Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set's podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is producer Howard Benson. Howard, we had
Speaker 1: to delay this because of issues with the fire. So
Speaker 1: how did that work out for you?
Speaker 2: Well, we were in at fire ready set evacuation spots,
Speaker 2: so we didn't have to evacuate, but we had to
Speaker 2: get ready to evacuate. So we were as most people
Speaker 2: were running around the house trying to figure out what
Speaker 2: to do. I was tearing the studio apart, trying to
Speaker 2: get the microphones, like the Sony C eight hundred, which
Speaker 2: is irreplaceable. So yeah, most of my stuff is in
Speaker 2: the cloud, but there was a bunch of other things.
Speaker 2: And then we had the fire that broke out up
Speaker 2: north of us, the Kenneth Fire, so that we were
Speaker 2: just surrounded. Look, we're lucky. We're one of the lucky ones.
Speaker 2: All we had to do is just sit and wait.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's just terrible what happened to everybody else.
Speaker 2: Just you know, I was down in Santa Monica a
Speaker 2: few days ago and you could smell the it's just
Speaker 2: you know, the smoke still down there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you talk about your studio, you have
Speaker 1: a studio in the home.
Speaker 2: I have a studio here and I have a studio
Speaker 2: on Woodland Hills, and the actually studio in Woodland Hills is
Speaker 2: where we were going to evacuate too. That's where my
Speaker 2: daughter lives. And I owned that studio for about twelve years.
Speaker 2: I bought it from a guy that worked at Disney
Speaker 2: and it was at Disney Studio, so it wasn't very soundproof.
Speaker 2: We had to really we had to bring a console
Speaker 2: in from Scotland and refurbish it. So we rebuilt the
Speaker 2: studio and that's what I've done most of my records
Speaker 2: in the last twelve thirteen years. But the home studio
Speaker 2: here is where i do all my vocals, and the
Speaker 2: vocals I'm kind of known for vocals. That's like part
Speaker 2: of my you know, white people hire me. So I
Speaker 2: have a vocal booth back there and I have you know,
Speaker 2: we're all wired into the other studio with a curs
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. So while I'm doing
Speaker 2: work here and the other studio, they're doing tracking and
Speaker 2: doing all the other stuff the guitars based drums. You know,
Speaker 2: we still are kind of a traditional recording business. You know,
Speaker 2: we still record with real instruments. That's not to say
Speaker 2: we don't usual you know, we still do a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, programming and all that, but people come
Speaker 2: to us because they like the sound of real things
Speaker 2: and they like the sound of humans in projects. So
Speaker 2: that's kind of like our you know, there was a
Speaker 2: moment there where were like, uh, oh, we're going to
Speaker 2: all be replaced by you know, an AI or something.
Speaker 2: But then we realize that there's actually more of a
Speaker 2: demand for real things than you know, there still is
Speaker 2: out there. So yeah, so all the vocals are done here.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the room. So the room
Speaker 1: you have in Woodland Hills, do you only use it
Speaker 1: yourself or do you have other people use the room?
Speaker 2: Right now, it's mostly my projects and my engineer Mike Plotnikoff,
Speaker 2: who is now a producer, and Joe Rickard. So these
Speaker 2: are guys that you know, back maybe ten years ago
Speaker 2: where my engineers and mostly doing that for me. But
Speaker 2: they've got their own clients now, so they leased the
Speaker 2: studio from me and I kind of give them a
Speaker 2: really good deal for that. I have another producer named
Speaker 2: Lenny Skolnick who works there, so we try to keep
Speaker 2: it within our group of people that we know, because
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of gear there, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff. We don't really have a staff that
Speaker 2: can accommodate different producers with different types of methodologies of working, so,
Speaker 2: you know, and we're also really busy, honestly, like we
Speaker 2: are always booked, so we you know, I even have
Speaker 2: trouble with getting my projects in there. So it's mostly
Speaker 2: my stuff, Mike's stuff, Joe's stuff, and mostly honestly, in
Speaker 2: the last four years has been Judge and Jury, the
Speaker 2: record company that I own along with Neil Sanderson from
Speaker 2: Three Days Grace he's my partner, and my son Grady,
Speaker 2: who runs the company. So we use that studio to
Speaker 2: record most of our music there.
Speaker 1: And you know, okay, so most of the big studios
Speaker 1: closed to what degree is your studio Woodland Hill's equivalent,
Speaker 1: like with a big room and certain equipment, just that
Speaker 1: it's basically controlled by you and not used by outside
Speaker 1: sources or would you go to another studio maybe to
Speaker 1: cut basics.
Speaker 2: No, we can do it all there. We have it
Speaker 2: all worked out. I mean the room you know now
Speaker 2: that we've had the room for you know, you know,
Speaker 2: at thirteen twelve thirteen years. We know how to get
Speaker 2: a great drum sound out of that, so we don't
Speaker 2: have to go anywhere else. We can do strings there.
Speaker 2: Our console is an eighty fifty eight Knive, an original
Speaker 2: Rupert Neve console with twenty four inputs. We have all
Speaker 2: the analog year you want, amplifiers, everything. The only thing
Speaker 2: we have to do is when we switch from guitars
Speaker 2: and bass to drums, we have to tear it apart
Speaker 2: and rebuild put it together, you know, so we have
Speaker 2: the room with it, you know, like we're doing drums.
Speaker 2: We don't want to have the amps taking up the
Speaker 2: room space. So you have to do a lot of
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. But we really don't have to
Speaker 2: go anywhere. The only place we go is to do vocals.
Speaker 2: And I like doing vocals in my home studio because
Speaker 2: I have a folk booth build here.
Speaker 1: Okay for that? So how big is the room in
Speaker 1: Woodland Hills.
Speaker 2: That's a really good question. It's I don't know, Like,
Speaker 2: can I ask my engineer. He's right here, sure, how
Speaker 2: big is it? It's Wooland Hills room, do you think, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like the size of two garage too. It's okay.
Speaker 2: So it was originally built for an RV, which I
Speaker 2: just found out. We found the original plans. So it's
Speaker 2: the size of like a two car garage, A big
Speaker 2: two car garage would be the live room right. Then
Speaker 2: the console room is about the same size, so that's
Speaker 2: you can and then there's a separate room for putting
Speaker 2: guitar amps. So there's a third room that you can
Speaker 2: use to isolate. Then there's a fourth room that was
Speaker 2: a bedroom that we use for all our pro tools
Speaker 2: work and you know, just a programming. It's kind of big, actually,
Speaker 2: and it's attached to the house. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: it's legally attached or not. When I bought it, it
Speaker 2: was set up like that, so we just kind of
Speaker 2: kept it, and you know, it works for us.
Speaker 1: Well how about you know they've been cracked down on
Speaker 1: home studios, how about zoning?
Speaker 2: You wanted something. When we walked in there, we were
Speaker 2: actually very worried about that, and then we realized after
Speaker 2: the first we actually had all these plans to mitigate
Speaker 2: the sound. We realized the neighbors with the kids were
Speaker 2: louder than we were, so we actually are the quietest
Speaker 2: people on the block. We have it so soundproofed, and
Speaker 2: we make sure that our clients are very when they
Speaker 2: come into the It's a flag loot by the way,
Speaker 2: so it's in the back so you don't see it
Speaker 2: from the street. Everybody takes super care to make sure
Speaker 2: that we are the least obtrusive people on the block.
Speaker 2: So nobody's asked us any questions. We have had the
Speaker 2: city out there. They have filmed some stuff there because
Speaker 2: it's a pretty cool filming location, being a flag loot
Speaker 2: and having a lot of land. It's a half an
Speaker 2: acre of land actually, and so we won't run into anything.
Speaker 2: We haven't had any problems at all.
Speaker 1: Okay since the city was there. Technically is it legal?
Speaker 2: Yes, Okay, they've walked around it and we've you know,
Speaker 2: refinanced it and everything. So we just I know that
Speaker 2: there's some things I wouldn't want to dig into. Let's
Speaker 2: put it that way. You know, like there's some paperwork
Speaker 2: I can't find from the original owner. He basically didn't
Speaker 2: pay his property taxes and left fast. So we got
Speaker 2: a really good deal in the house. That's you know,
Speaker 2: kind of what happened.
Speaker 1: So how did you sound proof it?
Speaker 2: It's really interesting. We got a guy in there named
Speaker 2: Matt Ellingson and he was kind of built Bay seven
Speaker 2: Studios in North Hollywood. That's where I came from. I
Speaker 2: was there for about twelve years. That's where I made
Speaker 2: all these records, the Mike Camp stuff. Everything was done there,
Speaker 2: and we just kind of said, okay, this is okay
Speaker 2: for doing trumpets and violins and Disney stuff. But we
Speaker 2: put on an extra I would say, about two inches
Speaker 2: of insulation on the interior of the house all aroun
Speaker 2: round it. And it worked. You know, we were kind
Speaker 2: of estimating, honestly, we didn't really do it that technically.
Speaker 2: We figured, okay, if we point to guitar amps this direction,
Speaker 2: we do the drums that direction. We you know, we
Speaker 2: insulate the walls that are towards the outside of the
Speaker 2: studio very well. We also, the bigger problem wasn't this
Speaker 2: actually the sound going out to the neighbors. It was
Speaker 2: the sound coming into the control room. We couldn't even
Speaker 2: play a guitar without hearing it in the control room.
Speaker 2: That we had to do a lot of work to
Speaker 2: isolate that. You know, somebody said, I think it was
Speaker 2: you know, Massenberg or something that you have to look
Speaker 2: at sound as water. If there's a leak, it's going
Speaker 2: to come through. So we had to make sure that
Speaker 2: there were no leaks, like everything was plugged up. So
Speaker 2: it took us about two or three weeks. We actually
Speaker 2: went through a kind of a bit of a thing
Speaker 2: where we were thinking, maybe we'll put everything in the
Speaker 2: other garage on the other side of the house and
Speaker 2: run tie lines in so we don't have the sound.
Speaker 2: But that just turned into a bit of a nightmare.
Speaker 2: So we you know, hey, we can run these full
Speaker 2: on marshal amps at full blast and we don't have
Speaker 2: any problem with it at all. So we did it
Speaker 2: pretty you know, we had to do a few adjustments
Speaker 2: later on with it to make it work, but I
Speaker 2: think we have it pretty well now. It's been working
Speaker 2: pretty well and no complaints, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So why would you not cut vocals there and
Speaker 1: do the vocals in your house.
Speaker 2: That's a personal thing that I liked. I liked to
Speaker 2: be with the singer, with my engineer Hatch, who is
Speaker 2: here away from the There's so much going on at
Speaker 2: the studio, people coming in and out. It actually is distracting.
Speaker 2: And I've always kind of liked to do vocals one
Speaker 2: on one with singers. That's just something I like to do.
Speaker 2: I like to have a It's a very personal thing
Speaker 2: for singers to sing and when I can just talk
Speaker 2: to them. In fact, I don't even have a talkback.
Speaker 2: I use an open mic, so there's never me pushing
Speaker 2: a button. They can always hear what I'm saying, so
Speaker 2: there's never the thought that I'm saying something about them.
Speaker 2: I learned that early on when I worked with Al
Speaker 2: McKay from Earth withinin Fire. He was one of the
Speaker 2: first people I came out to LA and worked with
Speaker 2: and I did vocals with him, and I realized how
Speaker 2: the talkback button can get you in trouble if you
Speaker 2: say something you don't realize somebody pressed it or didn't
Speaker 2: press it. So I said, you know what, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to have a talkback, but I'm going to leave
Speaker 2: the mic open. So right here is a fifty seven
Speaker 2: that's always on. Singer is in the vocal booth. They
Speaker 2: can always hear what I'm thinking and saying. I could
Speaker 2: hear what they're thinking and saying, and it keeps it
Speaker 2: more honest. It doesn't it's not like they're thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: Howard doesn't like this, or he's saying something to the engineer,
Speaker 2: or he's you know. I think it just keeps more
Speaker 2: of an honest relationship between me and the singer. So yeah,
Speaker 2: and I just like a smaller room. The room in
Speaker 2: the studio is a little too big, honestly, the vocal
Speaker 2: booth is and even when we try and put like
Speaker 2: baffles around it still a little bit here. It's a
Speaker 2: dead room. It's actually a room, believe it or not.
Speaker 2: When we built this house, the contractor had an attic
Speaker 2: space that was nothing in it, and I kept saying
Speaker 2: to my wife Monica, what's in that attic space, Like,
Speaker 2: there's nothing. I don't know what's there. So had him
Speaker 2: come back and he knocked a hole in the wall.
Speaker 2: There's this big empty attic and I said, you know,
Speaker 2: being a producer, vocal booth. So I had the same guy,
Speaker 2: Matt who helped us at the studio, come in and
Speaker 2: build a soundproof vocal booth, hardwired microphones. There's a Leslie
Speaker 2: cabinet back there from my Ham and Oregon, all wired
Speaker 2: up ready to go. Because I love putting organ on stuff.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I have a good relationship with my singers
Speaker 2: they come here, they know it's by the way. They
Speaker 2: also sometimes don't like singing around their band members and
Speaker 2: that kind of takes them out of that place. So
Speaker 2: they can sing with me and you know, we can
Speaker 2: talk honestly about things or not having somebody say hey,
Speaker 2: try this or try that. You know, it doesn't interrupt
Speaker 2: the flow. So I got used to that. I've been
Speaker 2: doing it like that for twenty years. Even at Base
Speaker 2: seven when I was there, I had my own vocal
Speaker 2: booth area where it wasn't part of the studio. I
Speaker 2: had the owner build it in the attic there and
Speaker 2: we would have them climb up a staircase and it
Speaker 2: would just be me and the singer and my engineer, Hatch,
Speaker 2: and that was it. You know, that's that's the only
Speaker 2: people there.
Speaker 1: Okay, when someone's in the vocal booth working with you
Speaker 1: at home, can they see you?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: And I can't see them?
Speaker 1: And is that conscious or the way the room worked out?
Speaker 2: That's the way I like it. I like it like that.
Speaker 2: I don't care what they're doing in there, you know,
Speaker 2: they I just need great vocals so they can just
Speaker 2: do whatever they want, you know, as long as I
Speaker 2: can tell, you know, when they're not up on the
Speaker 2: mic and something's off. But in there they have they
Speaker 2: can adjust their own levels too, So we have a
Speaker 2: separate mixer in there where they can adjust their volume
Speaker 2: of their vocal. They can adjust the volume of the
Speaker 2: track so they don't have to talk to me about
Speaker 2: that stuff. They can just sit there with their hands
Speaker 2: on the thing, so they can go over it and
Speaker 2: they can adjust like you know, a lot of times
Speaker 2: the singer will go, oh, turn me up, turn me down.
Speaker 2: It's not this, there's not that here. They can just
Speaker 2: do it all on their own, and so they have
Speaker 2: more control over their own sound. You know, it works
Speaker 2: out really well.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you're saying you're known for your vocals, you're
Speaker 1: cutting them in your house. You know, you're keeping your
Speaker 1: mic live the whole time. What else is involved in
Speaker 1: your special sauce.
Speaker 2: We have a Sony C eight hundred mike that I
Speaker 2: got after I did the Hoobastank song The Reason, which
Speaker 2: was a pretty big song for me. I didn't like
Speaker 2: I heard the song on the radio when I was
Speaker 2: driving around, and I didn't like how it sounded. I
Speaker 2: was using an eighty seven or a sixty seven. I
Speaker 2: forget what mike it was. I remember said to my engineer,
Speaker 2: you know what, I think, this doesn't sound hyped enough
Speaker 2: for me. It just sounds too dull. So we he suggested, Hey,
Speaker 2: we should use this new mic. It just came out
Speaker 2: the Sony C eight hundred. It's a much more hyped
Speaker 2: up mic, much more top end, more strident. But we
Speaker 2: need to have a knave like ten eighty seven or
Speaker 2: something like that to calm it down a little bit.
Speaker 2: And then a compressor A tube in fact, is right
Speaker 2: in front of me, the kneve and the tube tech.
Speaker 2: It goes right from the mic to the kneve to
Speaker 2: the twuoe tech straight into pro tools. That's it. Nothing
Speaker 2: else is going on now to me. The special sauce
Speaker 2: is coming back to the singer's headphones. Is a much
Speaker 2: more compressed version of their vocal. We're not recording it compressed,
Speaker 2: but I have it slammed going into their headphones so
Speaker 2: they can get on the mic off the mic, and
Speaker 2: it's just like this, and they sound amazing in their headphones.
Speaker 2: And I've always believed that the headphone mix is a
Speaker 2: huge part of getting a good vocal out of a singer.
Speaker 2: If they don't sound good in their headphones, they don't
Speaker 2: think they're going to sound good.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't use auto tune. I know a lot of
Speaker 2: people do that. I don't do that, but I have
Speaker 2: it so that the level is not changing very much
Speaker 2: in their headphones. It's a very static level. I'll worry
Speaker 2: about it on my end, do you know what I mean? Right,
Speaker 2: they're not I'm not going to have them worry about it. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's part of my special sauce is that, you know,
Speaker 2: and if they want a little rever, a little rever,
Speaker 2: if they want some of that, you.
Speaker 1: Know, starting like forty five years ago, they started to
Speaker 1: com vocals, etc. What's your style in terms of cutting.
Speaker 2: I learned how to comp vocals from the greatest of
Speaker 2: all time to meet Keith Olsen. Keith was one of
Speaker 2: my mentors, and we would sit and do vocals on
Speaker 2: tape back then and have them graded, and every line
Speaker 2: had a grade on it, and you got a seven
Speaker 2: for just being in the vocal booth, and if it
Speaker 2: was a really good vocal, you got a nine. So
Speaker 2: and I always said to him, why is it seven
Speaker 2: to nine? And he goes, because you're here it's a
Speaker 2: seven because you're even in the studio, and nobody gets
Speaker 2: a ten because nobody's good enough. So basically we would
Speaker 2: go through every line and grade them seven, eight, nine,
Speaker 2: and there'd be three or four people grading it. Then
Speaker 2: we would take that give it to the engineer. They
Speaker 2: would comp the vocal like that. So I learned how
Speaker 2: to listen very critically through things with him. And he
Speaker 2: was a genius at doing vocals. He did all those Fleetwood,
Speaker 2: Mac and White Snake records. And you know, I can't
Speaker 2: credit him enough for teaching me how to be a
Speaker 2: real per, how to handle myself in the studio, and
Speaker 2: just you know how important vocals were because he cared
Speaker 2: about I mean, he was the rest of the track
Speaker 2: was important to him, But the vocals are when I
Speaker 2: could see his brain really click on, you know, where
Speaker 2: like this is the melody, this is the harmonies have
Speaker 2: to be here, this is where it fits in the track.
Speaker 2: We don't have enough space. There's all this kind of
Speaker 2: stuff that I picked up from him.
Speaker 1: Okay, Traditionally the vocals are cut last. Is that what
Speaker 1: you do?
Speaker 2: No, I cut them right away as soon as I
Speaker 2: have In fact, i'm cutting three days Grace. Today we're
Speaker 2: just working to demos. You know, they're going to cut
Speaker 2: the rest of the stuff in the studio, the bass,
Speaker 2: guitar and drums, following what the demo is. But I'm
Speaker 2: going to cut the vocals to the demo because I
Speaker 2: know it's close enough. I don't need the rest of
Speaker 2: the track for that. In fact, I think that's a
Speaker 2: huge mistake cutting them lost. I think that makes them
Speaker 2: sound like they're the least important thing. To me, they're
Speaker 2: the most important thing. I want to get the vocals
Speaker 2: done right away, because what if I have to redo them,
Speaker 2: you know, or I want to change them or something.
Speaker 2: So I think producers. I don't see producers making that steak,
Speaker 2: although I guess they do, because you know, you might
Speaker 2: be maybe they do, but I don't. I don't do that,
Speaker 2: like I think that's the number. To me, you're walking
Speaker 2: through CVS and you're hearing your song on that little speaker,
Speaker 2: what are you hearing vocals? That's it? So to me,
Speaker 2: that's what matters. I honestly, the rest of the stuff,
Speaker 2: I don't care if it's a strat or a less paul.
Speaker 2: I don't care what strings they're using. I don't care
Speaker 2: what you know, drumheads, because if the vocal isn't good
Speaker 2: and the song isn't good and the lyrics aren't good,
Speaker 2: it's not good to me. That's how I think about it,
Speaker 2: And that's kind of when I started having hits, by
Speaker 2: the way, it is when I started thinking that way,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, when someone's here cutting vocals with you, are
Speaker 1: you cutting song by song? Do you like the whole
Speaker 1: album written? What do you do?
Speaker 2: I do it song by song. But I'm still an
Speaker 2: album guy. I love albums. You know, a lot of
Speaker 2: the bands I produce still make albums, but the albums
Speaker 2: aren't made the way they used to be in a
Speaker 2: six week period. They're made over a lot of time
Speaker 2: in between bands touring schedules and everything else. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just a different business than it used to be.
Speaker 2: The bands don't make as much money from the music,
Speaker 2: so they're touring and taking gigs and taking you know,
Speaker 2: doing other things like the music is almost I always
Speaker 2: looked at it that the music was the most important
Speaker 2: thing in their lives. Now the touring is almost more
Speaker 2: important to them because they need to make money. So
Speaker 2: I'm there to accommodate their schedule a lot. You know,
Speaker 2: like a lot of times when I do an Inflames record,
Speaker 2: or I do even a three days Grace record, or
Speaker 2: I'm doing some Daughtry stuff in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 2: it's in between their touring schedule. You know, they'll fly in,
Speaker 2: we'll do some vocals, they'll fly out, so you know,
Speaker 2: and we have to nail it pretty much.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, I'm coming in, I'm cutting a song.
Speaker 1: How many times are I going to have to sing
Speaker 1: it for you?
Speaker 2: Not that many. I'm not one of those guys that
Speaker 2: does an eight hours My My average vocals session for
Speaker 2: one song is about two hours. That's it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm in there singing. Are you ever going to
Speaker 1: change the lyrics or say you should absolutely tell me
Speaker 1: about really?
Speaker 2: Well, you know what, it's an interesting point about how
Speaker 2: you bring that up. If you tell an artist ahead
Speaker 2: of time that you need to change the lyrics, a
Speaker 2: lot of times you're going to get this response. Not
Speaker 2: a lot of times, but dude, that's my favorite part
Speaker 2: of the song. I can't believe you don't like it,
Speaker 2: and then they're going to obsess over it. Talk to
Speaker 2: the band, I like to have the artist in the
Speaker 2: studio on the mic, and then I'll say, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I'm feeling that line, even though I've
Speaker 2: known about it for about a month, But right at
Speaker 2: that moment, I'm going to get more of a response
Speaker 2: of okay, Lee, let me give me a second. Let's
Speaker 2: try and work something now, and they'll bring out there
Speaker 2: you know, spelled you know, rhyming dictionaries or whatever you
Speaker 2: know they use and we can kind of do it.
Speaker 2: Or sometimes I'll call this the main writer on the
Speaker 2: phone and I'll say, hey, dude, we got rewrite this line.
Speaker 2: We're gonna move on. Can you come up with something?
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm very I think that's huge. The lyrics,
Speaker 2: I mean, I've changed lyrics on lots of songs that
Speaker 2: have made a huge difference to me in the sales
Speaker 2: of the songs, you know, just because you know, we've
Speaker 2: known that that was a bad lyric. But we know
Speaker 2: if we bring it up at the wrong time, we're
Speaker 2: never gonna get it changed. There'll be an argument against
Speaker 2: us from the entire band that we can't overcome. So
Speaker 2: you have to just hold your powder to the right moment,
Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of like knowing when they run
Speaker 2: the Philly Special, you know what I mean, it's a
Speaker 2: joke for Philly fans.
Speaker 1: Oh okay.
Speaker 4: Do they tend to come up with the new line
Speaker 4: that fast? Well, that's my job is to push hard
Speaker 4: to do it. Yeah, Like, I know what I'm looking for.
Speaker 4: A lot of times it's a line. It's really bad.
Speaker 4: It's not a lined. It's not good.
Speaker 2: It's a lined. It's like a cul de sac where
Speaker 2: they wrote themselves into a like you know, you have
Speaker 2: this nice flow and then all of a sudden you're like, uh, people,
Speaker 2: places and things. I don't care. It's got to be
Speaker 2: something emotional. We're selling feelings here, that's what we are.
Speaker 2: That's our business, you know, selling like people, places and things.
Speaker 2: That doesn't do anything. So I'm usually looking for something
Speaker 2: that's going to connect on an emotional level. It's going
Speaker 2: to further the you know, the feeling I'm trying to
Speaker 2: or the artist is trying to get across. So it's
Speaker 2: not we're not talking about wholesale rewriting here. A lot
Speaker 2: of times it's just a line or two, or there's
Speaker 2: a word that doesn't rhyme correctly that maybe they missed, Uh,
Speaker 2: maybe there's a W instead of an I. That happens
Speaker 2: a lot where people switch tenses too much, you know,
Speaker 2: or not tenses, but you know, they'll say like you know, I,
Speaker 2: I you and then there's a W and then you go, well,
Speaker 2: wait a second, we you know, do we want to
Speaker 2: say that? Is that what we're trying to say? We're
Speaker 2: going to make a big message here and say we
Speaker 2: you know? Or is that do we want to keep
Speaker 2: it focused on the relationship between the two people. You know,
Speaker 2: those type of conversations come up a lot, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's assume I'm going to cut a vocal
Speaker 1: with you. Ay, how far in advance would I schedule it?
Speaker 4: Be?
Speaker 1: What do you want? You want a demo in a
Speaker 1: lyric sheet or.
Speaker 2: What I want? A lyric sheet? For sure? And a
Speaker 2: demo would be nice because I like to put the
Speaker 2: demo in the session because there's certain things on the
Speaker 2: demo that you can't reproduce the kind of you know,
Speaker 2: the inflections of the vocal or just the phrasing, and
Speaker 2: artists will misremember a lot of that stuff, like what
Speaker 2: did I do on the demo? So it's nice to
Speaker 2: have the reference there. You know, you know, I just
Speaker 2: would like you to warm up. Actually, warming up is
Speaker 2: a good thing. You know, when you're not warmed up,
Speaker 2: that means we have to do extra takes and extra
Speaker 2: takes or sometimes you know, it's that immediacy that you
Speaker 2: want to get out of a vocal. That's sometimes great.
Speaker 2: You know that the first shot at it is sometimes
Speaker 2: the truth. But if you're not warmed up, you know,
Speaker 2: so I'll sort of ask, hey, just do a few
Speaker 2: minutes of warming up. You don't have to go crazy here,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: But let's assume I'm cutting the vocal. As you said
Speaker 1: with Keith Olson, nobody's perfect. What might you say to
Speaker 1: me to get the best vocal?
Speaker 2: I'm not. I don't. I'm not believing it right now, Bob.
Speaker 2: You got to sell You're just not selling it enough.
Speaker 2: Like I mean, it's cool and everything, but it's not
Speaker 2: changing my life. I'm not giving you exact things. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying sing it like this. Sing. I never do that,
Speaker 2: and people think I do that because they go, oh,
Speaker 2: look at these records. You must know. I want you
Speaker 2: to give me it the way you want to give
Speaker 2: it to me, But you have to give it to
Speaker 2: me with conviction. You have to sell it to me.
Speaker 2: You have to give it to me that I'm feeling something.
Speaker 2: And if I can't feel it, what are we doing here?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: That's that's it. And I you know, I never get
Speaker 2: abusive in there with I mean, I've been with abusive producers,
Speaker 2: and I started my career working for some people I
Speaker 2: won't name who are just like, hey man, you know
Speaker 2: you just suck in there. You know you shouldn't even
Speaker 2: be in. I can't believe you're even like in this project.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm like, no, I'm never going to go
Speaker 2: that way. I'm gonna just be trying to give them
Speaker 2: positive reinforcement. But you have to make me happy right
Speaker 2: now and yourself, you know, or imagine you're in front
Speaker 2: of one hundred thousand kids right now, you got to act.
Speaker 2: We got to feel that right now. So you know,
Speaker 2: I'm sometimes at odds against the band too. Some of
Speaker 2: the band, the bands that come in, they don't really
Speaker 2: know what they're looking for either, and they'll say the
Speaker 2: wrong things to the singer. And that's sometimes why I
Speaker 2: don't want the bands in the studio with me. Like
Speaker 2: sometimes they'll just give them what their movie in their
Speaker 2: head is, you know, like I'm trying to get the
Speaker 2: singer to give me his movie what's in his head?
Speaker 2: So a lot of times you don't want the distractions
Speaker 2: of other people saying things, you know, to get some
Speaker 2: the you know, they can throw off your vocal. I
Speaker 2: trust myself enough at this point, you know, to know
Speaker 2: what I want, and then I do harmonies. I'm a
Speaker 2: very big harmony guy. I stick to bach. I'm a
Speaker 2: Bach guy. When I went to music school, I learned
Speaker 2: a lot. I mean, I have a degree in engineering
Speaker 2: and aerospace engineering from Drexel, but I took a year
Speaker 2: off and went to music school and studied real hardcore harmony.
Speaker 2: Arrangements hinder myth all that stuff. And when I do
Speaker 2: my arrangements, they're very traditional. Like all the arrangements I do.
Speaker 2: I try not. I stick away from parallel four its
Speaker 2: parallel fiss I. You know, I don't take the harmony
Speaker 2: and flip it over the vocal so the ear gets
Speaker 2: you know, mistakenly taken to the harmony, all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. But I do break the rules, you know,
Speaker 2: when I want to break them. So harmonies to me,
Speaker 2: are there to emphasize the lead vocal to make sure
Speaker 2: the lead you know you want to when you listen
Speaker 2: to the Beatles, they're the best at it. They know
Speaker 2: how to go from three part harmony to unisons, back
Speaker 2: to three part back to unisons, and it emphasizes certain
Speaker 2: lines and that also builds on the vocal. I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about that at exactly the same time we're doing the vocal. Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm going to put up a harmony here. Oh, I'm
Speaker 2: going to do a lower vocal here, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do a falsetto here, I'm gonna do a third above
Speaker 2: the vocal here, I'm gonna do a six below the
Speaker 2: vocal here. And then sometimes that guides me on about
Speaker 2: how I'm going to have you sing it. You know,
Speaker 2: there are certain things where I'm going to go, Okay,
Speaker 2: the energy is going to come from this high harmony
Speaker 2: part I'm going to put on there, and invariably i
Speaker 2: get well, if I can't sing above it s and
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, you can, you can, You're gonna you know,
Speaker 2: and they invariably do. So, you know, you just have
Speaker 2: to kind of get their heads positive about it, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you're hitting d's and then ease,
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh my god, I never sang that
Speaker 2: high in my life. Well, you only have to do
Speaker 2: it twice, so you know that in the double and
Speaker 2: I got it. Now, what am I gonna do live?
Speaker 2: That's your problem, you know, that's not my problem.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. You know you talk about the sixties, the Beatles,
Speaker 1: et cetera. You know you actually had backup singers, whether
Speaker 1: members of the band are external people. Then you hit
Speaker 1: the seventies, lead singers are doing their own backgrounds and
Speaker 1: their own Hartleys. What's your viewpoint on that?
Speaker 2: It's both are great. If I have a band member
Speaker 2: that can sing backgrounds, I'd rather have, and and they
Speaker 2: have been singing with the lead singer for a while,
Speaker 2: it's magic, absolutely, like you get this other thing happening.
Speaker 2: It's like Jagger and Richard's and stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 2: you know these other sounds that come out. But there's
Speaker 2: also something cool about having a singer that does their
Speaker 2: own vocals. Like when I do Daughtries record, for example,
Speaker 2: he sings his own vocal harmonies and he sounds great
Speaker 2: singing them together. You know, Kelly Clarkson, when I did her,
Speaker 2: I had Kara Diaguardi do the backgrounds because she's a
Speaker 2: great singer and she can sing with you know, Kelly
Speaker 2: very well. They match great. So I think it just
Speaker 2: depends on what's going on. You know, a lot of
Speaker 2: times in three days Grace, for example, Neil the drummer
Speaker 2: likes to sing the octaves, so I'll have him do it,
Speaker 2: and he does a great job at that. So I
Speaker 2: think it really depends on the song. You know, a
Speaker 2: lot of times the singer, by the way, cannot sing
Speaker 2: the super super high parts, so we do have to
Speaker 2: get somebody. If a band member can sing the super
Speaker 2: super high parts, thank god. Like I love it. I
Speaker 2: don't like generating harmonies that much. I'll do it once
Speaker 2: in a while, but you know, I like the real deal.
Speaker 2: The real thing adds to it.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just shoom. You nailed the vocal. Now you're
Speaker 1: going to woo Hills in the big room. What happens next.
Speaker 2: Well, I usually get the track from the Woodland Hills
Speaker 2: and I put it together. Here, I'm the I'm the.
Speaker 1: No, I'm actually I'm not going that far. You say
Speaker 1: you cut the vocal first, Now you have to cut
Speaker 1: the track.
Speaker 2: Well, it's being cut alongside me doing the vocal at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 1: So okay. Traditionally, while you're cutting the vocal, somebody on
Speaker 1: your team is cutting the track. You're not even there.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. I already know what I want.
Speaker 1: You trust your team enough to get what you want.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I've been like that for I don't know twenty years,
Speaker 2: the same guys. I know they know what I like,
Speaker 2: and I know it what I want, you know. So
Speaker 2: a lot of times what they're cutting is just the
Speaker 2: meat potatoes anyway. It's the bass, guitar, drums, stereo guitars,
Speaker 2: guitar solos. I'll well, you can't see it here, but
Speaker 2: I'll add a whole bunch of keyboards and programming after
Speaker 2: I have that all put together, and I'll listen and
Speaker 2: I'll go, you know what, we need something here or this.
Speaker 2: I'm a big believer in space, so I feel like
Speaker 2: we always over record everything, like I like to take
Speaker 2: things out to me the space. If there's a four
Speaker 2: member band, the space is the fifth member of the band.
Speaker 2: If you look at scorers, those little swiggly lines, and
Speaker 2: the score means don't play, you know. So a lot
Speaker 2: of bands with pro tools now have a problem with
Speaker 2: that because they want to record every bar, every measure,
Speaker 2: every sixteenth note has something going on. I like space,
Speaker 2: you know, So when I get the music back, a
Speaker 2: lot of times I'm subtracting from things, not adding to it.
Speaker 2: I'll add things here and there, But like, I want
Speaker 2: it to sound bigger. I want the drums to be bigger,
Speaker 2: the guitar is to be I want to be able
Speaker 2: to hear everything, you know, so and I know what
Speaker 2: Mike's going to do. Mike's a great engineer. He's one
Speaker 2: of the great sort of like original guys that could
Speaker 2: still record live instruments, So I know what they're going
Speaker 2: to sound like. I kind of know the demo that
Speaker 2: if we don't have a good demo, by the way,
Speaker 2: we're not going to record it. So the demo has
Speaker 2: to be a pretty good guide. You know. That's a
Speaker 2: lot different than it was twenty years ago. We're in
Speaker 2: the rehearsal hall. I had to be okay with it
Speaker 2: in the rehearsal hall to go we're going to record it.
Speaker 2: And then I was on there more often in the
Speaker 2: studio directing traffic because we didn't have anything to follow.
Speaker 2: But now we have demos to follow, so I know
Speaker 2: kind of pretty much where we're going with it. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a bit different.
Speaker 1: Okay, just going You mentioned pro tools a couple of times.
Speaker 1: Do you have an opinion of analyg versus digital?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I probably made my whole career when I
Speaker 2: switched to pro Tools. I switched to ninety six. I
Speaker 2: was one of the first rock guys to use it.
Speaker 2: I used it on Sepulteur record in nineteen ninety six
Speaker 2: ninety seven when it was called sound Designer, and I
Speaker 2: used I use it on a Less than Jake record
Speaker 2: back there, and I remember I bring this stuff into
Speaker 2: like Chris sod Algae and he would be like, what
Speaker 2: the hell's this stuff? You know, what's this computer? Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what this? You get this thing out
Speaker 2: of here and who are you?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: So, you know, we went through our growing phase back then,
Speaker 2: figuring out how to use all this stuff. But I
Speaker 2: don't think I could have made any of these records
Speaker 2: without the computer. I just wasn't I was I just
Speaker 2: couldn't connect my brain to the tape. Thing was too
Speaker 2: slow for me. Honestly, I just had all these ideas
Speaker 2: about what I wanted to do, and I was always
Speaker 2: weighed down by this slowness of tape and I just liked,
Speaker 2: you know, adding you know my vision. When the big,
Speaker 2: first big record I had was the pod record Fundamental
Speaker 2: Elements of Southtown, and if you listen to that record,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of really cool stuff going on in there.
Speaker 2: Which really made it work was having autotune, because you know,
Speaker 2: I remember in ninety six when I was doing Less
Speaker 2: than Jake's record, I had called Avid wasn't called Avid
Speaker 2: but pro tools back digit design. Back then, I used
Speaker 2: to answer the phones actually and I would calm up
Speaker 2: and say, hey, I'm having this problem. I'm getting IRQ errors.
Speaker 2: And you know, we were still on these powermats back then.
Speaker 2: And one guy said to me, Hen, I'm going to
Speaker 2: send you this floppy disc. I try this plugin out,
Speaker 2: and back then it was not that many plugins. But
Speaker 2: he said, it's a company called Antari's and they do
Speaker 2: stuff for the government or something. I don't remember exactly
Speaker 2: what the story was, but I got this plug in
Speaker 2: and I put it in and it was auto tuned,
Speaker 2: and I remember thinking, oh my god, this is going
Speaker 2: to change everything like this, like these singers and Less
Speaker 2: Than Jake are really good, but now they sound really
Speaker 2: good and they loved it. The band. They were like, man,
Speaker 2: I've never sounded that good in my life. So that
Speaker 2: made the performance more important, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like I wasn't focusing on the tuning anymore. I was going, man,
Speaker 2: this performance is badass. It's a little flat right now,
Speaker 2: but I'm this is way better than the one that's
Speaker 2: in tune. So I think that sometimes people missing like
Speaker 2: I never used auto tuned to the point where people
Speaker 2: made fun of me or anything. I never had that problem.
Speaker 2: Nobody ever said to me, oh, you over auto tuned it.
Speaker 2: In fact, if anything, I got the opposite. The bands
Speaker 2: wanted more auto tune. My autotune guy, by the way,
Speaker 2: my protols guy, sorry, my editor in Texas, a guy
Speaker 2: named Paul Decarley. He does everything graphically, so we don't
Speaker 2: We don't just use the button, do you know what
Speaker 2: I mean? We just don't turn it on like the standard.
Speaker 2: You know, he draws it in, so we try to
Speaker 2: keep it natural. Nowadays, they don't want that, you know,
Speaker 2: the artists want they want it on stunt, you know.
Speaker 2: So I find myself double auto tuning things. Now it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Back then, we were trying not to make it sound autotuning.
Speaker 2: Now everybody wants it perfectly, you know. But by the way,
Speaker 2: when I did Lesson Jake, I auto tune the horns.
Speaker 2: That didn't work out very well.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, I'll write about a record, Oh, auto tune, autotune.
Speaker 1: You're you're telling me that you can use auto tune.
Speaker 1: Let me put it in a different way. Can you
Speaker 1: employ auto tune such that people can't tell it's auto tune?
Speaker 2: You know, here's something really interesting. I have not used it,
Speaker 2: and people have accused me of using it because they say, oh,
Speaker 2: that sound has to be auto tuned. I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: that's actually the singer. Now, if I auto tuned it,
Speaker 2: you probably would think it's not auto tuned. So, you know,
Speaker 2: it's the opposite of what people And this is one
Speaker 2: of my theories about recording in the studio. It goes
Speaker 2: back to a bigger thing. The more accurate I have
Speaker 2: the music in the studio, the more detailed I get it,
Speaker 2: the more on, you know, everything being really locked in,
Speaker 2: the more live it sounds. Now when it's not done
Speaker 2: like that people listen to when I've done records that
Speaker 2: have been like loose and live, they go, oh my god,
Speaker 2: you you edited it terribly. No, that's the band. That's
Speaker 2: how they sound. Now when you're seeing a live show,
Speaker 2: you can't tell those things. You're in this big room.
Speaker 2: Everything's coming at you, this big assault of sound. You
Speaker 2: can't tell if the kick and the bass aren't married up,
Speaker 2: but you certainly can tell if I didn't do that
Speaker 2: in my production. So the more I made it perfect,
Speaker 2: you know, not perfect, but tied together like a great
Speaker 2: band was playing like the best session players in LA
Speaker 2: were playing it, the more people found it sounded live.
Speaker 2: So I was like, you know what, I think I'm
Speaker 2: onto something here. Actually, you know, I'm going to get
Speaker 2: it to sound great, and then it sounds, you know,
Speaker 2: as long as I mix it right. I never had
Speaker 2: anybody tell me my stuff sounded like, you know, like
Speaker 2: not as good. It's like the band. In fact, I
Speaker 2: always had the opposite. Oh the band sounds worse live.
Speaker 2: How did you do it? How did you make that
Speaker 2: record sound like that?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: I use pro tools, you know, so I always leaned
Speaker 2: into it, Bob, do you know what I mean? I
Speaker 2: leaned into it. I didn't lean away from it. I
Speaker 2: figured it's it's something that's now part of the world.
Speaker 2: I'm going to use it. I didn't shy away from it.
Speaker 2: A lot of producers in the early middle nineties were
Speaker 2: not getting I wasn't getting projects because bands would not
Speaker 2: want to record in the computer. But once they did it,
Speaker 2: they were sold. They were like, Wow, we sound great.
Speaker 2: We never sounded that great. That's you know, that's how
Speaker 2: I learned it.
Speaker 1: Okay, just hammering this point. There are people who talk
Speaker 1: about an analog sound and a digital sound. What's your
Speaker 1: take there.
Speaker 2: I absolutely love the analog sound. We use the whatever
Speaker 2: we can use in pro tools. There's a couple of
Speaker 2: selections you can make. One of them's called heat that
Speaker 2: adds a compression sort of a fake well whatever their
Speaker 2: version of tape compression is to things. I think early
Speaker 2: on in pro tools they didn't have as good of converters,
Speaker 2: so things sounded squirrely. Back then, you couldn't get a
Speaker 2: really good you know, the resolution wasn't great. Nowadays, the
Speaker 2: resolution is really good in the computer. Like you can
Speaker 2: use all kinds of plug in tape emulators, all kinds
Speaker 2: of stuff like that. I have a whole record album collection,
Speaker 2: like I got rid of all my CDs, but I
Speaker 2: have all my albums and I have a record player,
Speaker 2: and when I put it on, I enjoy it for
Speaker 2: about ten minutes, and then I just go, oh my god,
Speaker 2: Like where's the fidelity? I mean the RIAA curve. It's
Speaker 2: a pretty brutal curve.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Further you get into that record towards the center, the
Speaker 2: less base you have, and you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I could to fall in love with that stuff, but
Speaker 2: I don't know. I just like the full fidelity of records,
Speaker 2: the big you know, once the digital sound got once
Speaker 2: when Clear Mountain came out with the Apogee stuff, that
Speaker 2: changed everything. Like his resolution was so much better than
Speaker 2: the pro tool stuff. And I remember we bought all
Speaker 2: that stuff and we were like, whoa, now it sounds great.
Speaker 2: Then we started doing stuff ninety six K and then
Speaker 2: we realized, wait a second, doesn't sound that different than
Speaker 2: forty eight, and our computers are starting to crash all
Speaker 2: the time. We actually had a big argument with Universal
Speaker 2: Records about this whole thing. We had to kind of
Speaker 2: like en mass me and a bunch of producers say
Speaker 2: we cannot record ninety six forty eight because we just
Speaker 2: can't run the computers like that, you know. They were like, no,
Speaker 2: it has to be at that resolution, like for rock
Speaker 2: music really, you know, maybe if you're doing a jazz record,
Speaker 2: I get it, you know, but for rock music, it's
Speaker 2: just killing us. So now the standard recording is like
Speaker 2: forty eight to twenty four. That's kind of where we're
Speaker 2: at right now. I don't see many records that are
Speaker 2: outside of that either direction, you know, I don't see
Speaker 2: any forty four or one stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, but the computers continue to improve. Would the
Speaker 1: computers choke on ninety six today?
Speaker 2: You know, it still takes longer to process everything. It
Speaker 2: slows everything down. Probably is not as bad, it's funny.
Speaker 2: The only reason I bring it a up is we
Speaker 2: had to open up an old record that we're going
Speaker 2: to work on this week at ninety six, and then
Speaker 2: we realized how long it took us to like process stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, when we were just like like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: it's like, I know, it's not that much longer really
Speaker 2: in the world in the you know, maybe it's three
Speaker 2: minutes compared to like five minutes or something like that.
Speaker 2: It's shorter, but that just adds up over time, you know,
Speaker 2: and so there's not that much difference for a rock
Speaker 2: project to put to go through that. So I think
Speaker 2: we've all kind of I think it's a subconscious decision.
Speaker 2: All us rock producers that made that were sticking to
Speaker 2: this resolution. And I don't see anything else coming in
Speaker 2: that that. Like, I mean, Apple has their thing where
Speaker 2: I guess they have well, I'm not sure you have
Speaker 2: it anymore. I see most of the atmost stuff from them,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. I guess it's individual you know, preferences.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, play that out with Apple.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I caught your point.
Speaker 2: Oh well, we have to do what Apple used to do.
Speaker 2: They had that like super audio thing for a while,
Speaker 2: or I forget there was like these high resolution records
Speaker 2: we had to make for them. But now they really
Speaker 2: want are atmost mixes of everything. So we just have
Speaker 2: to deliver atmost mixes of every song now, or else
Speaker 2: we don't get the good play listening from them. That's
Speaker 2: kind of what you trade off, you know, like they
Speaker 2: sort of have you a little bit, you know, in
Speaker 2: that way, like if you don't give us the utmost mixes,
Speaker 2: we're not going to say what's going to happen, but
Speaker 2: you may not get all the goodies.
Speaker 1: You know, what's your take on outmost mixes.
Speaker 2: I don't make them. I have an engineer do that.
Speaker 2: But I've heard old records mixed and atmos and I look,
Speaker 2: I think it's just because I like my old album
Speaker 2: collection the way it sounded. I'm not a fan of it.
Speaker 2: I don't even like it when they redo that stuff.
Speaker 2: Like I've heard doors records where they put some of
Speaker 2: the vocals back in they weren't there. I don't like that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, well forget you know, redoing old records
Speaker 1: and at most they always fuck it up. But originally
Speaker 1: the ones Apple had the vocals weren't loud enough. But
Speaker 1: if you're starting from scratch, oh yeah, what's your viewpoint on?
Speaker 2: It's fine for some people. It's not something again that
Speaker 2: I pay that much attention to. We have a guy
Speaker 2: that doesn't. He sends them out. That's it, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not it's made for a certain Uh. I think
Speaker 2: my new car hasn't can handle it. I mean, my
Speaker 2: tesla said they could, but I couldn't hear any difference. Honestly,
Speaker 2: I think it's basically made for headphones, the app, the
Speaker 2: Apple earbuds. That's really why, you know, that's what I've heard,
Speaker 2: But I just don't Again, my focus is more on
Speaker 2: the production of the stereo mix the songs, the vocals,
Speaker 2: that stuff. You know, there's a whole group of autmost
Speaker 2: mixers out there that do a great job, I guess,
Speaker 2: and you know that's it. I really have not so
Speaker 2: much of an opinion.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pull back from that. Yeah, so you don't
Speaker 1: believe there are people who believe we're cutting the band
Speaker 1: altogether live it adds and energy. You actually believe the reverse?
Speaker 2: Well, I do like to cut it live just to
Speaker 2: get the arrangement down, But yeah, I believe the reverse. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I do believe that cutting the band live to
Speaker 2: get the original, to get to work the parts out,
Speaker 2: is important. Do you know what I mean? Because you
Speaker 2: can't like to work it out. But a lot of
Speaker 2: times when a guitar player is in there by themselves,
Speaker 2: they're coming up with parts as they're moving forward through
Speaker 2: the song, and a lot of times they don't even
Speaker 2: want to be in the studio with this. They want
Speaker 2: to take the song home with them and do it
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night in their underwear, and
Speaker 2: that's when they come up with their great guitar solo.
Speaker 2: So I think that's the pandemic has kind of changed
Speaker 2: the way we thought about that a lot. We just
Speaker 2: never conceived of doing a record without all the members there,
Speaker 2: and now all of a sudden, we're doing records with
Speaker 2: none of the members there. You know, we just had
Speaker 2: to make it work. It didn't work, by the way,
Speaker 2: using zoom or any of that. That stuff was just
Speaker 2: impossible to do. So we just had to like send
Speaker 2: it out, get it back, and if there was some problem,
Speaker 2: I call the guitar player. Hey, you know, you got
Speaker 2: to do it again, or it's not in tune. And
Speaker 2: that's one of the reasons we still have to have
Speaker 2: the guys come to my studio with Mike. The tuning
Speaker 2: issues with guitars. You can be good at it, but
Speaker 2: you need someone there to really help you with that.
Speaker 2: It's just too hard to get everything in tune all
Speaker 2: the time. You know, you spend most of your time
Speaker 2: tuning when you're doing guitar parts.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're here at home the Vocal studio. Your guys
Speaker 1: are in Woodland Hills. They're cutting a track. How long
Speaker 1: does it take them to do it?
Speaker 2: So they're cutting usually the okay, so let's just take it,
Speaker 2: for example, three days, Grace. I'll tell you the recording
Speaker 2: process for that. Neil has cut all the drums in Ontario,
Speaker 2: working off the demos, so the drums are now edited
Speaker 2: by my editor in Texas. The finished drum track is
Speaker 2: in Woodland Hills. The guitar player and the bass player
Speaker 2: in Woodland Hills from they came down flew in and
Speaker 2: Mike is recording. What we already know is the version
Speaker 2: that we're going to do because we have a really
Speaker 2: good demo that was made a couple months ago. We
Speaker 2: agreed that this was what the demo was. This is
Speaker 2: the guide. Now we're going to do it for real.
Speaker 2: So we're going to make sure those stereo guitar parts
Speaker 2: are in tune, the extra sweetening parts are the way
Speaker 2: we want them. They's just extra parts added, and that
Speaker 2: in some form is going to be sent to me
Speaker 2: to do vocals today with Adam. He's coming over here
Speaker 2: after we're done, so wherever the song is at, I'm
Speaker 2: going to start doing the vocals. At that point, it
Speaker 2: may not even be done. It may not even have
Speaker 2: the edited guitar as yet. But I know enough about
Speaker 2: working with Adam and Matt and this band that I
Speaker 2: can do it with even the demo guitars if I
Speaker 2: had to. So, you know, things are kind of We
Speaker 2: have a chart, by the way that we keep. When
Speaker 2: we're finished something, we check it off, so we're not
Speaker 2: it's not chaotic. We do know where we are in
Speaker 2: the project, but there are a lot of things happening
Speaker 2: at once, you know. In another part of the world
Speaker 2: is programming going on. We have a couple of programmers,
Speaker 2: one list in Dubai actually that we use that program
Speaker 2: strings and things, and we'll send him the track and say, hey,
Speaker 2: do some stuff, send it back and we'll see if
Speaker 2: we like it, and if we don't, we won't use
Speaker 2: any of it. Sometimes, so have an idea that I'll
Speaker 2: take and redo it over here in my stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: and I'll add a lot of the keyboards. After I've
Speaker 2: done with the vocals, I'll put some B three on
Speaker 2: it and things like that. I still like adding B
Speaker 2: three to these records. It's a anyway.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait a second, just going back to this three
Speaker 1: Day's Grace project. Yeah, you did say I'm trying to
Speaker 1: understand that you cut the vocals first, right, But in
Speaker 1: this case, it sounds did you cut the vocals first
Speaker 1: the way you were talking, or did the guy cut
Speaker 1: the drums first?
Speaker 2: I have to open the session up and let you know, actually,
Speaker 2: because I might be working with demo vokays.
Speaker 1: Let's not go there right now. Let's start with how
Speaker 1: does the guy cut the drums in Canada first?
Speaker 2: Because he's working from a demo that's been worked out,
Speaker 2: so he's playing to the demo.
Speaker 1: And what about do you send your engineer there?
Speaker 2: No, we have an engineer in Canada that we trust
Speaker 2: that we've been using a long time, and he has
Speaker 2: a room that he's going to record it. And since
Speaker 2: we're going to probably replace a lot of the drum
Speaker 2: sounds with samples, we're looking for a performance more than
Speaker 2: we are looking for drum sounds. So if we get
Speaker 2: a snare sound that a little squirrely, we can always
Speaker 2: replace it.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's stay there. He's cut the stuff. Tell me
Speaker 1: about replacing the drum sounds with samples.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he cuts it and say we don't like
Speaker 2: to kick and snare go And by the way, that
Speaker 2: happens ninety percent of the time. Okay, Like, it's not
Speaker 2: unusual to do this. In fact, if you look at
Speaker 2: the old Steely Dan documentaries, they were doing it back then.
Speaker 2: You know with the Wendel thing that you know, their
Speaker 2: engineer had Gary Katz and all those guys. So we
Speaker 2: will take the drum track, assign MIDI notes to the
Speaker 2: kick and snare that will trigger MIDI information that we
Speaker 2: can take any kick and snare anywhere in the world
Speaker 2: and have a trigger. We will print that underneath the
Speaker 2: snare drum track. They'll be samples of snares, there'll be
Speaker 2: samples of kicks, they'll be samples of Tom's. So then
Speaker 2: we have the choice when we mix of which ones
Speaker 2: we want to use, and that leads it up to
Speaker 2: the mixer. A lot of times as the mixers mixing,
Speaker 2: the mixer will go, you know what, I don't like
Speaker 2: this snare drum that was recorded. Look at that snare
Speaker 2: number three that fits into this mix much better. Now
Speaker 2: he doesn't have to go through the energy of replacing it.
Speaker 2: We've done it for him already. We've given him a
Speaker 2: menu of stuff that he can use. So you know,
Speaker 2: something we worked out with Chris ord Algaeback in the day,
Speaker 2: Chris liked to have all that stuff. You know, we
Speaker 2: would give him like samples of all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 2: and he would. In fact, we gave him his samples.
Speaker 2: He gave us our He gave us his samples, and
Speaker 2: we give them back to him put on the track.
Speaker 2: So then we get this drum track back that is,
Speaker 2: you know, it's not mixed or anything like that, but
Speaker 2: it's good enough. But we can work with it. And
Speaker 2: whatever case it is, it might get to me with
Speaker 2: note with guitars that are not finished, base that's not finished,
Speaker 2: but enough that I can cut the vocals. And while
Speaker 2: I'm cutting the vocals with at them, they're still cutting
Speaker 2: the guitars over there at the studio. But I know
Speaker 2: the arrangement because I already have it, the demo arrangement
Speaker 2: of it. You know. Now, the demo has to be
Speaker 2: in tune, obviously, and most of the time it is.
Speaker 2: But if it's squirrely, we'll let them know. But I
Speaker 2: don't really run into that at all. Honestly. The demos
Speaker 2: are pretty you know.
Speaker 1: And everybody's working to a click. How do you keep
Speaker 1: it all?
Speaker 2: Yes, everything's yeah, oh, yeah, it's metrono.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've seen a non metrono, a tract
Speaker 2: not to a metronome in thirty years.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you always have a third party mix it.
Speaker 1: You never mix yourself.
Speaker 2: I tried once or twice. I'm always I'm you know what,
Speaker 2: I kind of am not as precious at that point.
Speaker 2: I used to be much more precious about it. What
Speaker 2: I do now with mixing is well. For example, in
Speaker 2: three days Grace, they're gonna have some out third party
Speaker 2: mix it that I'm not gonna have anything to do with.
Speaker 2: I will have a say though, when they send it
Speaker 2: to me, I'll say to them, hey, I don't think
Speaker 2: the harmonies are loud enough. I'll talk about the vocals,
Speaker 2: mostly because they have their own opinions about the rest
Speaker 2: of the track. My really focused on how the vocals
Speaker 2: sound on the records. I do that, like for example,
Speaker 2: for Judge and Jury or for Inflames, my mixer Joe
Speaker 2: will mix them. And this is a pretty cool system.
Speaker 2: We have my pro tools Rig and his pro tools
Speaker 2: Rig are identical down to the plugins, down to everything.
Speaker 2: I'll send it to him first. He will mix it
Speaker 2: about sixty to seven. He'll send it back to me.
Speaker 2: Then I will add all the vocals into it the
Speaker 2: way I want with the effects. I want the delays,
Speaker 2: I want the reverbs, I want the doubles, I want
Speaker 2: where the harmony should sit. All that. Then I will
Speaker 2: send it back to him and he will finish getting it.
Speaker 2: He'll bake it more, he'll get the bread to be
Speaker 2: baked more, and then he'll send it back to me,
Speaker 2: and then I'll mess with it a little bit. Then
Speaker 2: i'll send it back. He'll mess with it. He's pretty
Speaker 2: much mixing it. I'm really just making sure the vocals
Speaker 2: are right. So that's how that one works. It's just
Speaker 2: different on every project.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to Three Days Grace. Why do
Speaker 1: they want to have a third party mix it without
Speaker 1: your input the same way you're talking about with the
Speaker 1: guy with the same pro tools.
Speaker 2: Rig Because there's some mixers like Dan Lancaster, and you
Speaker 2: know there's some A list mixers who you just trust
Speaker 2: more that you just go, you know what, these guys
Speaker 2: have it. This is the sound I want, you know.
Speaker 2: I know that anything I say in this situation with
Speaker 2: Three Days Grace that I've produced five albums of theirs.
Speaker 2: We all kind of know what's going on here, do
Speaker 2: you know. It's not like we're not going to drive
Speaker 2: the car off the cliff on this one. You know,
Speaker 2: if it's a new band, it's a different situation because
Speaker 2: then it we're creating something, a sound, something that's new.
Speaker 2: So therefore I'm way more involved in that. But on
Speaker 2: three Days Grace, I kind of know that I've been
Speaker 2: producing that band since two thousand and five. I kind
Speaker 2: of know, you know what I mean where the bodies
Speaker 2: are buried there?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Okay, So they were working with Gavin before you, and
Speaker 1: then it seems like in the middle they went back
Speaker 1: to Gavin and then back to you. Yeah, what's that about?
Speaker 2: Should happen with Gavin?
Speaker 1: Should happen with that?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Personally? Or the way the record came out?
Speaker 2: I just don't think they liked the I think they
Speaker 2: wanted someone a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Organized, Okay, But they went back to him, right.
Speaker 2: They went back to him, Yeah, because I did two
Speaker 2: albums with them. Then they had Don Gilmour produce an album,
Speaker 2: which then Adam left the band. Then when they went
Speaker 2: to Matt, I think they you know, they'd moved on.
Speaker 2: I mean it's okay. You know, like I produce a
Speaker 2: lot of multiple records by bands. They've done like four
Speaker 2: Theory records and those would be my fifth you know.
Speaker 2: So I stayed with bands a lot, but I think
Speaker 2: they just wanted to change it up. And when they
Speaker 2: went back with Gavin, I think it fell into the
Speaker 2: same rhythm it did on the first couple before they
Speaker 2: brought me in on the second album, A lot wasn't
Speaker 2: getting done, you know, fast enough for them with the
Speaker 2: With I have a I have a real team of
Speaker 2: people that is like when you work with me, you're
Speaker 2: going you get the full treatment. You know we got
Speaker 2: you know, you could trust it. We have guitar texts,
Speaker 2: we have drum texts, we have editor We have a
Speaker 2: studio that works things. You plug things in they that
Speaker 2: they work, cables work. This is stuff bands like to have.
Speaker 2: They it's in the background.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like flying in an airplane. You don't want to
Speaker 2: think about the rudder control, or you don't want to
Speaker 2: think about the you know, whether the left engines. You know,
Speaker 2: got a fan blade. It's broke with us. You come
Speaker 2: in the studio, you don't think about any of that stuff.
Speaker 2: Everything works We pride ourselves for that. That's something we
Speaker 2: really when I made this team, I said, we want
Speaker 2: the passengers to have a great flight here man, you know.
Speaker 2: And we're not partying with them either. I don't care
Speaker 2: how much they want to hang out with us. We're
Speaker 2: not hanging out with them, you know. And you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of producers get sucked into that thing where
Speaker 2: they want to hang out with the band. They think
Speaker 2: they're part of the whole thing. No, we go home
Speaker 2: at night, we leave the band. They are the band
Speaker 2: where the producers they come in. It's very professional. That's
Speaker 2: how I like it, you know. And the band's really
Speaker 2: like that too, because it gives them a certain amount
Speaker 2: of time to be creative and we're not going into
Speaker 2: the middle of the night doing junk. Then you come
Speaker 2: back the next day and you just realize it's all
Speaker 2: garbage that you just did. You're sort of like focused
Speaker 2: on what you're doing. And we work really hard for
Speaker 2: eight hours, like we barely stop working. But you're exhausted
Speaker 2: after that, you know. So I think they liked I
Speaker 2: think they like our organization. We you know, I once
Speaker 2: had a band come to me some forty one or
Speaker 2: an artist they said, we need to take you out
Speaker 2: of your comfort zone and put you in another city
Speaker 2: so you get, you know, out of your comfort zone
Speaker 2: so we can make this record. I said, guys, that's
Speaker 2: the last thing you want me to do. You're the
Speaker 2: creative people, we're you know, you want me to be
Speaker 2: crazy too, you know, like that's what you want. Like, no,
Speaker 2: you want us to be the steadying influence. So you
Speaker 2: guys can go ahead and be as creative as you want.
Speaker 2: You know, we'll make sure the plane doesn't crash. You know,
Speaker 2: that's our job. So you know, my job is to
Speaker 2: land the plane safely, you know, and make sure we
Speaker 2: have delivered the record. The word of a producer it
Speaker 2: means to produce, you know, it doesn't mean to like
Speaker 2: screw it up. So like I take that really seriously.
Speaker 2: That's why I work a lot, because record companies know
Speaker 2: I'm going to produce for them, you know, and the
Speaker 2: bands know I'm going to hand in the record, and
Speaker 2: you know it's going to be on budget at on time.
Speaker 2: You know, I want to have hits too, you know.
Speaker 2: That's another thing. Like I don't hire me if you
Speaker 2: don't want hits. You know, I like having hits, and
Speaker 2: the bands like having hits. They may not say that,
Speaker 2: by the way, but they like it later on. Usually
Speaker 2: if I have a hit, I'm in the chair next time,
Speaker 2: you know. So you know that's how I look at it.
Speaker 2: I'm a working class kid from Philly, man how I
Speaker 2: look at it.
Speaker 1: You know. Three Days Grace is managed by qbe.
Speaker 2: Prime Great Manage.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, Cliff has opinions. To what degree is Cliff
Speaker 1: involved in the record.
Speaker 2: In my side of it, not at all, but in
Speaker 2: the bands side of it a ton. So the band
Speaker 2: uses him as their A and R guy absolutely, because
Speaker 2: there really isn't that A and R. There is no
Speaker 2: A and R from the label on these projects anymore.
Speaker 2: You know. They get the budget and the band has
Speaker 2: to kind of do it bouncing ideas off their producers
Speaker 2: or their management. So I give my opinion, Cliffs gives
Speaker 2: his opinion, and the bands make up their own mind
Speaker 2: at that point. Now, the singles being picked are usually
Speaker 2: being picked by the radio person over at q Prime
Speaker 2: who his name is escaping me Warren, But Warren, right,
Speaker 2: Warren is the He's amazing at picking singles. In fact,
Speaker 2: yesterday Neil said to me, what do you think the
Speaker 2: next single is. I'm like, don't ask me. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to deliver you up to the plate
Speaker 2: and you'll get a nice swing. I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: ball we're throwing, but you're going to get a nice swing,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So okay, let's go back to the recording process. So
Speaker 1: you have all the instruments recorded, you have the vocals recorded.
Speaker 1: Now you're in your own house. What do you do
Speaker 1: to it?
Speaker 2: That's my fun time. I rearranged as much as I want.
Speaker 2: I changed chords around, and I sent it to the
Speaker 2: band and sometimes they go, Howard, what the fuck are
Speaker 2: you thinking? You know? And sometimes they go, oh, I
Speaker 2: love this. So it's that, you know. My manager used
Speaker 2: to always say, you need to give Howard a week
Speaker 2: to do his thing, and you know I would just
Speaker 2: It's that's where the to me, a lot of the
Speaker 2: record comes together. Like if there's like a chorus in
Speaker 2: the wrong place, or I need a double chorus here,
Speaker 2: the bridge is too long, we need a break here,
Speaker 2: the vocal is the second verse should have been the
Speaker 2: first verse. Those are things that I can now. I've
Speaker 2: got all the ingredients. I got kind of a cooked meal.
Speaker 2: It's not quite done yet. Now I can move the
Speaker 2: pieces around, you know, and bands really really like that
Speaker 2: for me. They want me to do that. You know.
Speaker 2: If I don't do that, I'm not doing my job
Speaker 2: for them. So I have to put that time aside,
Speaker 2: and I have to be has to be like sort
Speaker 2: of quiet, and I have to be able to be focused.
Speaker 2: And sometimes I'll work straight for like twenty minutes, take
Speaker 2: a break, watch Sports Center, come back, work twenty minutes,
Speaker 2: take a break, do something else, go for a hike,
Speaker 2: come back, look at it again in a different way angles,
Speaker 2: you know, try to envision it differently. And sometimes I
Speaker 2: think it's amazing and I'll send it and everybody hates it,
Speaker 2: and that's the that's you know, And I don't have
Speaker 2: any ego with that. If it's something that I feel
Speaker 2: super strong about, though, I'll make a stink about it.
Speaker 2: But a lot of times I'm just running stuff up
Speaker 2: the flagpole to see who salutes, you know, Like I'll
Speaker 2: just try things like that. And you know, it's a
Speaker 2: little bit more that the bands, because they all have
Speaker 2: pro tools now, they know how to talk to me
Speaker 2: directly about things, so it's a little bit more easier
Speaker 2: to do it Like a lot of times the band
Speaker 2: will say, hey, can you move this part a couple
Speaker 2: of bars over to this and move this thing? The
Speaker 2: few beats back and I know what they're talking about,
Speaker 2: so the you know, the communication is real smooth now.
Speaker 2: Used to not be that smooth because they didn't know
Speaker 2: what I was doing in the computer back then. But
Speaker 2: now everybody sort of works in pro tools are logic.
Speaker 2: We're all talking the same language much, you know. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's okay.
Speaker 1: Just since you mentioned that, I was going to ask you,
Speaker 1: obviously a pro tools guy, what's your take on logic.
Speaker 2: I think it's great for writing. I just didn't let
Speaker 2: I never learned it, you know, I didn't need to.
Speaker 2: So we see a lot of projects come in on
Speaker 2: logic and we just transform into pro tools, you know.
Speaker 2: I think it's a much Pro Tools is really a
Speaker 2: the more professional to me medium to record in the
Speaker 2: problem with it is is that it's not easy to
Speaker 2: do a lot of MIDI stuff in it. The MIDI
Speaker 2: stuff is sort of clunky still, but I don't have to,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not working in that medium that much.
Speaker 2: I'm working you know, if I do MIDI on it,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's mostly using the instrument tracks and
Speaker 2: using virtual instruments, or if I have to do some
Speaker 2: real instruments, I just you know, play him live. Most
Speaker 2: of the time. All these stuff I do is live
Speaker 2: the work and stuff. I don't really you know, do
Speaker 2: any MIDI stuff with that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, you're in your room. People can't see
Speaker 1: because this is audio only. There are multiple keyboards. You
Speaker 1: talked about the organ, to what degree do you add
Speaker 1: sounds a lot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can't see all this stuff. But I
Speaker 2: have a collection of Vox continentals. I'm a big sixties organit.
Speaker 1: Wait wait wait, wait wait wait. If you have a
Speaker 1: collections of Vox continentals, is that because you know they're
Speaker 1: not making anymore or each one sounds different.
Speaker 2: They all sound different, and I love the sound. I
Speaker 2: just love it. And they the bass sound the bottom
Speaker 2: end you When I work with man Xeric on a
Speaker 2: few things, I was lucky enough to meet him, I
Speaker 2: was a huge fan. I learned how to properly hook
Speaker 2: up a Continental to a speaker so they sound like
Speaker 2: a door sound. So I sneak this stuff in on
Speaker 2: my own, you know, for my own purposes, Like I
Speaker 2: just you know, I'll put a B three in there
Speaker 2: and I'll be like, yeah, man, ask the Keith Emerson
Speaker 2: sound I snuck in on that record, you know, and
Speaker 2: the band's like that stuff. There's you know, you're paying
Speaker 2: homage to your you know, the greats, the great people,
Speaker 2: you know. So yeah, I use a lot of virtual keyboards, melotrons,
Speaker 2: all that stuff, whatever works, and sometimes just a lot
Speaker 2: of modern stuff just for like, you know, doubling bass,
Speaker 2: and sometimes we'll take the real bass out and just
Speaker 2: use a bass a mode base, you know, like an
Speaker 2: old style mode base or you know, I just got
Speaker 2: a d X seven actually because somebody had requested that
Speaker 2: old d X seven Toto sound, and I bought a
Speaker 2: d X seven online. Of course, it got here from Japan.
Speaker 2: It was destroyed in transit, you know, and I fixed it.
Speaker 2: So now I'm going to put that old base Base one.
Speaker 2: You know, Base one is the preset and we're going
Speaker 2: to put that on one of our records. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's amazing what some artists refer to, Like you wouldn't
Speaker 2: know that some of these guys know some of these records,
Speaker 2: but you know they'll be like, yeah, like that Rosanna sound,
Speaker 2: and like, oh, I don't even know you knew who
Speaker 2: that project was, you know, so we'll steal. We'll steal
Speaker 2: some shit from Steve per Caro, you know, things like that.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm a big music history fan, like I
Speaker 2: love to go back. Me and Pete Ambarger are always
Speaker 2: talking about music history all the time, just about you know,
Speaker 2: all the greats and the keyboards they played, and the
Speaker 2: guitars they used, and the songwriting. I just went and
Speaker 2: saw Jimmy Webb at the Canyon Club play all his
Speaker 2: songs on a piano. It was so amazing. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm such a you know, I'm kind of a geek
Speaker 2: when it comes to that stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, so you finish. How long does it
Speaker 1: take you to work on a track in your room.
Speaker 2: Well, if it's a smooth one, it could be I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe a day. But sometimes I'll have to
Speaker 2: go back and rethink it. So yeah, you know, the
Speaker 2: band says, well, we like it, but we don't like this,
Speaker 2: or they'll say, hey, great, let's send it to mixing.
Speaker 2: We're done, that's it, you know. But sometimes they'll just say, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, you took too much out. I'll hear that
Speaker 2: a lot. Actually, I like to short things and get
Speaker 2: to the meat of the bone. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, how many times might it go back and forth?
Speaker 1: And to what degree do you stand up for your
Speaker 1: choices at the end.
Speaker 2: If I think it's a deal breaker when it comes
Speaker 2: to the commercial aspect of the music, I will I
Speaker 2: will absolutely put up a fight if it's something where hey, dude,
Speaker 2: the tambourine shouldn't have been in the third verse. It
Speaker 2: needs to be in the third B section. Okay, you know,
Speaker 2: like that's not something I'm going to start a fight over,
Speaker 2: you know. But if somebody says to me, and I've
Speaker 2: had this a bunch, hey, I don't like that double
Speaker 2: chorus at the end, and this song is like two
Speaker 2: minutes and thirty seconds long, and I'll say, not much
Speaker 2: of a song there, man, Like I think we should
Speaker 2: repeat the chorus. But I'll tell you what, instead of
Speaker 2: the chords going a minor FG, let's go a minor GF.
Speaker 2: It'll still work. The melody. We're in the same KEYSC,
Speaker 2: we're in the relative minor, the relative major melody of work.
Speaker 2: Let's mess around with the chords and we'll do the
Speaker 2: double chorus. But let's make the second chorus a little
Speaker 2: bit differ, and maybe made the drums halftime, and I'll
Speaker 2: add a little gifted the end, you know, like another
Speaker 2: part that comes in, you know, like a secondary hook.
Speaker 2: So those are the kind of things that you know
Speaker 2: you could do pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Actually, you know, Okay, you've been around for a while,
Speaker 1: well before I get there. What's your take on mastering? Uh?
Speaker 2: Boy, that's really funny question. When I first got into
Speaker 2: the business, I hung out with a guy named Tony
Speaker 2: Ferguson who was mastering the No Doubt record, And I
Speaker 2: remember I went over to Interscope and he played it
Speaker 2: for me and he said, I saved this record in mastering.
Speaker 2: I said, and you know, I didn't know any better.
Speaker 2: Like I was like wow, because I mastered it seven
Speaker 2: times and this is the perfect mastering. And I was like, wow, Okay,
Speaker 2: now I go. No, he didn't. It was a good record,
Speaker 2: you know already, Like it was mastered sixteen different ways,
Speaker 2: it still would have been you know, tragic kingdom, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. So I my feeling has gone
Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty degrees, like I don't want him
Speaker 2: to really mess with what I've got. I need him
Speaker 2: to do a few things for me, make sure the
Speaker 2: levels are all consistent throughout the project and if I
Speaker 2: miss something like I have too much boominess and base
Speaker 2: and things like that. But a lot of times you
Speaker 2: really need him just to make sure the codex are
Speaker 2: correct for the different formats you're delivering too. So you know,
Speaker 2: I have a guy who masters our stuff in Switz, Sweden,
Speaker 2: as we have this guy Niles Nielsen, who does all
Speaker 2: our stuff. He's the keyboard player for in Flames. He
Speaker 2: has a separate mastering business and he's he's amazing. He's
Speaker 2: really quick. The stuff comes back, it sounds great, it's
Speaker 2: not overly done.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I think Ted is probably the best, but sometimes we
Speaker 2: can't afford him to do some of his records. Ted Jensen,
Speaker 2: you know, we used him a lot of records, but
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes it's just easier to use some of
Speaker 2: these other guys. You know, some mixers just do their
Speaker 2: own mastering. So I think it's going on. It's it
Speaker 2: used to be something that is like an official meeting
Speaker 2: where you and the band and the management the label
Speaker 2: went to the mastering lab and Big Bear Tooth speakers,
Speaker 2: the whole bit big. I don't know what they were called,
Speaker 2: but everybody sat there and went through this whole thing.
Speaker 2: You know. Now it's something that you just go, hey,
Speaker 2: we need it mastered. The next day it comes back
Speaker 2: from the mastering guy. That's it, you know. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a different business now. I wouldn't want to be
Speaker 2: in that business.
Speaker 1: No, No, I know people who are, and it ain't
Speaker 1: like it used to be. Speaking of ain't like it
Speaker 1: used to be. You've been around long enough. It's the Internet.
Speaker 1: How's that affected budgets? And how's that affected the way
Speaker 1: it work?
Speaker 2: Well, now that's why we have the label because honestly,
Speaker 2: three or four points being a record producer, it ain't
Speaker 2: there anymore. I mean you're dealing with one song. Basically,
Speaker 2: one single pays you the points. And instead of selling
Speaker 2: albums like we used to where we made three or
Speaker 2: four points on ten songs, now you're making it on
Speaker 2: one song and your rock business so you're not streaming
Speaker 2: at all what's used to stream. So the record company,
Speaker 2: Judge and jury, we own fifty percent of the master
Speaker 2: with the label with the artists owns fifty percent of it.
Speaker 2: We fund everything, but we're making more money, but we
Speaker 2: also have to fund it. But at this point in
Speaker 2: my career, I can fund it. So you know, wait,
Speaker 2: let's let's park Judge and Jury for a second.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you're dealing with Three Days Grace, you're dealing
Speaker 1: with another band where it's not your money. Right to
Speaker 1: what degree of the budget's going down? How do you
Speaker 1: compensate what goes on there?
Speaker 2: I think in Three Days Grace, it's not Look, our
Speaker 2: budgets used to be about, say, four hundred thousand per album.
Speaker 2: Now they're down to maybe two hundred thousand for this product,
Speaker 2: for this project. This is an this is an odd
Speaker 2: project because they're still signed to a major, which is
Speaker 2: very rare. You know, I can count on my one
Speaker 2: hand the band signed to majors. I think, so they
Speaker 2: still get a pretty good budget. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: it's not I mean, it's definitely different. Like I don't
Speaker 2: charge you know, my relationship with them is just a
Speaker 2: little bit different because I'm in partners. It's hard to say,
Speaker 2: you know, I have my own deal with them. It's
Speaker 2: really not fair to say what that is like. But
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to be a producer, Bob right now,
Speaker 2: A rock producer. I think it's too hard. I think
Speaker 2: it's really a tough business to be in. It used
Speaker 2: to be a big, really really good lucrative business to
Speaker 2: be in, but I got in under the wire, honestly
Speaker 2: with it. You know, I had hit records when you
Speaker 2: were still selling albums and iTunes, downloads and things like
Speaker 2: that streaming. The only the reason I excuse me my
Speaker 2: career and I still do well is I produce so
Speaker 2: many records, you know, like one hundred and seventy of them,
Speaker 2: and so my catalog is really huge if you look
Speaker 2: at my resume, and so I get income on all
Speaker 2: those songs. So it's just, you know, not any one
Speaker 2: of them in their own would be able to like
Speaker 2: support a lifestyle that I have, but all of them
Speaker 2: together do. And I got that from I really, I
Speaker 2: really I what Chris SORDAUGI was doing, to be honest.
Speaker 2: Chris was just mixing records so fast. He was mixing
Speaker 2: like entire albums in three or four days, you know,
Speaker 2: And so every year he'd mix what fifty albums, sixty albums,
Speaker 2: seventy albums. His shot at hits was so much higher
Speaker 2: than everybody's because his odds were better. And I thought,
Speaker 2: you know what, as long as I can get the
Speaker 2: songs right and the bands and I sell records and
Speaker 2: I make great records, who cares how fast I work,
Speaker 2: you know. So I put a team together and I
Speaker 2: did it quickly so I could do ten albums a year.
Speaker 2: There were some years I did ten albums, you know,
Speaker 2: and if I'm batting three hundred like a baseball player,
Speaker 2: I'm in the Hall of Fame, you know. So you know,
Speaker 2: to me, it was more about that than it was
Speaker 2: about you know. I mean, I wanted to have a
Speaker 2: life after music. I have a family, I live in
Speaker 2: you know, I live in calabass have two kids. I
Speaker 2: sent him through college, and I worked my ass off
Speaker 2: for I still working. I don't even have to work.
Speaker 2: But I love doing this rec I love this business.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm kind of like never going to be
Speaker 2: able to. I look at and Clive just keeps working,
Speaker 2: you know, like I kind of want to be like him,
Speaker 2: you know, just keep going, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. Let's assume I'm not signed to
Speaker 1: a major label. It's basically my money or an investor.
Speaker 1: Are you gonna work with me?
Speaker 2: Uh? As far as a record label or.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, I want to make a record.
Speaker 1: I want to use your team, right, I personally will
Speaker 1: write the check. Not a label, not a traditional outfit.
Speaker 1: Are you open to that business?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I give that to my other guys. It's too hard.
Speaker 2: And the reason is not because of the sales, but
Speaker 2: because a new artist with lots of money, they don't
Speaker 2: know the tempo of making records. So you end up
Speaker 2: in this endless cycle of redoing and redoing and expectations.
Speaker 2: How come it's not selling, Howard, how come's not selling? Well,
Speaker 2: you don't have any followers. Nobody's you know, following, there's
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, but you fucked the record, you know.
Speaker 2: Like all this stuff starts to happen with people that
Speaker 2: don't know what they're doing. The mature artists don't give
Speaker 2: you that stuff. They know the tempo of what we're
Speaker 2: working in the worldview of the music business new people.
Speaker 2: It's tough man working with I've done it before, I've
Speaker 2: done I'm not doing anything just for the money. I'll
Speaker 2: give that to my guys to do that. Oh, kills
Speaker 2: are called like puff pieces, puff projects. How many people
Speaker 2: are on the payroll, Well, they're not they're all ten
Speaker 2: ninety nine.
Speaker 1: S Okay, So that's the point. So let's assume you
Speaker 1: give it to one of your guys. You've taken a piece. No,
Speaker 1: so you own the physical plant. You might be doing
Speaker 1: work there. Somebody else might be doing work. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is my way of giving back to
Speaker 2: my team. They've been loyal to me. They've been there
Speaker 2: for me every year, every year since two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, and they have business worlds they
Speaker 2: want to grow. I'm fine my life, and so anything
Speaker 2: I don't want to do, I just give it to Mike,
Speaker 2: or give it to Patch, or I give it to
Speaker 2: Joe and or I give it to my son Grady,
Speaker 2: who will give it to somebody he knows. And if
Speaker 2: they he wants to commission him, fine. If they want
Speaker 2: to use the fine, if they want to use the studio, fine,
Speaker 2: it's okay with me. It's not worth it's life. It
Speaker 2: comes under the life is too short Moniker for me.
Speaker 2: Do you know, like I'm just not getting in the
Speaker 2: studio with some new artists that for money.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to dig ones. If someone of your guys
Speaker 1: is cutting in in the studio in your house, you're
Speaker 1: going to take a commission on that or just streen.
Speaker 2: Wellside of my house. It's in the studio. That's not
Speaker 2: my house. That's that's my other.
Speaker 1: The loose language by my part. They're working in your
Speaker 1: studio where you just charging them an hourly or daily
Speaker 1: or are you taking a piece of the project.
Speaker 2: Since they're leasing the studio from me, it keeps them working.
Speaker 2: That's where I'm getting something. So I know if they're
Speaker 2: not getting projects, they're not going to keep leasing the studio.
Speaker 2: So it behooves me to make sure there's projects there,
Speaker 2: you know, so they can skip paying the rent. So
Speaker 2: I'll give them stuff. Hey, hey, here's a project that
Speaker 2: came in. They have twenty thousand dollars to do two singles. Mike,
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: That's it, Okay, let's switch gears. Tell me about Judge and.
Speaker 2: Jury record company that me and Neil started about five
Speaker 2: years ago, and we sign new bands, established bands. We like.
Speaker 2: They come to us because they like working with me
Speaker 2: as a producer, or they like working with Neil as
Speaker 2: a songwriter because Neil has had a lot of hits
Speaker 2: and now they really like our team of We do
Speaker 2: have people on staff on the judge and jury, and
Speaker 2: they like our marketing department, which is run by my
Speaker 2: son Grady, who loves the music business. He's on the
Speaker 2: he's on the business side of it, collecting royalties and
Speaker 2: things like that. So it's a standalone label through the
Speaker 2: Orchard you Alan Becker signed us over there. It gave us,
Speaker 2: you know, a good deal, and uh, it's fun. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've never thought i'd actually own a record company, but
Speaker 2: I think I think it's only really worth doing if
Speaker 2: you're owning about half the master now. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of work to make these records sell anything.
Speaker 2: You have to promote them a lot. You have to
Speaker 2: put a lot of money. And I'm not talking about
Speaker 2: radio promotion, but even just the basic marketing and social
Speaker 2: media and all that stuff. I'm not involved in that
Speaker 2: stuff that much. I'm more involved than the sort of
Speaker 2: creed Like I said to them, I'll do this with
Speaker 2: you guys, but I still want to just do what
Speaker 2: I do well, which is produce records like I'll you know,
Speaker 2: and if they don't want to hire me, by the way,
Speaker 2: the artists, they don't have to, like sometimes we'll just
Speaker 2: buy finish masters from them. You know, we're not forcing
Speaker 2: anybody to work with us, you know, but some people
Speaker 2: like we'd signed this band Saliva that you know is
Speaker 2: a you know, hasn't made it, you know. They said,
Speaker 2: we've never made a record that sounded the way we wanted.
Speaker 2: We want to work with you guys, as we said
Speaker 2: to them, Okay, let's do a record together. We signed
Speaker 2: them for one album and you know, pretty easy deal
Speaker 2: to make. We have a record right now that Tommy
Speaker 2: de Benedict. This is working at radio for us and
Speaker 2: you know, being on the other side of the desk
Speaker 2: a little bit, so it's an interesting, you know, place
Speaker 2: to see things.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pull back lens. Okay, what is funding this?
Speaker 2: We well, Neil and I pay for everything.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's not from an advance from Sony or anything
Speaker 1: like that. What do you mean? Sorry, But my point
Speaker 1: is you and your partner are paying for the whole thing.
Speaker 1: You're the bank.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're ok. We have not taken any money from anyone.
Speaker 1: Ok But there's no third party income other than if
Speaker 1: you're actually streaming something or whatever. So how many records
Speaker 1: have you signed or put out.
Speaker 2: We've put out That's a really good question. I'd have
Speaker 2: to look at the catalog. But with a lot of
Speaker 2: the singles and doubles, you know, one home run with
Speaker 2: Breaking Benjamin at Star Set. We went to number one
Speaker 2: with that one. I say, we've signed. This is our
Speaker 2: busiest year. We're putting out four albums in the next
Speaker 2: four months. Saliva album, a album by Dead Habits, which
Speaker 2: is the singer from Escape the Fate, his band, Caleb Piles,
Speaker 2: the Christian artists that we're working with, and god, who's
Speaker 2: the fourth one. I'm spacing out right now, but oh
Speaker 2: Ray Garrison Silo's project. So we have a publicist on
Speaker 2: board outside that we hired for that, and so it
Speaker 2: runs like a record real record company, and my job
Speaker 2: is mostly to be wheeled in to make some you know,
Speaker 2: the bigger decisions since I'm paying for it. Same with Neil.
Speaker 2: But we have like ten ninety nine employees as well
Speaker 2: for this one who work you know, with us, And
Speaker 2: once you get down to it, you're really looking at
Speaker 2: two or three people that can do the work because
Speaker 2: being with the Orchard gives us a big advantage. They
Speaker 2: have a good staff there, so they do a lot
Speaker 2: of that you know, royalty stuff for us. They pay
Speaker 2: the royalties and all they do, also do the marketing,
Speaker 2: they do the social media stuff for us. We do
Speaker 2: a lot of it too, but they augment that. So
Speaker 2: we're not just sitting here alone on the ocean by ourselves.
Speaker 2: We have a partner. We're paying them eighteen percent for that,
Speaker 2: though we do have to pay them a distribution fee.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I had to learn this from scratch, by
Speaker 2: the way, in twenty twenty. It was like learning a
Speaker 2: new business from It was like an upside down business
Speaker 2: to me because I was used to like, you know, here,
Speaker 2: we make full albums, we go to radio, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, like the traditional record business. It wasn't
Speaker 2: like focused on social media or anything like that. Now
Speaker 2: it's all so it's so focused on that stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, is this a vanity project? Are you guys making
Speaker 1: any money?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're making money. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you talked earlier about rock not streaming. What
Speaker 1: is the state of rock today? Well?
Speaker 2: Rock? Okay. The trick in our company just because I
Speaker 2: know the numbers keep the cost down, which is why
Speaker 2: the studio really has a lot to do with it.
Speaker 2: We don't have to pay those kind of things if
Speaker 2: I produce it I'm not charging. Neil's not charging. Our
Speaker 2: biggest expense is on putting a record out. Are really
Speaker 2: the marketing expenses.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The cost of doing the projects is not that much
Speaker 2: because we have all that. That's part of the reason
Speaker 2: we started it is we figured, Okay, we can defray
Speaker 2: a lot of these costs because we're the ones doing
Speaker 2: the albums. So if we stream, say, you know, twenty
Speaker 2: million streams, we can make enough money to make money
Speaker 2: on that project. Not every record does that, but once
Speaker 2: you start building the catalog up, the catalog becomes worth something.
Speaker 2: As you know, you can sell catalogs later for like
Speaker 2: ten times earnings. So the trick is to own the own,
Speaker 2: you know, to keep building up your you know, the
Speaker 2: value of your catalog, your your intellectual properties. And I
Speaker 2: learned that as a producer because I have a lot
Speaker 2: of that stuff in my you know, people are always
Speaker 2: trying to buy my catalog as a producer. So we
Speaker 2: just said, you know what, why don't we do it
Speaker 2: as a record company. Neil sees that from three days Grace,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So let's just go sideways for a second. Sure, have
Speaker 1: you sold any rights?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Would you no? Give me your philosophy.
Speaker 2: It's you're dumb ast shit to sell them unless you
Speaker 2: you know, when you sell them, you have like four
Speaker 2: wives and seventeen kids. You have to split the money
Speaker 2: up with and you can't, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I'm lucky. I have the same wife of thirty five years,
Speaker 2: and my kid's great at royalties. I don't need. I
Speaker 2: don't have any of that stuff. Like Mike, you know,
Speaker 2: my son's great at finding sound exchange royalties that didn't exist,
Speaker 2: or you know, going to Sony and saying, hey this
Speaker 2: you know project this record you did blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: The point schedul didn't give the escalations or all the
Speaker 2: you know, the AFM after money is not coming in,
Speaker 2: where is it? He's listed as a keyboard. You know,
Speaker 2: you need somebody on staff to do that, and my kid,
Speaker 2: luckily is on staff, so he has made me a
Speaker 2: lot of money. Grady finding missing royalties. Not everybody's like that,
Speaker 2: but to me, it's an appreciating asset music, Like it's
Speaker 2: only going to go higher because you're gonna have more
Speaker 2: people getting Spotify. I mean, this is we're like in
Speaker 2: the second inning of this right now. So why would
Speaker 2: you sell it. You're not going to get that in
Speaker 2: come anywhere else. First of all, why do people want
Speaker 2: to buy it so badly? Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not forcing people. They're coming to me
Speaker 2: all the time.
Speaker 1: It just cracks me up. You know, you're a musician.
Speaker 1: These people who are saying their business is money. The
Speaker 1: people who are buying it, they're not buying it if
Speaker 1: they're not making money. It's crazy.
Speaker 2: That's all you really have to think about. It's that
Speaker 2: part of it, you know. I mean, you're dying for
Speaker 2: these royalties. It's a cash machine. Think about it. Every
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter what's going on in the world. The
Speaker 2: reason why hoobastank is going to stream every day somewhere,
Speaker 2: and why would I give that away?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm with you totally on this. Let's go
Speaker 1: back though. You talked about Judge and jury, rock the
Speaker 1: rock world in general. Give me your take.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a This is one of those things
Speaker 2: that either I sleep well at night or keeps me night.
Speaker 2: But when I go to like Louder than Life and
Speaker 2: I go, oh my god, this is healthy. Look at
Speaker 2: all these kids. They're killing each other out there. It's awesome.
Speaker 2: And then you look at the streaming and you go, yikes.
Speaker 2: You know, like some half the bands are not streaming
Speaker 2: anything here. So I think it's like, look, it's not
Speaker 2: as lucrative as it used to be. But I think
Speaker 2: if you're smart about it and you don't overspend, and
Speaker 2: you have compelling material. I keep going back to this
Speaker 2: with my company. We need to have great material. A
Speaker 2: lot of the material or these rock bands are doing
Speaker 2: is not great. It's okay, you know, it's not where
Speaker 2: it used to be, where we were the forefront of
Speaker 2: you know, talking about things that nobody wanted to talk about.
Speaker 2: We were, you know, the bad boys. You know, we're
Speaker 2: no longer the bad boys anymore. It's just bland. So
Speaker 2: as much as I talk a good game, I'm still
Speaker 2: trying to get that to be in our music. But
Speaker 2: it's hard because some of the artists are just not
Speaker 2: like that anymore. You know, they're not saying anything that's
Speaker 2: that radical or anything. I mean, I just I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'm not really sure what to think about it. Sometimes.
Speaker 2: All I know is I love doing it, and that's
Speaker 2: you know. I just love the sound of a good
Speaker 2: rock song. I don't know, you know, maybe that's a
Speaker 2: bad explanation, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, in terms of the percentage of new music listening,
Speaker 1: is rock just not being promoted and marketed correctly or
Speaker 1: is the audience not listening to it? In the percentage
Speaker 1: it used to be a reflection of the music itself.
Speaker 2: I think it has to do with the star power
Speaker 2: of the of the artists. We're not I don't think
Speaker 2: that right now we're selling music anymore. We're selling brands,
Speaker 2: and the bands are just not good brand. They're not
Speaker 2: like branded. You compare the brand of Olivia Rodriguez to
Speaker 2: the brand of say, you know, a band like you know,
Speaker 2: bad Omens, which is a big band and bad Omens
Speaker 2: does pretty well, but they're never going to compete with
Speaker 2: a brand like that, with a or swift brand. You know,
Speaker 2: there's things are just massive, they connect more. You know,
Speaker 2: we just don't have that for whatever reason. And it
Speaker 2: comes down it's not I can't fix that. The artists
Speaker 2: have to do it. Like you know, I remember back
Speaker 2: when van Halen came out, nobody thought Van Halen would
Speaker 2: work back then, but you know what, they were so
Speaker 2: special and so great and so different that they came
Speaker 2: out of they came out and stuck out. They created
Speaker 2: something that wasn't there before. We're just not doing that.
Speaker 2: We're just not you know. So, I mean it's a
Speaker 2: really tricky question.
Speaker 1: I thought, well, well, but you're in the heart of it,
Speaker 1: So let's go so in what's called active rock as
Speaker 1: a radio for a bat Okay, let me put it
Speaker 1: this way. I remember when led Zeppelin was considered heavy
Speaker 1: metal and Black Sabbath was too far out. You listen
Speaker 1: to active rock a lot of these records. I feel
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to the history of forty years
Speaker 1: worth of music, you don't know how they got there.
Speaker 1: So that the the average person who hears it the
Speaker 1: first time, they're not immediately into it. So the question
Speaker 1: becomes is it the music itself? Is it the acts?
Speaker 1: Is rock played out? Could it be shaken up? You
Speaker 1: talk about the Beatles doing harmonies the best whatever the
Speaker 1: Beatles did, harmony's choruses, bridges starting with the chorus versus
Speaker 1: you're not hearing an active rock.
Speaker 2: No you're not, And there's no story really Like you
Speaker 2: were just alluding to this a little bit that when
Speaker 2: you hear a led Zeppelin record, there's a story behind
Speaker 2: it and you're hearing you know, even a Who record,
Speaker 2: there's a story you can think of. I can't think
Speaker 2: of a story behind most of these bands, Like there
Speaker 2: isn't any story. You know, people like to have that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. But when you think of Tyer Swift,
Speaker 2: you think of a story. I mean the kids, do
Speaker 2: you know when you think of you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of huge pop bands. You know, Billie Eilish is a
Speaker 2: great one, there's a story there. It's like, look at
Speaker 2: you know where she came from and her brother and
Speaker 2: all this stuff. And you know, we just don't. We're
Speaker 2: not good at telling stories anymore in our business. And
Speaker 2: I'm not really sure why, you know, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: where it's coming from. I think the active rock thing
Speaker 2: is a really we There's always been this problem with
Speaker 2: active rock where it just becomes its own worst enemy
Speaker 2: because it starts sounding like everything else. It sounds like
Speaker 2: everything else on there, and it just because like I
Speaker 2: was listening to Octane this morning and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I can't tell the difference between any
Speaker 2: of these projects. They all sound the same, and by
Speaker 2: the way, I'm one of them, you know, Like it's
Speaker 2: almost like if you don't get the texture. And al
Speaker 2: In Kovak, who you know is great at active rock,
Speaker 2: you know, he used to say this stuff in meetings.
Speaker 2: He would say, you need to get the texture right.
Speaker 2: In other words, it needs to sound like active rock
Speaker 2: to be on active rock. Who cares about the songs
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. What matters is the texture. I don't look.
Speaker 2: I wish it wasn't like that, because I think the
Speaker 2: songs matter, you know, but active rock has turned into
Speaker 2: a thing where it's a texture based thing. I think
Speaker 2: in pop music it's more the songs have to be great,
Speaker 2: you know, because you could hear pop music and it
Speaker 2: sounds like the old broadcasting where everything was different. You know,
Speaker 2: you could put on like a station, there'd be something
Speaker 2: like this, something like that, something like this, and active
Speaker 2: rockets all the same, you know. So I mean I
Speaker 2: joke with Three Days Grace. You guys could fart on
Speaker 2: the tape and it's going to go to number one,
Speaker 2: you know, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, just Three Days Grace been around for a while,
Speaker 1: but you've been around even longer. The people coming across
Speaker 1: the transom, are they different today?
Speaker 2: As far as the artists, Yeah, you know, they try
Speaker 2: to be like, we have an artist we work with.
Speaker 2: It's a bit more of the DM side.
Speaker 1: And let me reframe my question. Okay, back in the
Speaker 1: days of the English rock stars of the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: they tended to be people who were not great socially
Speaker 1: did it to get laid? There was no social media.
Speaker 1: They practice, they practice, they practice, they got their notoriety.
Speaker 1: Today you have a lot of people, Oh I learned
Speaker 1: three chords, let me start promoting myself. So the people
Speaker 1: who come in as people as desire, as creativity, what
Speaker 1: have you seen change?
Speaker 2: It's so much more based on how many followers you have.
Speaker 2: That's the first thing they tell you when you meet
Speaker 2: a band is their social media following, you know, because
Speaker 2: they assume that that's what we want to hear about,
Speaker 2: do you know, And it's probably true, you know, because
Speaker 2: it's really hard to take something from zero to It's
Speaker 2: like we have this you know. Look, it's hard to
Speaker 2: get from the goal line to the twenty. It's a
Speaker 2: lot easier to get from the fifty to the goal
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. So it's really hard to
Speaker 2: start this up. So bands end up becoming you know,
Speaker 2: not only artists, but performers and videos and they do
Speaker 2: anything they can to get attention. It's less focused on
Speaker 2: the music and the songs actually focused more on the notoriety.
Speaker 2: But it's even hard to do that to break through that.
Speaker 2: You know, there's just so many people competing, you know.
Speaker 2: Craig Common once said to me, it's the dumbing down
Speaker 2: of art the Internet, Like there's just so much dumb
Speaker 2: art out there. It's really hard to get yourself noticed.
Speaker 2: And I think bands because they're working with two guitars,
Speaker 2: bass and drums, it's even harder. You know, you're you know,
Speaker 2: if you'ren't using those instruments, you're not considered a rock band.
Speaker 2: You know, well a courdy the well, the Grammys would
Speaker 2: maybe say it's differently because they put things in the
Speaker 2: rock category that are.
Speaker 1: Let's not get into the Grammys. You know that's coming.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: I got my own issues there and that's but let's
Speaker 1: go back to the bands. Okay, I have a manager,
Speaker 1: ultra successful, you know who this person is, doesn't want
Speaker 1: to manage any band, say's too complicated, just wants to
Speaker 1: manage solo artists. Where that person's and maybe there is
Speaker 1: a band, but it's clear there's a leader. Do you
Speaker 1: have a take on that?
Speaker 2: Well, I totally see his point of view, because you
Speaker 2: can have a really good band that one guy is
Speaker 2: the I call it the tyranny of no. They're just
Speaker 2: saying no to everything and they have a vote and
Speaker 2: it's no, no, no, no no, and you're fucked. That's
Speaker 2: it there. And usually it's the guy who can't play,
Speaker 2: the worst guy in the band, and they use their
Speaker 2: no power to stay in the band. I see that
Speaker 2: a lot in band. It's like you have this really
Speaker 2: good band with three good guys and say the drummer
Speaker 2: can't play, and they you come up with these good
Speaker 2: ideas about baby, telling more of a story about this
Speaker 2: or that, and they're like, no, no, no, that's not us. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: what are you gonna do? You know, like, you know
Speaker 2: he's right. Probably, you know, we don't really have that
Speaker 2: ability to discern that stuff because we have to put
Speaker 2: out projects. We can't just say, well, there's one bad
Speaker 2: guy in the band. We can't do it. We have
Speaker 2: to work around that. But by the way, as a producer,
Speaker 2: my life is summer camp, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Like they come in, they leave. As a manager, that's
Speaker 2: a way worse job he's got them, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean? Like, that's you're basically babysitting the whole time.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't only have to babysit for six
Speaker 2: weeks or something. You know.
Speaker 1: So you say you're a working class kid from Philly,
Speaker 1: Tell me.
Speaker 2: Well, I came up in a blue collar city. And
Speaker 2: I looked at myself as like, oh, well, well, since
Speaker 2: you're saying.
Speaker 1: You're working class kid, what did your parents do for
Speaker 1: a living.
Speaker 2: My did was an insurance salesman okay, and my mom
Speaker 2: was a school teacher.
Speaker 1: Okay, so straight middle class. How many kids in the family?
Speaker 2: One kid? My brother owns an accounting works as an.
Speaker 1: Accountant as a younger or older.
Speaker 2: Younger two years and he was in a band.
Speaker 1: So what kind of kid were you? You mentioned watching
Speaker 1: Sports Center? Were you an athlete? Were you good in school?
Speaker 1: Were you popular or unpopular?
Speaker 2: I was. I was in a band from when I can.
Speaker 2: I was kind of a chubby, fat kid. So my
Speaker 2: way of getting girls was being somehow. A kid came
Speaker 2: to my house one day with his band. It'say, could
Speaker 2: we use your basement? And I said, yeah, you could
Speaker 2: use my basement, but I have an organ down there
Speaker 2: I can play. I couldn't play, but I told him
Speaker 2: I could and it was a pipe pump organ, and
Speaker 2: that it caught me, you know what, I mean that
Speaker 2: I got the disease because like I could play stepping
Speaker 2: Stone by the Monkeys, there's only four notes, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you girls would show up in the basement,
Speaker 2: you know. So you know how that is? One thing
Speaker 2: leads to another and I'm playing in bands all around
Speaker 2: Philly and I, uh.
Speaker 1: Well, let's slow down, wait to slow down. Yeah, did
Speaker 1: you ever take music lessons?
Speaker 2: Well, my mom was a music teacher, so I learned
Speaker 2: it from her naturally. I used to hear her play piano.
Speaker 2: It is a funny story. She used to play my
Speaker 2: favorite things downstairs. I would un her upstairs and the
Speaker 2: chord progression is the same as Light by Fire, and
Speaker 2: I remember how much I love Light by Fire. And
Speaker 2: only years later did I put together the two things,
Speaker 2: and I went, you know what, I think that's because
Speaker 2: she kept playing my favorite things downstairs, you know. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I just I used to be one of those guys
Speaker 2: that dropped the needle on things and just learned it
Speaker 2: by year I developed a really good ear. I can't
Speaker 2: read music that well. I'm good chord changes. I can
Speaker 2: read chord change. I can read like charts really well,
Speaker 2: but I can't read music, read music music like you know,
Speaker 2: you can't put chopin in front of me.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. So you're playing piano at what age?
Speaker 2: Organ?
Speaker 1: Oh? Organ?
Speaker 2: Like eleven twelve?
Speaker 1: Okay? And this interaction where they you're playing in the basement.
Speaker 1: How old are you then?
Speaker 2: Thirteen? Bar Mitzvah. I was getting bar Mitzvah about then.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they're playing in your basement. Did the bands
Speaker 1: whoever in play out play gigs?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we played bar Mitzvah's and you know what happened.
Speaker 2: I got really good, really fast, better than the rest
Speaker 2: of the guys. So I started to learn songs like
Speaker 2: in a Gotta Davida and the doors and things that day,
Speaker 2: didn't you know? They were like, what is this stuff?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: We want to play you know, rolling Stones music? And
Speaker 2: I started gravitating more towards keyboard stuff and all, and
Speaker 2: then I you know, back then, you just played in
Speaker 2: any band that was around, you know, like you're there
Speaker 2: was another band they needed a keyboard player. I dragged
Speaker 2: my Vox organ you know RMI actually an RMI organ
Speaker 2: over to their house and play. So when I went
Speaker 2: to Drexel.
Speaker 1: Were okay, continue continue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I played in the high school bands.
Speaker 2: I still have all the notes, by the way, I
Speaker 2: kept everything. So we played like you know, bar Mitzvah's
Speaker 2: and I don't know, churches, just stupid stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: like with thirty people would show up. But I started
Speaker 2: learning songs, like learning how to play other people's music.
Speaker 2: So I play. I knew all the Stone songs, I
Speaker 2: knew the Door songs, I knew the Beatles songs. I
Speaker 2: learned all the songs of the moment. And when I
Speaker 2: turned seventeen or eighteen, I wanted to go to school Drexel.
Speaker 2: I wanted to get it. At that time, I wasn't
Speaker 2: thinking about being a music pro. I was good, and
Speaker 2: I'd liked math and science, so I wanted to be
Speaker 2: an engineer. So I went to Drexel University and enrolled
Speaker 2: in the materials engineering department. Of course, but then I
Speaker 2: dragged my Hammond dorgan down the Drexel with me, joined
Speaker 2: a fraternity, put it in the basement, started learning Emersus
Speaker 2: Lincoln Palmer on it Tarcas, and these people were hearing
Speaker 2: this through the neighborhood because I had it turned up
Speaker 2: at full blast and people would come around and watch
Speaker 2: me play Tarcas. And another band got together, a fraternity band.
Speaker 2: I joined that one, and then another band got together
Speaker 2: where I would play Amersus Lincoln Palmer, and you know,
Speaker 2: then something really interesting happened. A band came through with
Speaker 2: Lee Andrews and the Hearts. He was a Philly guy
Speaker 2: and he had a hit song back in this fifties.
Speaker 2: There was a seven piece band, a disco band with him.
Speaker 2: I was like the social chairman of the fraternity at
Speaker 2: the time, and these guys and I said, well, you
Speaker 2: don't have a keyboard player, and they said, well, we're
Speaker 2: not going to be with him anymore. Do you want
Speaker 2: to join the band? And I was like okay, and
Speaker 2: I joined the band and we started playing disco techs
Speaker 2: around South Jersey back in the day where the Penalty
Speaker 2: Box was someplace else, wild Wood, Cape, May, all those
Speaker 2: Jerseys shore towns, and that's where I really got good
Speaker 2: at it, because I had to learn how to arrange
Speaker 2: beg songs and Bowie songs and songs that were more sophisticated.
Speaker 2: So I started learning how to do horn arrangements, and
Speaker 2: this thing just started. But I was still going to
Speaker 2: Drexel and during my engineering degree, so I was like
Speaker 2: literally living twenty four hours at a time, you know,
Speaker 2: driving back and forth from the shore, playing in this
Speaker 2: disco band. And eventually I started writing our own material
Speaker 2: and it wasn't any good. I graduated from college. The
Speaker 2: band I was in wanted to come to La. We
Speaker 2: came out to LA. I got a job at Air
Speaker 2: Research at Garrett down in the South Bay as a
Speaker 2: mechanical engineer, and I worked there for four years. So
Speaker 2: I worked, you know, promoted a few times. I was
Speaker 2: a good engineer, Actually I liked it. I worked on
Speaker 2: the C five B. I worked on lead edge slat
Speaker 2: actuation systems for F eighteen's. I worked on the Space Shuttle,
Speaker 2: the orbital gimbo actuators. I worked on all that stuff.
Speaker 2: I was a mechanical engineer, so these are actuators that
Speaker 2: actually move the surfaces. But at nighttime, I was going
Speaker 2: to Sunset Sound because I knew the second engineer there
Speaker 2: who get free studio time, So you know, you're hustling,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, that's what you're doing. So
Speaker 2: I was hustling studio time at night and getting bands
Speaker 2: that were local, like Jack Mack in the Heart Attack.
Speaker 2: I'd get them studio time, I met them somehow a band,
Speaker 2: and you know, I was learning how to I didn't
Speaker 2: really know what my job was yet, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, Like, I didn't know there was a I
Speaker 2: knew the producers were producers, but I was just trying
Speaker 2: to make music. And then all of a sudden it
Speaker 2: clicked to me, like, wait a minute, I really don't
Speaker 2: want to be in any of these bands. I want
Speaker 2: to be the guy that calls the shots. First of all,
Speaker 2: I don't have to tour. I don't want to tour.
Speaker 2: A second, it combines engineering and music, and I'm kind
Speaker 2: of okay at both of those things. You know. I
Speaker 2: did take a year off from Drexel and went to
Speaker 2: music school. I went to Philadelphia College of Performing Arts.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait a little bit slong. Yeah, sorry, there's a
Speaker 1: scene in Philly. Okay, there's the whole black scene, but
Speaker 1: you also have Hall and Oates, you have the guys
Speaker 1: in the Hooters. Did you intersect with those people.
Speaker 2: At all zero. Never I was in this suburban Philly scene,
Speaker 2: whatever that was, you know, and the Northeast Philly scene.
Speaker 2: The guys in my band were all from Northeast Philly.
Speaker 2: They all went to Catholic schools and we played the proms,
Speaker 2: all the Catholic school proms. Their father Judge holy ghost.
Speaker 1: But even when you were in college, you did intersect
Speaker 1: with those.
Speaker 2: People though, the only time I met Gamble I met
Speaker 2: him at a fundraiser about ten years ago to raise
Speaker 2: money for Jefferson Hospital or something like that. So I
Speaker 2: met him, and I was really stoked to meet him
Speaker 2: because he wrote Expressway to Your Heart, which is one
Speaker 2: of my favorite songs because I drove on the Scoogle
Speaker 2: Expressway a lot. So I was stoked to meet him.
Speaker 2: And I love the Spinners, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I grew up listening to all that stuff, all the
Speaker 2: Philly soul stuff. But I never met them. I never interacted.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, okay, just to clear ups and data. You
Speaker 1: graduate from Drexel, you work in Long Beach or somewhere
Speaker 1: down there. The band comes.
Speaker 2: Out too, Yeah, and the drummer came out.
Speaker 1: What happened with the band?
Speaker 2: They were all college graduates. So they all school, they
Speaker 2: all had jobs, so one worked at Farmer's Insurance.
Speaker 1: Now I'm less worried, I'm less interested in what they
Speaker 1: did for jobs. What was going on with the band?
Speaker 2: Oh our band? Well, we got an invet Okay, the
Speaker 2: Dubin family from Philadelphia. They own a paper company, big
Speaker 2: paper company. They were friends with this guy, Edward Slockin.
Speaker 2: His father owned the Beverly Hills Hotel in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: two before he sold it to Marvin Mill who sold
Speaker 2: it to the bar Nay. This guy had a lot
Speaker 2: of money, so one thing led to another and he
Speaker 2: became our investor. So we got it in the studio
Speaker 2: through Sunset Sound. The people I met with producers. One
Speaker 2: of the producers was Dennis Kirk, the other one was
Speaker 2: Chris Bond, And we tried to make demos. We were
Speaker 2: fucking horrible because we were This is kind of like
Speaker 2: comes into the rest of it. But at one point
Speaker 2: the producer said to me, you're unproducible. You're just such
Speaker 2: a jerk in there. You always won it your way.
Speaker 2: And finally I ended up producing the sessions, and you know,
Speaker 2: in the back of my mind, I'm going I kind
Speaker 2: of liked this gig better than the gig I have,
Speaker 2: which is just sitting here bounding on keyboards, you know.
Speaker 2: So you know, I think that's kind of how it
Speaker 2: led to that, because I just like everybody's career, it's
Speaker 2: like it fits and starts, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: like things. I remember after we made our demo, Eddie
Speaker 2: said the manager, Oh, Clive Davis is in Bungalow four
Speaker 2: at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I'm going to take them
Speaker 2: the demo. You'll be signed by this time tomorrow, right,
Speaker 2: So you know, he goes into Clive's bungalow, which, by
Speaker 2: the way, thirty years later, I told Clive I have
Speaker 2: a bone to pick with you, and I called him out.
Speaker 2: So he goes to Clive and he goes, this is
Speaker 2: the band that I've been managing, and I paid for
Speaker 2: this demo, and Clive goes, he puts it on, and
Speaker 2: he goes tell them to stick with their day jobs.
Speaker 2: It was crushing moment. Crushing, right, I thought I was
Speaker 2: going to be able to quit my day job.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Say I worked another two years at Garrett This is
Speaker 2: now in nineteen eighty four or something like that, and
Speaker 2: Finally I said to my parents. I call my parents
Speaker 2: up and I was like, look, I know you you
Speaker 2: know suffered to get me through college, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to do this for I'm going to try this, you know.
Speaker 2: I'm going to move to the valley to Encino, to
Speaker 2: a little house and live in the garage. Was pretty
Speaker 2: much what I was doing. Set up my eight track
Speaker 2: FoST X and try it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: And the problem with leaving an aerospace job is once
Speaker 2: you leave your aerospace job, it's hard to get back
Speaker 2: into it because the technology takes off after that. So
Speaker 2: after about three or four months, I was kind of
Speaker 2: committed to it. So it took me two years to
Speaker 2: produce my first album. At that point, I got lucky
Speaker 2: and got a Tsol album that was on Enigma Records
Speaker 2: that they had not delivered and the band they were
Speaker 2: ready to get dropped, and a friend of mine knew them,
Speaker 2: and one thing led to another. I got him in
Speaker 2: the studio. I finished the album, I got my first
Speaker 2: producer credit, and then two years went by and I
Speaker 2: got my next producer credit, which was their next album.
Speaker 2: So you know, I wasn't producing very much, but I
Speaker 2: was learning along the way and then I got lucky.
Speaker 2: I met a band called Bang Tango.
Speaker 1: Wait before you get the Bang Tang, what were you
Speaker 1: living on?
Speaker 2: I was living on demos, and I had met my wife, Monica,
Speaker 2: who was and she was a publisher at the time.
Speaker 2: And she started giving me, by the way, a lot
Speaker 2: of grief because she said to me, all you care
Speaker 2: about her guitar sounds, that's it. You just care about guitars.
Speaker 2: You're not caring about the songs enough. I said, Ah,
Speaker 2: who guess the fuck about the songs. It's about the guitars,
Speaker 2: you know. And like she's hammering me about this, and
Speaker 2: I'm not listening to her because she's my wife, of course,
Speaker 2: you know. So I'm like, you know, this would come
Speaker 2: back later when I finally figured it out, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, Like, Oh, she was right the whole time,
Speaker 2: you know. So you know, you know, I struggled a
Speaker 2: long time. I quit my job in eighty four and
Speaker 2: I didn't have a hit record, a real bonafid hit
Speaker 2: till nineteen ninety nine. It took me fifteen years kids
Speaker 2: in school, private school, doing demos, keeping my nose clean.
Speaker 2: I worked for Irving at Giant Records in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: That was boot camp for me. I learned how to
Speaker 2: handle myself in the music business. I met Keith Olson
Speaker 2: about then, still didn't have any hits. It was like,
Speaker 2: I got to tell you something, man. I was ready
Speaker 2: to give up. I had really ready to get a
Speaker 2: real estate license.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There were times where I was making ten thousand bucks
Speaker 2: a year. We were living off savings I made. Sylvia wrote,
Speaker 2: you know when after I started having hits, Sylvia Rohane
Speaker 2: hired me and those were all good days. But I
Speaker 2: paid my dues man, Like, that's when I had my
Speaker 2: first hit. I remember thinking, I am not letting go
Speaker 2: of this not happening. Like this took too long, you know,
Speaker 2: like like you know it was. It was the weirdest
Speaker 2: thing because I didn't think it was ever going to happen. Actually,
Speaker 2: I really had kind of mentally almost given up that point,
Speaker 2: you know, but Pod gave me the chance to do it.
Speaker 2: And you know why. It was protest.
Speaker 1: Wait wait wait, wait, slow down. Tell me about bang
Speaker 1: Tango first.
Speaker 2: Well, bang Tang was a project I back then in
Speaker 2: the hairband days. Anytime you walked into a club in
Speaker 2: LA they were getting signed. So everybody was getting signed.
Speaker 2: If you had hair and you could play, you got signed.
Speaker 2: So I was on the every night I was at
Speaker 2: the Sunset Strip going looking for projects. The Gazari's, you know,
Speaker 2: Whiskey at the time, I think it was the Viper,
Speaker 2: remember the Central Filthy mcnasty's. I forget what it was called,
Speaker 2: but you know, and Brett Hartman over at MCA liked it.
Speaker 2: I was hanging out with the band a lot because
Speaker 2: I was trying to get in rehearsals, you know, I
Speaker 2: had to make myself useful. So I would go to
Speaker 2: rehearsals a lot with them, and I would start arranging
Speaker 2: their music. I had no contract or anything, and I
Speaker 2: got a lawyer who liked me, and one thing led
Speaker 2: to another and I got the project and then it
Speaker 2: did pretty well. But that was like, you know, few
Speaker 2: and far in between those projects at that time that
Speaker 2: did anything. There's no royalties or anything from that stuff.
Speaker 2: So then I did pretty boy flittle hair bands back then,
Speaker 2: you know, I was kind of at the end of
Speaker 2: the hair band era in a way, kind of got
Speaker 2: into it, you know, but I couldn't compete against the
Speaker 2: good guys. The guys were killing me, like Tom Worman
Speaker 2: and you know Michael Wagner, Bo Hill. These guys were
Speaker 2: like legendary to.
Speaker 1: Me back then.
Speaker 2: You know, they were the legends Bob Rock, you know
Speaker 2: those guys Fairburn.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the breakthrough was Pod Yeah, So how'd you
Speaker 1: get that gig?
Speaker 2: Well, they call it the The A and R. Guy
Speaker 2: actually liked my Bank Tango record. I can believe that.
Speaker 2: And Tsol he was a fan of those records, and
Speaker 2: he called me up and he said, this band is
Speaker 2: from San Diego. They're a Christian rock band, and we're
Speaker 2: going to break him in the real world, but we
Speaker 2: want to make a record that sort of straddles the line.
Speaker 2: And I like your record that you did with them,
Speaker 2: And I liked this last Lesson Jake record you did
Speaker 2: Hello Rockview, which actually became their biggest selling record.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, just a little bit slower. How'd you
Speaker 1: get the less than Jake? Right?
Speaker 2: I did a single for the screen movie. They were
Speaker 2: in a screen movie that Wes craven I directed and
Speaker 2: their manager was friends with my little manager at the time,
Speaker 2: and they needed a producer really fast to go to
Speaker 2: Gainsville to do a cover of I Think We're Ala.
Speaker 2: I Think what's that Partcherd's Family song?
Speaker 1: Jesus not my area of expertise.
Speaker 2: But anyway, it was a Partrid's Family and we did
Speaker 2: a cover of it, and the band like working with me,
Speaker 2: so they asked me to come back, and I came
Speaker 2: back to Gainesville with pro tools in hand all the
Speaker 2: way to Gainesville and we started making the record and
Speaker 2: it came out really well, you know, but then it
Speaker 2: wasn't selling that much though, because it was still a
Speaker 2: ska band. It had a limited audience. Wasn't putting food
Speaker 2: on the table. Let's put it that way, right And anyhow,
Speaker 2: so this all comes together and John Rubi Lee, the
Speaker 2: A and R person for Pod and I said, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do this in the computer. And they had
Speaker 2: already hired Ed Stasium to do the record, and it's
Speaker 2: a great producer and everything, but he's an analog guy.
Speaker 2: He's in tape. Rubi Lee, in a flash of inspiration,
Speaker 2: calls me back and goes, listen, tell me more about
Speaker 2: this computer thing. And I said, well, I'll be honest
Speaker 2: with you. Your band really needs this computer. I'm being
Speaker 2: honest with you. They are going to benefit from me.
Speaker 2: The one thing I've realized being in a band. My
Speaker 2: band was the worst band in Hollywood. We had nothing
Speaker 2: to say to the youth of America. Nothing. I was
Speaker 2: raised a normal middle class kid. I'd have anything to say.
Speaker 2: That was the problem with my band. We had nothing.
Speaker 2: We were laughing at Motley Crew across the street, you know,
Speaker 2: because they were dressed up and shit pod though. When
Speaker 2: I saw them, I was like, these guys have everything
Speaker 2: I don't, which is a point of view. They have energy,
Speaker 2: they're intense. They just need my arrangement help. And he
Speaker 2: took a leap of faith on me, and we did
Speaker 2: it on the computer in pro Tools nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: And I remember waking up one morning looking at TRL
Speaker 2: and there's Southtown and I literally could not believe it
Speaker 2: because it hadn't happened before, you know, for me, like
Speaker 2: like that, you know, And I kept doing double takes,
Speaker 2: you know, like, wait a minute, did I produce this?
Speaker 2: It can't be mine. I'm so used to not having
Speaker 2: anything sell at that point, you know. And then it
Speaker 2: was like holding off for dear life. After that, like
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, I'm getting hired by everyone, buddy,
Speaker 2: and my career just it took off so fast that
Speaker 2: it was like a blur. You know. I had to
Speaker 2: learn how to start turning projects down, which was another
Speaker 2: art itself, you know, you know, how to work quickly,
Speaker 2: how to keep producing hits, and you know, form a
Speaker 2: team around me get you know, the best engineer I
Speaker 2: could get, Mike from. Mike Platnikov was from Little Mountain
Speaker 2: Studios in Vancouver, and I loved the sound of those records.
Speaker 2: So I brought him down to do my engineering, and
Speaker 2: you know, one thing led to another, and it just
Speaker 2: started like I don't know what happened, honestly, it just
Speaker 2: was so quick, you know. So but I put in
Speaker 2: I used to I thought to myself, you know what
Speaker 2: I put in all this time doing this, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of like, you know, I appreciate this like a lot.
Speaker 2: You know. I didn't take it for granted at all.
Speaker 2: I wasn't a kid at that point. I was still thirty,
Speaker 2: you know, forty years old. I wasn't a kid, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about the recording the Youth of the Nation.
Speaker 2: Well, that was probably the first time I had recorded
Speaker 2: anything that sounded exactly the way I wanted it to.
Speaker 2: Because it was a song that I had heard in
Speaker 2: rehearsal back when we rehearsed and rehearsed in Santia for
Speaker 2: that second album. There was a school shooting walk into
Speaker 2: the seven eleven. Sonny turns to me and he goes,
Speaker 2: Marcus has this lyric, we are the youth of the Nation.
Speaker 2: I wasn't sold on the lyric because I thought it
Speaker 2: was too big and I thought it was preachy. But
Speaker 2: Sonny goes, here's the opening line. It's the last day
Speaker 2: of the rest of my life. I wish I would
Speaker 2: have known, because I would have kissed my mama goodbye.
Speaker 2: And I went, oh my god, that's I mean, I
Speaker 2: could I almost get teared up thinking about it now.
Speaker 2: It hit me so hard, and I called my manager
Speaker 2: and I said, Aliyah, I can't even fuck this one up.
Speaker 2: You know, this is going to be a great song,
Speaker 2: you know. And we put it together and then I
Speaker 2: think Marcos and I were talking about a kid's choir
Speaker 2: and I love bob Ezrin's production of Another Brick in
Speaker 2: the Wall, and I said, you know what, this is
Speaker 2: the time, this is the moment I'm going to use them.
Speaker 2: And I made a huge error. I brought in the
Speaker 2: fans of the band to come sing the parts. And
Speaker 2: the lawyer calls me on the phone right when I'm
Speaker 2: about to hit record, and he goes, you.
Speaker 3: Can't record them. They're not lee. You better get them
Speaker 3: out of here as fast as possible. I said, why,
Speaker 3: they're just going to see the chorus. He goes, We're
Speaker 3: going it be sued so many ways. So I saw,
Speaker 3: I said, do you have any posters in the trunk
Speaker 3: of your cars? Just get the band, get the kids
Speaker 3: out to the parking lot. So I hired a Disney
Speaker 3: vocal arranger and got Disney Kids to come in legitimately
Speaker 3: with the contracts, you know what I mean, real kids schore.
Speaker 3: That was I dodged the bullet right there a little bit,
Speaker 3: but it was my naive diativity at that point, you know.
Speaker 3: So anyway, and the song came together and I just
Speaker 3: I remember when I was done the song, I thought, finally,
Speaker 3: this is the way I want it. This is kind
Speaker 3: of what I this is the feeling I want from
Speaker 3: this song, this big song with this big message, telling
Speaker 3: this intimate story verse by verse about a person you know,
Speaker 3: about little Susie and about you know, my you know,
Speaker 3: being taken two to the chest and just you know,
Speaker 3: all this kind of stuff. It's it's a very intimate
Speaker 3: story with a massive message, and it just kept, I
Speaker 3: don't know, it just got where it got.
Speaker 1: Then.
Speaker 2: I felt the same way about a song called move
Speaker 2: Along I did for the All American Rejects. It had
Speaker 2: the same idea to it, intimate story about trying to
Speaker 2: get through the day. And I brought the kids choir
Speaker 2: into that one too, you know, because I wanted to
Speaker 2: do the you know when you sing the chorus and
Speaker 2: the breakdown, same thing as you so, But I created
Speaker 2: Bob a lot because Bob, I think is brilliant and
Speaker 2: he did such a great job on those records. But
Speaker 2: you got to pay homage and respects, and the only
Speaker 2: way to really do that is through your work, you know.
Speaker 1: So, Okay, did you know the Reason was going to
Speaker 1: be as big as it was?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: It's second engineer in the studio. We were working on
Speaker 2: all these songs, and the second engineer, he's just some kid,
Speaker 2: and he goes, that song's going to be huge, And
Speaker 2: I said, what are you talking about? This love song?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Whatever?
Speaker 2: You know, like you know, you're in a in the
Speaker 2: middle of it. At that point, and he goes, I'm
Speaker 2: telling you, my my girlfriend's going to love that song.
Speaker 2: And then of course Lee or Cohen, who's running the
Speaker 2: label at the time, calls up and he goes, I
Speaker 2: think that song's going to be huge. And then somebody
Speaker 2: said it needs a bridge, and I went, you're right,
Speaker 2: it does need a bridge. And I thought again, I
Speaker 2: went back to the Beatles, and I said, how am
Speaker 2: I going to come up with a bridge? And so
Speaker 2: I took the little help from my friend's idea where
Speaker 2: it goes to when he goes, you know, I get
Speaker 2: by with the little help of my friends. It's the
Speaker 2: first time you hear the D chord, so it goes
Speaker 2: e ed a. You don't hear it the rest of
Speaker 2: the song. It's only in those spots. So in the
Speaker 2: bridge of the reason I put the dcord, I put
Speaker 2: the one that doesn't appear anywhere else in the song there.
Speaker 2: And you know, the reason is you is a D chord?
Speaker 2: Reason is you? Is it D chord? So there again
Speaker 2: you have to refer back to the stuff that's great,
Speaker 2: you know, And that's kind of how that worked out
Speaker 2: that one. And then the little piano intro part I
Speaker 2: put on. There was a reference to one note Samba
Speaker 2: by Sergio Mendez. It starts off the ding ding ding
Speaker 2: ding like that, and that was kind of a paying
Speaker 2: respects to that and Count Basie who always said you
Speaker 2: can get away with one note. So you know, that's
Speaker 2: just what was going through my head.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You went to music school in
Speaker 1: the middle of your tenure at Drexel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's funny. I got my honorary doctorate from
Speaker 2: Drexel in twenty fifteen, and I told a funny story
Speaker 2: during the speech because my grade point average was terrible
Speaker 2: and I dropped that at Drexel. I went to PCPA
Speaker 2: and I had to reapply to Drexel, so I had
Speaker 2: to go to Dean Woodring and sit sheepishly in front
Speaker 2: of him and say, listen, my parents are really mad
Speaker 2: that I'm not finishing his degree, so can I reapply?
Speaker 2: And he let me back in right, And I did
Speaker 2: pretty well the rest of the time there because I
Speaker 2: focused on it. When I got my honorary doctor and
Speaker 2: he was there and I went up to him and
Speaker 2: I said, Dean, I really appreciate you letting me back in.
Speaker 2: I don't have no idea why you did, and they
Speaker 2: must not have looked at my great point average when
Speaker 2: they gave me this and he goes, you know why
Speaker 2: I let you back in? I said, why he goes
Speaker 2: because anybody who comes back who wants to be back
Speaker 2: in is usually a pretty good student after that, because
Speaker 2: you're not They're coming in of their own volition. And
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, okay, so it was kind of
Speaker 2: easy decision then, you know, like I was actually really
Speaker 2: thanked him up and down for that one, you know,
Speaker 2: because he didn't have to. I mean, I was not
Speaker 2: thinking about engineering back then. It was all music to
Speaker 2: me at that point. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, but did you drop out to play music? Did
Speaker 1: you drop out to go to music school?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I dropped out to go to music school. I'd
Speaker 2: play music, yeah.
Speaker 1: And so what did you think you were going to
Speaker 1: learn at music school? And what did you learn?
Speaker 2: You know what? I didn't really know at the time,
Speaker 2: but I knew one thing that I was good at.
Speaker 2: Two things. I was really really good at soul fesh,
Speaker 2: which I means I could hear intervals easily, Like I
Speaker 2: could sit down as somebody plays a C and they
Speaker 2: play an F I know, it's a fourth. If somebody
Speaker 2: plays an A and plays an E, I know it's
Speaker 2: a fifth. I had a really good ear, but I
Speaker 2: couldn't put together harmonies. And a lot of this stuff
Speaker 2: in the bands was disco band I was in. They
Speaker 2: were asking for harmony arrangements and I was trying to
Speaker 2: I was guessing a little bit. But when I went
Speaker 2: in there there was a course in three part harmony arrangement.
Speaker 2: It's called Hindamoth. It's a book called Hindemith, and it's
Speaker 2: so basic, so basic, but it's basically called arranging for
Speaker 2: a four piece. That's it. That's the whole thing. All
Speaker 2: the stuff I learned in there still applies. All of it.
Speaker 2: Arranging for harmony, it's arranging for a small because basically
Speaker 2: these bands are they're really four piece bands. You know,
Speaker 2: bass drums, guitars, you know, vocals, that's it. The rest
Speaker 2: of it's sweetening, you know. So that was a big
Speaker 2: I'm so glad I went there. I a still learned
Speaker 2: a lot about music history, which I don't apply or
Speaker 2: anything like that, but you know, didn't do very well
Speaker 2: at site reading, that's for sure, you know. And I
Speaker 2: audited it to classes.
Speaker 1: You audited it right, so.
Speaker 2: Which means that the only ones I got transferred across
Speaker 2: were the ones that apply this humanities classes to Drexel.
Speaker 2: So I was able to apply my ear training course,
Speaker 2: my history course to my humanity's credits a Drexel. So
Speaker 2: it wasn't a total loss, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like I dropped, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Okay, just a couple of things. It muses school.
Speaker 1: Why were you auditing as opposed to taking the courses
Speaker 1: for real?
Speaker 2: Because I couldn't take I couldn't play keyboards, That's the one.
Speaker 2: That's the one course I audited. It was the you know,
Speaker 2: sitting and playing site reading. I just the kids who
Speaker 2: to MUSA school were so far advanced than I was.
Speaker 2: They were kids playing.
Speaker 1: But that was the only that was the only class
Speaker 1: you took. It you as the only one. YEAHA was
Speaker 1: it a one year course? I just went for one
Speaker 1: year and then what was it? I went back to Drexel?
Speaker 1: You know, I mean what went through in your head that, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going back.
Speaker 2: I felt like I learned enough. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: learn how to arrange and I knew that course existed,
Speaker 2: Doctor Chris Wiki. He ended up becoming the provost there.
Speaker 2: He taught the course and I had heard about this
Speaker 2: guy through somebody and he said, yeah, he's really good
Speaker 2: at arranging for small ensembles, and some reason in my mind,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to do it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It was probably very reckless, honestly to drop out of
Speaker 2: three years of Drexel, you know, to do this. I
Speaker 2: didn't even know if they were going to let me
Speaker 2: back in or not. But that's where my life was
Speaker 2: going at the time. It was a bit little reckless,
Speaker 2: you know. But at the end, I realized, you know what,
Speaker 2: it's nothing else I can learn in this school because
Speaker 2: I'm not going to play concert piano. It's not where
Speaker 2: I'm heading, you know. So but what I could do
Speaker 2: that the other kids couldn't do. I could sit down
Speaker 2: and improvise. They couldn't do any of that. These kids.
Speaker 2: It was funny. They could sit and play box Italian concerto,
Speaker 2: say reading it, you know, but if I said play
Speaker 2: a minor D and the amprovised, they didn't even know
Speaker 2: what I was talking about, do you know. So it
Speaker 2: was weird how the two sides didn't you know what
Speaker 2: I mean of music? They were surely different to disciplines
Speaker 2: almost you know, Just to.
Speaker 1: Be clear, did you drop out to go to music
Speaker 1: school or did you drop out and then go to
Speaker 1: music school.
Speaker 2: I dropped out to go to music school. I applied
Speaker 2: to music school first.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah. And at the time, you had no
Speaker 1: intention of going back to Drexel, no at all. So
Speaker 1: why did you go back to Drexel Other than parental pressure?
Speaker 2: I went back because I think I got you know,
Speaker 2: I started feeling kind of a little bit stupid about it.
Speaker 2: I was like, you know what I did three years
Speaker 2: at this Drexel. I'm going to get my degree at
Speaker 2: some point. Why am I like? I got Okay, I
Speaker 2: learned soulfege, I learned about arranging. I'm never going to
Speaker 2: be a concert pianist, you know. Let me finish the degree.
Speaker 2: I'll get a job. I'll go to LA And that
Speaker 2: all worked out pretty well. Got my job, had my degree,
Speaker 2: so I could get a job in LA and I'll
Speaker 2: live in LA and try the music business. But at
Speaker 2: least i'll have a job. If I didn't get my degree,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't know how I
Speaker 2: was going to support myself, so I had to have
Speaker 2: the job.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you literally scratched your way to where
Speaker 1: you are now, very admirably. You have all the success,
Speaker 1: you're busy, You've achieved so much. But is there something
Speaker 1: on the horizon? Is there still a dream? Walp you
Speaker 1: say I want to do that.
Speaker 2: No, I just want the label to be self sufficient,
Speaker 2: That's really it. I think if I could produce the Beatles,
Speaker 2: I would, but well.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, the Beatles you can't produce because two
Speaker 1: of them are not here. But is one of the
Speaker 1: one of the dreams to work with some hero, some.
Speaker 2: Icon, you know. I worked with two of my favorite
Speaker 2: heroes already, one with Santana. I produced a Santana record
Speaker 2: and I worked with Ray man Zeric on that record.
Speaker 2: So I got to work with people that I idolized,
Speaker 2: and I got to know Ray pretty well. I would
Speaker 2: say the one person I wish I had worked with
Speaker 2: was with Keith Emerson. I never got to really work
Speaker 2: with him. I was a huge prog rock fan growing up,
Speaker 2: and that didn't work, you know, it just didn't work out.
Speaker 2: I tried contacting them. I don't know. I'm sort of
Speaker 2: happy where I'm at right now. You know, my kids
Speaker 2: in the music business, which is good. I like that.
Speaker 2: My wife sort of is retired and she sold her
Speaker 2: publishing company, did really well with that, and we travel
Speaker 2: a lot. That's one thing I really liked doing as
Speaker 2: traveling because I like seeing the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: There's so much more to see than just living here,
Speaker 2: you know. I went to Vietnam earlier this year. I
Speaker 2: went to Cambodi at Laos and I think that you're
Speaker 2: not serving yourself, is my opinion, as a human when
Speaker 2: you don't see everything. You know, like you're only going
Speaker 2: to be on this earth a certain amount of time.
Speaker 2: And when I went to Vietnam, it was such an
Speaker 2: eye opening experience and all these different places. We're going
Speaker 2: to Australia in a few weeks. I just want to
Speaker 2: see it all. That's what I want to do, you know.
Speaker 2: So I'm lucky to be in that position where I
Speaker 2: can do things like that.
Speaker 1: How much of the year are you traveling?
Speaker 2: I would say probably a quarter of the year.
Speaker 1: Oh really a lot, a lot?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, these is three week trips. Some of them, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're big trips. Some of them are just plan trips,
Speaker 2: like TALC tours, you know that you go on a
Speaker 2: trip with a bunch of people, and some of them
Speaker 2: are trips we do ourselves. I'm going in June to
Speaker 2: play I just learned how to play golf for some
Speaker 2: stupid reason. But I'm going to play golf with a
Speaker 2: friend of mine in Scotland later on this year, and
Speaker 2: then we might go to Morocco later in the year.
Speaker 2: I never thought about going to Morocco, but somebody said, hey,
Speaker 2: you should check it out. It's a new you know,
Speaker 2: it's sort of an interesting place. I'm a big World
Speaker 2: War Two. It's aanatic wheal. I love reading about that stuff,
Speaker 2: and they have I love to see sort of where
Speaker 2: you know, the battles were fought, the Kerosene Pass and
Speaker 2: all that stuff.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So you know, I love going to Normandy. That was
Speaker 2: a great trip to see the bat you know, the
Speaker 2: beaches and all. And went to you know, travel to Iceland.
Speaker 2: Great trip. Something that's like, you know, you don't see
Speaker 2: things like that that brings color into my life, you know,
Speaker 2: like it makes it more. It makes me appreciate living
Speaker 2: here more.
Speaker 1: Actually, you know, so we're we're a couple of places
Speaker 1: on your horizon. So called bucket list.
Speaker 2: You want to go to, Well, we're talking about going
Speaker 2: to India and that would have to be with a
Speaker 2: land trip, I think, because you need to have a
Speaker 2: guide for that one. Yeah, I like to try that,
Speaker 2: you know, not too long, Like some of the trips
Speaker 2: are too long for me, Like I don't like twenty days?
Speaker 2: Is it for me? Be it away from home?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: So I'd like to try that, I think. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Australia was one of them. In New Zealand that's going
Speaker 2: to be checked off. But you know, we thought about Antarctica,
Speaker 2: but that's a whole other thing. Like sometimes you can't
Speaker 2: get there if the weather's bad, you've wasted the whole trip.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I want to risk that. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm not no desire by the way to do a safari.
Speaker 2: So that's the bottom of the list. Okay, everybody says
Speaker 2: to do it.
Speaker 1: But you're on one of these trips it's twenty days long.
Speaker 1: Are you disconnected?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Are you basically working while you're on the trip?
Speaker 2: I can't get away from the work. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: mind either because it breaks it up for me, do
Speaker 2: you know, Like I like sometimes it's in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night. My time usually at there are time
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like at the time is off,
Speaker 2: it's like eight o'clock. Night is usually like mid noon
Speaker 2: in LA or something. So you know, I'll set up
Speaker 2: a meeting or something like that, and you know, put
Speaker 2: my two cents and I can't do music from there.
Speaker 2: It's mostly the record label stuff I can do from there,
Speaker 2: so yeah, I don't try it. I'll listen to mixes,
Speaker 2: you know, okay mixes and things like that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Okay, Howard, it's been great talking to you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for sharing your story and your insights with my audience.
Speaker 2: Oh well, thank you for having me. Absolutely, I'm a
Speaker 2: big fan. You know. We listen to you all the time.
Speaker 1: By the way, well, as I say, it's good to
Speaker 1: hear you know, your philosophies and to get into some
Speaker 1: of this nitty gritty, I mean cutting vocals. You really
Speaker 1: you made some good points, but there's still more points
Speaker 1: to make. You say, you work with Kelly Clarkson and
Speaker 1: some other people. But we're gonna leave it here for today, Okay,
Speaker 1: till next time. This is Bob left Stacks
Speaker 3: Sh