows record I had done on a 4-track. Gedge always looked for new things. He was one of the first people to work with Steve Fisk [issue #3]. So this thing I did on a 4-track plopped me down at Rockfield [Studios, Wales], where "Bohemian Rhapsody" had been recorded.
But Spiderland did open most of the doors?
Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar were big fans of it, so that's how I ended up working with Uncle Tupelo. I felt like I was living the dream when all of these great bands started calling. Fugazi and The Breeders were calling? What?! Pinch me!
And they couldn't just look you up online — they had to work a little to find you.
Yeah! Calling Touch and Go or going through a few friends was the only way to do it. Even now I look back on it and wonder how it happened. I really didn't think I was that good. I was still hacking together my skills. It's all synchronicity/Zeitgeist stuff.
What was the quality everyone liked?
The records had room to breathe. I mean, of course I nudged things here and there and fucked with things a little, but I gave the songs a lot of space, I think. I kept busy and went to work on Arcwelder's Pull right after that. I was recording in the Rykodisc [Records] offices at night. Those sessions were great learning experiences because it wasn't a foregone conclusion that we would put the [Sennheiser] 421s on the toms and a D12 on the kick. We wanted to try everything and we did. We did demos at the Ryko offices, so when we went into Pachyderm [Recording Studio] with a little of Touch and Go's money, we had most of it figured out. We mixed most of it in Albini's attic.
The sessions at Ryko are legendary. You were recording records at a record company's office.
It was actually a great space. We'd work there until 6 p.m., then we'd turn on the mics until 4 a.m. It was a big, open space with cubicles all around. I'd set the drums up in a conference room that was live as shit. We didn't want '70s- sounding stuff! We wanted live sounds, so it worked for us.
So you would record after work and then go back to work the next day?
I was usually an hour late. [laughs] I could do it back then [1990-93]. Soul Asylum's Grave Dancers Union demos were done there. Joe Henry recorded with The Jayhawks backing him up. That started as demos, but his manager convinced him it was "the record" so they released it. It sounds good even though it's flawed and has gates misfiring all over it, but with only eight tracks back then I made decisions early. Zuzu's Petals and some other Twin Tone bands recorded there. Babes In Toyland did their Fontanelle demos there. John Loder called me many years later and said he thought the demos should have been the official release.
Then Pachyderm became your home for a while?
Yeah — it's a great studio near Minneapolis with an SSL board. Between 1990 and 1995 I would direct anyone with a budget to that studio. These days I work anywhere. I like [Mitch Easter's] Fidelitorium, which is nearby, and other than full band things, I record in my home a lot. But Pachyderm was a great environment for getting things done. There's nothing to do around there. The U.S. Maple guys would go fishing though.
How did Simon LeBon deal with that?
Ha! The idea that he would produce Unrest's Cath Carroll was more of a concept than a reality. He showed up, went skinny-dipping at the house pool, decided he didn't like it there and went home. He didn't like the pizza and didn't eat tater tots. Rural Minnesota's a little short on escargot. He's got the credit on the album though. I remember initial set up taking a long time. We finally did "Hydro" at 2 a.m. It was the first record I did outside of the circle of friends, and it was a 4AD release, so I'm sure I was a little anxious about getting things right. Maybe it would be the gateway to me being the next Steve Lillywhite!
Mark [Robinson] told me it was his favorite guitar tone ever. Do you recall what you used?
It was an oddball, bidirectional AKG thing, probably a ribbon and maybe a 57? The room we used at Pachyderm has a "something" that makes loud guitars sound great. I can identify that room in other recordings I know were done there. Mark worked quickly, knew what he wanted and was very communicative.
Is that about the time you started identifying yourself as a "producer?"
I'm still trying to figure out what that means. Anytime you make a decision, you're "producing." I guess I felt that way in real time when I was working on The Jayhawks' Sound of Lies.
That's surprising! Gary Louris seems like the kind of guy who knows what he wants.
