Live Room in Shelter Island Sound
It definitely trips you out. It’s still intimidating in a way because you’re f**king with history. You don’t want to screw it up, and you want to present it in…You’re not trying to reinvent it, either. I’m not trying to make it better than it was. I’m just trying to present it in a true fashion that sounds good today because if you compare it to the way the records sounded back then, I thought the records were very thin sounding back then. They were very bottom light in the mastering and just the way they mixed it…But it’s pretty trippy being inside those sessions from 1965. It definitely is.”
ON SOME OF THE OTHER HIGH POINTS OF HIS CAREER:
“Working with Lou Reed and Eric Andersen. We did a song, they did a song together, and Eric was one of my early heroes from his Blue River record, which is getting a lot of attention now because there’s this huge exhibit at the National Country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Cats…Having Olivia Newton-John walk into your studio is a pretty great moment, too…[Bobby McFerrin,] he’s so freaking talented and he’s so magically musical you can’t help but be joyful in his presence because it’s…He just does it, he hears it.”
ON WHAT HE LOOKS FOR IN AN APPRENTICE:
“I want someone who’s interested in recording real musicians or real instruments. That’s what we do here mostly. We have a great piano, we have a great drum kit, and we pride ourselves in how we record vocals for people and how we make them comfortable. So they see that aspect of it. So kids who are interested in that, interested in quality sonics and interested in how to put performances and records together using everything at our fingertips, analog and digital, that’s the kind of student that will attract, be attractive to me. Someone who has done a little bit of homework, they’re here to learn, so if they don’t know anything that’s fine, too. But it’s just the appreciation of the art of recording and if they’re really interested…You really gotta want to do this. There’s no in-between.”
ON WHY HE MENTORS FOR THE RECORDING CONNECTION:
“To me, it made sense. It was kind of the way that I learned even though I didn’t have a particular mentor…I’ve had the experience of teaching in a classroom, too, and it’s not my favorite way to teach this material. No one taught me. I just kind of had to learn as I go and people, someone showed me…You just start to learn all that stuff, and then as you go you’re really learning on the job. Whereas today with all these freaking music schools all over the place and there’s 20-30 kids in a classroom, and you’re trying to teach kids who have such varying degrees of knowledge and inspiration about what they’re doing…To me, it becomes really not a great way to learn this stuff, and no one teaches this stuff in a classroom. But with the mentoring program, what I liked about the initial idea was that you actually…you’re in there. You’re seeing it happen as it happens…And there’s been some great people who’ve come through….I’ve had people who just are still doing it. One guy opened up his own rehearsal, recording studio. Another guy has a studio over in Long Island City. Some guys learn how to do it just so they can go on to record their own band. I’ve had a lot of good experiences with people. The younger kids seem very respectful of what goes on in this room because it is…There’s a lot of history in this equipment. It’s been making records since 1979, and yet we still have the latest and greatest Pro Tools and utilize everything. So it’s a very powerful situation that we have in this studio…When they’re learning with me, they’re going in there and setting up the kick drum mic and we’re moving it around, and we’re doing this and I’m explaining as we go. A couple of guys, they can basically come in here and do what I do. They’ve learned from the ground up the right way why we do stuff.”
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