Tape Op 102

The Creative Music Recording Magazine

Tom WermanPoison, Mtley Cre, Cheap Trick

The War on Drugsw/ Adam Granduciel

Catherine MarksFoals, Flood, The Howling Bells

Al Schniermoe. & more

Seth Kauffmanof Floating Action

Bill Cheneyof Spectra Sonics in Behind the Gear

Music Reviewsw/ Jimmy Page on Led Zeppelin

Gear Reviews

I s s u e N o . 1 0 2J u l y / A u g 2 0 1 4

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Hello andwelcome to

12 Letters14 Bill Cheney in Behind the Gear18 Seth Kauffman22 Catherine Marks26 Tom Werman34 The War on Drugs36 Al Schnier & moe46 Gear Reviews64 Music Reviews66 Johns End Rant

Online Bonus Content:Bill CheneyAl SchnierOnline Only Feature:Brad Blackwood

pa

ge

102!#

Why is it these days that people(especially mainstream media) constantlyrefer to musicians being able to record athome as if its a recent development?Homerecording has been happening nearly as long as any kind of soundrecording existed. In the 1940s Les Paul cut hit records in his garage.Emitt Rhodes delivered pop masterpieces from his home studio in theearly 70s. I know computers are powerful and can do all sorts ofmagical things, like recording more tracks than any home setup fromthe past, or emulating analog hardware and real instruments. Butthis doesnt mean people were not resourceful back in the day, orthat they didnt find ways to record under any budget. And itcertainly doesnt mean that music was any less valid, despite therecording methods used. Viva home recording its been around along time and it will always exist!

Larry Crane, Editor

Tape Op

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The Creative Music Recording Magazine

EditorLarry Crane

Publisher &!Graphic DesignJohn Baccigaluppi

Online PublisherDave Middleton

Gear Reviews EditorAndy Gear Geek Hong

Production Manager & Assistant Gear Reviews EditorScott McChane

Contributing Writers &!PhotographersCover art assembled by Scott and John. Thanks to Rainbow Electronics for the

loan of the vintage radio transmitter tube from a Japanese submarine., Ruben Reveles for shooting the photo

and Kyle Field for the drawings.

Ryan Barrington Cox, Tom Beaujour, Dave Hidek, Jacob Biba, Jay Blakesberg, Garrett Haines, Geoff Stanfield, Allen Farmelo, Joseph Lemmer, Kirt Shearer, SteveSilverstein, Scott Evans, Joel Hamilton, Chris Koltay, Adam Kagan and Jeff Slate.

www.tapeop.comDave Middleton and Hillary Johnson

Editorial and Office AssistantsJenna Crane (proofreading), Thomas Danner (transcription),

Lance Jackman ([email protected]) Tape Op Book distribution

c/o www.halleonard.comDisclaimer

TAPE OP magazine wants to make clear that the opinions expressed within reviews, letters andarticles are not necessarily the opinions of the publishers. Tape Op is intended as a forum to

advance the art of recording, and there are many choices made along that path.Editorial Office

(for submissions, letters, CDs for review. CDs for review are also reviewed in the Sacramento office, address below)

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Im not in the music industry, but my husband is.Needless to say there is always a copy of Tape Oparound. Being a hairstylist, this should make me run inthe other direction (no fashion or beauty articles?) butI have to tell you that I find it almost as interesting ashe does. I think a testament to good writing andcontent is that it can be understood and enjoyed byanyone. So I had to write, because who knew you had asecret fanbase of non-industry insiders. Keep up thegood work; Ill be reading!

Janis Schoenemann

I just wanted to say thank you for your magazine.It is consistently my favorite. The articles are alwaysso well written and engaging, and I love researchingthe advertisers for updating gear and keeping my wishlist well stocked.

Lee Crase

In your articles, the interviewer (always well-prepared and familiar with the interviewee) will askabout certain songs/passages of music, to find out howthe engineer got a particular sound. Its a perfect wayto present a question because then the reader can listento the specific song/passage referred to in the question.Perfect! But I am almost always unfamiliar with thesongs/music referred to, so I cant put the response incontext to fully understand it. I wish it was possible foryou folks to have a snippet of the music [indicated inthe articles] posted on your website (just enough forreference), so that people like me could listen. What anamazing educational benefit it would be!

K8ch

We do put links to YouTube videos in the online, orbonus versions, of our articles. But were reticent to hostany music on our site due to probable copyright andownership issues. In this day and age isnt it fairly easyto hear snippets of music via iTunes or Amazons stores?And many songs seem to be up on YouTube, no matterwhat copyright owners may wish. The music is out there;enjoy the search! -LC

My name is Gerardo Montoya. Im from Mexicali, BajaCalifornia. Mexico. Im writing to you because Id like tothank you for every story Tape Op brings to us. Ive beenrecording bands in my town as a profession since 2007.I would like to share what I do with you. Thanksfor every story and honest adviceyou write, or decide to publish.

Gerardo Montoya

John La Grous article,The Future of AudioEngineering, [Tape Op#100] was excellent, andId love to see moreforward-looking thoughtpieces in Tape Op. Inmy opinion,the recording

community has atendency to fixate on the past.This fixation borders on nostalgia, and it seems to pullour interests, as well as the work of our technologydevelopers (who respond to our interests), in ratherconservative directions. Do we need yet another U 47 or1073 knock-off? And, on the digital side, wouldnt itmake sense to build new processors, rather than to focuson getting plug-ins to imitate vintage gear? It shouldntcome as a surprise to us that, as John notes in hisarticle, the innovation in audio is not coming from theaudio community, but from the gaming, TV, and filmindustries. All of these fields have stayed on the cuttingedge of technology and, not coincidentally, are thriving,while the music industry continues to sink into anunprecedented financial and artistic devaluation. Pleasecontinue to bring us articles such as Johns, so that wecan collectively imagine, and help create, a future thatsas innovative and exciting as our past was.

Allen Farmelo

It feels like you have been a mysterious member ofmy (and my familys) life for years. I have subscribed toTape Op off and on since 2000. Even my wife, who isntinto recording, will skim through the new issue when itarrives. Know that your work has been, and willcontinue to be, appreciated. Thank You.

Jered Reynolds

Hello, just wanted to write and give a quick thankyou for issue #101's producer interviews, in particularthe triple-whammy of Ryan Freeland, Colin Marston,and Just Blaze. Reading those three back to back is asadmirable an introduction as I can think of for someoneasking the question, "Yes, but what IS a producerreally?" The answer of course is that there are as manyways to produce as there are producers, and getting tohear nuts and bolts of technique as well as philosophyfrom three such diverse talents is a great illustration ofthis. The best compliment I can give is that theinterviews inspired me to go listen to the productionsof all three, and I was as impressed with the endproducts as I was with the thinking behind them.Thanks for another great issue.

Casey Holford

I like reading your magazine, but it would be really niceif you would edit out the cursing. It would keep people likeme from having to keep a sharpie on hand while Imreading. The advice of the grandmother of a comedian,whose name I dont remember, was to keep his materialclean. It will draw in the people who dont care if it is cleanor not, and it will also draw in the people who do care.Thank you for your consideration, and for putting out a free(emphasis on free) recording magazine. God bless.

Micah Gamble

I understand your sentiment, but it aint gonnahappen. Many times I feel the language used ininterviews reflects the tone of the interviewee. See theinterview I did with Snuff Garrett [Tape Op #73]. Hedropped an f-bomb every five words, and I edited outmany of them. But to edit out all of them would notcreate the same feeling of hanging out with this cowboyof a record producer. While there may be a couple of wordsIm reticent to print, I plan to utilize language in the bestways I can to get any points across. -LC

12/Tape Op#102/Letters/(Fin.)

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Bill Cheney and his partner JimRomney are the men responsible forkeeping the amazing legacy of SpectraSonics, a legendary, if criminallyunheralded, pro-audio company alive.

LC: The history of Spectra Sonics startswith William G. Bill Dilley.

He was the chief test engineer for the ICBM[intercontinental ballistic missile] during the early tomid-1960s. He was basically involved with thetransition between tube and transistor technology inHF/RF communication. At the time, he was aconstant contributor to AUDIO Magazine. He wroteabout recording technology; from portable, tubebased consoles to VCA-based compressor/limiters.

LC: Was that a passion of his, on the side?Yeah, audio. Ive got the original tube preamp he built

in the late 50s, and then I think he saw the lightwith transistors. It was an immediate thing, between1962 and 1964. The first day I met him when I waslike 21 or 22 years old the first thing out of hismouth was, Eliminate the cause; dont minimize theeffect. Later, I found this in his handwritten notes.He would isolate each issue that caused a specificcircuit problem, and resolve it. This applied to peakoverload, solid state circuit noise and distortion, plusoverall amplifier stability. Rather than chasing thingswith a bigger stick, he just eliminated the problem.Thats how his designs worked.

LC: What year did the first Model 101 ampmodules come out?

In 1965. He originally just wanted to build modules,power supplies, and equalizers. He sold to places likeAuditronics in Memphis. The problem was thatpeople couldnt deal with the grounding, which isimportant with our stuff. There was also an issuewith console construction, which did not meetDilleys milspec mindset. In the end he was forced tostart building consoles.

JB: So all the early Auditronics consoleshad Spectra Sonics 101s inside?

Right. When I went up to the factory for the first time,you had women with beehive hairdos, smokingcigarettes while wiring looms, and youd have stacksof consoles in rows. I recently found out that asecond production facility existed for Spectra Sonicsvia Auditronics. He couldnt build them fast enough

in Ogden, Utah, so he built what was called Son of36 Grand. It looked just like a Spectra Sonics console,but they were building them in Memphis with Spectraparts. But then they started going out the back door,rather than being sent to Ogden to be shipped andsold. So Bill said, Were not going to do thatanymore. And that was that.

LC: So there are some bootleg consolesout there. How did you end up as partof Spectra Sonics?

I was working for a professional audio dealer when I was21 years old. I went to a seminar one day, and BillDilleys personality was rather intimidating. I satthere and listened to him, and when I went home Itold my mom that this guy had it figured out.Everybody else at the seminar was pissed andwouldnt go back the next day, so I was the only onethere. I made numerous trips to the factory over thenext few years. Bill always had time for me. One day,I told Bill, Ill work for you for free. So I starteddoing AES shows with him.

LC: What year was that?It was 1975 or 76. Hed been going for over ten years.

When the company started, Bill was still an officer inthe USAF.

LC: My introduction to Spectra Sonicswas the 610 compressor. My friendcame by with one and told me toturn everything all the way up. Itgoes crazy.

A normal compressor is a peak-sensing level compressor.Whatever the amplitude of the peak is however muchgain reduction you get. In fact, theyve taken thedefinition so far, that anything over 9:1 compressionis peak limiting, which is backwards from what wedo. What we do is that the peak is separate from thecompression. So we eliminate the peak. The peaklimiter in the circuit is in and out of the circuit in 180nanoseconds [ns]. Its eliminating the peak. Soeverything else that passes through, theres no peak.In a peak-limiting mode, you can take ourcompressor and put it in front of a conventionalpower amp and get another 10 dB out of that poweramp, but not hear it because its in and out. In theanalog world, peaks are bad. Peaks destroy thecharacter of the recorded signal.

LC: Its a fast transient peak that wedont perceive.

Yeah. The peak is gone. Theres no musical content; itspurely voltage. So the peak limiter is separate fromthe compressor. The compressor still attacks at 100ns, so there is not a transition issue. The compressoroffers up to 20 dB of gain reduction. You can setthat slope wherever you want, and you can set thatrelease wherever you want. So youve got the peaklimiting mode, youve got peak limiting withcompression, and then youve got hardcompression, which is how most folks have used the610 for decades.

LC: Yeah, absolutely.Spectra Sonics gear is well known for a unique RMS

overload distortion. Its so well balanced that itdoesnt clip like a normal transistor circuit. I dontthink that was what Bill had in mind when thecircuits were designed, but thats what yourehearing. For example, if you listen to early ZZ Top,when they recorded lead guitars at Ardent, that wasa 101 driven into RMS overload.

JB: So what came first? The early cardsand consoles, or the 610 limiter?

You had the Model 101 in 1965. Then he built what wascalled the Model 100, which was three 101s on aboard. The 610 limiter came out in 69. The first EQhe came out with was the 500, in 1966, which was alittle 2-band, like Stax and Ardent had. Then the 502came out in 69, which was the 3-band.

JB: And thats the Record Plant console?Right.JB: How many of those consoles got

built?Id guess maybe 30 or 40 is all. The Stax console got

thrown in the dumpster. The sister console was atArdent, and at Muscle Shoals for a time.

JB: Wasnt there some connection withthe Flickinger products?

Well, Daniel Flickinger was a dealer of ours. He bought101s for years and built consoles with our stuff. Thenhe tried to copy our stuff. At first he just removed ourname and put his name on it. Then he startedbuilding his own boards. People sent them intoSpectra Sonics for warranty repair and theyd literallybeen on fire. It was a really crude attempt at a copy.Sometime later Dilley realized Flickinger was trying tobuild a 101. It comes down to having the stability incertain stages, as well as the right parts. Flickingernever figured it out, so he just added beefier endstage outputs, with bigger transistors that wouldhandle the current and reduce the fire hazard.

LC: Ive been under the impression thatSpectra Sonics never ceased tooperate.

They didnt stop. Bills first love, the only reason thatSpectra Sonics existed, was because he was an AirForce test pilot and loved to fly. He wrote theoperational manuals for the F-100 to the F-107. Hewas a fighter pilot in WWII, and shot down Germans.The only way he could get a personal airplane was tocreate a company. The first year in business, in 64,he did six figures, which was a lot of money backthen, so now he could afford his airplane. He hadhangars full of airplanes when he died. I separated

Behind The GearBill Cheney by Larry & JohnThis Issues Spectre of Sonics

14/Tape Op#102/Mr. Cheney/(continued on page 16)[email protected]

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16/Tape Op#102/Mr. Cheney/(Fin.)

from the company in the late 80s, as I had my own business. With the backing ofSpectra Sonics, I started Applied Technology with my partner Jim. We evolved awayfrom audio and went to work for large corporate and government agencies, buildingcommunication and weapons test facilities. Then in 07, we started to see what washappening with the 610. On eBay, they were initially selling for $100 to $200. In 2006the price had jumped to over a $1,200. I called Bills son, Greg Dilley, and said, Jimand I want to buy the 610 production rights. He said, Just buy the whole company.

JB: So this was after Bill passed away?Bill passed away in 03. Greg wanted to continue running Spectra Sonics Aviation, an FBO,

and had little time for the audio part of the family business.LC: I remember sending my tech my 610, and he was like, I cant

figure it out. So we sent it to the factory to get refurbished inthe late 90s.

They were still fixing stuff. He was still supporting everything, still supporting consoles.LC: Thats kind of unusual in this business.Again, it was a moral thing with him. Theyd made their money, and they were really careful

with their money. Thats why the family wanted us to pick it up, because they knewthat we wouldnt butcher it. It took us two years to get our first product out becausewe couldnt meet spec. We were working on the 610, and there were certain parts thathad to have really tight, high tolerance specs. People will try to copy it, but you cantjust put parts on a board with our stuff. During the process of producing the first 610s,I called up Greg and asked, How are you selecting this, this, and this? Greg said, Idont know. Then I get a call one day and Greg said, Ive just found Dads handwrittennotes. So we went back and reverse-engineered everything. It took us two years toget the 610 to meet spec, and we would not sell them until they did. Theres a pictureof Tchad Blake on our website, and hes got a 610 from 1969 or 1970, and hes got a2012 unit, and hes using them interchangeably. You cannot tell the difference.

JB: Youve done a good job of keeping the company intact.Jim and I probably could have retired, but we are stubborn so we are going to keep this

up. Recently its been doing a lot better. Were fighting guys who have hundreds ofthousands of dollars in ad budget, with a lot of BS and momentum, and its justdifficult. But we are not going to stop.

JB: I was really impressed when you sent me a 502 to check out.One of the first things I did was open it up. It had such solid andbeefy circuit board traces and transformers and inductors.

All of our products are designed and built the same way; to last forever.JB: You just dont see much new gear thats built like this.No. It goes back to the way that Bill Dilley would do things. He prided himself on all of

his consoles. Theyd snap together. There was a thousandth of an inch tolerance in allthe milling, so things would literally snap in, even though he still had screws to holdit. The stuff was built like a tank. Thats just the way he did it. r

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Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist SethKauffman has been crafting exotic music forover a decade. Whether hes recording albumsunder the moniker, Floating Action, sitting inon sessions with Dan Auerbach and RayLaMontagne, or producing albums for otherartists like Courtney Jaye, Seth brings adistinctly laid-back vibe to each project. Irecently had the pleasure of chatting with himat his home in Black Mountain, NC.

How did you get started recording? Theoldest thing I found was the ChoosyBeggars self-titled album from 2003.

My friend, Bryan Cates, who was the singer/songwriter,did most of our recording. He did The Choosy Beggarsto ADAT. Then our friend, Thad Cockrell,recommended Chris Stamey to mix it.

When did you start recording yourself?After [The Choosy Beggars], I had a 4-track and was

messing around. Thats when I got into the idea ofdoing everything myself. When I got married andmoved to Durham, [NC], I thought, Man, if I coulddo more tracks, I could make real-sounding things!For years after that, I used Cakewalk [Software]. Itsreally cheap, like $35 at Best Buy.

Whats your setup now?Ive got [PreSonus] Studio One. Bill Reynolds [of Band of

Horses] talked me into getting a better interface. Icouldnt get multiple tracks at the same time withCakewalk. I could only do left and right to get two

simultaneous [tracks]. Now I can get more, but Idont really know how to use the program. [laughs] Ihit record and thats pretty much it. Ive still neverused any onboard effects. I always use Echoplexdelays, or spring reverb units, before it hits thecomputer.

What sounds are you chasing? I grew up in Greensboro [NC]. In the early 90s, we were

in high school figuring out music. That period was theworst for popular music. It seems like every period isthe worst! [laughs] Every sound that was happening,especially in Greensboro, was not cool, and we hatedthat; but we didnt know how to articulate it. We likedRobert Johnson, 60s Motown, and the RollingStones. We [The Choosy Beggars] recorded this gospelalbum called Bring it Back Alive, trying to get that oldsound. It was really a cool thing, but we just had ourlocal recording guy, so it was super cheesy andsounds awful.

Whats your approach to recording yoursongs?

I usually start with rhythms. Everything thatshappening is simple. Im not virtuosic at anyinstrument. Im always trying to create some weirdpolyrhythm to help the song. Whatever creates somenew groove.

Do you ever use a click?Ive never used an actual click thats from the computer.

Ill use a [60s Ace Tone Rhythm Ace] drum machineand record it for four and a half minutes. I then use

it like a click to play the drums to, and mute it afterthat. There are some songs where its even left in.

Do you already have songs writtenbefore recording?

Usually it is rhythm first. Thats what Im doing now. Irecently got this tabla drum machine. Ive beentracking it to a [4-track cassette recorder], thenflipping the tape over and recording that to thecomputer backwards. Theres this weird rhythm thatdoesnt make sense forwards, but then backwards itdoes. Then I figure out some hip-hop drumbeat andsee if I can make that work. Theres no go-to; I try todo something different [every time].

Do you write song structures around thebeats, working with the fills andfluctuations that are already there?

Thats why its fun to do it myself! I can get risky withit because the fill is not in the right place. There arehappy accidents where Im like Whoa, I wouldvenever put [the fill] there, but it sounds cool!

You end up with an extra bar.Right. In a lot of ways I let it write itself.I like your arrangements. Theres

p l e n t y g o i n g o n , b u t e a c hinstrument has its own space.

Thats part of doing it all myself. Im real shy. In the studiopeople are butting heads. Ill have an idea, but cantdefend it because I dont know where its going to lead,and then it gets shot down. If its just me, I can spendhours on it, even if it doesnt work. With each album,

Seth Kauffman Completing the Mythinterview and photo by Ryan Barrington Cox

18/Tape Op#102/Mr. Kauffman/(continued on page 20)[email protected]

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Ive gotten logistically better at doing it all myself.Sometimes I sit down at the drum kit first and, in myhead, do the whole arrangement, and try to get all thefills right. I enter this mental zone and get real intense.My face turns red it gets crazy. Its a mad scientist world.

Is it easier to explore crazy ideas whenyoure not wasting anybody elsestime?

Yeah, Im totally free to pursue ideas. I can makeeverything complement each other; nothings fightingeach other.

On the new record [Body Questions, out inAug 2014], you recorded all theinstruments at home, and did thevocals with Bill [Reynolds]. What wasthat like?

Ive worked with Bill quite a bit. He produces a lot ofsingers, and vocals are his forte. I hadnt sung the songsbefore, so they were fresh. He was super patient. It wasin Ojai, California, north of L.A. Orange groves are a bigthing and there are all these meditation gardens. Its alot like Black Mountain, [NC]; a real small town. He hadthis little house there; wed get up at 7 a.m., havecoffee, start singing, mix, and then go to bed at 10 p.m.

What gear did he use?He had a big bass amp and he would send vocals [through

that], mic it, and send it back in as reverb. He had a1/4-inch tape machine that he would set up forslapback tape delay, but we also used a lot of plug-instoo. They almost sound as good as the real thing. Whenwe got the final mixes, we would put that on tape andit all got mastered from tape.

You also produce other artists records.Was there a particular one that youenjoyed?

The Courtney Jaye album [The Exotic Sounds of CourtneyJaye] worked because Id never produced anyone else atthat point. She used to be on a major label, and it wasa big deal at the time. Id done my album, Research[2007], and she wanted that sound; a lot of Hawaiianpercussion. Its a really good record. She sent me someacoustic demos and I picked out the ones I thoughtwould be best. I was able to give it movement.

You play the roles of producer and artistsimultaneously.

I dont really see it as two roles. Im obsessed with tryingto make things that dont exist yet. Its no good if itsounds like a generic rock song. At the same time, Imcreating it from the engineers standpoint. Ive got avision that itd be cool if it sounds like this. So Imaware of that the whole time.

This is an era, or a style?Yeah. Drum sounds. Maybe it doesnt matter if theyre

clean, or they need to be super fucked-up. The answeris usually they need to be really fucked-up sounding![laughs]

Do you mean cranking gain knobs,blowing them out?

I still dont know what Im doing. On my older albums Iknew even less. Sometimes I would crank the digitaldistortion. For years I took shit for that.

Have you ever tried consciously to be lo-fi?I cant do that anymore. Theres something about it, but

theres something more to what Noah [Georgeson] does.I wouldnt really call it lo-fi; its more like rolling off top-end, or using ribbon mics on tape. Its not lo-fi, but itsthis organic warmth.

Youve started on another record. Whatsit like, so far?

I cant repeat myself. Ive gotta do something different, soIm trying to delicately build some beats and sit with itfor a while. Im getting closer and closer. Theres somemigratory sense, where I can tell when its time to do it.I didnt want to do it too soon and make it sound likethe last album. Im trying to gather all these things, getto a new spot, and then do it. It needs to be different,but it also needs to be good.

Do you feel like its infinite, how muchyou can keep doing new things?

No, thats really scary to me! Everything has been done,but I still think mankind will never write the perfectsong. The great songs of all time hit some percentage;some aspect of perfection. r

Ryan Barrington Cox records music and builds useful things inAsheville, NC.

Seths Role on Ray LaMontagnesSupernova with Dan Auerbach ProducerRichard Swift was the drummer, even though he can playeverything. Dans got this guy, Leon [Michels], who playskeys, mainly, but also plays horns part of the crew onthe Dr. John record [Locked Down]. He got Dave Roe, whowas Johnny Cashs bass player. Russ [Pahl] played pedalsteel and Kenny Vaughan played guitar. I didnt knowwhat Dan knew about me, or what he thought I was gonnado. I guess he wanted me to be a rover. Richard Swift andI did some doubled drums. I also did a lot of percussion,some guitar, a little bit of keys, and I ended up singing alot of background vocals. Collin [Dupuis] is the secretweapon of Dans. Hes the quintessential transparentengineer guy; a mad scientist who runs around and getsall the sounds. He knows a lot about the old gear. Danlikes to do everything live with no click; just the idea ofin a room. There were seven dudes playing at once. Itwas half older Nashville legends and half younger indiedudes, or whatever [were called]. We did first takes,knocking out one or two songs a day. We would get thearrangement barely down, do a couple of takes, and nooverdubs. Ray played acoustic guitar and sang it all live.Its happening, it sounds so good, and thats what comesout on the record. Its unconventional and looser, withmore bleed tactics that are unacceptable to mostpeople. Dan gets a team; people with the right vibe. He is

a really good leader too; he keeps everybody together.

20/Tape Op#102/Mr. Kauffman/(Fin.)

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An Australian architecture student bumps into famous producer/engineer Flood whilestudying in Ireland, returns home to start playing in bands, and eventually moves toLondon and becomes an in-demand engineer and producer? Sometimes the truth israther fantastic. I had to figure out Catherine Marks unusual career path, so wemet up over breakfast on a rainy London morning, off of Portobello Road.

interview and photo by L

arry Crane

6

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Youd studied classical piano when youwere younger?

Yeah, from like four to 15. Im not really that goodanymore, but I think it helps to be able tocommunicate notes and chords, at the very least.

I heard that you studied architecture inMelbourne.

When I did architecture at Melbourne uni, I had to do acompulsory year at a firm before I went on to finishmy degree. For some reason, I thought it would be agood idea to do it in Ireland, because my mums Irish.Dublin was full of amazing musicians, at the time. Istarted going to see bands, which Id never donebefore. I met Flood maybe halfway through the yearof my time there. It was at a Nick Cave concert, andwe got along really well. Someone had mentionedthat he was a music producer. I dont think Iunderstood what that was, at that point. I think atmy going-away dinner I asked him if hed produce me,and he said no. I think he was working on a U2 recordat the time. He said, I wont; but if you are reallyserious about working in music, Ill help you. Go back,finish your degree, and work out if you want to dowhat I do. Its a big sacrifice.

Its overwhelming. So you went back toMelbourne to finish your degree?

Yeah, I joined a couple of bands playing keyboards. Thefirst band I was in was called The Wreck. I would sayit was kind of ethereal indie-pop. Then The Wreckbroke up, and I joined this band called The Harlocks.

Was there kind of an open invitation tocome to London and work with Flood?

No. In his mind he thinks I pestered him, but in mymind I think that he called me regularly to make sureI was still coming. Either way, we had stayed incontact over those four years. When I eventuallymoved to London, I became the assistant to theassistant engineer, Andy Savours. But I didnt knowwhat it was to work in a studio. Id never personallyrecorded anything. I was not technically savvy, at all.But I was so excited about making music, and beinginvolved in making music. Even the things that Ifound difficult I was determined to figure out. Theresa real dynamic in the studio, which I definitely knownow and its incredibly crucial, but I really didntunderstand it then. Id been working at anarchitecture firm, and I had people who were workingunderneath me.

How did you approach learning some ofthe technical side?

I asked a lot of questions; probably annoyingly. I stillconstantly apologize to Flood now for the way I was.But Flood and Andy also had this thing they calledthe war of attrition. Id ask a question when Ithought it was the appropriate time, but it obviouslywasnt. Theyd reveal a little bit of information, whichof course made no sense to me, at all, because it hadno context. Id ask, What does compression do?Theyd go, Well, it does this but this is all weregoing to tell you, for now. I still joke to Alan Moulderthat I think Ive finally worked out the differencebetween attack and release. He knows that I knowthings, but we dont have those kind of discussions.

He laughs at me because I dont profess to be overlytechnical, but I do actually know all this stuff. Thetechnological side of things is, like, 25 percent of it.

How did you get up to speed though?After three months of shadowing Andy, Flood gave me

the keys to this project studio up in Kilburn, which hecalled The Boys Bedroom. It was a mess. All his mateshad been using it. I started sorting things out and re-patching. I slowly started teaching myself all theequipment. He just kept throwing me in the deep end.Theres a session here, and the band wants to record25 tracks, in six days. Things would break down; Idjust stay calm and work it out.

I agree that the technical is a smallpercentage of what you have to do toget a record done.

I say all this stuff, but recently I engineered the FoalsHoly Fire record for Flood and Alan. I was reallynervous about doing that, because youre workingwith two of the greatest producers and engineers inthe world. It was an amazing opportunity, becausethey rarely work together, and Foals is an incrediblytalented band. It was not only keeping the shiprunning, but also managing the technical side ofthings as well.

Its like the old-school studio system ofbeing the tea boy, the tape op, andworking your way up. Its amazing tohave landed in a place like Assault &Battery, with two fantastic engineer-producers.

Alan and Flood still take on a lot of people, and theylove it. They see Assault & Battery as a hive ofactivity. There are great bands coming in. Therescommunication and collaboration. They love thatthats still happening. Alan said the other day that itspossibly more exciting than Trident Studios was. Iknow its really rare now, so I do feel very lucky to bea part of it. Even though Im now mixing on my own,I still want to be a part of that team, in a way. I wouldhope that making records is like a craft. There are somany different ways of making records, but I hopethat craft will never get lost. I feel lucky to have beenable to learn from so many other awesome craftsmen.

Youre freelance now, but you still keepin touch with them often?

Yeah, I did a project last year with Alan, which we co-produced. Im mixing it at the moment. Its likehaving your homework marked! Im much moreconfident now, obviously. But I feel like in every bandthat I work with, everyones learning, and adapting,and growing together.

How did your career progress after TheBedroom studio?

I was there, on and off, for maybe two years. Once Idtidied up the studio and started feeling my wayaround, there wasnt much I had to do during the day.Id go and bother the girls who managed Flood andthese other producers. I was like, What can I do?There was a job with Ben Hillier recording TheFutureheads in Scarborough, and they wantedsomeone for two months. They were going to hire achef and an assistant. I was like, Pick me! They

couldnt find anyone else, so I was kind of the lastresort. On a Friday afternoon, when everybody wasleaving, they said, Okay. Can you cook?

Can you cook?No, I couldnt cook at that time. Not for 11 people. It was

set up in this barn in the middle of nowhere, in thecountryside of north Yorkshire. It was beautiful andamazing, but freezing cold. I had to get up in themorning, set up the microphones, and turn the heaterson in the barns. I didnt have to make peoplesbreakfast, but I started making lunch, and then Idmake everyone tea. It was a big complex, and I wasrushing around everywhere. A bonus was, for maybe anhour or two a day, I could sit in a studio that theydmade out of this other barn. But usually I was sittingand watching Ben Hillier work. He had a very lovelyengineer, Rick Morris, and I remember thinking howlittle Rick gave away of his personality. Im quite open.I am who I am. I thought that maybe I should be alittle more like he was. I tried, but it didnt really work.

To subvert your own personality?Yeah. I think that was one of the other things that

Flood instilled really early on. Youve got to beyourself, because people can tell if youre not.

Where did you end up after thatFutureheads session?

When Alan and Flood decided to take on the big recordingroom at Assault & Battery, I moved in there with themand became the assistant for that studio. This was moreof a challenge, because I suddenly had to really be onit and know the studio. I then went on to assist forAlan Moulder. After about a year of learning I startedbeing able to set up mixes and get vocal sounds forhim, as well as moving the mixes into the main room.Then hed get projects that he loved, but maybe thebudgets would be quite small. I would do them to apoint, and he would take them in and spend half a dayto finish them off. After that he would do the singles,and I would mix the rest of the record. I never imaginedmyself being a mixer. Id done songwriting,engineering, vocal production, and all these things.Working with Alan made me realize that you have tothink about how the record is going to end up. Whenyoure producing, engineering, or even assisting,thinking about how you actually want it to sound inthe end and come together is important.

Thats a good place to get some training.What made you go freelance?

I think it happened organically. It never was me makinga decision to go out on my own. I just started on stuffthat Alan loved, but didnt necessarily have time todo. I think that point where clients are saying, Wewant you only just started to happen in the last sixmonths. Its incredible.

Youre doing a lot more mixing now.Didnt you mix some albums on yourlaptop?

Howd you know that? I have done a couple of albums,several years ago. It was really through circumstanceswhere I couldnt get a studio. I wouldnt necessarilychoose to do it like that. I love mixing on a console,but at the moment Im mixing The Howling Bells this project I did with Alan on Pro Tools with a

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Chandler [Mini Rack] Mixer, as well as a few bits ofoutboard gear, running it through an EQ, andcompressor back in. I guess it is because budgets aregetting smaller. For us to be able to get paid at all,we need to adapt. Its unfortunate, but I think weremaking it work. Its something that I feelcomfortable with. But I also feel comfortable mixingon a console as well.

Where is that mixing taking place?Thats at a little room in Assault & Battery. It was an

old mastering room.How much do you end up editing and

tuning material?I dont think Im particularly fond of comping drums or

Auto-Tune. Im very reluctant. I dont think its out oflaziness, but its much easier to get them to playagain. It saves time. All that stuff is really timeconsuming. But I know that everyone has a differentprocess. I was talking about it with a band yesterdaywho was asking if I was going to comp the drums. Isaid that Id like to not have to do that, unless theywant it to be a creative thing where theyd like thingsto sound cut-up, or to sound like a drum machine.They said that they worked with people before whojust did one drum take and then spent hours cuttingit up. I can understand that. Its a process that somepeople might have to go through. When Im mixing,the last thing that I do is draw out the esses on thevocals; whether it really needs it or not. Its thesethings that people do to make them feel like theyredoing their job.

Youve gone back to Australia andproduced and engineered sincemoving away. How did that comeabout?

I think that people had heard of me; they heard aboutthis young Aussie chick whod gone to London. Idgone back to Australia and asked my manager, Karen[Ciccone], to organize some meetings. Because Iveworked with Flood and Alan, that opened a lot ofdoors. I would love to eventually make more recordsin Australia, and to be close to mum and dad.Through those meetings, I found people who hadparticular things that I could do. I worked on aBuchanan album. I worked with Paul Kelly, whos anAussie hero an incredible musician and songwriter.

Was that nice to be able to go home, visityour parents, and get some work too?

Yeah. Here I have my life; I can come home and be inmy own flat at the end of the day. With mum and dadits like, Why were you out so late last night? Well,because I didnt finish the record until two oclock inthe morning!

So what has kept you at this career?Your familys on the other side of theworld, you come to London andyoure sitting in sessions for 12hours a day.

I think part of it is just determination. I think that alot of people thought that I wouldnt last very long,that I was doing the wrong thing, or that it wasntwhat I wanted to do. But it turned out that it was.Even though I found it difficult initially, just being an

invisible nobody, I slowly started to realize howcrucial that aspect was, and how you were suddenlypart of a team. I wanted to be part of making music,and it didnt matter how.

What do you think you bring to asession?

Im very organized. I think its all about seeing the bigpicture. Everyones got this common goal. Itsthinking about what I can do to help everyone realizewhat they want to achieve. I still feel like its notabout me and my vision. I think, in that way, Imquite reactive. Its about the energies and theexcitement; all the emotion, or whatever that goeson on that particular day, with those particularpeople. Creatively, thats definitely the way I work.What excites me at that time? Obviously Ive got aplan of what we need to achieve; but musically, andemotionally, its very experimental. Its the happyaccidents that color and shape the fundamentals of asong. Thats definitely what excites me. I rememberasking Flood a stupid question like, What did you doback then [on tape] if someone played out of time,or sung out of tune? Hed say, Turn them up! Iknow he was being flippant, or annoyed by myquestion, but I took that to heart. You either makethe most of it, or find a way that you can workaround it.

What do you see in the future?Im working so much at the moment that time is just

getting compressed, more and more, into ridiculousschedules. I feel like Im now coming back to workingaround the clock. I have a couple of weeks offcoming up, which Im really excited about. Im justgoing to sleep. But I dont know whats next.Hopefully I can maintain the interest there is, withthe people who want to work with me. Some of theproductions Ive been doing over the past few yearsare coming out now, which is exciting. I dont getoffended if I dont get chosen for a job though. Ithink its so much about personalities, and thedynamic that you have with the band. Youre goingto be spending loads of time with them, so they needto respect and trust you. r

Thanks to Rough Trade Records for allowing us to pop infor a photo session!

24/Tape Op#102/Ms. Marks/(Fin.)[email protected]

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You did not come up through the studiosystem. Instead you got an MBA fromColumbia University. Did thatdegree, or anything in your businesstraining, help you later when youwere making records?

The degree basically helped me get a job. I had aconcentration in marketing, and I did it mainly to stayout of the Vietnam War, as well as to please my parents.I went into advertising major league advertising andI hated it. Music was always the main thing in my life.I just couldnt ignore it, and I knew that I had thecapability for it in some way. I wrote a letter to CliveDavis; the fact that I had an MBA made me appear moreserious. I presented myself as a musician who was astudent of rock n roll, who also had two degrees and ajob. Instead of saying, Give me a job. I need a job. Isaid, Id much rather work in music because, honestly,I dont like what Im doing. I think I saw three or fourother people and the last one said, I want you to seeMr. Davis. Mr. Davis gave me a job and that was it.

When you were at Epic Records, one ofyour responsibilities was editingsongs down to single length. Was theactual edit that you did the one thatended up on the radio, or did you doan example and then somebody elsewould recut it?

I had a tape machine and a splicing block in my office.I really enjoyed editing. Theyd bring it to me andtheyd say, How do we do this? How do we get this8 minute song down to 3:20 without butchering it?Id figure out a way. Id just listen to it a few times.I had the pop structure in mind intro, verse, chorus,verse, chorus, bridge, solo, verse, chorus, out. Idmake notes. You had to make sure everything was thesame going into the splice, and out of the splice. I gotvery good at hearing whether it would work or not. I

wasnt allowed to touch the master. We were a unionshop at CBS. So, Id take the model from my office,walk it down to the studio, and give it to themastering engineer. Id say, Edit here; 1, 2, 3, bang,and hed copy it exactly. I did some songs that hadseven or eight cuts in them. The OJays For the Loveof Money was so long [7:14]. It was great because itwas wide open it had a lot of space in it. Anythingfrom Philadelphia wasnt going to have much of atempo problem.

Tom WermanNo Power Without Order

by Tom BeaujourTed Nugent, REO Speedwagon, Poison, Mtley Cre, Molly Hatchet, Twisted Sister.

When pitching this article to Tape Op, it was not lost on me that many of the artists that TomWerman signed and/or produced in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s are probably exactly what drovea good number of this magazines readers to create a scene, as well as methods of making andrecording music, that circumvented the commercial rock establishment. But I probably wasnt theonly kid running around the streets in 1987 with a Maxell XLII in his Walkman that had PoisonsOpen Up and Say Ahh! on one side of the tape and Hsker Ds Flip Your Wig on the other. Even if Iwas, its hard to argue that Cheap Tricks late 70s trifecta of In Color, Heaven Tonight, and Dream Police all Werman productions werent the high water mark of American power pop. Werman, now69, stopped making records almost completely in the mid 90s when the alternative rockrevolution resulted in him becoming essentially unemployable, due to his close association withglam metal. He says, I was already 55 in 1990; time to hang it up, really. How many lifetimeproducers work successfully beyond that? A handful. Tom Dowd, Jerry Wexler, George Martin,and Phil Ramone. Not hard rock guys though. Rather than slog it out, Werman opened a luxurybed and breakfast called Stonover Farm, located in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. Theestablishment is still thriving, and thats where I visited him on a snowy winters day to discuss hisunusual career arc, unwaveringly pop aesthetic, and, most importantly, what it was like to make hitrecords in an era where the budgets were even bigger than the snare reverbs.

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The first artist you signed to Epic was TedNugent.

I didnt know what a producer did when I started; I wasa talent scout. Embarrassingly enough, I signed TedNugent. Thats really hard to explain to people thesedays, given his views and outspokenness. Butactually, hes a really good guy. He just got twisted atsome point. Ted had a production deal with this guy,Lew Futterman, who would call the shots. He could bethe producer. I was kind of bummed by this becauseI was thinking that maybe I would get a producer. Iactually asked Pete Townshends lawyer if he wouldconsider producing Ted Nugent, one day when wewere on a plane together. She laughed. But, to hercredit, later on she sent me a letter congratulating meon the success of the record. I horned in. I went intothe studio a lot. I slowly, but surely, started makingsuggestions. Lew was a reasonably creative guy, buthe didnt know much about rock n roll and he wasnice enough to give me co-production credit. There Iwas a producer. I also remixed the whole record. Hemixed it; it was delivered and I didnt like it, so Iasked for $5,000 to remix. I took it back down toAtlanta, where we had made it, and I mixed it with areally great engineer named Tony Reale. Unfortunatelylater he borrowed some money from me anddisappeared. It was a real disappointment to mebecause I loved the guy.

What did you look for in the engineersthat you hired, and who were some ofyour favorites?

A sense of humor first. The first engineer I everlatched on to was Gary Ladinsky. When Cheap Trickdecided they wanted to record in L.A., I called theRecord Plant. I figured, Well, thats a well-knownstudio. I spoke to the studio manager and I said,Can you recommend some engineers? They hadsome house engineers some guys that workedthere pretty exclusively, who had come up from tapeops and assistant engineers. I interviewed three ofthem on the phone, and Gary Ladinsky came off asthe best. He was low-key and easy going, and hejust sounded good to me.

You figured he had been screened. Yeah, he was making records. He had made some

Moody Blues records. I liked his credits, I liked him,and we decided to work together. We went out thereand we made Cheap Tricks In Color, which wasRolling Stones Album of the Year. He had bookedSound City for the tracking, I think. It was a prettyinteresting project, and I really enjoyed workingwith him. We wound up making 16 records together,almost every one of them at the Record Plant. It wasmy home away from home just the best place onEarth. It was a party house, as well as the mostprofessional recording facility I ever saw.

Does that mean the process is almostinvisible to you while making therecord? Like, nothing is breaking?

Their maintenance staff was unbelievable. We had thesame assistant engineer for three years. He went onto win a Grammy. But no matter what kind of chaos

was going on in the studio in the control room, inthe halls you could always count on the fact thatyour assistant engineer was on the case. Hed markeverything, hed put everything away, and hed get itback to the vault. Absolutely button down it waslike a SWAT team. Yet, they did everything that theycould to accommodate the rock n roll life. I meaneverything. It was great. I lived there.

While you were working with Gary andmaking those 16 records, you werereally just there the whole time?

Pretty much. We did go to Orlando for Molly Hatchet. Wedid one in Nassau at Compass Point. We did the restin Orlando at a tiny little studio called Bee Jay[Recording Studios], because the bands managermade a really good deal with them. It was just like TedNugent in Atlanta at Sound Pit Studios. Futtermanmade a really good deal for that studio. I mean, reallygood. In the 70s we used to make some albums foranywhere from $30,000 to $50,000. And then slowly,by the mid 80s, we went up to $200,000.

Was the increase in budgets due to thefact that you were spending moretime in the studio, or that the studiosgot more expensive?

Spending more time, working with less talentedmusicians, escalating studio costs, bigger rental fees,more outboard gear, more drugs, more time wasted it was just a lot of that stuff. I had the permission the clout so that we could spend a little moremoney. Honestly, for most of the records I was

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making, especially the second and third for any band,I was almost positive that the record was going torecoup so I really wasnt worried. I tried to savemoney, but I didnt skimp. Id pay double scale forsome backing singers, and keyboard guys whod comein by themselves. Wed spend two or three days andtheyd make a bundle. Wed work out the parts. Icouldnt write or read music, so I would sing to thekeyboard player or any studio musician that I used.

Did you use studio guys a lot on therecords you were making?

I never used a ringer, or anybody uncredited never. Idhave guests but never substitutes. One of thestranger guests I had was Mickey Raphael, WillieNelsons harmonica player. He played on PoisonsOpen Up and Say Ahh! on Nothing But a GoodTime and stuff like that. These guys would come in;theyd get double scale and work overtime. Youd paywhat you had to.

Its so foreign now, that there wasmoney to spend.

Yeah. There was plenty of money to spend. On top ofthat, theyd make a video for $100,000.

Without romanticizing anything, doyou feel like records lost anything inthat transition to being much morelaborious?

Well yeah, they got too perfect. They got a littlefinished, they got corporate, and I was into that. Iwas into perfection. I thought that you could nothave power without order in music. You had to be on

time, and in tune, in order to make really locomotiverock n roll something that had a lot of forwardmomentum and rhythm which was my thing. All ofa sudden, around the late 80s, everything that I knewwas wrong; everything that I worked for wassomething that the new bands didnt want. Therewere times when these new bands said, That soundstoo good. Its out of tune; its out of time like theRolling Stones, times ten. Not only were theyimprecise they were sloppy.

It really seems like the temptation wouldhave been there to bring in someringers with some of these bands.

Sure. Rikki Rockett playing drums for Poison Youknow, that was tough. But I accepted the project byseeing the band, evaluating them, and saying, Okay,I can make a hit record with you. Not, I can makea hit record, with two out of the four of you, andbring in some ringers. It wouldnt be the bandssound; it wouldnt be the bands vibe. I think itsalways important to try to duplicate, or be faithfulto, the bands live sound even though one of thethings I was most criticized for was commercializingthe band, and making them too neat and too pop.But thats just who I am. Musically, I gravitatetowards the strengths of the record and want to getrid of the weaknesses. The hook and the main guitarlick in all my work if there is a good guitar lick,like Cat Scratch Fever, youre going to hear it. Itsgoing to be featured. Were not going to bury it.Were not going to soft pedal it. I was very good at

comping vocals. Id do three tracks of vocals and Idbe able to pick out whatever was best about everyline, every word, and every phrase. Id say, Take 15minutes, and wed put one together. Then wed dotwo more and Id put that together. By the time wewere finished, the vocalist was thrilled. Theyd say, Idid that?

I was going to ask you about that, versushaving the guy just punching in.

Oh, yeah. No. I really wanted to shorten the process,and keep him and his voice fresh. The same with leadguitar. Id bring a guy into the control room and justsit and work with him on the fills. A lot of guys wouldhave a solo, but they wouldnt know how to fill.Theyd fill over the vocal, or they just wouldnt feel it.I would sing to them. Id say, How about somethinglike this? I was really good at shortening their dayand getting the real meat out of them.

From the early 70s to 93, when youstopped, would you say that thequality of musicianship went downconsistently, for all bands, acrossthe board?

Well, no. I guess it started to go down for me. I startedto work with musicians who werent quite as good,starting in the mid-80s. Everybody in Cheap Trick wasbrilliant. Robin Zander was the best vocalist I everworked with, Bun E. Carlos was the best drummer,and Tom Petersson was the best bass player. Theywere great! We did those records just like that.[snaps fingers]

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Because they were out in the Midwestrehearsing, playing shows, andgetting good.

Same with REO Speedwagon. They were the first band Isigned. These are road-tested bands. Then you get topeople like Mtley Cre and Twisted Sister, who werentbad and Poison but it took a lot. They could play theirinstruments, but Lets just say that Nikki Sixx improvedquite a lot on the bass, from the first album I did withthem to the last. Tommy Lee was a great drummer thesecond best drummer I ever worked with. Mick [Mars] wasa good guitar player too. Micks problem was that hedidnt know his equipment that well, and he didnt havea good tech. When we finally got a good guitar tech which was on Girls, Girls, Girls he started to sound reallygood, as far as Im concerned.

Theres a certain consistency andmidrange to the guitars through theCheap Trick, Nugent, and MollyHatchet records. Did you have anyequipment that you travelled withfrom session to session?

The only thing I brought with me from project to projectwas a mic a Sennheiser vocal mic that I purchased forVince Neil because he sang through his nose. I rentedit to all the bands. Wed do a test by putting a[Neumann U] 87, and something else, up against mymic. Wed do a blind test, and my mic always won. Idont remember the model but it was a $2000 mic thatI bought in 1985. In the beginning, I didnt understandanything about the frequency spectrum, or how you hadto distribute the instruments over the whole frequencyrange. I tended to try to fit everything into themidrange. Everythings there vocals, guitars, and thetop of the bass it all fights for space. What I noticedwas that, with midrange build-up, you are going to geta painful playback when you turn it up. If the wholeband is well distributed, you can turn that thing way upand it will just fill the room. Its pleasant to listen to,and so much more apparently loud.

Did you have a pretty rapid technicallearning curve, once you were instudios all the time?

The only thing I really learned was what you could do withoutboard gear. Not how it was done, but just what wasavailable to modify sound. I had some favorites. WhenI started producing, there were three things you coulddo: a chamber echo/plate echo, tape slap, and a phaser.But I was still making records when you could quantizeand pitch correct. That was the beginning of the end,as far as really good music and really good recording, asfar as Im concerned. But, as I kept producing more andmore records, there definitely were routines that I foundthat worked on records that I had done before. I neverrecorded a rhythm guitar without doubling it andspreading the two never! Id double it; it wouldsmooth it out, or average out the peaks, and I lovedthat. I never made one record where you had troublehearing the rhythm guitar. Never.

Yeah, with your records its prominent,but not harsh they are there, buttheyre not clawing at you. Were thereother routines?

Plenty. There are backing harmonies that bands would neverdream of having. For instance, Poison consideredthemselves a hard rock band. Listen to the arrangementon Every Rose Has Its Thorn; its pure schmaltz purechicken fat. I call it the kitchen sink approach. I puteverything in there: Oohs, ahhs, strings, and synth pads.I did all the hand percussion for all my records. After wewere finished with the recording, Id go in one afternoonand do all the percussion the tambourines, the handclaps, the shakers. I always told the band if they didnt likeit we could hire somebody, but everybody liked it. Thatwas my last chance to influence the direction of the song.I liked doing backwards things. I liked phasing. I loved theRoland Jazz Chorus amp. What a great sound that is. I lovethe Hammond B3 organ. I used it with power chords a lot.There are very few Mtley Cre songs that dont have a B3.Sometimes piano you could conceal them behind theguitars. I used double cello on Cheap Tricks AufWiedersehen. You cant hear it, but you can feel it, alongwith the guitar, when everything is going, Duh duh duhduh duh. It makes a real drive.

How would you pick which instrument wasgoing to produce the right texture? Wasit instinct, or trial and error?

Trial and error. Id say, Id like something like this. Thekeyboard player would give me a sound. Id say, No,more gnarly. Lets crank up the Leslie because its toopolite. Stuff like that. But I am a sucker for string padsand constant pedal tones I always try to find the keynote that would go through the whole verse. Id use anorgan, or Id use a string synth pad. I made records toplease me. Producers are supposed to be neutral; theyare supposed to serve the band. But I found the musicthat I enjoyed was music that people would buy. So,why not?

Around 1983, when you transitioned tohard rock bands, were you werethinking, This is where Im going togo, because this is where the newguitar rock is. Did you identify thissort of sea change?

No. It wasnt me. I stopped signing bands after I left CBS.I got my projects by A&R guys calling me. They wouldsay, I have this band; I think you would be a goodproducer for them. I would meet with them, I wouldsee them, Id listen to their demos, and then Id makea decision. It was the industry that kind of decidedwhere I was going to go, and it didnt do me any favors.With Twisted Sister, Doug Morris the head of AtlanticRecords called me and said, Youre the only guy whocan make a hit record with this band. So, I did it forhim, because you dont turn down the head of AtlanticRecords if he calls you. I was pigeonholed.

Thats sort of the way of the world Weneed that guy. What do you thinkyour skill set was perceived as being?

Im quite sure that they said, What the hell are we goingto do with this band? Id made hits from notunrecordable bands but challenging bands. I had thisstring of hits remarkably, even to me. At one point,when I moved to L.A., I remember I had three albumsthat I did in the Billboard Top 40. Three differentalbums, by three different groups. It was great.

When Nirvana came out did the phonejust stop ringing?

Yeah, it was pretty quick. Theres an old joke that I tell allthe time the four phases of any Hollywood career: 1.)Whos Tom Werman? 2.) Get me Tom Werman. 3.)Get me a young Tom Werman. 4.) Whos TomWerman?

Do you think that the whole industrywas relieved when they could get ridof glam metal? Or were they justmoving on to the next thing, as theyare wont to do?

A&R people are lemmings. Theyll go wherever the windblows. They are generally very insecure. Publish orperish a lot of pressure. If another A&R guy wasinterested in a band, immediately you paid moreattention to that band, even if you didnt particularlyrespect his taste. One of my favorite stories is whenTom Zutaut, who signed Mtley Cre and hired me toproduce them, went to see Guns N Roses at the Roxy.It was a showcase, and a lot of A&R people were there.He told me that he made it very obvious that after hedheard a few songs, maybe after the third song, he gotup and made sure everybody saw him walk out. Thenext day he signed them. He didnt want anybody toknow that he really wanted them; he figured he wouldthrow them off. It was pretty cool. But no, I thinkthey were happy only because they were off to theraces it was a foxhunt. Blow the trumpet and getthem out of the bushes, because Seattle was loadedwith these guys.

How involved were you in mixing?Typically I would let the engineer set up the mix and work

on it for maybe five or six hours, then Id walk in, hearit, and give him a list. Id say, Make this a little louder.Try more compression here. Try this; this is too shrill.And Id let him work on the list. Then Id come back inagain, and Id do the same thing. Wed refine it, andrefine it, and Id know if I was going in the rightdirection. For him, it would be a series of littlechanges. For me it would be quite a difference betweenthis playback and the next playback. I never touchedthe board until we went to tape. The only thing I didthen was really ride for levels, or maybe Id pan orsomething. But I found that if you produced the recordwell, it almost mixed itself. You could really pre-mixthe record during the recording by doing the rightthing getting the right sound, making the right part,being aware of all the musical parts of the song.Occasionally, when you didnt do such a good jobproducing the record, you tried to fix it in the mix,which really cant be done. I wasnt afraid to scrap amix. Wed work till midnight. Id come in during the dayand do that whole come-in-go-out thing, and thenafter dinner wed try to bring it home. By midnight,wed sit there and say, Fuck, we went right by it. Weover-mixed it. Then youd just go right back to zeroand come in the next day. Those were usually the songsthat just didnt turn out that well.

When things switched from being onvinyl to being on CD, did you changehow you were mixing? Did it affect howyou were doing things?

30/Tape Op#102/Mr. Werman/(continued on page 32)[email protected]

[email protected]

Well, I guess I did a little bit. But each engineer has his ownsignature. Geoff Workman, who did the first two MtleyCre and the Twisted Sister record that I did he had abigger bottom end than Ladinsky. Duane Baron, who didthe second and third Mtley Cre albums he had anotherapproach. More balanced, and a little more meticulous.They really determined how it sounded, to a large degree. Ididnt say, Okay, were going to CD now, instead of vinyl,so we have to do this. I remember listening to TedNugents first album on FM stereo, in New York. Before Iwould produce a record, I would listen on FM stereo, and Iwould listen on earphones. I thought, This is good, this isgreat. Id listen to the record and Id say, This is as goodas I can make it, but theres definitely something lacking.It just doesnt sound like all those other records. I finallyheard one of the songs that I produced on WNEW FM withtheir compressor and I said, Wow! Is that my record? God,it sounds good. Compression! So, I had this one masteringengineer, George Marino at Sterling Sound, and he dideverything that I ever did, basically. Up until the time whenI think he retired. I remember there would be a point inevery project, or every song, when hed give me thecompressor control. Id go way overboard; then Id go offand Id find the middle.

You attended all of your mastering?Oh, yeah. It was so important to me. I always saw it as a

process of peeling off a layer of wax over the linoleum floorand revealing the linoleum. Youd go in there with a flattape and youd come out and A/B the two and be like, Ohman, I just improved this record by 20 percent. This is somuch better than when I walked in the building. Thats agreat feeling. You just play it over, and over, and over, andover. And youre hearing stuff that you didnt hear in themix that just came out. A creative mastering engineer canjust bring out the best stuff. I would approach masteringlike mixing. I would say, Well, this solo needs to be louder,but this fill is a little too loud. So, hed actually map outhis moves. Hed roll off something on that fill, when he gotto that fill. Wed try to do whatever we could to make therecord the best it could be. I didnt just let it go. r

Tom Beaujour is the owner of Nuthouse Recording in HobokenNew Jersey. He has worked with Nada Surf, Jennifer OConnor,and Guided by Voices, among many others.

32/Tape Op#102/Mr. Werman/(Fin.)[email protected]

[email protected]

Talk about your roots as an engineer/producer. Was there a particular pointwhere you thought, Hey, this is reallycool. I want to do this.

Probably around 2000. I got a BOSS BR-8 digital recorderthat ran off of Zip disks and mixed out on a MiniDisc.Before that I was playing a song into a tape recorder andthen playing it back and recording to that, but notoverdubbing. But when I started to get into multitracking,thats when I started to see my writing get exponentiallybetter. The obsession grew. Instead of just using a drummachine, I was starting to get into situations like, I canonly use one track for drums, so where am I going to putthe [Shure SM]58? Put it right between the snare andkick? [laughs] Through the BR-8 I was learning aboutcompression and at first I really didnt know what itmeant, so I just turned it all the way up; everything wouldget louder and blown out. I was like, This is fuckinggreat! [laughs] Slowly I learned what it was doing. I had

that BR-8 for about seven years. Around 2007, whenSecretly Canadian [record label] committed to my firstrecord, I bought a [Tascam] MS-16 1-inch [tape deck] anda Tascam 24-channel board. That was a new kind of wayof engineering for me. Learning about aux sends andfeeding shit back through them, slowing the tape down,sampling off tape. It was a place where I had my own littlezone, with a few Memory Man pedals and pieces of gear.By doing that all the time I started getting better atrecording guitars, and I started reading about engineeringand rock mythology. Like, Oh, on Born to Run they threwa 12-string guitar into a dbx [compressor]. Lets do that!

Given the 80s rock influences in yourwriting Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty did you find yourself learning about themaking of all of those records?

Not really. Before I started this record, I was in a guitar storeoutside of Philly called the Guitar Barn, and they had thisMXR Pitch Transposer. You can see pictures of Phil Collins

in the studio with a whole rack of these things, but I neverknew what they were. It came with the meter display,which is pretty rare. I would usually start everything athome on the 1-inch: drum machine, guitars usuallythrough my [Fender] Champ or my Traynor amps andsynths or Rhodes. Really anything I could do that wouldset the mood of whatever idea I was working on. JeffZeigler, my engineer, had the same 1-inch machine, so Idgive him all of the tapes to transfer into Pro Tools. But Ihad this piano riff for this one song, and I was like, Letshook up that Pitch Transposer. We had its mono outputinto a stereo [Vox] Time Machine delay, and all of a suddenthat became in some way the sound of the record.

I gathered that this record wasnt made inthe traditional sense of band goes intoa studio and knocks out ten songs over ahandful of weeks. It was more of along-term personal project. What was itlike making a record that way?

AAdam Granduciel The War on Drugs

by Dave Hidekphoto by Jacob Biba

With 2014s Lost in the Dream, The War on Drugspeoples playlists. Frontman and producer extraord

was kind enough to take a break from touring to discuthe record, as well as some of his p

[email protected]

The advantages include being able to take one littleidea and watch it expand, [as well as] taking thingsaway and putting things in constant revising.Theres no sound in my head that Im trying tocapture; its the whole process that excites me, fromthe first demo to mixing. In mixing youre like,Mute all the drums, after hearing it all for a year,and then youre like, Mute everything, except forthose synths. All of a sudden theres this Aha!moment, but it still has all the elements that weveadded to in the past year. Disadvantages to thisprocess would be that without a deadline Im notsure when Id get to the point of making those finaldecisions, because that journey is so exciting to me.Because there is no distinct sound chasing, the songcan always become something new.

Did you get to a point where you werethinking, I dont know what Imlistening to anymore!

Yeah, definitely. Towards the end, there were a few songsthat I knew didnt feel right. There was one song, AnOcean In Between the Waves wed spent eightmonths working on a certain version of it. I started itat home and it was really sweet, and then over thecourse of nine months it started to get out of my hands.We mixed it, and everyone loved it, but it just didnt feellike me. It felt wrong. So we started over and re-recorded it in two and a half days. I kept the drums thatwe recorded at Echo Mountain Recording [Asheville,NC], as well as a few original guitars from my firstrecording, but other than that it was all redone. It wasreally satisfying, and the song ended up being a lot ofpeoples favorite song on the record. I feel good that Imade that decision, despite people saying, Yourecrazy. This sounds great!

When you were tracking, was there oneparticular signal chain or piece ofgear that you kept coming back to?

When we were at Echo Mountain, they had a Sony C-37A[microphone] that I used on Slave Ambient [TWODsprevious album], and I remember the chain was a C-37Ainto an EMI sidecar and into a [Teletronix] LA-2A itwas so thick. I wanted to go back down there for thatmic to do vocals. We started to do a shootout. Theyhave a [vintage Telefunken Ela M] 251, and of courseJeff was like, We have to try it! So I put it up, and itwas kinda bright. No one wants to say that it doesntsound good. [laughs] Is there a cable shorting out?But I was like, Lets just try that C-37A. We put it up,and all of a sudden it was great. Jeff was using the C-37A into a [Neve] 1073, into a Manley Vari-Mu, into anSSL. Once we had that chain, we used it for all of thesongs. For mixing, Nicolas [Vernhes, Tape Op #20] hada Universal Audio 175 [compressor], and that was great.

After tracking, did you go back to yourstudio or Jeffs for comping and editing?

Yeah, wed do a lot of comping at Jeffs, as well as a lot ofediting of guitars and keyboards. There were only a fewinstances where I was taking the hard drive home. Iwanted to have those moments were I could sit with arough mix in my room, play along through my [Fender]Champ, and come up with little leads or work on lyrics.One weekend I got super inspired and I brought all myamps and all of my rack gear up to my bedroom, and Irecorded for about four or five days straight. I rented aRoyer 121, and my Champ sounded awesome. I did all ofthese guitars; it was super productive.

In your comping/writing process, how doyou determine whats working andwhat needs to go?

If I did ten takes of guitar, Id think, Just let me do onemore. Even if the sixth one was better, wed always keepthe last one I did for the rough. Like, Well comp themlater, and you never end up comping. [laughs] In themoment I feel, I can do better, but theres somethingabout the sixth one that was cool, and theres somethingabout the tenth one thats cool. Its really just aboutbuilding it up, adding sweet tones, or using a pedal andgetting some cool sounds out of it. I think part of it isalways listening to rough mixes. The song is alwaysthere, but with different guitar sounds and textures.Lead guitars start to reveal themselves and become

hooks. Its trusting your instincts and trusting the peoplethat you choose to work with. We spent four or fivemonths working on a piano part. And then one night atMitch Easters [Tape Op #21] it was 2 a.m. and my pianistRobbie [Bennett] was playing the [Yamaha] C3 babygrand. I could tell he was having a good time. I said,Lets do the piano part for Eyes To The Wind right now.He did a third take and I said, Thats the one. Weddone 20 takes over five months, but that was the one.You cant always have someone playing your song andimmediately have them playing what you want.

Theyre not you.Yeah, and sometimes you dont even really know what it

is. Theres no way to explain music, really it just feelslike, That was the one. It may have been because wedall had a big dinner and some wine.

One great thing about Lost in the Dream isthat theres this tight, punchy rhythmsection, and then all of this space forvocals, reverbs, synths, and guitars. Wasthat something that came up inmixing, or was that something that youkept in mind throughout tracking?

That was something that Nicolas Vernhes did in mixing. Hewasnt familiar with the band at all, but he wanted tomake the best illusion possible that it was a bandplaying in a room. Even though we didnt play any ofthese songs live, and everything was done to a [RolandTR-]707, he was able to focus the rhythm section intothat tight sound of a band for a lot of these songs. Itwas great. It wasnt something that I had thoughtabout, but you get caught up in the arrangement.Should I have the drum machine in there and then fadeto the real drums? Nicolas was good at putting thosethings lower, letting them be subtle, and creating thatillusion of bringing the vocals up a little closer, as wellas hearing performances in the bass or the drums. I knewit was all there, but in the moment I just didnt knowhow all of these songs were going to connect together.

If you were to go back to the outset of thisrecord, or even past records, whatsone thing you would tell yourself?

At the end of the day its really about what comes out ofthe amp or the piano, instead of what its going into.Im going to buy a C-37A, but it doesnt really matter.Capture that moment where youre the most confidentin a song: when the idea is the most pure, and yourereally excited about the song you have, or the soundyoure working on. That magic comes through if its a[Shure SM]58 plugged into an Mbox, or a 251 into anEMI channel. Its those tiny things that make the songspecial. Following through on the idea, hearing it, andknowing its right. You dont have to know what youregoing for, but its helpful to know what you like.Sometimes its fun to spend an hour on a guitar soundand put a [Shure SM]57 up, just to get the initial idea.I think working quickly is nice, and theres no right orwrong; its just confidence and believing in the art ofrecording. Why are you recording? Its to capture sound,but also to capture a moment. And that is just asimportant as the sound. r

s have made it onto mostdinaire Adam Granducieluss the unique making ofproduction philosophies.

Mr. Granduciel/(Fin.)/Tape Op#102/[email protected]

The band moe. has been going strong sinceforming in Buffalo, NY, over 20 years ago.Guitarist/vocalist Al Schnier joined up in 1991; theband has been busy on the road, as well as releasingalbums, ever since, even putting on the excellentmoe.down festival (The fifteenth year is happeningin Turin, NY, August 29-31, this summer). I droppedAl a line as moe. were wrapping up their 11th album,No Guts, No Glory!, to discuss the bands studiohistory, his home studio, and thoughts on recordingguitars.

You guys are working on a new record?Yup. Weve finished all the tracking at this point. We

were working at the Carriage House Studios inStamford, Connecticut. Wed been there once before,around 2000, working on our album, Dither, with JohnSiket. It was one of those places where we had a reallygood experience and good memory of it. Originally wehad planned to be on the West Coast to do therecording, but for personal reasons we had to do it inthe Northeast. It was good to be back there.

What is it that you like about CarriageHouse?

There are a couple of things. Weve spent enough timein a lot of different recording studios, and a lot ofdifferent residential situations. Weve even gone so faras to rent a house on one of our records, as well asmove in all of our own gear to build a makeshiftstudio setup. We want a space thats conducive togetting the work done. It has to be comfortable, butyou also want the right gear. You want everything towork. Carriage House has the right combination ofthose things. You have a great collection of gear, butalso a comfortable place to work. In this day and age,

the personal customer service part of it really goes along way. Its the easiest record weve ever made. Wenever felt like we were on the clock, or in somebodyelses space. They helped us get our job done. If weneeded anything, they were there to help out.

That should be the situation most of thetime.

Well, it should be; but a lot of times you get into astudio where you might be dealing with somecomplacency, or maybe some gear thats not quite inshape that hasnt been cleaned in a while. You spendtime putting out fires and checking the gear yourself,when you should be recording.

When you set up a house as a recordingstudio did you find yourselves prettydistracted with equipment?

Not so much. I have a really good friend named MarkCochi who has his own recording company called RDRLocation. Hes got a 48-track HD rig with [iZTechnology] RADAR, a Sony digital desk [DMX-R100],48 channels of API preamps and outboardcompressors, and $100,000 worth of microphones. Wewerent wanting for any gear. The only distraction wasthat several of us were geeking out over the gearwhile we were doing the recording.

Ive gathered that you have a propensityfor that, when it comes to recordingequipment and guitars.

Yeah. Wed be recording a guitar part and say, Whydont we do a mic shootout first to see which mic willbe best? An hour and a half would pass by, until oneof the guys in the band would finally say, Hey! Areyou guys done? Can we record this guitar part?

You want to understand what thoseoptions are.

Right, exactly. Its cool because everybody in the bandhas been working for so long, so were all prettyparticular about the sounds were going after, as well aswhat were trying to produce and create. Some of us aremore involved on the technical side of things. Ipersonally have to be careful not to get bogged downin that, because I could spend days in the studio havingmy way with the equipment, more than the songsthemselves. I could spend an hour trying to create asound like I have in my head. I want to build soundsfrom scratch. Those are fun days in the studio for me.

What was the first experience that youhad going into the studio with moe.?

moe. had actually recorded some demos before Istarted playing with them. Theres this great vintageguitar shop in Buffalo called Top Shelf Music. One ofthe luthiers there, Andrew Buscher, was also a guitartech with the Goo Goo Dolls. He lived above theguitar shop and had a studio in his apartment with a16-track, 1-inch machine. There was probably aSoundcraft board and a few random pieces ofoutboard gear. We made our first two albums there,but hed gotten a better tape machine by the time wedid the second album. We were working at night, afterthe guitar shop closed. Wed go in at six or seven atnight, and work until two in the morning. Some of theguys were still in school at that point, and we hadneighbors and things to contend with, but it was agreat process.

Thats pretty awesome.It was good that we were in his hands, because he had

a certain appreciation, not only for the recordingprocess, but also for the gear. I remember sittingdown with him and comparing our Les Pauls at onepoint. He was explaining why the 68 Goldtop that hehad was different from the 72 Goldtop that I had. Hewas a big fan of The Who, so everything was informedby their musical vocabulary. It was good to have himreinterpret what we were doing through thatvernacular.

You mentioned having a month atCarriage House and not feeling soon the clock. Has that been a goal?

Absolutely. Every time we try and create these situationsin which we can get the work done. On one of therecords we did, we tracked in a theater in Portland,Maine. We knew the theater was going to be emptyfor a couple weeks. We had a really good relationshipwith those people, so we asked them if we couldmove in for a couple of weeks. Its nice for us to workwhen were left alone that way. Were all fat and oldat this point, but we still worked 12-hour days for amonth straight. Once we get into the process ofmaking a record, were pretty dedicated to it. Its niceto be able to do it that way, rather than have to beon the clock, work around a schedule, bounce aroundto different locations, or move in and out of a studio.When you go to a nice, quiet town in Connecticut, theonly thing to do is make the record.

How much pre-production do you guysdo? Do you take songs out on the roadfor a bit and come into the studio torethink them, or vice versa?

Al Schnier of moe.by Larry Cranephotos by Jay Blakesberg

36/Tape Op#102/Mr. Schnier/(continued on page 38)[email protected]

GGuitar Sounds in the Studio

I used to play through a Hiwatt half stack. Its agreat sounding amp. Theres nothing that sounds asbalanced to me, in terms of full-spectrum guitar tone.But I found, in the context of a mix, it wasnt reallydoing the job it needed to do, because I dont need tobe covering that much of the tonal spectrum. I need tobe playing guitar in guitar-friendly frequencies. So Imoved over to a [Vox] AC30. Its right in those reallygreat midrange guitar friendly frequencies. Theres thatpeak, right around 3 kHz, thats great for guitar. It sitsin the mix. Those are things you need to learn the hardway. You need to go through that process. Its difficultwhen youre making electric music, because you canput anything, anywhere you want. Step on a pedal, and

it could be something else.

38/Tape Op#102/Mr. Schnier/(continued on page 40)

L to R: bassist Rob Derhak, guitarist Chuck Garvey, and Al Schnier

percussionist jim loughlin

[email protected]

40/Tape Op#102/Mr. Schnier/(continued on page 42)

producer dave aron

drummer vinnie amico

photos by Jay Blakesberg at Carriage House Studios,Stamford, CT.

[email protected]

Both. Weve worked out a song on the road for two yearsbefore bringing it into the studio really putting itthrough its paces. A typical soundcheck for us isabout an hour and a half. A lot of it are songs thatweve been playing for ten years, but were constantlyevolving the songs. Somebody might have a new idea.Were always tweaking the arrangements. The newersongs get more attention and work until everybodysettles into their parts. The changes have the rightfeel. But weve also done the exact opposite. Wevewritten songs in the studio and kept the third takes thats the one thats on the record. This new albumhas both. We have brand new songs, where weliterally walked in with demos that we recorded on aniPhone like one of us with an acoustic guitar. Wehad to flesh out the band versions.

Do you find that sometimes that a songcomes out on the album, but thenyou take it on the road and it morphsagain?

Yeah, absolutely. Especially with a band like us, becausewere a live improvisational band. Even when werewriting a song, we get to a particular section andknow that its going to be great to mine later live

Tape Op 102

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